The Last Hour of Gann (160 page)

Amber shivered. She wasn’t cold.

“Tell me why you want to do this,” Meoraq said without opening his eyes.

“God wants to know?”

“I suspect He already knows.” He sounded very faintly annoyed. “Yet I am compelled to ask
anyway. Answer.”

“Because you’re mine and I want to make you happy in every possible way.”

“I have always been happy without this act,” he said, but it was a grudging admission.

“I still want to share it with you.”

“And if I say it is an offense?”

“Then I won’t ask you again.”

His brows knitted heavily over his closed eyes. “So you don’t really want to do it.”

“Right this instant, it’s probably the thing I want most to do in the world, but I’m not going to do it if it offends your god.”

His eyes slid open just to slits. “You don’t believe in God.”

“You do.”

“You have tried often enough to convince me otherwise, but you will not do so now with your human mating rituals?”

“
Whether or not I believe in your god is irrelevant. I’m trying to make love with you. It can’t be making love if you think it’s corrupting you.”

Meoraq tipped his head back and gazed, not at the ceiling where human feet were once again loudly tromping, but through it and straight on to heaven. Looking God in the eye, perhaps.

And if so…she found herself wondering if this was the strangest prayer He’d ever been asked to mediate.

“Yes,” said Meoraq.

Amber started. “What?”

He looked at her, gestured at his cock. “The will I receive has not changed. No pleasure we find in one another offends the eye
of God. You may do as you wish.”

She stared at him for a while, then up at the ceiling and back at him.

He grimaced at her, an expression which was never going to grace the covers of one of those sultry bodice-rippers her mom had like to read (and which was far more likely, come to think of it, to be found on the splash page of a horror comic), but something in it made that not-cold shiver come right back, even harder than before. Amber rolled onto her knees and arched up to kiss him, to feel his dry tongue prod at hers and his fingers comb carefully through her hair, and it was beautiful, like the heat and pulse of his cock when she gripped it, like the musky sweet taste that coated his sa’ad, like the orgasm that swept through her when she brushed her lips across the head of him and heard his rich, full groan. She did not drink him in with the pleasure she’d imagined, but with joy beyond
all
imagining, right up until he fell out of the chair.

Footsteps on the ceiling. Meoraq panting on the floor. Amber watched him
, giggling now and then when the happiness threatened to split her in half, and finally draped herself across his chest and thighs where she could both snuggle platonically and fondle him at the same time.

“Say something,” s
he said at last.

“God is in His heaven,” said Meoraq in a
distant voice. “And loves me.”

Zhuqa had said something like that once. This time, it was beautiful.

8

T
hey were a frustrating six days that followed. Meoraq’s limited healing lore had always served him well in the past, or at least, that part of the past which did not include his Amber. It was not the alien workings of her body that concerned him now—that, he was content to leave to Sheul and He seemed to have mended it. No, what he did not know how to manage was his woman’s spirit, and in particular, her will to leap from her sickbed and be immediately whole.

Amber’s long lying-in had left her weakened and restless. Six days was not enough to restore
her to her fullest, but it was all she would allow.

He had sympathy. Some. No one liked to lie around and be tended, and certainly no one enjoyed being reminded that they were any less than what they had been, what they should be. His Amber’s fierce will chafed at inactivity. It was no less than a punishment to her and Meoraq understood that feeling. He also understood, as his wife apparently did not, that overworking weakened
flesh only slowed one’s recovery and that the mistakes made while in that state could cripple his woman for life.

He explained this. She claimed to accept it. And then she refused out of hand his suggestion of
meditation and stretches, even for one day, and instead began a regime of climbing the stairs over and over. Before the day was out, she had set the goal of walking all the way to the stream and back, and achieved it despite his warnings. Was he surprised? He was not, not even the next morning, when she wanted to hunt.

Meoraq had only a few moments to think that over without arousing her suspicion, but the facts were simple enough. Point: If he denied her request and left without her, she would likely begin again with her own idea of how best to recover. Point the second: She was equally likely to go hunting without him. Point the third (and most
significant): At least one and perhaps all three of the human males in his camp had eyes on her. Meoraq did not believe any of them would dare to attempt conquest and he did not doubt Amber’s ability, however weakened, to put a scar on them if they did, but it was a point and worth the consideration.

So he took her hunting. All that day and all the days that followed, he led his woman on long walks, well away from any game trails or spoor, and let her believe herself hunting. He lost hours to her stubbornness that could have been spent packi
ng his lodge back onto the sled, but then again, even when there were no animals to track, there were plenty of trees to lean up against.

Exercise was exercise
.

On the seventh morning following Amber’s emergence from her sickbed, Meoraq woke early with too much to do. He nuzzled his wife all the way awake, since there was no hope of escaping the cupboard without disturbing her anyway, and told her to be ready to leave within the hour.

“Got it,” she mumbled, rolling over to spread herself out over the bed as he left it. “Gonna sleep a little bit, be right up, okay?”

He grunted assent, patting her fluffy head, and shut the door quietly. After a few short stretches and his morning prayer—
my thanks Sheul, O my Father, for the shelter of this lodge and its civilized cupboard which is half the size of mine at home, and my thanks Sheul, O my Father, for the woman who shares it with me and has not failed once in fifty-nine nights by her own reckoning to hup her bony knee into my groin
—he went upstairs.

The foreroom of the underlodge was empty at the moment, although someone had moved the sled on which he had
half-heartedly packed their provisions. Leaning close to straighten them, Meoraq smelled the unmistakable tang of sex. Damned humans. Now every time he put the walls up, he was going to think about that.

He open
ed the door and pulled the sled outside, facing into the wind to clear his scent cavities. It was not quite dawn, although the sky was greying in the east. A fine morning, dry and cool. A good day for travel.

He was not alone.

Meoraq stiffened, fighting the urge to hiss. He did not turn to look at her, did not hear her little footfall or catch more than the usual smoky scent in the breeze, but he knew who it was with him and he saw no reason to pretend otherwise. “What do you want, N’ki?”

“You told Amber you wanted to leave.”

“In an hour. Wait below.”

“Can’t I help?”

“Don’t insult me. You wouldn’t lift your hand to help if it were resting on live coals. What do you want? Speak plainly.”

“What are you going to do with me?”

“Nothing.” Meoraq busied himself with the sled, re-stacking things that did not require adjustment and tightening straps he was going to have to untie and fasten again when the rest of the gear was loaded. Anything to keep his hands busy so they would not be tempted to strike.

“When this is over, I mean. You can’t—
” Her hand caught at his sleeve.

He slapped it off. Hard. But at least he only struck her hand.

“You can’t leave me,” she said in her shaking voice. Her eyes filled with water. “Please, Meoraq.”

“Don’t say my name like that and don’t you dare cry at me,” he added, pointing the whole of his hand right into her flat, ugly face. “
I am not my wife, to be caught and reined by the little water you run out of your eyes.”

She did not answer, but her eyes dried in the wind and did not tear up again.

“You sicken me,” he spat, yanking at the sled’s ties. “But you are my wife’s blood-kin and so I will take you into my House.”

“Thank y—
”

“Thank
her
, not that you ever would. I can only pray that one day she will see you for what you are, but until then, know that
my
eyes are open. You’ll come to my House, yes, and I’ll shut you behind as many doors as I can and if God shows favor, neither she nor I will ever see your face or hear your whining voice again!”

“
Perhaps you can find a cage to put me in.”

“
Don’t you dare hook that at me!” he hissed. “You’ll have a room, human. You’ll have your meals brought and baths at your pleasure and all manner of comforts, ha, and you won’t even have to ply a man’s slit to get them.”

It was, in truth, a low thing for any man to say, and despicable in the throat of a Sheulek. Still, he did not expect the slap. It caught him right across the snout with a flat, undramatic sound, and although it didn’t sting much, it briefly whitened his vision on that side.

He recoiled to stare at her. She neither excused herself nor asked forgiveness—would that have made a difference?—but just stared back at him, her chin raised, defiant. And why shouldn’t she be defiant? She knew he wouldn’t strike her back. Because of Amber.

“Go below,” he said at last. He could feel the color throbbing in h
is neck, but his voice was calm. “I am done with you.”

She made a sniffing sound, jerking her head as she turned so that her hair snapped a bit, as in a short gust of wind. The sight, the sound, sparked a flare of such rage that his hand went to his waist, gripping at the air where the hilt of his kzung should be, if only he were wearing it. His head cleared after a few slow breaths, but while it lasted, the killing urge was bitterly welcome.

‘Patience,’ he told himself, and made his empty hands go back to work. ‘Great Sheul, O my Father, help me to remember that my wife loves the useless little poke.’

And if she had the power to hear those thoughts, they would have been as good as a knife in her belly. He remembered only too well the look on Amber’s face when she had seen her Nicci again, and he knew he had done nothing since to keep the fire of that first joy lit. Even now, knowing all that his wife had suffered and all that it would mean to her to see him at least trying to show her blood-kin some small friendship, the only kindness he could muster was to stay where he was instead of chasing after her and slapping an apology out of her whining mouth.

He hated Nicci. Even before she’d put her hand on him in that evil way, he’d hated her. She was no worse than any other human he endured with far better grace. Indeed, she was quieter than most, which should have made her far more tolerable. She wasn’t. He hated her.

Footsteps on the stair, uneven in gait but familiar. Meoraq raised his head and flared his spines, grunting a wordless greeting. Amber yawned back at him
and sat down on the sled. “Morning,” she said.

He glanced at the sun, still touching the horizon. “Almost.”

“You okay?”

“Yes.”

“You look pissed.”

He grunted.

“Hey. Come here.”

He eyed the
bundled leather walls she patted so invitingly, leather that some other human had already perfumed with…fluids…and straightened up. “You come to me,” he ordered, slapping lightly at his chest.

She did, rolling her eyes but smiling as she slipped her arms around him. “It’s almost over,” she murmured.

He acknowledged this, rubbing at her back and gazing meditatively into the distance, into the east. The shrine was there, so close. He had more fingers than days left in this journey. Sheul awaited him. Sheul, manifest as flesh.

“I could hunt,” he said, already feeling the futility seep into the air. “One good hunt to leave here. You and I could go on together. The humans could wait here for us.”

Amber frowned, but did seem to think it over.

“If that’s what you want to do—
” she began at last. Meoraq finished it with her, each in their own tongue, “—I’ll wait here with them. No,” he said at the end and hissed under his breath.

She said nothing for a time, only held him. At length, softly, she said, “Do you want me to talk to them about something?”

“No.”

“Do you want to put off leaving for another day?”

“No.”

He felt her fingers drumming against his scales as she thought.