by R. Lee Smith
An hour ago, he might have been here to stop it.
They had not left her body behind, only that of their companion. Perhaps she was alive still…or perhaps they had taken her corpse away as trophy. No, he must believe she lived! Lived and fought, as fiercely as the evidence here proclaimed, knowing he would follow.
“Sheul, O my Father, show me the way. Set me upon their path if she lives! Give me my right of vengeance if she does not!” He struggled with his fear and broke upon it, suddenly roaring, “How could You have sent her to me just to take her from me now?”
It was not for men to demand answers of God, no more than it was the recalcitrant son’s right to demand forgiveness of his father. Meoraq knew this. He bent his back beneath the weight of guilt and silence, one hand splayed open in cooling blood, and knew—for the first time in all his life—no love for God.
The moment passed away eventually, but the Meoraq who rose from his knees at the end of that bad time would forever be changed from the man he had been and he knew it. He collected his weapons, cleaned and sheathed them. He gave what fuel remained to the fire so that he could count his remaining provisions by its light and make them ready for the next day’s travel. Then he lay down and closed his eyes.
There was nothing he could do until morning.
4
Amber woke up to the sound of what she thought was an engine stuttering. In that moment, before she opened her eyes or even really had a chance to process sound or smell or anything lucid, she felt the overwhelming rush of relief that she had dreamed the whole damn thing. They’d said there would be no dreams in the Sleepers, but they’d been wrong, because she felt as though she’d been locked in that one for years. But she was awake now, which meant she was on Plymouth with Nicci right in the room beside her. There had been no crash. There were no lizardpeople. There was no Meoraq…
That hurt and it was the hurt that pierced her enough to drag her eyes open and see for herself what was real.
The first thing she saw was the wall. A leather wall, dyed black and stretched between some rough-cut poles, not so much to keep the weather out as to keep the light of their fire in. The crudity of this enclosure assured her at once that, for good or ill, she was still marooned on an alien planet with a race full of lizardmen.
Only after this fact sank in did she recognize that she was still bound—wrists to elbows, ankles to each other—and tethered to one of the poles holding the wall up. The belt that had gagged her had been loosened but not removed; it hung around her neck like a dog collar. The next thing she saw, what she probably should have seen first, was a small, slender lizardman—a lizardlady, maybe—hunched over with its wrists tied to a length of pole along with several other lizards, stuttering hoarsely without words.
Crying. All this time, she’d thought Meoraq had never seen anyone else cry but her. The sight of the lizard in a posture of such helpless, terrified surrender, coughing out its sobs as quietly as possible while the raiders (a lot more raiders, she noticed) talked around a campfire close by, pulled at Amber’s heart in a way only Nicci’s crying jags had ever been able to do before.
“Hey,” she said before she stopped to think that nothing she said was going to make any kind of sense to these people. “Hey, don’t cry. It’s…well, it’s not okay, but it will be. It might be.”
The lizardlady (she was positive now that was what the captives were. They had smoother, more delicate features and, more to the point, they appeared to have a breast. Only one. It wasn’t much—just a slight swelling in the center of each slender chest, more like a broad wedge than the round bubbles Amber had, but plainly a breast) gave her a fearful, shivering stare and began to stutter harder.
“What in the grip of God’s loving arms did I just hear?” The leader rose from his place at the fire, silencing his men with a wave of one hand before aiming it at Amber like a gun. “Did you just talk?”
She clamped her bloody lips together and said nothing. Her jaws still ached and the taste of blood was still bitter in her mouth. She could be as defiant as she wanted in her heart, but the rest of her didn’t want the gag again.
The raider’s leader was not deterred. He crossed the small camp in just a few steps to hunker beside her and prodded at her shoulder with one blunt finger. “Say something.”
“Fuck off,” she said. Stupid thing to say. She could have wished him a Merry Christmas for all the good it did her.
“God blows blessings up my ass,” someone else said, standing up. “It can talk!”
“You’re both imagining things,” said a third lizardman. “It’s just making sounds, those aren’t words.”
“Those aren’t dumaqi words,” the leader corrected. He drew a knife—he wore a pair high on his arms, like Meoraq—and showed it to her. “I think it’s time I had a better look at you, little one. Hold still and this won’t hurt. Toss around and I guarantee nothing.”
He did not untie her. He left her hands behind her back and her legs cinched together and simply cut along the seam of her tunic, severing each clumsy stitch she’d sewed on herself, until it just fell open. He grunted, flicking at strands of her hair with the tip of his knife, then stabbed it into the ground for safe-keeping and cupped her chin in his hand. He turned her head this way, then that, nudged at her lips, her ear, the ticklish flesh around some healing scratch on her cheek. Then he let go and dropped his gaze.
He touched her breast, then gripped it, kneaded it. His scales and the cold popped a nipple out for him; his thumb rolled over it thoughtfully, gave it a pluck, a careful pinch. He stopped when she winced, eyed her, then moved on to finger her bellybutton. He seemed to be trying to push his finger into it and when he finally decided that wasn’t going to happen, he leaned back on his heels and just grunted again.
“Where do you suppose it came from?” someone asked.
“Washed in on some storm.” He flexed the spines on the back of his head in a shrugging motion. “If you’d ever read the Prophet’s Word, you’d know that the first years after the Fall brought all manner of new and terrible life out of Gann.”
More than one raider cast his eyes skyward or hid them entirely behind a rubbing hand, but only the one called Vek, with a bandaged arm and a glazed look in his eye, was reckless enough to actually say, “Zhuqa, my missing hand is screaming at me in ways you can’t imagine. I can’t hear that piss-talk tonight and stay sane.”
“You go north far enough, you will find monsters. Hairy beasts as tall as three men standing on each other’s shoulders, swinging tails that can knock a man dead without even knowing he was there. Legless things in the rocky cracks that come up and bite, steal the feeling from a man’s body, and while he lies there unable to move, they crawl up into his slit and make a den in his guts. Even the trees have teeth there and will eat a man if he stumbles too close. I have been to the northlands,” he went on as his men murmured uneasily at each other. “I have seen all these things. This—” He gave Amber’s breast another rough, almost petting squeeze. “—is new to my eyes, but if they have monsters in the north, they must have them elsewhere as well.”
“This isn’t a monster.” Vek took a deep swallow from a small flask and came a little closer to them. “It’s a person.”
The leader grunted agreement.
“And I,” Vek went on, bending over to blow a particularly pungent and strangely sweet cloud of breath at her, “am going to kill it.”
“Ease off, Vek.”
“I mean to take a few days doing it, too,” he added, pointing at Amber. “I hope you understand me, you little smear of ghet-shit. I am going to cut off your hands and your feet and eat them in front of you.”
The leader reached up and caught Vek’s harness, gave him a small shake to make him look at him, and quietly said, “Ease off, I said. If I decide to sell it—if—I will give you the first offer. Until then, it belongs to me and you keep your distance. I’m feeling tenderly toward you at the moment, for the sake of all the years your
two good arms have done me, but that doesn’t mean I won’t put you right into Gann’s open mouth if you keep giving me reasons.”
Vek moved off, grumbling and drinking, to collapse in a heap by the fire. He picked something up and looked at it—his hand, Amber realized—and threw it into the coals hard enough to send up a cloud of hot ash.
The leader picked up his knife again and resumed cutting. Her pants, as crudely made as her shirt, put up a little resistance at the waistband, and then he was able to put the knife away and just tear along the seams. Soon, she was lying there in her boots and the belts he’d used to tie her up and not a damn thing more. She tried to keep glaring, but the wind cut across her and the effect was completely spoiled by her sporadic shivers.
“What’s it doing?” someone asked.
“She’s cold,” the leader said after a moment’s silent contemplation.
All of them exchanged glances. It was some time before one of them said, “She? Are you sure?”
“No.” He thumbed at her nipple again. “But I believe these are teats of some kind. And this—” He started to move toward her pussy; she yanked her bound legs up. He dropped his hand back to his knee with a look of tolerant amusement and finished, “—looks open to me. That means female.”
“Oh that is disgusting,” one of them said, almost exactly at the same time as another said, “That is so much money…”
The leader grunted. Then he leaned in a little and tapped at his forehead with two fingers. “Zhuqa,” he said.
“What are you doing?”
“Say it,” said the leader. He tapped his brow again. “Zhuqa.”
Amber glared at him, shivering under her thuoch hide. She kept her mouth shut.
He flexed his spines again as he gently cupped her cheek. Then he lifted his hand, showed her his open palm, then slowly drew back his arm.
“Zhuqa,” she spat.
All the lizards but one recoiled.
“She said it,” one of them breathed.
“She tried.” Their leader dropped his hand to her forehead and gave her one of Meoraq’s friendly knuckle-taps. “Zhuqa means me. And Eshiqi…that means you. Say it.”
She didn’t think about it consciously, with words and arguments and a rational balance of pros and cons, but once again, that sense of helplessness welled up. It wasn’t despair, only a ruthless acknowledgment of her new situation and the very few options before her: Fight and be overwhelmed (and probably killed), or play along and hope for something better a little further down the road.
All this had time to sink in before Zhuqa ever had the chance to show her his slapping hand.
“Eshiqi,” said Amber.
“Good girl. Now look at me, Eshiqi. I want you to see this.”
He untied her left hand, just the one. She watched as he took her gently by that arm, holding it not quite straight out from the shoulder. He smiled, cupped her elbow, then slid that hand in an unmistakable caress down to her wrist, down to the Manifestor’s docking bracelet that she’d worn so long, she had forgotten it entirely.
“This,” he said, prying the thin metal off with his eyes locked on hers, “is over.”
He took it off, held it up briefly for his men to see, and then set it down. He drew a knife, the one he’d used to cut her clothes away, and as she struggled in vain to yank her hand out of his grip, suddenly stabbed it down. Into the bracelet.
Amber stopped fighting and looked at that. His men muttered and nudged each other. One of them rattled out a particularly nasty lizardish snicker. Zhuqa merely sheathed his knife again and tied her wrists back together, leaving the bracelet dead on the ground.
“Now you are mine,” he told her, and lifted her back onto his shoulder. The moment ended. He gestured to his men and they started taking down the walls and kicking the fire out. “Water for the slaves and get them moving,” he ordered, already walking. “I want to be home before dawn.”
* * *
When the sun came up, Amber raised herself up as best she could as she swung over Zhuqa’s back, searching for any dark speck that might be Meoraq, but she couldn’t see anything. Not saoqs, not corrokis, not any living thing. Just hills and trees…and ruins. And where Meoraq avoided the fallen cities of the ancients, the raiders headed right for them.
Headed home.
The ground beneath Zhuqa’s boots gave way to cracked pavement as the weathered framework and crumbling heaps of overgrown buildings slowly enclosed them. Ancient machines lay in rusty piles here and there along the streets, but their placement only seemed random at first glance. When she was behind them, looking out, Amber could see the sentries positioned behind them. One of them cupped his snout and let out a loud yodeling cry that Amber might have mistaken for a ghet’s howl if she hadn’t seen him do it. In the distance, someone else joined in and someone else beyond that, and then there were dozens of voices all raised together.
Soon, she could hear them coming, heavy boots tromping over the overgrown roads and speculative voices made indecipherable by the wind. The captives began to cry again, struggling in their bonds until the men walking at their sides were forced to cuff at them to keep them moving, but all Amber could do was hang there.
Trotting feet crunched up to them unseen and some new voice coughed out a laughing, “What is that?”
“The short answer is, ‘Mine’.” Zhuqa didn’t even slow down. He passed a raider who fell into step behind him, his head cocked and gaze traveling freely over Amber. “You didn’t want to come, remember, Iziz? All the way to Praxas, you said? In this cold? Fuck that, you said.”
“Is it the first time I’ve ever been wrong?” the other asked. “What is it?”
“I call her Eshiqi.”
“Her?” Iziz hooked a finger under Amber’s chin and tipped her head up. “Gann’s breath, that’s eerie. It looks almost like a person.”
Zhuqa laughed. “Almost,” he agreed.
“You selling it?”
“You buying?”
“I might toss a bid out. Can you fuck it?” he inquired, looking more and more interested.
“It’s got a slit in the right place. I haven’t tried yet. She killed Godeshuq and took a hand off Vek.”
Yet. He hadn’t tried yet.
“And gave you a good bite, it looks like.”
“Not half so good as she would have liked, eh, Eshiqi?” He shrugged to jostle her into a slightly different position as he ducked through a door into the ruined mouth of a building. More raiders lounged around in various stages of idleness, getting to their feet at the sight of her, only to be distracted by the captive lizardladies. Zhuqa showed no interest in any of them, only led the way through torchlit halls to a wide, echoing stair. He started down, bumping Amber hard against his shoulder on each step.
Iziz followed, toying with Amber’s hair. “You never said if you were selling.”
“If I do, I’ll see that you know before the open bidding. Here.” She felt him shift and saw a metal plate flicker as he tossed it over his shoulder for Iziz to catch. “Make yourself useful and take the new slaves to my pen. My men will want a wrestle; I ran them all night. Take one for yourself, since Godeshuq won’t be needing her, but be polite. Take the one the others leave. And give Vek first choice. His feelings are bruised.”
Iziz raised his fist and turned around to take charge of the slaves, herding them down another hall and out of Amber’s sight. Soon she had nothing to look at but torchlight on the walls, another stairwell, another corridor, and then—
“Home,” announced Zhuqa. bumping her in another good-natured shrug. She felt him shift again, heard the small scrape of a key turning in a lock, and then he took a few steps forward into darkness. “Not much, but better than wind and rain, even to fierce little snap-jaws like you. Did you note how many guards we passed on our journey to my chambers?”
Many. One at every landing. One or two at every crossways in the halls. Amber said nothing.
“I am going to put you
down now and unbind you. Mark me, I don’t have to unbind you, but I choose to. You may get the idea to run. If you do, I swear before God the All-Father I will let you. You won’t get far and I will not come and get you for one full day and night because I will be rather cross with you. Do you hear me? Kick your legs twice if you do.”
She kicked sullenly. Once. Twice. And stopped.
“Good girl.”
He heaved her off and set her with a jarring thump on her feet, holding her at the waist until she steadied. Then he let go and moved away.
The door was open just behind her. She could see the red light of the torches in the hall. ‘If my legs were only free, I could run,’ she thought. Useless, suicidal thought, but it still had to take its tumble through her brain. Turn right at the second crossways, run to the end. Up one flight, run to the left. Up four more flights and out.
Stone scraped along metal. Sparks spat and caught on a narrow wick set in a mirrored bowl of oil. Zhuqa glanced over his shoulder at her, grunted, and walked away to light another lamp.
Amber didn’t run. She looked instead at the room around her, a room which had perhaps been office space in the years before the Fall. She could see an open cupboard heaped with furs to serve as a bed, a scattering of mismatched armor and other clothing, a few small trunks and one very large one, a small table set with an empty plate and a cup, a chair crowned artistically with a tachuqi skull, and on the cracked walls, a few shelves and some hooks, one supporting a large and well-stained leather flask.
Her eyes came back to Zhuqa in the end. He was waiting for it, waiting for her to see him when he reached out to catch the door.
And pull it closed.
She glared at him. The glare was stupid, maybe, but she couldn’t stop it from happening. She could stand there without running and she could keep her mouth shut, but she couldn’t help glaring. It was too easy to imagine how it might be to snatch up that lamp and throw it, too easy to see him coated in oil, flailing, burning.