The Last Hour of Gann

by R. Lee Smith

  “Prick!” spat Amber, taking it with her to her table.

  Dkorm laughed again, but in a puzzled way. “What was that?”

  She remembered suddenly and with a sharp pang that ‘prick’ was also a dumaqi word and that she’d just called him a hingepin or something. It brought Meoraq right back to the surface of her thoughts, made her feel taken all over again.

  Amber looked down at Zhuqa’s baby and watched its tiny hand flail and punch until she gave it a finger to latch onto. Its grip was surprisingly strong. It squeezed once and then towed her finger up under its chin. It bit her, gumming harmlessly at her fingertip while she watched, transfixed by the working of its jaws, the minutia of its tiny fingers wrapping her giant one, the impossible detail of each individual scale. It was hypnotizing her and she wanted to be hypnotized, wanted to forget where she was and why and how long she was likely to stay because rescue was coming, sure it was, but it he wasn’t here yet.

  “It’ll piss all over you,” Dkorm warned, watching her wrap the baby in the loose folds of her oversized shift.

  She ignored him. The baby was singing, its chirring breaths gradually lengthening to fall into rhythm with the rise and fall of her breasts. It relaxed, arms and legs falling slowly open like a bud in the sunshine. Basking in her. Not her warmth or her scent or the sound of her voice. In her.

  She lost herself in it. She never heard the door open, never knew anyone was behind her until she felt the weight of his hand on her shoulder.

  Amber stiffened, her own hand cupping protectively over the baby’s hot, wrinkled back, but that was all she did. She didn’t try to shrug off Zhuqa’s touch. And it was Zhuqa. She only had to look as far as the lizardladies bending their necks or Dkorm standing at attention next to Xzem to know who was behind her now.

  The hand gave her a pat, then took itself away. Zhuqa stepped out from behind her and walked around the table, moving toward Xzem, whose breath quickened but who did not quite dare to cover her baby in the huddle of her own body. She crouched, rigid and in anguish, as Zhuqa peeled back Rosek’s wrap and watched her nurse.

  The silence was a hammer on Amber’s ears. She could hear every wet sound as the baby sucked at her finger, every happy grumble and purr as it nestled close.

  “Am I making you nervous?” Zhuqa asked mildly, still gazing at Xzem’s baby.

  “Isn’t that what you’re going for?” Amber countered.

  “Not you, Eshiqi.” Zhuqa’s eyes shifted, shining lazily back at Dkorm. “Am I making you nervous, Dkorm?”

  “No, sir.”

  “No?”

  Dkorm fidgeted, checked himself, tried to stand taller. “I don’t expect to see you in the workpit, is all.”

  “Ah.” Zhuqa returned his easy stare to Rosek. “I thought you might be nervous.”

  “No, sir.”

  “It would not be an unreasonable feeling.”

  “Sir?”

  “Particularly since the task of caring for whichever little sprat is not biting at Xzem’s ample teat is supposed to be yours.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Yes?” Zhuqa allowed himself the posture of very mild surprise. “Then this was understood?”

  “Yes, sir. Very well.”

  “Very well,” Zhuqa mused. “So then. I confess to some confusion.”

  “Eshiqi wanted to hold it.”

  “Ah.” Zhuqa reached down to stroke the nursing baby’s cheek, and while he did this, Xzem did not breathe at all. “As it happens, I like to see Eshiqi hold it, but I believe my last word on the matter was that Eshiqi could see the baby, Dkorm.” He straightened up and turned around. “See it. Not hold it.”

  Dkorm was frowning, flustered. “My apologies, sir.”

  “Well, yes.” Zhuqa indulged himself in a small chuckle. “Apologies would certainly appear to be in order. You are passing my first-born around, Dkorm.”

  “I am very sorry, sir.”

  “To a slave, actually.” Zhuqa began to walk back around the table.

  Dkorm did not back away, but was quick to say, “Sir, I wouldn’t have done it if it were not Eshiqi.”

  Zhuqa glanced back to rest his eyes on Amber and the baby in her arms. His spines were forward, relaxed. The scales at his throat remained black. “She does seem rather fond of it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I confess to being fond of it myself,” said Zhuqa. “Have I made any secret of that?”

  “No, sir.”

  “No. I do not consider myself a sentimental man, but that is, as far as I know, my only living child. Do you have children, Dkorm?”

  “I…I don’t know, sir.”

  “Truth?”

  “Sir.”

  “That is a howling shame. A man’s legacy is in his loins. Once the soul is pissed out and the body goes to rot, there is nothing left in this life that endures, not the coin of his hoarding or the good word of his friends or any damned thing at all, save the name he has left to his children.”

  “I…Yes, sir.”

  “Look there—” Zhuqa dropped his arm around Dkorm’s shoulders and gestured at the sleeping infant in Amber’s arms. “—and you look upon my eternity.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Nestled in the arms of an unbroken slave.”

  Dkorm hesitated, but there was no safe answer and not a lot of give to the truth. “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you ever stop to think such a slave could, in a moment of defiance—” His fingers drummed once on Dkorm’s shoulders. “—dash its helpless little brains out just to strike a scar on me?”

  Amber’s arms tightened on the baby.

  Zhuqa waited, then looked down at Dkorm. “Did you?” he prompted.

  “No, sir.”

  “Not even once?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You disappoint me, Dkorm.” Zhuqa studied the man standing rigid under his relaxed arm, then gave him another pat and stepped away. “I accept your apology. Let Eshiqi hold the baby if it makes her happy.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Dkorm, only a little shakily.

  Zhuqa came to the table and hunkered comfortably before Amber. He cocked his head, listening to the breathy rumble of its sleeping purrs. At length, he raised a hand to stroke at the side of its blunt snout, which caused it to curl up at once, mewing indignantly and turning into the swell of Amber’s breast. Zhuqa grunted, his spines fanned all the way forward. He looked at Amber. “You could hurt me very easily if you chose to kill it,” he said quietly. “But not so deeply or so well, I think, as I could hurt you by doing the very same thing.”

  He glanced back down to watch her arms tighten into a protective shell around the baby, then grunted, pleased, and rose to his feet. “Xzem, take it.”

  Xzem bent her head, then placed her squirming, complaining child in Dkorm’s hands, then came to take the infant from Amber’s equally reluctant grip. The baby’s mews, ignored, became howls. It fought the teat Xzem offered, twisting its head violently side to side and straining with all its fragile might to find its way back to Amber.

  “Now, Dkorm, let me make my next order very clear to you: Nobody touches Rosek except you and Xzem…and Eshiqi, I suppose. If she wants to. Nobody else.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Xzem is to hold my child every moment that her own is not sucking at her.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “During those times, Eshiqi can hold it. If she doesn’t want it, you hold it. If anyone else touches either child—look at me, Dkorm—if God Himself lays on His benevolent hands in blessing, I will devote the next six days to killing you.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Dkorm. His posture was exemplary. His hands on Xzem’s wailing baby did not shake.

  “Do you believe I can make it last six days?” Zhuqa inquired, chucking at Rosek’s chin. She did not stop crying, but did give him a wet-eyed incredulous look.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Zhuqa rubbed Rosek’s small snout and smiled up at Dkorm. “I should have a certa
in reputation for honesty in this camp. I’ve worked hard to cultivate it.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Dkorm after a puzzled moment, since Zhuqa seemed to be waiting.

  “So I know that I am understood when I tell you that sitting in the workpit with slaves may not be how you want to pass your days, but it is a sign of my trust and my high regard. It is, in fact, an honor and I want to know that it is appreciated.”

  “It is, sir.”

  “Good. That eases my mind.” Zhuqa headed for the door, then paused and turned back. “As an honest man,” he said evenly, “I say if I have to tell you to play with this fucking thing one more time, I will make her a rattle-stick out of your own teeth.”

  Dkorm shrugged the baby up onto his shoulder and started rapidly patting her.

  Zhuqa grunted and left, closing the door quietly behind him without another glance for Amber.

  Dkorm immediately turned on Xzem, saying, “If there’s a trick to shutting this thing up, you tell me right now or I’ll muzzle it.”

  Xzem surged forward only to cringe back, her wide eyes filled with panic and pain in equal measure. The infant squirming at her teat renewed the full force of its waning screams immediately.

  “Shut one of them up at least,” snapped Dkorm, jostling the baby harder. And suddenly his spines smacked flat against his scales and he thrust Rosek out at arm’s length, not quite fast enough to avoid the stream that came spraying out between her kicking legs.

  Dkorm closed his eyes. He took a short breath between tightly-clenched jaws and sighed it out. His head bent. “I hate sprats,” he muttered.

  Amber eased warily onto her feet.

  “Sit down!” Dkorm snapped, slapping at his leg. “Oh fuck Gann, it’s in my boot! I’m going to be walking in your little poke’s piss the whole rest of the day! Xzem!”

  Xzem darted forward, pushing Zhuqa’s screaming infant into Dkorm’s hands and snatching her own away. Dkorm dropped with a mutter onto a bench, hooking the baby over his arm so that he could keep rubbing at the wet patches on his leathers. “Fucking sprat. I want you to know, Xzem, the very instant this thing dies, I’m pulling your little pisspot in half.”

  Xzem shivered, but made no sound.

  “Baby,” said Amber in lizardish, putting out her hands.

  Dkorm glared at her. “What’s the matter, Eshiqi?” he asked blackly. “Think I’m going to drop it? Think I’m going to bash it’s screaming little face into the floor and stomp on the fucking thing until it shuts the fuck up at last? Huh? It’s fine. Leave it alone.”

  His neck was lighting up brighter and brighter with every breath.

  Amber dropped her hands, looked around, then dashed into the other room to dunk a rag in wash-water and bring it back to Dkorm.

  He eyed her with an ominous lack of expression, but then leaned back and gestured at his leg. Amber knelt beside him and scrubbed carefully at his breeches, feeling his stare like a physical thing on the back of her neck. The baby, inelegantly folded over his arm, squirmed and cried.

  “Fuck Gann, but you’re ugly,” Dkorm remarked, fingering a few handfuls of hair. “I don’t know why Zhuqa would want to dip it in you when he could have any other slave in this camp. Or all of them.” His gaze dropped to the baby in his arm. He shrugged it roughly into a new position and gave it a few equally rough pats in an unsuccessful effort to quiet it. “I don’t know why he wants this thing either. It doesn’t do anything but eat, make noise and stink the place up.”

  “Why do you keep calling it ‘it’?” Amber asked, and when he only squinted at her in confusion, she tried again, supplementing her terrible lizard-speech with pantomime. “Is it a girl?” she asked, pinching her thumb and forefinger together to form a tear-drop shaped opening. “Or a boy?” Blushing, she pushed a finger through from the underside so that it thrust out like a painfully true-to-life lizardman penis.

  The yellow stripes on Dkorm’s throat flashed a little brighter and began to fade. “You want to know the gender? Too soon to tell. Look.” He caught hold of the baby’s leg and moved it so that the baby’s naked loins were broadly displayed (and the baby itself was almost upside down). The baby’s slit was no more than a crease in its scales with a narrow hole at one end. Dkorm prodded this, saying, “It’s just a pisser right now. It won’t open for…” His spines snapped down and up again in a shrug. “…a year and some days. By dry season next, I should think. Some people say they can just tell, but some people piss out of their mouths.”

  She couldn’t stand it anymore. She took the baby from him, righting it and drawing it in to lie against her breasts, where it quieted at once. He watched, folding his empty arms, in no hurry to take it back.

  “Pointless,” he said, watching the baby begin its shivering song of sleep. “The first one always dies. I suppose Zhuqa thinks he can save it with a better mother, but it won’t work. Gann will have it. And once it’s gone—and I split your little dip, Xzem, don’t think I’ve forgotten—I’ll finally get some sleep.”

  Xzem hunched a little further over Rosek as she wiped the baby clean.

  “She was raider-got herself,” Dkorm confided, running his eyes lazily over Xzem’s huddled back. “How old were you when you had your first bastard?”

  “I do not know,” Xzem whispered.

  “Young, then. We’ll say too young and close the door. How many have you had?”

  “I do not know.”

  “No, I suppose they all blur together after a time. Do any of them still live? No, you wouldn’t know. She’s been sold to so many camps, she’s probably fucked half the sons she brought into this world. What say you, Xzem?” he asked, helping himself to a fresh cup of their foul drink. “They say a mother always knows her child, no matter the years or the distance. Have you ever wondered if those were your own eyes you saw in some stranger’s face before he bent you over?”

  Xzem cupped the back of the baby’s head, nuzzling at it with her narrow snout, and stayed silent.

  “She came to us so well-used, I was in her three shoves before I knew I was. Chuaan would never have paid for a woman like Xzem, but she had a sprat and Zhuqa’s stupid about sprats.” Dkorm rattled out a laugh and drank. “He actually wants one. Three of his play-women have squeezed one out for him, but they all died. And he burned them,” he added derisively. “Last time, it was raining and he made us all stand out in the fucking rain and watch him burn that noisy little shit-machine like it mattered.”

  Dkorm punctuated this statement with a contemptuous glance at the baby in Amber’s arms, but soon his gaze shifted to her body and took on a speculative gleam. He stood and came over to get a better look at her.

  Amber moved to put the worktable between them. He followed as unhurriedly as she’d done it, watched her struggle to roll out some clay with the baby tucked up in the crook of her arm, and said, “You could do that better with both hands, I think.”

  Amber did not give him the baby.

  He didn’t come right out and ask for it either. She felt him lift up a sizeable hank of her hair and drop it again. Then she felt him pressing at her arm. When she glanced tensely back, she found him with his spines all the way forward, watching his fingers dimple into her flesh. “Soft,” he said, almost to himself. “You soft like that all over, Eshiqi?”

  She pulled out of his grip.

  “Calm yourself. I don’t drink from Zhuqa’s cup,” he snorted. “Besides, I’ll find out soon enough. Zhuqa likes a little fighting spirit in his women, but only if he has the pleasure of breaking it quickly. When he decides you’re too distracting, he’ll put you up on the bidding block. Before long, you’ll be like Xzem here, nothing but a catch-cock with a little meat attached to keep it warm.”

  She turned her back on him and went back to the lamps.

  Immediately, his hand closed on her shoulder, yanking her roughly around before shoving her hard into the wall. The baby, jolted out of sleep, began to make its high, gaspy wails. Dkorm didn’t even look at it. The color was
out on his neck again and visibly pulsing. “Don’t turn your back on me, you flat-faced dip,” he spat.

  All around the room, new slaves cringed back and old ones made themselves motionless and invisible.

  “You don’t show me your back unless I’m climbing it. I don’t care who you fuck, you’re still a slave in this camp. I can tell Zhuqa a thousand lies that will have that soft hide off you in strips.” He held her gaze a moment longer, then dropped his eyes deliberately to the baby in her protective arms and looked up again. “Shut it up.”

  Amber moved warily over to Xzem, never taking her eyes from Dkorm, and passed the baby down. It refused the breast Xzem kept trying to coax on it, but did eventually exhaust itself into an unhappy sleep.

  “Fucking sprats,” Dkorm muttered, turning away. He eyed Rosek, sleeping on the floor against her mother’s thigh, but moved on and found a crate against the far wall to sit on. In the other room, one of the children whispered; Dkorm’s neck lit briefly and darkened again. “Fucking sprats,” he said again, thicker. He dropped one hand to his groin and rubbed sullenly at himself, looking at all of them with a growing lack of emotion as his neck lit up brighter and brighter.

  He wasn’t going to take six breaths and calm down.

  Amber found his cup and filled it. He watched her do it with ominously blank eyes as he kneaded at himself, but when she brought it to him, he took it. After a moment, he took a drink. After another moment, he leaned back into the wall and tucked the hand that had been between his legs behind his head instead. He looked Amber up and down one last time, then grunted and shut his eyes. “Get back to work, all of you. Quietly. You wake those things and I’ll crack your bones.”

  There was an immediate rustle of sound as the lizardladies resumed work.

  Amber turned around. Xzem at once dropped her eyes. She kept her head bent as Amber went back to the worktable and picked up her half-done lamp. Then Xzem reached out and tapped the back of her hand once on the top of Amber’s bare foot. Just once—a touch so light and swift that if Amber hadn’t seen her do it, she might not have noticed. Amber paused uncertainly, but Xzem did not look up and she was afraid of attracting Dkorm’s attention. She went back to work in silence, like all the other slaves.