by R. Lee Smith
He waited.
Amber shook her head and went back to the doors of the shrine. They loomed, blacking out the sky, holding the whole world in its shadow, impossible to touch. The part of her that believed this was a dream insisted Meoraq was in there, that he needed her. But if it was a dream, she’d have to wake up. Meoraq needed her there, too.
“Can you help him?” she asked awkwardly. “If I…believe in you or…do things for you?”
“That isn’t how it works.”
“Well then how does it work, goddammit?!” She swung around, her hands in fists, but Lashraq didn’t flinch. “You don’t plan things, you don’t help people, you sure as fuck don’t care when people die, what do you do?”
“I talk,” Lashraq said quietly. “But I can’t make you listen.”
“All you’re telling me is you can’t help! What good are you? You…You son of a bitch, look at me!” she exploded. “Don’t you know what we’ve been through? And you just stand there and talk about fucking butterflies when we’ve come all this way and lived through so much and now this is how it ends? It’s not fair!”
“Suck it up,” he replied and lit another cigarette.
She cried until she could make herself stop and then she took a few deep breaths. Six of them. She looked at him. He watched the tide come in.
“Who are you?” she whispered. “Who are you, really?”
“Me?” Lashraq shrugged his spines and shoulders at the same time. “I’m the warning.”
And as she tried to wrap her head around that, he reached out and clasped her shoulder. His grip was strong; his eyes were kind.
“But there will be a boat,” he told her. “And a helicopter. So hold on, Amber. Watch for them. And take the chance when you see it, because I can only give you one.”
He tipped his head back, grunting thoughtfully in the back of his throat. “Looks like the storm is clearing,” he said.
She looked up. The sun behind the clouds turned the whole sky a blinding white. For a moment, she was back in the skyport again, and then she was nowhere at all.
* * *
Amber came around in a lamp-lit tent to the sound of lizardish laughter and the ocean. She was not alone. She rolled over with difficulty and at first tried to see Meoraq beside her, but the face was all wrong, and so were the scars and the clothes. It was Iziz, just sitting there with his knees drawn up and his hands clasped around them, staring at the side of the tent. He said, “You ever been to the mountains, Eshiqi?”
It wasn’t another dream. She didn’t wake up.
“We lived there a few years when I was very young. I spent a lot of time alone, up in the rocks. One day, I found a thuoch den with two pups and no parent. I tried to raise them, because I was a sprat and sprats are stupid like that.”
Nicci. Nicci was dead. They might all be dead by now, although it stood to reason that someone had to be alive to make the raiders all roar and laugh like that. It wasn’t any fun to torture someone who was already dead.
“I stole away every day to look in on them and fed them what I could of my own meals. God and Gann alone might know what I would have done with them if that had worked, but it didn’t. I crawled down into the den one morning to find the big one eating the little one while the little one whined and shivered in its own guts. I ran screaming down the side of the mountain until I fell and went the rest of the way down on my belly. My mother found me, fixed me up, and while she was doing that, someone tracked up the mountain to see what scared me. They brought me back the big pup, all warm and wriggling. I hugged it all night, crying while it licked my face and loved me in its dumb pup way. In the morning, I killed it with a rock.”
Amber turned back onto her side.
“My mother told me it was pointless to hate the pup. All animals kill each other when they have to, she said. We all eat each other to survive. Thuochs, dumaqs, humans. My mother was the worst fuck in that camp,” he added in a pensive tone, “but she had her moments.”
Amber did not answer. She tried to pretend she didn’t even hear.
“I don’t think I’ve ever told that story before,” said Iziz. “Unless I got drunk and maybe told Zhuqa and then forgot. Which is possible. But you remind me of that pup. The little one, I mean, getting your guts gnawed open by your littermate and just writhing while she did it. I wouldn’t have thought it of you.”
“What are you going to do with me?” Amber asked dully.
“Patience, Eshiqi. Patience is more than a word. Zhuqa used to say that. Made me just spitting mad, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to it. I’d never heard of this place,” he remarked, looking around at the walls of his tent as though he could see right through them to the shrine. “Doesn’t look like the sort of place God would spend much time. Kind of a piss-gully, if you ask me. Druud seemed to think there’d be something big here. If I understood him right, he thought there’d be some kind of flying machine. We’ve been here for days and we’ve been looking, but we couldn’t find it. Did you?”
“No.”
Iziz glanced at her, then grunted and shrugged his spines. “None of that old shit works right anyway. If it did, we wouldn’t be scratching out nests in the ground like beetles. Zhuqa gave us as much of a city as we’ll ever know.” He gave her a longer, more assessing stare. “You ever live in a city?”
“Yes.”
“A real one?”
“A human one.”
He grunted, looking thoughtful and curious. “Describe it.”
She closed her eyes, not to help her visualize, but just to shut the sight of him away. He let her and did not interrupt during the long silence she took to put her thoughts in some kind of order. Nicci was in every one of them. At last, she gave up and simply said, “Have you ever seen pictures of your Ancients in their cities?”
“Some, sure.”
“They looked like that. Tall, narrow buildings. No walls. Lots of machines.” She rolled onto her back and opened her eyes, staring at the ceiling of the tent and only vaguely aware of Iziz beside her. “It stank. Especially when it rained. Hot tar in the summer, wet gutters in the winter, just a constant nasty stink. Even the good smells, the food places and all that, reeked of hot grease and garbage if you went around the back. And our place, that was all rancid booze, pot and piss. And dead cats, that one summer.”
He put his hand on her stomach. It was neither a menacing touch nor a lascivious one, just the absent-minded touch of a man’s rough hand, there between her navel and her pubis. He gazed straight ahead at the wall. “Druud talks about your Earth-place a lot. We encourage it. We don’t have much to entertain ourselves with these days. You took all the fresh dips and Ghelip took the rest. What have I got, eh? Druud. Druud and his piss-talk of Earth. What color was the sky?”
“Blue.”
He grunted and rubbed at her belly. “That’s what Druud said. I cut off one of his toes for lying to me. Guess I owe the little piss-licker an apology.”
A gust of wordless hoots and laughter erupted outside. She thought she heard Eric in the middle of them, but couldn’t make out what he was saying, just that it was hoarse and hurt.
“You have me now,” said Amber, going through the motions without hope, without feeling of any kind. “You can let the others go.”
“I could,” Iziz agreed. “I certainly could.”
“Do you want me to beg?”
“For Druud?”
“For Scott,” she said. “For Eric. For anyone else that’s left.”
“There’s a few. Not many. Humans break easy.” He gazed at the tent wall, his spines flexing now and then as he thought, and finally he said, “All right. Beg and let’s see what happens.”
She started to roll over onto her knees, but his hand on his stomach turned hard and pressed her flat where she lay, so she just reached out her hands instead. She held them up, palms empty, but he wouldn’t look at them. She let them drop. They both stared, each into their own wall, and then she said, “Ple
ase.”
He grunted.
“Please let them go.”
“Go on. I’m listening.”
“I won’t fight you.”
“Mm.”
“I’ll do whatever you want.”
His fingers drummed over her stomach.
“I’ll be good.” It was the only thing she could think to say.
“What will you do for me, Eshiqi? Just for me.”
She thought.
“I’ll cry,” she said.
He looked at her.
Outside, raiders laughed and cursed, ate and drank. The waves rolled in and out, in and out. The wind blew.
“That was good,” said Iziz, and turned back to the wall. “I was tempted. I didn’t think I would be. I’m keeping them, Eshiqi. I’m keeping them and I will personally see to it that they are starved and worked and whipped and fucked right up to the last hour of their lives, and do you know why?”
“Because you can.”
“What a spiteful thing to say. I can do a lot of things that I don’t do, Eshiqi, and let me tell you, torturing humans without killing them means far, far more work for me than any fun I’ll ever get back out of them. A man has to have a reason to put up that kind of coin, so why don’t you think? Think hard and tell me why I’m doing it.”
“Because I killed Zhuqa.”
“No. That’s the reason I’m killing your man. Think harder.”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t?” Color grew along the side of his neck. “You don’t know. You can’t think of anything else you might have done.”
“I…” Her thoughts seemed to sink away from her grasp. She shook her head, but couldn’t shake them any clearer. “I took…your women.”
“You took his baby.” His spines lowered. His head cocked. He did not look at her. “Did you tell him what you were going to do before he died, Eshiqi? Is that how you twisted the knife?”
“No.”
“But you took it. Druud says you sent it on to Chalh with Xzem and the other dips, and since I don’t see any of them out there, I guess it’s true. Why did you do that? Why did you take his baby if you didn’t even want it?”
“I wanted it,” Amber said. Strange, how she couldn’t lie to him, almost as strange as him asking her these things in the first place. His pain and hers filled this small space, choking out all other feeling, even hate. “But it was more important that it have a real home, even if it wasn’t with me.”
“A home.” Yellow flared on the side of his throat. “It had a home, Eshiqi. It had a fine home.”
“It deserved a better life.”
“Shit on that. Do you really think that worn-out catch-cock cared about Zhuqa’s sprat as much as he did? Do you?”
“If Zhuqa could have given it a home inside the city walls, he would have.”
That, Iziz did not answer. She lay beside him, watching the color fade out of his scales without any sense of relief, sunk in grief. He watched the wall of his tent. Time passed, unnoticed, unfelt.
His hand moved suddenly. It slipped between the wrapped edges of her tunic to rest on her bare belly, just below her navel, just above the top of her breeches. Iziz turned his head toward her, but kept his eyes on the wall. “Is this what I think it is?”
Nicci’s voice, like a hook in the back of her mind, tearing open her heart and bleeding a memory: Want to see where they cut it out?
She couldn’t answer. Silence could be deadly here, but she simply couldn’t speak.
Now he looked at her. His hand flexed; the muscles of her stomach tightened.
“Is it his?” he asked. His voice was low, but strained.
It was Meoraq’s, it had to be. Too soon to show a bump if it was Zhuqa’s. Too soon to show Iziz anything that could have made him suspect this. No, she didn’t know that for a fact, but facts weren’t everything. For some things, faith was stronger.
“It’s mine,” said Amber. “That’s whose it is. Mine.”
“I guess that makes it mine, then,” Iziz mused. “Never had a sprat before, not that I knew of. Never even had a thuoch pup.”
“You did until you killed it.”
“At least mine died loving me.”
‘You getting out of this, little girl?’ Bo Peep wondered. Her mental voice was quiet but not slurred, not just doing the mommy-thing while she nodded off. ‘Seems like you came an awful long way just to give up now.’
“Fuck you,” said Amber.
Iziz’s spines flicked forward.
“Not you. I’m sitting up now.”
He took his hand off her. She pushed herself up, feeling the drag of her body in ways she never had even when she’d weighed two hundred pounds. She wiped at her eyes, but they were dry. She wasn’t crying. That didn’t seem fair.
“What did you do with my sister’s body?” she asked.
“Threw it off the edge,” he replied, without venom.
“Zhuqa would have made me eat her.”
“Maybe. He might have burned her. You never knew for certain. He had moods. But one thing I can promise you: He would have killed your Sheulek and he would have made you watch.”
She nodded listlessly. “Is that what you’re going to do?”
“Oh yes,” Iziz said. “And he’s going to die hard. Before I’m done, you won’t be able to put your hand on him without bloodying your fingers. He may not scream much,” he remarked, scratching restlessly at his throat, where the color was starting to come back. “I never saw Zhuqa give up better than a hiss in all the years I knew him. Made no difference how hard he was bleeding. Want to know what he used to say?”
“I am not my clay,” said Amber.
Iziz looked at her, head cocked and smiling, both at the same time. “Just so. But that’s fine. I don’t care how much he feels it. It’s really you I want to hurt.”
“For how long?”
“As long as I can. I’m going to make you live, Eshiqi. I’m going to kill your man and take your sprat and I’m going to make you live.”
“I’ll kill you if I can,” she said. It wasn’t a threat, wasn’t a warning. She didn’t know what she meant by it, only that it needed to be said.
“You killed Zhuqa,” he acknowledged. “He got careless. I won’t. He liked you.” Iziz looked at her, neither sneering nor smiling. “I don’t.”
12
He raped her three times in grim-faced silence, braced high above her on stiff arms, moving hard, scarcely touching her. She didn’t resist, didn’t cry, didn’t even close her eyes. She stared at the ceiling of the tent; he stared at the wall. When it was over, they put their clothes right and then he tied her comfortably yet securely at wrists and ankles and left her there.
Alone, with the rest of the world covered up, time had a way of melting into strange new shapes. She sat for a while, then lay down and rolled onto her side, then struggled until she could sit up again. Her mind worked, mechanically filling up the empty places where minutes ought to be. She thought of Nicci, just seven years old, holding her hand on the way to school, and Amber looking both ways all the way across the street because sometimes the cars didn’t stop. She thought of the boy Iziz had been growing up to become the man who had burned his only friend’s body. She thought of Nuu Sukaga, that poor son of a bitch, standing by the window in his underwear for a hundred and eighty-eight days, waiting for Saiakr to drive up. She thought of Meoraq, but no matter how she tried to think of him, it all faded into black.
The sun went down. The tent got dark, lit on one wall by the fire outside. Dumaq shadows, huge and indistinct, passed back and forth as raiders settled. It was a quiet night, peaceful in its way. The irony did not escape her.
When Iziz came back, he untied her ankles and took her out, but she couldn’t see anyone she knew—not Scott or Eric, and not Meoraq. He didn’t watch her pee, didn’t speak to her, didn’t offer her a bite of his stolen food when he took her back into the tent. He just tied her up again, lay down with his back t
o her and slept.
She slept too. She didn’t think she would, but she was just so tired and it was the only possible escape. She had no dreams.
In the morning, he raped her again. Only once this time, and she didn’t think he came. It wasn’t really sex for him, just another weapon. He knew he wasn’t killing her with it, but he wanted to keep it sharp. When he finished, he took her out for her morning pee, then brought her over to the fire and gave her a bit of cold meat and some tea in her own cup. She dropped them both on the ground and he threw her down beside them and made her pick them up and eat, mud and all.
“Don’t do that again, Eshiqi,” Iziz said, standing over her while she took the last shaky swallow from her cup. “You won’t make me mad enough to kill you, but I will trim you down some. Remember Zru’itak and mind your fucking manners. Geozh!”
“Sir?”
“Get the slaves in a line and load them up. The rest of you, break camp. We’re moving on.”
“No!”
Scott ran forward, caught a cuff from Geozh, and went sprawling on his face in the mud to the general amusement of the raiders. Undaunted, he got back on his feet, alternately wiping at his face and finger-combing through his hair. Now and then, his hand twitched down toward his hip, wanting to straighten a jacket he was no longer wearing. “Not yet. No. Absolutely unacceptable.”
“You have something to say, Druud?” Iziz asked, turning all the way around to look at him.
“We haven’t found it,” Scott said. “We had an agreement.”
Iziz leaned back a little, his spines flaring forward, but he raised his hand to stop Geozh when he cocked a fist.
“I brought you here,” Scott was saying. “I agreed to allow my people to…to serve in…in certain capacities and I brought you here and I said…I said you could have that bitch!” he shouted suddenly, pointing at Amber. “That lying bitch! This is all your fault! This is all your—” He stopped and smoothed down his hair some more. The mud was drying to his scalp like the plastic hair of a cheap doll. “But there is a transmission tower,” he said calmly. “And that proves there’s a ship. So. We need to find it.”