by R. Lee Smith
“What do you think that was about?” one of the guards asked quietly.
“I know it was bad,” another replied, letting his hand rest on the hilt of his sword. “And I know it’s getting worse by the moment.”
It was. And it was her fault as much as Scott’s. She only had to look at them, what was left of them, to know they’d been through hell and the first day out of it was way too soon to expect them to shake it off. Amber took a deep breath (one for the prophet) and let it out slow. She sat down.
Nicci came to sit with her, warm and alive and so much older than Amber remembered. It was like looking into her mother’s face, that last day, and knowing it was Death you were looking at. Knowing it was looking back at you.
“I’m sorry,” Amber said.
Nicci nodded without looking at her.
“This isn’t how I wanted this to go. You don’t know how I’ve dreamed of this moment…and I’ve already fucked it up.”
Nicci shrugged.
The baby in her arms began to purr.
“Was there…” Did she really want to know this? “Was there really a cage?”
“Yes.”
“How long…I mean…”
“I don’t know. You couldn’t count the days in there. Or maybe you could. I didn’t try.” Nicci stared at the fire some more, then shrugged again. “There was still snow on the ground, though. How long ago was that?”
“I don’t know,” Amber admitted. “Meoraq made us stop for the winter. We only just crossed the mountains when I got caught. That must be the official welcome in Gedai.”
“Must be.”
The quiet was not an easy one. The lizards watched them. So did Scott.
Nicci sighed. She bent her head—an eerily lizard-like gesture—and said, “We were walking along in this tunnel, you know? Only it wasn’t just a tunnel. It was a…like, a pipe. A sewer pipe. A storm drain, really. And I remember thinking how stupid that was, because of how much it had been raining. But it was mostly empty that day, and Commander Scott said it would be dry and there wouldn’t be any animals and it had to be safe because the bots were going in and out. We didn’t want to, but he kind of went off on it, you know how he does. So we went in anyway. And I knew it was stupid.”
The baby bit her, whimpered, and bit again. Amber brought it out, wrapped it regretfully in its smooth hide, and gave it back to Xzem. Nicci waited for the end of this process without watching it, then went on in the same dull, inflectionless voice.
“When it flooded, it happened all at once. And I know how that sounds, but it’s true. There wasn’t any warning. It wasn’t like it was raining and the water rose up. It had been raining for days and the water was still pretty much just around our feet, and then suddenly there was this wall of water coming at us. It hit and we all went away, all mashed together, and that was pretty bad,” said Nicci in a vague, thoughtful tone. “The lights all went out. It was pitch black and so loud. Everyone was grabbing at everyone else and all you could hear was the water and the bubbly sound people make…you know…when they drown.”
Amber didn’t want to hear any more, but she didn’t try to stop Nicci from talking. Sometimes you had to say the bad stuff. She put her arm around her sister’s shoulder and watched the baby nurse at Xzem’s breast.
“Then the tunnel dropped away and there was this grate or something across the whole floor. It was rusty and there was a big hole through it, but some of us managed to catch it and climb out to where there was a kind of ledge. Not all of us. Just…some. We all held hands on the ledge until the water went down and we could find our way out. I didn’t think we would, but we did. After that, we kind of camped there for a few days. I guess we were waiting, you know, for you and Meoraq. But it kept raining and there were these storms…storms like I never knew could happen. The buildings we were next to fell down and then the street dropped out from under it and all this water started bubbling up and it was still raining, so what were we supposed to do?”
The wind died down, as if in sympathy, and Scott’s voice was right there in an urgent whisper: “—need to think about what’s best for us!” Then silence and the weight of their stares.
“We turned south,” said Nicci, “because Commander Scott said it would be warmer.”
“Now wait just a goddamned minute!”
“That’s a logical assumption,” said Amber, as indifferently as she could.
“And we took a vote! We all agreed it was our best chance!”
“The men took a vote,” said Nicci. “You were right about that, too.”
Scott started forward. Lizards drew swords. Scott retreated to slap furiously at the leather wall, looking like nothing so much as an angry ape.
“That thing gets just one more of those,” said one of the guards, pointing his sword at Scott, “and then I kill it. I am not waiting for it to come at me.”
Scott hunkered down, muttering and swiping at his hair.
“So we turned south, but it didn’t get warmer. It started snowing. And then it started freezing. And it was so cold…” Nicci trailed off. Her head cocked—again, like a lizardman expressing interest and reluctant humor. “There wasn’t any water, unless it was coming down in sheets and freezing on our bodies, and there wasn’t any food, unless it was chasing us down and trying to eat us. And six more people died, and Commander Scott said we should cross the mountains after all—”
“Hey!”
“—because the skyport was our only hope.”
“We all agreed, goddammit!”
The lizardman who still had his sword drawn came suddenly, swiftly forward and dropped to one knee before Amber. He bent his head, clearly unsure of the protocol, then gave her a hard stare and said, “If you understand me, keep it quiet.”
“Scott…”
“She’s misrepresenting the facts!”
“Not by much,” said Eric quietly. “Sit down, man.” And to Nicci, just as quietly, he said, “You really are a two-faced little whore, you know that? Acting like it’s such a conspiracy that you girls didn’t get to vote. Did you even try? Hell, no. You just sat there like a bunch of dummies waiting for us to make the decisions. When it came right down to it, you wanted us to take care of you. We did, so shut up about it.”
The lizardman kneeling in the grass before Amber hadn’t moved, although he had shifted the focus of his uneasy stare.
“We went into the mountains,” said Nicci. “There wasn’t a road or anything, so we just went where Commander Scott said our chances were best. The snow was over our boots the first day and over our knees the second day and by the third day we were trying to walk on it because we couldn’t go through it anymore. We should have gone back,” she said, turning her dull eyes on the rest of them. “We all knew it. We should have gone back but we followed him anyway.”
“That’s enough,” said Eric, still without raising his voice.
“Sabrina froze to death,” said Nicci. “Only she didn’t just freeze. First, her fingers turned black. Commander Scott tried to rub them to warm them up and they broke off. Sabrina’s fingers broke off in his hand like…” Nicci’s head cocked the other way, thinking hard. “Like icicles breaking off the bannister back when we were kids, remember how we’d do that? Snap snap snap, all in a row. While Sabrina was watching. They fell into the snow at her own feet. And I remember how Commander Scott started to bend down, like he was going to pick them up, you know? Like he was going to hand them to her. And then he just walked away like he hadn’t seen it happen.”
Amber tried to say something. Anything. All she could do was breathe. She looked back at Scott and for once, for maybe even the first time since she’d met the prick, she looked at him without any anger in her at all, only a heartsick throb of horror that was, for a change, for him and not aimed against him.
She didn’t know what he read in her eyes, but it wasn’t sympathy. His face turned ugly. He looked at the lizardman kneeling before her and turned away.
�
�Then her feet turned black and she couldn’t walk anymore. We were all standing around waiting for her to die so we could keep moving. And she did, but by then, there were others. We had to keep walking, but everyone was dying. Mr. Yao—remember him?—fell down dead. I didn’t know people could really do that. We were walking and he just fell down dead. And we kept on walking. Like we didn’t even see it. But we all saw it. We all walked right by him.”
Amber couldn’t stop herself. She reached down and plucked the sleeping baby off Xzem’s breast, cuddling him back to her own. It woke up, bewildered, then recognized her and snuggled down, purring itself back to sleep. Xzem shifted her wrap up over her nipple and waited to be needed again, watching Amber’s face anxiously.
“Every day, there was someone else dead. Every single day. But we still followed him.”
“We made it out,” said one of the Manifestors and the others muttered agreement. “We didn’t lie down and die like you would have done, lizard-bait. We made it out because of him.”
“We did,” Nicci agreed. “All fifteen of us. But Lani died the next morning. I don’t know whether it was cold or hunger by that point. I guess it could have been either one. And Mr. Briggs died two days later. He just walked out into the snow to go to the bathroom and didn’t come back. We never found him. I don’t know whether he got lost or got eaten…or just kept walking. And then there was Maria.” Nicci looked at Eric, politely inquisitive. “Would you like to tell her about Maria, Mr. Lassiter?”
“Go to hell, you scalie-fucking cum dumpster,” said Eric gently.
“Maria got pregnant,” said Nicci, unmoved. She went back to staring into the fire. “Which was what I seem to recall our role was by that time. Their most precious resource, remember, Amber? We were their wombs. Only now that one of those wombs was full, suddenly our leader was saying…well, pretty much what you said when he called you a womb. Suddenly having babies was right down there with…what did you say? Building a community theater and casting for Miss Saigon?”
“I don’t remember,” said Amber numbly, thinking The King and I over and over, like the tolling of a funeral bell.
“So they took another vote. It was very democratic. And after the vote, they caught Maria and while she was screaming and pleading for them to stop, Mr. Lassiter and Commander Scott took turns punching her in the stomach.”
Silence. The fire hummed and the baby purred.
After a while, Nicci said, “It worked. Eventually.”
More silence. Scott swiped at his hair. The lizardmen watched him. The lizardladies huddled together and tried not to look at anybody.
“But she kept bleeding—”
“Oh, shut her up, for Christ’s sake!” Scott exploded.
The lizardman stood up. Amber touched his wrist. He shut his eyes and hissed, then shot her a very Meoraq-like look of annoyance and knelt down again.
“She kept bleeding—”
“It’s enough, Nicci,” said Amber. “Come on. Stop.”
Nicci considered, gazing into the fire. “She kept bleeding,” she said at last, decisively. “And she got really sick. And in the morning, Commander Scott and Mr. Lassiter said she was dead and we kept going, but we all knew she wasn’t dead—”
“Nicci.”
“We could all hear her under the wind—”
“Nicci, please.”
“—crying—”
Amber pressed her face to the baby, as if its sleeping purrs could drive every other sound away.
“—begging us to come back.” Nicci thought about it while Amber enveloped herself in the peaceful song of a small life that knew only how deeply it was loved. “And we left her there anyway,” said Nicci. “We all walked away and pretended we didn’t see those big weasel-things at all, didn’t we? We pretended we never heard her screaming.”
“I swear I’m going to hit her if she doesn’t shut up,” said Eric in his soft way.
“I’m not sure she can shut up,” Amber answered wearily. “Let her say it all. Who can it hurt now?”
“When we saw that place, Commander Scott said it was the temple, even though Meoraq told us to look for the ends of the world and we all knew we weren’t there. But we followed him. And the place got bigger and bigger and we knew it was wrong, but we all kept going. They sent someone out to look at us or something, and Commander Scott sent Abdullah to go meet him, only I guess it freaked him out to see Abdullah coming right at him like that because he…” Nicci shrugged again. “Commander Scott knelt down in the snow, so we all knelt down in the snow with him. So they took us away. And they cut us up and they did a lot of things…but they fed us and they kept us warm, so…and this is actually kind of ironic…being captured like that probably saved our lives.”
And that, mercifully, seemed to be the end. Nicci watched the baby doze against Amber’s chest, the scantest hint of emotion wrinkling at her brow, although Amber couldn’t say quite what that emotion was. She only knew that it was better—not much, maybe, but better—than the total lack of life that her sister had exhibited throughout her awful recital.
“So are you happy now?” Scott asked bitterly.
Amber looked at him, helpless to do anything but shake her head.
“You sure? Not even one I-told-you-so? One If-only? One steaming Bierce-knows-best pile of bullshit we can warm ourselves by as we gather around your campfire?”
“Go to sleep, Scott,” said Amber. “It’s over, all right?” She had to chew her next words a long time before she could keep them down, but in the end she was able to say, “You did the best you could,” and mean it.
Scott stared at her for a long time and then dropped his eyes. He looked at the fire and said, in a strained, distant sort of voice, “You know…that first night after we left…that very first night, when we were alone and we all thought, you know, that you were dead…”
The fire snapped. The baby shifted, purred for a few seconds, then slipped easily back into sleep. The lizardmen watched from the far wall, hands on swords, restless.
Scott looked up, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a hideous imitation of the charismatic smile she remembered. “That was the night I fucked your sister,” he said. “She said she didn’t want to, she even pretended to struggle, but she came. And she wasn’t even a virgin, so yeah, Bierce, you really dropped the ball somewhere along the line, but that’s okay. I’m sure you did the best you could. You want to know something? Huh? You ruined everything, Bierce.”
“Yeah, and I broke your flashlight, too.”
“Fuck you!” he spat, and didn’t flinch even when every lizardman in camp whipped out a sword. “You! Ruined! Everything! We’d have been just fine if you’d only died! We’d be home by now if it wasn’t for you! You!”
And then he lay down with his back to her and pretended to be asleep.
Amber closed her eyes and concentrated on the baby’s little purrs, its small hand so warm against her breast, its living, loving reality. Gradually, the hot knot in her stomach loosened, although the bitter taste in her mouth remained. When she finally opened her eyes, Nicci was looking at her with those dead eyes and Bo Peep’s own bitter smile. “Aren’t you glad you found us?” she asked.
* * *
Meoraq found the soldiers sent to assassinate him without difficulty. There were nine in all—two groups of four and a lone man wearing the governor’s colors. He killed them swiftly, tied the corpses to trees with their own belts, and left them to be found. Perhaps they were, for there were no more assassins that night. As his last empty patrol along their back-trail came to an end, Meoraq met with Onahi and his men, and with them took a rogue kipwe they found sleeping in the trees.
It was another hour before they returned to camp, bearing what they could upon two hastily constructed litters. Amber had a grimace of some unhappy sort for him, but did not stir herself from the fireside. The watchmen, however, came at once to make their unsettling report of angry words and blows struck and Meoraq knew even before they
pointed him out who had been at the root of it all.
“Honored one, you have said these creatures dwell in the sight of Sheul,” Onahi murmured, frowning now at Scott. “And you have proven that it is His will you have their care, but it would seem a far simpler matter to care for them were they kept bound and hobbled.”
Meoraq flared his spines reprovingly, but spoke no censure. His heart was in the right place. And honestly, Onahi just wanted Scott hobbled. Meoraq wanted him dead. And buried.
He left the preparation of the first skewers to Onahi and made a quick count of his camp. All were present—watchmen, slaves, humans, and his Amber. She had the infant in her arms again, he saw. It slept too deeply to sing, even when she stroked a careful hand across its little back. ‘Someday it will be my child at that breast,’ Meoraq thought, but he did not disturb her or the child to say so.
The meat roasted and the humans clustered close to watch it. Meoraq tried not to resent this. They had endured a terrible captivity and they were doubtless hungry. All the same, his days of tending to them like cattle were done.
And so when Scott deemed the meat done enough for his taste and reached to have the first skewer out, Meoraq caught him unhurriedly by the wrist and pushed him back. “This is my camp,” he said. “And you are not my welcome guest. You have what I give you, human, when I choose to give it, and you will receive it gratefully or it will be the last thing you ever take from my hand.”
Scott’s face puckered and colored in that way Meoraq so well remembered. “We’re starving,” he insisted.
Meoraq flattened his spines in disgust. He let go of Scott’s wrist to seize the edge of his loose tunic and pull it up, revealing the man’s pink body, which was not an abundant one, but certainly was not emaciated. “No, you aren’t,” he said, and covered the man curtly up again. “Sit and wait for your share or go hungry.”
“Does it understand you?” Onahi asked, watching Scott limp sullenly away.
Meoraq grunted a caustic affirmation as he tested the skewers himself and decided one of them at least was indeed ready. He took a token piece for himself and gave the rest to Amber. She offered it at once to Nicci.