The Last Hour of Gann (65 page)

Meoraq had seen many lies told to his face. The humans were not always honest in the things they said, but when it came to talk of their Earth, he could not see those lies. It bothered him. Most of the time, he was able to close his mind to this conflict, since the humans had little energy during their travels for Earth-talk and even less inclination to spend their resting hours in his company, but here in these ruins, with this damned image inescapably pressed into the wall, there was no avoiding it.

Either the humans had come in a ship from another world
never mentioned in Sheul’s Word or they were lying to him. All of them. Even Amber. And he did not believe that, either.

The door hissed softly open.

“Get out,” said Meoraq without taking his eyes from the tiled wall.

Retreat.

He was going to be chasing them out of here all damned night, he just knew it. Because of the ship. He thought he could chip it free of the mortar that held it, but decided the satisfaction couldn’t be worth the damage to his blades and they’d all seen it already anyway. Nevertheless, the temptation remained.

The door hissed a second time. The light of a human’s lamp-machine fell in a pool across his back, throwing his shadow as tall as Sheul’s own across the mosaic. There, the ship was a blade aimed at his heart.

“O my Father,” said Meoraq loudly. “Give me Your arm, I pray, that I might beat this human so severely, none other will dare to defy me.”

“Bring it, lizardman,” said Amber.

He grunted and moved away from the tiles at once, before she could come any closer. Useless gesture. She had seen the ship, but he didn’t want her looking at it again. “And now it is you,” he said, advancing on her. She did not so much as lower her eyes, not even when he stood toe-at-toe with her. “I do not want anyone in this room. How is it that I am still not understood after all this time?”

“I underst
and you just fine.” She rolled her eyes a little. “Scott sent me to find out why not.”

Some hot, red emotion stabbed him, too deeply to be identified, too bright to be ignored. “And you do his bidding now, do you?
” he snapped. “Even you?”

“I can’t justify being a bitch all night, every night, for no good reason. Unlike some lizards I could mention. What’s your problem?”

“I don’t want you in here! How many times do you need to be told?”

“I’m going to need a better reason than just because you said so,” she fired bac
k, “or my answer is going to be a big fat I’ll go wherever I want to. And if you think you’re man enough to stop me—”

There, a spear of stormlight struck down, illuminating the whole of the room with its silvery flash and cutting Amber’s words away as neatly as if it had struck her dead. She shone her human lamp past him at the window.

“If I am
man
enough?” Meoraq echoed, but Amber did not re-engage him. Thunder broke and boomed across the plains, making her flinch back. The lightning came in sheets overhead, filling the night with a constant, flickering illumination that periodically let out a flash of white brilliance. It wasn’t enough to read the Word by, perhaps, but it was more than enough to see Amber’s round, staring eyes.

“Go back to the others,” Meoraq told her, once it became obvious she was content to stand there all night.

She stirred, like one waking from a sleep, and shone her light on the glass again. “You don’t have tornados here, do you?”

He took her wrist and forced the light down. “
Mind where you aim that damned thing! Go, I say. Obey me!”

“Quit grabbing at me. I want to see—
” And there she stopped, not for the storm this time, but to give him a sudden, startled look. “Oh shit. It’s not the ship, it’s the window.”

“Eh?”

“I thought you were just being a dick about—” She started to shine her light at the tilework on the wall, then stopped and forced the beam down. She looked at him, her brows creased in alarm. “We’re not alone out here, are we?”

Meoraq flexed his spines a few times (If
he was man enough, she said. If.) and finally forced them to relax. “I haven’t seen anyone, but that is no reason to set a beacon at every window.”

She tipped the lamp upwards, so that it shone its light briefly across the underside of her face, then switched it off. The storm continued, pouring light in sheets across the churning skies, more than enough to let him see the furrow of a
frown on Amber’s troubled face. “Maybe we shouldn’t stay here tonight.”

“Now?” he asked irritably. “You have to say that
now
? Human, it is hours too late to move on, even if your accursed people would condescend to be moved.”

“I would much rather get rained on than murdered in my sleep,” said Amber, but she jumped at the next clap of thunder all the same.

“You are under my watch. No one is going to murder you, except perhaps me if you insist on ignoring my commands. Go back to the other room and stay with your people.”

She did not react to the threat. Indeed, she gave no sign she’d even heard him. She was staring at the window again, clutching her human lamp, now dark and lifeless, in both hands. Both shaking hands.

“Calm yourself,” said Meoraq gruffly. “It’s only a storm.”

“I’m calm,” she said, but in a strained and distracted way. “Do you see me freaking out? No. I’m totally calm. I just…don’t feel very safe.”

“There is nothing to be gained by worrying over the weather. We are in Sheul’s care tonight.”

“I know you think that’s comforting, but it’s not.”

“So be it. Console yourself instead with the knowledge that you aren’t sleeping in the rain. And treasure it, human, because I promise you, that
is
a luxury.”

“But we’re completely boxed in. If anyone bad comes, the only way out—
”

Meoraq
unclipped his kzung and showed her the shine of its blade in the stormlight. “—is through them,” he finished, and flared his mouth to bare all his teeth. “Is that man enough for you?”

The flicker of the storm made it difficult to tell, but he thought she smiled. And then she screamed as lightning struck the ground directly outside the window, sending shards of stone into the glass. The thunder that followed shattered
what the stones had cracked; the window blew inward and smashed itself across the floor. Meoraq turned his head away from the wall of freezing wind that blasted in at them and was nearly knocked from his feet when Amber slammed up against him.

Like a little fork of lightning inside his mind, Meoraq’s thoughts washed out to white.
He could not hear the storm, feel the wind. For a moment—the very briefest moment, the very longest—he was aware of nothing but the press of her body to the whole of his, her hands digging at his back, the warmth that was her breath blowing against his heart. He could not feel himself at all, except where he was defined by her touch.

Her embrace.

Meoraq returned his sword to his belt and awkwardly hovered that arm over her, lowering it by hesitant degrees until his hand just touched her shoulder.

Amber pushed herself away quickly and no sooner had she done so than the door hissed open and they were joined by
Scott and several of his men. In near-perfect synchrony, they threw up their arms against the driving rain that had found its way indoors, but Scott had enough voice to shout, “What the hell happened in here?”

“Out!” Meoraq ordered. He caught Amber by the wrist and headed through the door, pushing
Scott and his men before him and towing Amber after.

“What did you do?”
Scott demanded on the other side, and without waiting for an answer, thrust his arm at Amber and said, “She broke the window!”

“I did not!”

A crash of thunder like Sheul’s own hammer turned the rest of her words to a scream he could not hear. She ducked down, her hands at the sides of her head to cover her human ears, and she stayed that way even after the thunder rolled away.

And she wasn’t the only one, Meoraq saw. Many other humans had assumed protective positions or had at least cleaved on to some other human. Some of the females were actually crying.

“Okay,” said Scott, and said it several times in his attempt to restore order. “Okay, just calm down. It’s only wind.”

“Yeah, so is a tornado,” said Crandall, looking nervously up at the ceiling. “
I’m from Kansas. I see this shit all the time. Hey, lizardman, is this place safe?”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean—”

Thunder. Screams. Meoraq waited.

“I mean, this is an old building, right?”

“Yes.”

“So is the roof going to fall in on us? It’s not, is it?”

M
eoraq flicked his spines forward and back dismissively. “It might.”

Some of the humans screamed some more,
but this time, there was no thunder to frighten them. Scott hastened to settle them with complicated hand gestures and soothing words, but the face he turned at last on Meoraq was pale and strained. “That’s not funny.”

Anger flared and his hand snapped up, but he caught the slap before he threw it.
“I am not in a joking mood,
S’kot
,” he hissed. “The ruins are old. The wind is strong. The walls could fall. I advise you all to pray tonight, for it will be Sheul’s will alone if this place still stands at the end of the storm.”

Thunder again, shaking the very foundations of the building beneath their feet. Humans screamed, males and females together now. One of them groped at Meoraq’s own arm and he was compelled to slap the thing away. Immediately after he’d done it, the thought came to him that he had not slapped Amber away and she’d had both her arms around him. It did not make him feel badly for the human he’d struck, but it did make him look for Amber among her people.

He found her clinging to Nicci, the two of them huddled so tightly together that he could not quite be certain whose arm belonged to who or whose head was buried in whose hair. A spark of thought—
Must it be both of them
?—lit and faded in his mind, as bright and brief as lightning. He frowned and turned deliberately away. “We have more shelter here than out upon the open plains,” he said loudly, determined to cut through their chatter if he could not quell it. “That is what you wanted most, isn’t it? So. This will be our camp. Remove these things,” he ordered, pointing at the chairs.

“And put them where?” Eric asked.

Meoraq pointed again, at the foreroom. “With the rest of the trash,” he said. “After which, none of you are to enter that room. Mark me, all of you. If you need to use the necessary, exit through the room you entered by, but you are to be swift about it and return here immediately.”

The humans eyed one another as the rain drummed down and
the thunder shook at the walls. At last, Eric uttered a grating sort of sound in the back of his throat and began, “That sounds like a lot of work. I mean, there’s a lot of empty rooms. I don’t see any reason why we can’t spread out.”

“Because I said so!” Meoraq hissed and grabbed onto his brow-ridges as if to hold them to his head.
“I don’t have to give you reasons! I give commands! Where is your obedience?”

“Okay, okay!” Eric raised both hands and patted the air. “Here is good. Be cool. Bierce, you want to come deal with this?”

“Do we get a fire at least?” asked Maria, standing close to her man’s side. “Or do we have to be cool in the literal sense as well?”

Eric dropped his hands and looked at her, his face puckering as with pain. “Baby, you’re not helping.”

“Excuse me for being cold!”

Meoraq took two swift steps forward and put his face close to Maria’s even as she tried to hide behind her man. “Stop,” he said, very quietly. “Whining. At me.”

Maria did not answer. She clutched her Eric’s shirt and did not move.

Meoraq straightened up and gave Eric a dark stare, then turned around to address
Scott. “This is not a discussion. I am giving you my orders. Clear the room, settle your nests, go to sleep. No fires,” he added, glancing back at Maria. “Most of these old buildings have fire dampening devices. Some of them still work. No fires. And no lights anywhere—
anywhere
—where they can be seen outside. How do you mark me?”

They didn’t answer, but they marked him well enough. Eric took his Maria
firmly in grip and they began to move furniture into the foreroom, Eric hauling the larger pieces and Maria picking up the inevitable debris that broke off. Some others followed their example, but most just huddled up to mutter at each other and eye the ceiling whenever the storm hammered on it. Meoraq paced as far away from the lot of them as the dimensions of the room would allow before setting out the components of his tent. It was a shameful extravagance, and he knew he could be comfortable enough with just his mat, but the lights were going to burn for as long as the room sensed occupants and if he had to look at humans all night, he was going to kill one of them. This was no longer a facetious thought. Not tonight and not in this place.