The Last Hour of Gann (112 page)

“Your pillow-talk needs a lot of work,” she told him, but she burned and when she finally slept, it was smiling
with his hand over her belly where his new-sparked son surely grew.

2

T
he mountains were not wide. Meoraq assured her the crossing should only take four days, six at the absolute most. Then it would be back on the road, one with a beach at the end of it, no less. It was too much to hope that it would be a warm, sunny beach, but still, Amber had never been to one (
sleeper-dream of mama cigarette smoke screaming seagulls but o the sunset and the waves coming in
) and when she had it in her to hope for things, she did hold out a little hope for one nice day at the beach.

She’d thought she was prepared. No matter how sedentary her winter routine had become, her
memories of the endless march across the plains were never far. She knew it would be tough. She knew she’d be cold and hungry and exhausted all the time, but she knew she could take it and keep moving. She was ready. Four days.

Except that Amber had quite naturally twisted her ankle on those fucking snowshoes within the first stupid hour of
the first day after leaving the cave.

Except that
on the second day, she’d also tumbled a good fifty meters down an icy slope into a slushbank when the ledge that had supported a hulking lizardman’s weight and that of two sleds lashed together (Amber was no longer pulling hers because of her ankle) without any complaint whatsofreakingever gave way under her fat ass.

Except that
on the third day, it had started snowing again that night for the first time in days and days and motherfucking days and now they were in it up to their knees again, which meant she was also back in the damn snowshoes.

Amber did not believe in God, but if ever there was some supernatural force trying to send a sign, Someone was screaming it. And Meoraq, who saw messages from God in plants, caves and even plops of animal poop, pretended to be oblivious. No matter what fresh slice of shit-cake got served, he just bandaged her up and kept going.

Amber could take all the punches the universe could throw, but waiting for the punch to hit was killing her. On the fourth day, the day they were supposed to be out and which found them camped in the middle of the same goddamn nowhere with the same goddamn ice storm crusting up the side of the tent, Amber gave up and said it for him: “You told me so.”

Meoraq raised his head out of the pillow of his pack and rubbed sleepily at his face. “Eh? Was I talking?”

“You told me it wasn’t time to leave and I made you.”

He looked at her, spines flexed all the way forward, then laughed and dropped back into his arm.

Now that stung.

“I did!” she insisted.

He made a very bad effort at smothering another laugh. “I forgive you,” he said gravely.

Amber took that for as long as she could and then she threw the blankets back and kicked free of them.

Meoraq groaned and rolled onto his side to watch her grab her mat and pull it to the other side of the tent in noisy heaves. “Please yourself. I don’t forgive you. Shall I have you whipped, woman? Would that make you happy?”

She dug down through the layers of their bedding for the xaut fur in the middle and yanked it free.

“Where do you think you’re going with that?” he asked, cocking his head.

“It’s mine!” she said, wrapping herself furiously in its itchy warmth. “I made it
and it’s mine!”

He dropped onto his back and rubbed his
brow-ridges. “Deep breaths, Uyane,” she heard him mutter. “Deep and slow. So.” He moved his hand and gestured to her. “What is it you want to say?”

“If you’re mad at me, get mad at me!”

“If I’m not mad, can I just go to sleep?”

“Stop making fun of me!”

The slap/rasp of his hand rubbing back on his brow-ridges. The steady rise and fall of his broad chest as he breathed six times. Then he threw back his blanket and before she could untangle herself from the xaut fur and get out of his reach, he’d gripped the edge of her mat and yanked her against him. He stripped the fur away and made the bed again: blanket, xaut fur, blanket.

She stopped fighting halfway through and just let him tuck her in, her eyes burning with humiliation, staring at the top of the tent until it blurred into new colors. When he was finished, he lay back down and snugged an arm around her, grunting comfortably against her shoulder. He seemed to fall asleep.

The storm blew and blew. It never stopped here. Never.

“Shall I guess?” Meoraq murmured against her ear.

Amber pressed her teeth tight together and did not answer.

“I say…” His hand slipped up to rest between her breasts.
It was his favorite place to touch her. God alone knew why. “It’s just a little weather. And you say…it’s weather that could kill us.”

She shivered and tried to roll away from him. He waited until she was done and simpl
y spooned up against her back.  “And I say we rest in God’s sight,” he continued. “And you say, stop acting like it doesn’t matter,
lizardman
.”

She felt the breath catch in her throat almost like a laugh, and gritted her teeth even harder because it wasn’t fucking funny, no matter how he said it.

“And I say, tell me what you want me to do about the weather. And you don’t say anything at first, but you get that look. And so I say, tell me plainly what the matter is. And you say something inexpressibly foolish, such as how this is all your fault. And so I tell you how foolish it is to say that, which is a reasonable thing to say, and you become impossible to deal with. So.” He nuzzled at the side of her neck. “I will say none of these things. It is absolutely no use trying to talk with women.”

“Sexist son of a bitch.
”

“Ha.” He snuggled closer under the blankets. “I win. So just say it, Soft-Skin, before you choke on it.”

“We were supposed to be out of the mountains today.”

“Shit happens.” His language, her phrase. They were both doing a lot of that.

“And it is my fault. You can make all the smart-ass comments you want to.”

“Lo,” Meoraq intoned, “even his ass be wise.”

“Jerk.”

“Mm.”

Wind blew, cracking the ice forming on the side of the tent.

“When I was a boy,” Meoraq murmured, “and my training masters wished to give me the most severe punishments, they would set me to copying books. And the book that every boy most dreaded to see was Master Darr’s book of maps, because every line had to be perfect, you see. Every hill, named. Every bend of every river, just so. I must have copied that book ten times, end to end.”

Amber waited, gritting her teeth, but curiosity won out in the end. Meoraq could make the most random crap imaginable sound profound when he said it in that slow, meditative way. “And?” she said finally, surrendering.

“And when I first left Xeqor,” he went on, “I thought I knew the land, because I knew those maps so well. I had no hesitation when I set off, for I knew whe
re I would find the range of Aqcha and I knew where to find the city of Fol Ganis on the other side. It came as a hell of a shock when I climbed that first peak and saw more mountains.”

“And the moral of this story is?”
asked Amber, and immediately regretted it because it didn’t sound tough and bored at all, just snotty.

“That everything looks small on paper,” Meoraq
replied. “But in Gann’s world, shit happens.”

The wind died down, making the relative quiet seem much louder and heavier than it should. Meoraq’s body beside hers remained perfectly relaxed.

“I’m sorry for being such a bitch,” Amber muttered finally.

He patted her breast companionably. “Forgiven.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

She didn’t feel much better. How the hell could he lie there so still? “Are you really this sleepy?”

“Yes. Wait.” He raised his head. “Why?”

“Well, it’s only the middle of the day.”

“There’s nothing else to do.” He flicked his spines at her. “Is there?”

“Jesus Christ, really? How did you ever survive living with me as long as you did without having sex every other hour?”

“With God’s aid alone,” he
said seriously. “It was a terrible time.”

“Just t
alk to me, okay?”

“It is absolutely no use,” he reminded her, but rolled onto his back and pulled her halfway onto his chest. “It hasn’t been so bad, has it?”

She thought it was a joke and started to laugh at it, albeit in a bitchy way, but then got a better look at him and realized he was serious. “For you, maybe. I am a walking bruise, lizardman.”

“You bruise too easily. But do you hurt?”

Of course she hurt! She opened her mouth…and thought about it, damn him.

“Not like before,” she admitted. After all, she was just lying here, not sprawling in a gasping heap, half-conscious. If the weather wasn’t so piss-awful, she’d still be walking. She ached a little on her hip where she’d done some serious splits on her way down the slope the other day, but unless she actually poked at a bruise, even those didn’t bother her too much.

She didn’t hurt. She wasn’t tired. She wasn’t even all that cold, thanks to Meoraq’s tent, plenty of furs, and the clothes they’d spent all winter making. She hadn’t been hungry in more days than she could count.

“No,” she said, surprised. “I
guess it’s not that bad.”

“And when it is over, it will be over forever. You will have a bed all the rest of your life, except on those nights when you have mine. You
will have servants. You will sit at a table and eat from a plate.”

“You
say the most romantic things. You sure you want to risk letting other guys see me?” Amber asked. “Apparently, I have this overwhelming sensuality.”

“Your servants will be women.”

It took a few seconds for that to register all the way.

“Hang on.” She pushed herself up a little so she could see his face. “I thought you said women didn’t work on this planet.”

“We don’t pay them,” he explained. “And most of them only care for their own households, so no one sees them. It’s only if a man has too many daughters or a barren wife set aside that they end up working in House Uyane.”

“What?”

“It’s a big House. It needs a lot of tending and my father never had daughters. I don’t think he even had sisters. It’s the lord’s responsibility to see that all those within his holdings are cared for, so why not put them to work? Besides, they’re rarely out where we can see them. It’s mostly the extra boys that do the running around and cleaning.”

“Extra?”

He rolled one hand idly through the air. “Orphans and bastards and such. If they weren’t born under the sign of the Blade, they’re the responsibility of the lord-steward.”

“What happens to them?”

“Farmers and cattlemen can always use more workers, but they have to be old enough to be useful. I’ve seen boys as young as six in the fields of other Houses, but my father waited until they were ten or so.”

“Practically grown,” said Amber sarcastically.

He grunted agreement. Several more minutes passed while Amber tried not to fidget as she thought about his place in Xeqor and whether or not she was supposed to help take care of all these extra kids. Meoraq just dozed. Suddenly, he tensed and roused himself, saying, “You will do no more work when we are home, woman. Swear your obedience!”

“Okay.”

He eyed her mistrustfully and settled back down.

“So what kind of work are we talking about, since the kids do all the cleaning?”

“Eh.” He yawned, rubbing at his eyes. “They cook and do the washing. In a House Uyane’s size, that’s a lot of work. I suppose they must do the heavy things a boy can’t, like haul water. I don’t know, really. Mostly, they stay below, out of sight.”

“Why?”

“It’s where the work is. Besides, if they come up, someone other than my father might see them.”

“And?”

He raised his head up to look at her, as if he thought she might be joking. When he saw she wasn’t, he laughed a little anyway, his spines flexed forward. “If a man saw them, he might want to have sex with them. Unless he were born under the Blade, that would be a crime. And even if he were, it’s still trouble.”

“But if your father saw them…?”

Meoraq shrugged and lay back down. “He was lord-steward.”

Something dark and cold and incredibly heavy shifted in her stomach, not quite waking up all the way.
“How is that fair?”

“Eh?”

“When women sleep around, they’re possessed by the devil, but it’s okay for men to get with the help? What kind of half-assed laws are these?”

“
Not men,” said Meoraq, in warning tones. “The lord-stewards, who are masters over all their households. And Uyane is not merely a House under the sign of the Blade, it
is
the Blade. Its stewards are highest in God’s eyes. He wants them to breed.”