by R. Lee Smith
“So were you.”
“But I know my thoughts. What were yours?”
“I was thinking of the day my mother died,” Amber admitted. “Sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?”
“I don’t know,” she said uncomfortably. “I should have been thinking about you or something. You know. So you could ask me what I was thinking while you were at the lowest point of your life and I could say, ‘How much I love you,’ and you’d feel better.”
He smiled faintly. “I feel better.”
“Because I was thinking of my mother?” she asked, surprised.
“Because you told me the truth, even when you thought it was something I did not want to hear. That is how I know how much you love me. I do not need to be told.” He brushed the back of his knuckles across her brow, then dropped his hand to his lap again and stared at the wall. “What happened the day your mother died?”
“You don’t really want to know.”
“You always sound so certain about the things I want.”
“Fine,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Nothing happened, really. I mean, we were there, but they didn’t let us in to see her. We were just sitting in the room outside, me and Nicci, and I was holding her kind of like this. Waiting for the world to end.”
He grunted.
“But it didn’t. End, I mean. Life went on.” She heard herself utter a surprisingly sincere little laugh without knowing she was going to. “Look how far it went on.”
He said nothing.
“What were you thinking?” she asked.
“That I’m glad you’re here with me.” He said it without emotion, without looking at her. “Master Tsazr had to hear that message and walk all the way back to Xeqor alone. I couldn’t do that.”
“He probably thought that too, until he did it.”
“I couldn’t,” he insisted. “My life ended when I heard those words. I may have looked and sounded like a living man, but I was clay, soulless clay…until you spoke to me again. One word changes all the others. Truth.” He shut his eyes and rubbed his brow-ridges. “I am so thankful that you are here…and I have no one to thank.”
Amber held him while the silence grew heavier and heavier, and when she couldn’t stand it anymore, even knowing she couldn’t make it any better, she said, “What are you afraid of the most?”
He was quiet. Neck bent, he opened and closed his mouth several times before finally whispering, “Being alone.”
She put her arm around him again.
“I know I should be more worried about my soul,” he said in a quick, almost embarrassed way. “But I think I have one and I don’t think I’ll care if I’m wrong when I’m dead. What frightens me is knowing I’m alone now. When it matters.”
She nodded, gently rubbing at his bicep, right above his sabk, and feeling his scales scrape at her palm. “I know that nothing I say is going to fix what you’re feeling right now, but listen to me, Meoraq, please. If there is no God, then you’ve been making all the decisions up until now and you’ve done just fine.”
He made a sound of lackluster agreement, not looking at her.
“And if there is a God, He’ll be there, the way He’s always been there,” said Amber. She hesitated and then softly said, “If there is a God, He’s with you now.”
Meoraq flinched a little. He looked up, searching the sooty ceiling as his spines slowly came all the way forward. He wiped at his eyes, glanced at his damp fingers, and stood up. “Let’s go.”
“Are you going to be all right?” she asked, following him to the door.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But at least I have the comfort of knowing nothing worse can possibly happen.”
And with that, he pushed open the heavy door and stepped out into a pool of blood. He looked down; the hilt of a kzung came whistling down and cracked against the top of his head. Hands seized her, pulling her roughly out into the light over Meoraq’s crumpling body, and the first thing she saw—perhaps not unsurprisingly—was neither the raiders nor their captive nor even the dead man at their feet, but Nicci in their leader’s grip.
Amber let out a cry and lunged, but all this accomplished was to catch the leader’s eye. He looked at her, cocked his head, looked more closely at Nicci, and then tossed her carelessly aside for one of his men to catch. He smiled.
“Hello, Eshiqi,” said Iziz.
11
Nicci didn’t cry. She didn’t fight, either. She only stood in the bruising grip of the raider who held her, looking back at Amber with their mother’s eyes. There was as much of Bo Peep’s aimless, haggard accusation in that silent stare as there was pain, but there was no confusion. She didn’t ask who these men were or what they wanted. She didn’t ask Amber to make them go away. She just stood there.
“It’ll be all right, Nicci,” Amber told her, just as if she weren’t also in the unbreakable grip of a lizardman, just as if Meoraq weren’t lying on the ground being tied up while he was still unconscious. Just as if there were some chance it might be true.
“It will not be all right, Nicci!” Iziz snapped. He did not falter over her name and why should he? He had been born into Gann’s world. Creation was not sacred to him; nothing was. “No matter what happens, it will not go well for you!”
Nicci did not shiver, did not even look at him. She turned her face away from Amber and watched the waves roll in from the sea.
Iziz spared this emotionless response a glance, but no more than that. Whatever he was looking for, he wanted it from Amber. “You look good, Eshiqi,” he said, with surprising mildness following the venom of his other words. “I mean that. I didn’t think you would. You are so fucking ugly and I hate you so fucking much, I am truly astonished by how glad I am to see you. So often, the things you look forward to the most are just sparks, eh? A flash, a little heat, and nothing but ash for the rest of your life. But you look good. Come here. Let her go,” he said to the raider holding her. “She won’t run. Come here, Eshiqi. Right to me.”
The hands gripping her arms loosened and finally fell away. Amber walked on legs like water past Meoraq and Nicci both to stand before Iziz, close enough for him to hit her if he wanted to. She didn’t think he’d kill her yet, but hitting was definitely an option. Her heart was pounding worse than it had ever done on the Candyman’s humming little injections a lifetime ago, punching at her ribs from the inside so hard she couldn’t believe that he couldn’t hear it too.
But if he heard it, he ignored it. He gazed into her eyes like a lover—smiling, marveling, savoring. Then he reached one hand into the pocket of his sword belt and held up an insignificant slip of bent metal. He pulled a bit of mganz-wood off one sharply-pointed end and there it was: a fish hook.
Iziz looked at it. He started to speak, then just stopped and sighed instead. He looked at her.
Where was he going to use that? On her neck, on the vein that had to be throbbing there in this panicked pulse as thick as a subway tube? In her eye, or even both eyes, before the real fun began? Or would he try to use it like she’d used it on Zhuqa, and how much damage could he do down there, ripping at her insides in search of a vein she didn’t even know if he’d find?
“He was my friend,” said Iziz. It was not an easy admission for him and he made it like they were the only ones there to hear it. “He was our leader, but he was my friend. How many of those do you think I have, Eshiqi?”
Behind her, Meoraq groaned against the ground. Amber strained in vain to see him through the raiders and it was only because she did that she finally saw the body and recognized it as Crandall.
“Little piss-licker took a jump at me,” Iziz remarked, watching her reaction. “Friend of yours?”
“He did?”
“Seemed to think he’d have help.” Iziz ran his eyes over the few remaining humans, ably held by his men. “And if he’d had it, maybe they could have had me. Not all of us, but me for certain. But they let him jump alone.”
She looked for and f
ound Eric and Dag with the raiders. They wouldn’t look at her.
“I didn’t kill him right away,” Iziz was saying. He turned around so that he could stand at Amber’s side, see what she saw and think his own thoughts. “I told him he could live if he’d raise a fist to me. You may be ugly, but you can still be useful. So I gave him the choice: Keep my camp, carry the tack, catch a few cocks or show me he can fight them off, and who knows? Maybe someday he could have a sword on his belt and a slave for his own. It’s the sort of thing Zhuqa would have done,” he added meditatively. “So for his sake, I offered. He told me to fuck myself. But the rest of your men put their fists right in the air when I slit his throat, didn’t they…what’s your name? Nicci?”
Nicci did not respond. She and the ocean were in their own world.
“I thought she was you until you came out,” said Iziz, studying the two of them, first Nicci, then Amber. “I thought she was you and that maybe we’d killed you after all. They say the dead can walk again if they aren’t burned and Gann won’t have them. She looks like you,” he mused, eyeing Nicci slowly up and down. “But she bent her neck for me and you never would. Or would you?”
Behind them, a sudden scuffling as Meoraq tried groggily to rise and was beaten back down to the ground. It took a lot of beating. Iziz watched. Amber didn’t dare to, no more than she dared to look at Nicci. Iziz still had the fish hook in his hand; he was just looking for the best place to stick it in.
“What would you do, Eshiqi?” Iziz asked. His voice was low and too close to her left ear. She could see the dim dazzle of cloud-covered sun on the fish hook on her right. “If I told you I would let him go, would you raise your fist to me?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’d be lying.”
He grunted, a soft paff of air against her neck, and combed through a few strands of her hair with the hook. “I suppose I would be. Get him out of here. And don’t get stupid with him. That’s a Sword of Sheul you’re handling. Tie him up, keep both eyes open, and leave him the fuck alone until I say different. Go on.”
Two of them went, dragging Meoraq between them. He let himself be taken without resistance, but his eyes were open and they were not defeated.
She knew better than to ask. She knew and she asked anyway.
“What are you going to do to him?”
“Do you expect me to answer honestly?”
“Zhuqa would.”
His glance was ice on the edge of a knife. “He probably would. But he’s dead. And his killer is talking at me like that’s a safe or even a sane thing to do. Do you really want to know what I plan to do? Do you really think that will somehow help while you wait for it to happen?”
His throat was still black. She risked another question. “Did you burn him?”
He leaned back. “Who?” he asked, but his eyes told her he knew who.
“Zhuqa. Did you burn him at the funeral?”
Some of the raiders close enough to hear exchanged glances and murmured to others further back.
“What makes you think he even had a funeral?” Iziz asked finally.
“Because you were his friend and he would have wanted one.”
He stared at her. No one else moved. No one else spoke.
“That was a damned good hit,” Iziz said at last. “I mean it, Eshiqi. You aim for the gut like a fucking tachuqi. Yes, we burned him. You want to know how long it took or how it smelled?” His voice was rising, but she didn’t need it. The yellow was coming in at his throat now and coming in strong. “You’d think it would smell like meat cooking, wouldn’t you? But it doesn’t. It smelled fucking awful. Gann’s breath could not be more rank than the smoke from my only friend’s funeral. Why would you even ask…” He trailed off, his head tilting by degrees, like the head of a clockwork toy. “You want to make me angry, is that it? You think if I’m angry I’ll just spit up everything I’m going to do to you and you can make a plan. What do you need to plan for, eh? Do you think I’m going to kill you?”
“Eventually.”
“Oh, that’s a good word. Eventually.” He circled back to where he could stand and face her, folding his arms to tap the point of the hook against his own arm. “You haven’t asked how I know your language.”
That startled her. She hadn’t thought about it. With everything else there was to see and hear and wait for, the little matter of a lost language barrier had not even begun to send up its alarms. Iziz raised a hand and gestured without taking his eyes from Amber. He watched her while she looked and saw raiders drag a slumped, limping human unwillingly out into view.
He was naked, except for leather strips wrapping his feet and the metal band around his neck to which a chain might be attached if the need arose. His arms had the washed out color of a man who used to get a lot of sun before being stranded on this sunless world. The rest of him was a grub-pale pinkish-white, where he wasn’t bruised or scraped or just plain filthy. He stood where they made him stand and put his hands over his groin and stared at the ground.
“We call him Druud,” said Iziz. “He’s been very helpful.”
“Are you all right, Scott?” Amber asked finally, knowing perfectly well that he was not. They weren’t starving him. He had no scars, no branding burns, no obviously broken bones to show for his time in captivity, but he was not all right.
Iziz waited with her for an answer that never came, then took two easy strides forward and slapped Scott hard across the face, knocking him back into the chest of another raider, who had to catch him before he fell to the ground. “Eshiqi asked you a question,” he said.
“I’m fine,” said Scott. He didn’t look at Amber.
“Eh. He’s a liar.” Iziz gripped Scott’s chin to make him face this way and that before shoving him away again. “At his best, he’s never even close to fine. What would you say, Geozh?”
The raider holding Scott uttered a considering grunt. “He’s a hot grip when the urge comes on. That’s fine enough for me, sir.”
Scott flushed and stared fixedly at the ground.
“Zhuqa once said you were like a slow fuck into God, Eshiqi. I confess, I was expecting better, but Geozh is right. This one’s nothing but a little soft meat and a squeeze. He doesn’t even squirm anymore.” Iziz gave Amber a long, assessing glance, but did not seem to find what he was looking for. He grunted and stepped back, rubbing at his throat and frowning as he studied her. “I suppose you cast him out for a reason,” he said at last. “What did he do?”
Amber didn’t answer, not out of any planned defiance, but simply because she didn’t know what to say. There was no satisfaction in seeing Scott the prisoner of these horrible people, only the same sick horror she had felt in their grip herself. She’d survived it and he could survive it too, assuming any of them walked away from this…but she’d had Meoraq to take her in, to tell her she was his, to make her believe it. Scott had nothing and she had nothing to give him except silence when Iziz might be asking for a reason to hurt him.
Iziz grunted mildly after a suitable span of time had bled itself out, then turned around and walked over to Dag and Eric. “What did he do?”
“He tried to kill her,” said Dag.
Iziz flared his spines forward. “Truth?” he asked, almost but not quite laughing. “And all you did was exile him? You didn’t stab him in the head first?”
“She couldn’t,” Dag told him. “She was, um, hurt.”
“Hurt?” Iziz came back to her, his head still cocked, still smiling. “You didn’t look very hurt the last time I saw you. Did Zhuqa get a cut in after all? Did I? Tell me you bled for me, Eshiqi.”
“It was a—”
Iziz turned back in the same easy, friendly manner, drew his sword and hit Dag in the face with the hilt. The sound of bone crunching was somehow louder than Dag’s scream, and the spattering of blood and teeth falling over the ground was even louder than that. “When I talk to you, I’ll look at you,” Iziz said, and look
ed back at Amber. “How bad were you hurt when Druud tried to kill you? I’m curious. Wait.” He glanced behind him to the raiders standing over Dag, who was still screaming even as he tried to fit his shattered jaw back into place, and said, “Shut that thing up or get rid of it.”
The nearest raider helpfully kicked Dag in the side, then smacked him in the head with the pommel of his knife a few times, and finally grabbed him by the hair and started hauling him toward the hole in the shrine’s crumbling wall. Nicci moved out of the way.
“Stop it!” Amber shouted. “He’s hurt, for God’s sake! He can’t help it!”
Iziz swung toward her, moved in close, but did not hit her. “Pick someone to take his place,” he said, staring hard into her eyes. “I’ll let him go. I’ll even patch him up first. Druud, fetch me the humans and put them in a line. Pick someone to go over, Eshiqi.”
Amber couldn’t stop herself from looking as Scott assembled the last of his Manifestors—naked, shivering, mutilated, and still following him—but when they were all there, she clamped her jaws shut tight and stared back into Iziz’s eyes.
He waited, his spines ticking out the seconds. “Not even you?” he asked softly. “It’d be quick, at least. Quicker than all the eventual ways I had time to think on while I stirred Zhuqa’s burning bones.”
She closed her mouth.
“Please yourself. Geozh!”
Dag’s mushy pleas and promises to be quiet turned into screams, turned into receding shrieks, turned into nothing. Amber didn’t watch. She looked at Iziz looking back at her and said, “What do you want?”
“From you?”
“Yes.”
He seemed to consider the question fairly. It seemed to be the truth when he finally said, “I don’t know yet. But for right now, I want to know how bad you were hurt when Druud tried to kill you.”
For answer, since answers had become inevitable, Amber loosened her girdle and opened her tunic to show him the scar left by the kipwe’s attack. Iziz’s spines flared again as she undressed to this small degree. Faint smudges of yellow lightened his throat as he looked down at her chest, then her belly, and finally at the scar.