by R. Lee Smith
“Eshiqi says there is no ship,” Iziz said.
Scott laughed scornfully. “Of course she does! She wants us to be afraid! She came here,” he declared, coming at Amber with his hand raised, pointing, “for the sole purpose of undermining the colony’s efforts! Of course she says there’s no ship, but there is a transmission tower, we’re all looking right at it, Miss Bierce, so fuck you!” he screamed. “Fuck you! I was right and you were wrong! You threw away all the concrete and you stole my flashlight and broke it and you fucked the lizard and turned him against us but you’re not taking the ship so where is it? Where is it, huh? Where—”
Iziz reached out without hurry and gave Scott a tap on the underside of his chin. Scott’s jaws clopped shut. He grabbed at his face and looked at Iziz, all wounded eyes and stiff shoulders. Then he turned around and walked with silent dignity back to Geozh.
Iziz folded his arms, watching impassively as Scott directed his people out of their cluster and into a line. Through the wind and the tide, Amber could hear snatches of his speech: true pioneers rose above adversity, the good of the colony came before personal feeling, and Amber Bierce was a bitch.
“Sometimes I think he really believes that if we found a ship, I’d let him sail away on it,” Iziz remarked. “The first night we were here, picking the place over, he must have had a thousand chances to run, but he never did. Little piss-licker came to get me five times, trying to work the doors open. You believe that?”
“Yes.”
“Came to get me. But the doors wouldn’t open. Druud wanted me to pry them open. Old places like this… sometimes the doors burn you. I told him. He wouldn’t hear it. So I gave him a sword.” Iziz glanced at Amber. “You’d have stuck it in me. But Druud passed it off to one of his pokes and he stabbed it right in the door, just because Druud told him to, when he’d heard me say what could happen.”
Amber didn’t ask.
“There was a light,” said Iziz, as if she had. “And then there was a hole through him. I could have put my hand through it. Thirqa could have put his head through it. No smoke. No blood. The meat didn’t even look that burnt, but the fur on his chest was charred. He didn’t die right away. He looked down first and he let go of the sword. I was watching to see if he’d put his hand through the hole, and I really think he might have but he didn’t have time. He dropped. And Druud said, ‘Maybe he loosened it.’ I think he would have set another of his pokes on the door if I’d let him.” Iziz thought about it and snorted. “I think the poke would have done it if he’d asked.”
Raiders were breaking down the camp, stacking tents and packs indiscriminately on the sleds. She still couldn’t see Meoraq.
“But you got the doors open.” Iziz gave the domed shrine a meaningful glance. “What was in there?”
“Nothing you could steal.”
He looked at her, snorted. “I can steal anything, Eshiqi. If you haven’t swallowed that yet, I can serve up some more.”
Amber shut her stupid mouth and stood silent.
Iziz gave her a second, harder stare. “No apology?”
“I’m sorry.”
He slapped her, not hard, just enough to sting. “No, you’re not. Don’t lie to me again or I’ll carve your man, Eshiqi. I’ll carve him and make you eat the pieces I cut off.” He eyed her, his head cocked. “Beg me not to hurt him.”
Did that mean he was still alive? The words spilled out of her in a breathy rush: “Please don’t hurt him!”
He slapped her again, rocking her a little this time. “Slaves do not give orders in my camp! Beg my forgiveness!”
“Please—”
This slap smashed her lips into her teeth, filling her mouth with the taste of her own bitter blood. “Get on your knees and beg like a slave!”
Amber dropped to her hands and pushed them both palms up on either side of his boot. Somewhere in the world, Scott laughed.
Iziz twitched in his whole body at once. He looked around, blinking, color coming in strong at his throat. “Who was that?”
“Druud,” said Geozh, rolling his eyes. “Who is it always?”
Iziz cursed and turned, ready to walk away, to go deal with Scott and his petty nonsense until the day was gone and they were moving and where was Meoraq? Amber lunged out in a froggish hop to slap her hands down in the mud again, this time pressing her head to Iziz’s boot, just the way she’d seen Xzem do to Meoraq once.
He stopped. She could hear him breathing, feel him looking down at her.
The waves kept coming. The ocean never cares.
“Get up,” Iziz said finally. “I know what you want. Get up and we’ll go see your Sheulek. Druud, you’re coming too, but I hear one more sound out of you and I’ll sew your mouth shut. The rest of you, keep working.”
And with that, he started walking, leaving Amber and Scott to come together in his wake and follow.
Inside one of the many ruined structures of Matezh was Meoraq. Impossible to say just what it had been, once upon a time—a garage, maybe, a workshop, something that needed this wide open floor. If there had ever been anything inside, it had been picked clean over the years and now there was nothing left, nothing to distract her from the sight of Meoraq dangling from the rusted girders with his feet just off the floor. There was a crack in the ceiling where two panels had fallen away from each other enough to let in a little light and a steady trickle of windswept spray that had collected on the roof. Naturally, Meoraq was positioned just below this. He was naked. They’d wrapped a scrap of filthy cloth around his head to mask him and the cloth did not appear to be moving with his breath.
Iziz let her look as long as she wanted, but at her first step forward, his hand dropped over her shoulder and forced her back onto her knees. “He’s alive,” he said. His voice echoed; Meoraq did not move. “Say something, Sheulek. Your woman is here.”
Silence. The water dripped and spattered.
Iziz walked calmly over, drew Meoraq’s bone-handled knife from his belt and stuck it in Meoraq’s thigh. Meoraq jerked violently—a fish on a line—and hissed through his hood.
“See? He’s fine. We’re going to play a game,” said Iziz, coming back to Amber. “Zhuqa liked games. Most of us do. A raider’s life is more boring than people realize. My game is called, ‘God and Gann.’ Wait here and don’t move. You don’t get to speak to him, Eshiqi. Remember Druud is watching.”
Iziz left them.
After his last footstep faded, Scott whispered, “You may as well talk, Bierce, because I’m going to tell him you did anyway.” And grinned.
The hood shifted. Meoraq said, “S’kot.”
Scott flinched and stared around.
A second hiss, longer and quieter than before. “Bastard son of Gann and a she-ghet, so you have found your pack. Now hear the words of Uyane and mark well: I will not die here.”
“No. No, you probably won’t.” Scott backed up, trying to laugh, but it came out in such a high, unnatural patter that if Amber weren’t looking at him, she might not have recognized the sound. “They have plans for you, lizardman. You’re not going to die anywhere close to here, but they will kill you.”
“But they won’t,” said Meoraq, “burn me. And so I will be free to follow you all the days of your treacherous life. I will hold your face in my heart at the very moment of my murder and when I am made mad by unending death, I will still know you, human, and I will gnaw your living bones.”
“Is that a real threat?” Scott asked, but he kept backing up. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!”
“You shouldn’t laugh, Druud. I’ve seen men die for no reason.” Iziz returned, his boots clomping heavily across the floor. He had one of the sleds, helping him to carry the odd assortment of things he brought with him. When he reached Amber, he began to unpack, laying everything out in a neat line. “I’ve heard things on the wind myself. My mother called them the howls of hungry ghosts, the voices of men who’d forgotten how to speak. So. Are you calling my mo
ther stupid?”
Scott shot Amber several sidelong glances and suddenly pointed. “She talked.”
Iziz sent Amber a narrow stare, still arranging things, then straightened up, caught Scott by the hair and slapped him hard and fast, forwards and backhand, on his face, throat, chest and any other part of Scott’s screaming, struggling body he could reach. “Don’t you ever lie to me again,” he said at the end of it, dropping Scott carelessly on the floor and stepping over him. “Come here, Eshiqi. It’s time to play.”
Amber eased forward into striking range, but he merely folded his arms and watched as she examined the three distinct selections he’d set out for her. Meoraq’s clothes—his neatly folded tunic and breeches, his travel-harness, everything but his boots, which Iziz was wearing. One of the large travel-flasks, filled, by itself. Six or seven small vertebrae, cut from whatever animal the raiders had been roasting the night before, with shreds of greasy meat and stringy tendons still clinging to them.
“Choose,” said Iziz when she finally looked up. “Each one is a blessing. Each one brings pain. God and Gann. That’s the game and if you don’t play with me, he goes right over the edge.”
Amber looked at her choices with new eyes. The bones seemed the most ominous, although she couldn’t say exactly how. There wasn’t much meat on them, but what there was might be poisoned or maybe Iziz meant to force Meoraq to swallow them whole. That left his clothes or the flask. She couldn’t see how clothes could hurt, unless they were ratted up and used to throttle him. On the other hand, Meoraq wasn’t as susceptible to cold as Amber and walking naked might not be too hard on him. What about the flask? He might be able to live without clothes for a day, but not water. But she was assuming there was water in the flask, which was not at all certain. It could be poison. Acid. Anything.
“One,” said Iziz quietly. “Two. Three. Four—”
Her arm felt so much heavier than it should be. Raising it to point made her entire right side cramp.
Iziz grunted and picked up Meoraq’s tunic and breeches, revealing the coiled leather belt hiding beneath them. He handed her the clothes, wrapped the belt around his fist so that the buckle dangled, and walked forward.
“Oh no!” Amber dropped to her knees, palms up, crawling after him. “Please, no!”
The belt howled. It hit like a fist dead center of Meoraq’s back. He jerked, swinging wildly by his bonds, but Iziz had no trouble at all hitting him again. He swung the same way he’d slapped Scott: quick, brutal, roundhouse blows that hit anywhere, everywhere. He never spoke. His throat stayed black and cool. He ignored Amber until she grabbed at the belt, then stopped just long enough to push her to the ground and step on her before resuming the attack.
When it finally ended, Amber was crying too hard to tell. She knew only when he took his boot off her back and dropped the belt on the floor in front of her. Iziz, only slightly coarse of breath, crouched down beside her and knotted his fist in her hair, raising her head, forcing her to see the damage: what seemed to her eye hundreds of mottled, irregular blotches all over where his scales had been beaten out of pattern and a few bloody trickles making their way down his limp body to drip onto the wet floor.
Iziz stood up, dragging her with him, and held her on her feet until she steadied. “You can talk to him now if you want to,” he told her. “But for every word you say, he gets one more stroke.”
Amber’s hands rose in shaking flutters to press over her mouth.
“You sure? He’s Sheulek. I’m sure he could take it. And just imagine how much it would mean to him now to hear his woman’s words of comfort.”
She shook her head, too numb even to hate him while Meoraq hung there, silent.
“Please yourself. Bring him down and get him dressed, Druud,” Iziz ordered, and took a long drink from the flask. “Make sure you get his harness on tight. Doesn’t look like he’ll be walking much, so we’ll need to drag him. He slips his tether and I’ll whip you both together. Let’s go, Eshiqi.”
Iziz started for the door and Amber followed, walking backwards, unable to keep from staring at the horror she had helped to happen. Scott watched her for a second, then went ahead and untied one of Meoraq’s wrists. The sound of his body hitting the floor stung at Amber’s eyes, but she didn’t make a sound. “Looks bad,” Scott called after her, his brow furrowed with exaggerated concern. “You know, he probably has broken ribs. He could have a broken rib right now sticking into his l—”
Meoraq drew up one leg and slammed his foot square in Scott’s stomach. Scott flew back, hit the wall first and the floor second, bent over and threw up between his splayed legs.
Iziz paused in the doorway. “Druud, for fuck’s sake,” he began, and that was when the lights came on.
Iziz looked up, frowning, then down as the floor shuddered. The wall panel where Scott had impacted, now slightly bent, dropped away to reveal the ancient control panel beneath. It sparked twice and emitted a high-pitched whining sound, echoed as a bone-humming groan beneath them. Cracks appeared right down the center of the floor—four of them, exactly the same length with exactly the same space between them, in perfectly straight alignment. They widened as the wall squealed and the floor shook.
There were doors in the floor. The doors were opening. One, two, three—all empty holes with rising platforms that slowly sealed them off again.
Up through the fourth came a dust-dull wedge-shaped ship.
* * *
The swaddles of his crude hood kept air suffocatingly close. Meoraq could smell nothing but his own unwashed hide and blood-tinged breath. Before the beating, sounds had been muffled; afterwards, pain dulled everything to a grey groan. He was aware that something had happened, but didn’t care what, beyond the thought that the raiders might all be standing around Scott’s caved-in corpse and paying it an apprehensive witness.
That hope died with Scott’s sudden, shrieking, “Haaaaa!”
“Leave it, Druud. You have work to do.”
‘Yes,’ thought Meoraq, flexing his bound hands. ‘Come and dress me, S’kot.’
He had no illusions. His blades were taken. He had been roughed some and hung for hours, denied food and water, and now whipped with his own belt. To judge by what speech he’d caught, the leader of the raiders meant to keep him alive as some torment to Amber, but raiders were not a patient breed. Meoraq thought it very likely he would be dead within three days.
For the first time in all his life, Meoraq did not know what that meant. Would he see the Halls of Sheul growing from the clear light of heaven, his father and mother come to meet him? Would he wander the lightless reaches of Gann forever, losing all his mind and memory until he had become as empty as the deadlands he traveled? Or would he simply end?
No matter. He would know the truth soon enough, but before then, he would kill Scott.
But Scott did not obey his master. Instead of coming to harness Meoraq, he ran to another part of the room and seemed to circle, calling to his men. And they came. Meoraq could hear them crying out like madmen, some laughing, some weeping—reactions the raiders found greatly entertaining.
Meoraq knew his best chance of killing even a man like Scott depended on lying still and feigning helplessness (which did not require much feigning), but he simply had to see what was going on. With effort, he rolled onto his side and rubbed his snout on the floor until he’d pulled his hood loose enough to work it down over one eye.
He saw Amber first. She saw him. He didn’t know how he looked to her, but he thought she was beautiful. There in the open doorway with the light of day behind her, turning her hair to a haze of white and gold, wearing one of his tunics and the green girdle given by the lady of House Uyane. Frightened, but standing, because she would know no other way than to survive for as long as she had breath. He looked at her and from where he lay with all this empty room between them, he could still feel her arms around him.
And then he noticed the ship.
Surprise took him, but no
t for long and what it left after its fading was the same sort of baffled exasperation he so often had when trying to understand human motives. What were they so excited about? If the thing were nothing but a husk, a crate in the shape of a ship, still it would be scarcely the height of a man, again as wide and perhaps twice that in length. Room enough for the humans—barely—but only if there were no mechanics to move the ship and no supplies necessary to sustain them on their journey. And that was assuming the ship could move. Dust, not even dust in so thick a coat as this, did not always mean a thing was broken, but the strange metal of its hide was obviously pitted with corrode and its windows remained dull even when Scott wiped at them. An idiot could see the ship was dead. But Scott had a long way to go before he could be considered so well as an idiot.
“Druud, leave it. It’s old, but it can still bite if you tease it. Leave it alone. All of you, back to work.”
The humans stayed where they were, whining protests. Scott actually put his arms around the ship, hugging it like a child with a toy that might at any moment be unfairly stripped away. Surprisingly, some of the raiders protested as well, more and more of them coming to watch Scott’s men make fools of themselves over a broken machine.
Meoraq lay quiet and counted them. Sixteen. There might be others out in the courtyard, but sixteen was not an insurmountable number, if he had his swords.
Or if he could use them. Meoraq tested his clay and found it heavy, thick with hurt. A Sheulek could endure pain, but his flesh was swelled and he could feel blood pooling under his scales and those were simply facts. If he’d cracked a few bones, as seemed likely, six might well be beyond him, much less sixteen.
Yet he may only have to kill a few to make the rest run. If he could gain his feet, gain his weapon, seize just one short second of surprise, with God’s favor—
But he didn’t have God’s favor. He had the strength the sickness gave him…and that might not be enough.