The Last Hour of Gann (83 page)

“If it came baked in a bar of gold, I don’t think I could ever like this. It stings my mouth.”

He looked up sharply. “Are your teeth loose?”

“No, I’m just cut up some from when…” She didn’t finish. She looked away at the other fire, where humans huddled together to sleep or exchange low words. She
watched them in silence for a long time and then rubbed at her face in a terrible, broken way. “I really screwed up with these people, Meoraq.”

That was a new turn of phrase and he wasn’t wholly certain of her meaning, so he said n
othing.

“The worst part is, I don’t really know how. I don’t deserve this—I don’t think I do—but I don’t think I can stop it either. It’s not because I think I’m right all the time and it’s not because
Scott’s a dick…or maybe it is. All I know is, I could walk over there right now with a spaceship in my arms and they’d probably club me to death with it before they thanked me for it.”

Meoraq leaned back in some surprise. “Do you want thanks?”

Now she looked at him, her brows furrowing. “Don’t you?”

“
No. A Sheulek requires no man’s favor when he stands in God’s sight.”

“
Oh come on. Don’t you think you deserve a ‘thank you’ after herding us across the wilderness and giving us food and water and then patrolling half the night to keep the man-eating chickens out of our camp while we sleep? Don’t you want just once for someone to
appreciate
it?”

He shrugged his spines. “Sometimes. I’m still a man and men can be petty, but I try to take the high path. Sheul may yet reward me for my efforts here; your
people never will, I think. That cattle’s ass, S’kot, likes to keep them afraid of me.” He pointed yet again at her tachuqi fat and studied her face while she picked at it. “Did you think I hadn’t noticed?”

“He’s been pretty obvious, but you don’t act like you see it.”

“Because I don’t care. The world is filled with fools like S’kot, and worse, with the fools who let them act as wardens over them. They deserve each other. I don’t care what they think of me and neither should you.” He pointed at her tachuqi fat. She rolled her eyes again, but began at last to really eat it, and after she had taken several bites and he’d had time to think, he said, “I am Sheulek. Have I told you what that means?”

“
It means you’re a foot.” She glanced at him. “A wandering soldier or something, right?”

“
A Sheulek is more than a warrior. We are the instruments of God’s judgment.”

“I don’t think I got that.”

“Sheul’s will is not always manifest to those of us who dwell on Gann. When conflicts arise that cannot be settled by men, we Sheulek are called to mediate. Most of these matters can be settled with words,” he added, taking back his samr to clean and sheath it. “If you have conflict with S’kot, call him forth and I will mediate.”

“I don’t think that will go over too well.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean, court will be in session all of three minutes before you bang the gavel down on
Scott’s fat head. Admit it,” she said, giving him half a smile that did not much touch her eyes. “You’d love the excuse to take him out.”

“You think I have had no excuses before this?”
He took a bite of his salt-back, swallowed, and added, “I don’t need one anyway. One of the privileges of carrying these blades is that I can use them against whoever I want. Yet for now, this moment, I must believe Sheul put him in my path for a reason.”

She snorted. “Maybe it’s to kill him.”

“Father, hear Your son’s desire, but in the meantime, I don’t require his good opinion of me,” said Meoraq with a dismissive flex of his spines. “It wouldn’t mean much, coming from him.”

“Easy for you to say. You don’t have to live with these people.”

“Neither do you.”

Her eyes rolled. She looked at the fire and moved roasts around.

“If you want his approval,” said Meoraq bluntly, hating even the tast
e of the words, “give him yours. Lay your open hand at his boot for all your people to see and his favor will fall like rain.”

“No. He’s an idiot. And I know you think I’m an idiot too—
”

He never should have said that.

“—but if I just smile and let him do whatever he wants, he’ll kill us.”

“Do you believe that?”

“Yes!” She stopped and frowned into nothing for a few moments. “Yes,” she said again, with less heat but more feeling.

“So.
Do what is right. Stop pursuing the gratitude of your pathologically ungrateful people.” Meoraq put a hand on her bent knee and leaned forward until his face and hers were a breath apart. “And stop whining.”

It seemed the right thing to say, for a change. She
smiled a little anyway, and when she smiled, it was as though a cold hand reached directly through his flesh and squeezed at his stomach.

He had nearly lost her this night. A thumb’s width of bone at the end of her stupid spear had been all that made the difference between his Amber sitting at this fire…or burning on it.

Meoraq gave her a tap and stood up, looking away. “Mind the meat,” he said unnecessarily. Of course she’d mind it. “I need to do something with the carcasses before the ghets come.” He hesitated, then looked down—not directly at her, but close—and said, “You were very brave tonight.”

“And stupid.”

“But brave.” He reached…but closed his hand into a fist and walked away without touching her. He wanted to. And that was why he just didn’t dare.

7

A
mber fell asleep while cooking, which, if someone had told her it had happened to them, she wouldn’t have believed was possible. In the aftermath of the tachuqi attack, she had thought she would be awake all night and so she’d busied herself with chores while the others gradually went back to sleep, ultimately ending up behind Meoraq’s tent with a small fire and the stewing pouch, washing up and crying some more. The next time she checked on the meat, Meoraq’s mending kit had been set out in a conspicuous spot, so she went back behind his tent to see what she could do with her shirt. The hanging shreds were beyond help; she ripped them off, then went ahead and ripped the whole shirt up to the neck and started sewing. The new seam was as ugly as a surgery scar, but the shirt fit a lot better, so she did them all the same way, even her sweaters from home, leaving only her last new Manifestor’s shirt still folded and untouched in the bottom of her pack.

She didn’t think she was tired, the same way she didn’t think she was too badly hurt, but
with her adrenaline burned out and her emotions pulled thin, a full stomach and a dark night, it happened. One moment, she was leaning over a half-sewn shirt to turn slabs of meat on live coals, and in the next, it was day and Meoraq was shouting the place up: “I said, get
back
! That is for smoking, not for eating! You have had all that I mean to give you today!”

She woke up, but not fast. Her head felt cottony, thick with hurt, but her head wasn’t even half the problem. She’d never hurt so much in her life. Her stomach was a furnace of so much sick
heat that it felt almost like a separate entity—a pregnancy of pain—with a weight and a pulse all its own. She had to touch it, thinking with half-asleep logic that she could measure the extent of her internal injuries by how much swelling she found, but decided she must still be dreaming once she had. ‘I am not this flat tummy,’ she thought decisively, and was comforted. She left her hand on the stranger’s stomach, though. It hurt to bear her hand’s weight, but it felt good to be cradled, and after she’d had a few minutes to brace herself, she sat up.

It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t quick, but she made it happen. Cold air hit her as grav
ity took her blanket away, forcing her to pull it back up. While it would have been exaggeration to say that the blanket felt like it weighed a hundred pounds, she could honestly say it felt like ten, and that was ten too many for the arms that had kept a giant man-eating ostrich at spear’s length the night before.

All these thoughts had time to pour themselves, thick as syrup, redly throbbing, through her head before Amber noticed it wasn’t her her blanket. Her Fleet-issue sheet of tinfoil was nowhere to be seen. In its place was a real blanket made of some heavy woven material, dark red in color, wonderfully warm. After that sank in came the real shock: she was in Meoraq’s tent, lying on his bedroll, which had her grass-bundle-and-waxed-saoq-hide one
, great as it was, beat all to hell.

While she was staring at this in a stupefied kind of horror, a lizardman’s shadow grew suddenly huge and dark on the wall. “Be quiet!” Meoraq hissed. “If you say one more word, S’kot, even to beg my forgiveness, I will split you down to the ground! Great Sheul,
O my Father,” he continued under his breath, “see Your son in his hour of trial and give me the strength to keep from killing that ass-headed fool just one more day.”

With that pious thought hanging in the air, the mo
uth of the tent rippled, bulged and finally opened. He stuck his head inside, moving carefully and making no sound, only to see her already sitting up.

His spines slapped flat. “Fuck,” he said, and withdrew. His silhouette twisted, his long head turning in profile, sparking some vague storybook memory—a dragon, a cave, a damsel in distress—before he shattered it by shouting, “Get back, you pack of ghets! You! If I see you reach your hand toward my fire again, I’ll cut it off! Back!” Then he looked in at her again.

“Hey,” she said.

He glowered and came all the way inside, flinging the flap shut behind him like it was a door he could slam. Muttering savagely under his breath, he dropped to one knee and began rummaging through his pack. His spines were still flat. Those yellow stripes were out and glaringly bright on his black throat. Amber re-thought her ‘What the hell am I doing in here, lizardman,’ approach and said instead, “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

He grunted, pulled a rolled-up mass of something from his pack, and tossed it at her. It fell open on impact and dropped into her lap. Some kind of leather shirt, long-sleeved, nicely-tailored. His spare tunic.

She hurried
ly pushed his blanket down, exposing her mended shirt with the new black stitching staggering its way from neck to hem. It was still a little big on her and the cloth puckered and bunched all along the ugly seam, but it covered her. “I don’t need that. I fixed my shirts.”

“I
decide what you need. Put it on.”

“Meoraq—
”

“Put it on.”

“I can’t!”

“Don’t whine at me. Put it on.” He leaned back
on his heels and looked at her, rubbed his throat, checked his belt buckle, and suddenly spat, “How do you feel?”

Amber plucked listlessly at one sleeve of the tunic. “About this?”

“I don’t care how you feel about that!” he snapped. “How badly are you hurt?”

She dropped her eyes to keep from looking at his, which were blazing, bright as fresh blood, furious. He wanted to get moving, of course. She’d slept half the day away already, and yeah, she hurt, there wasn’t a square inch on her that wasn’t reliving last night—worst of all her stomach, which felt like she’d swallowed a hot, jagged rock—but she for damn sure wasn’t going to whine at him about it.

“I’m okay,” she mumbled, looking at the tunic. His tunic. The tunic everyone was going to see her wearing.

Silence. He was staring at her. She could feel him staring, even though she didn’t dare look.

Outside the tent, people were talking, moving around. She found herself wondering who’d started the morning fire, who’d topped off the flasks. Her stomach hurt.

“I’ll be out in a minute, okay?” she said finally, desperately. “Just let me get myself together and I’ll be ready to go.”

“Take all the minutes you want,” he replied. “You’re not going anywhere today. Tell me where it hurts.”

“I’m fine.”

“You may not go anywhere tomorrow either,” said Meoraq, just as if she hadn’t said anything, as if she weren’t even there. His scaly fingers closed on her chin, forcing her head back. He glared at the side of her face, then pulled her chin down almost to her chest so he could see the top of her head. When he was satisfied with that, he nudged her shielding arm aside and pulled her shirt up to expose the plum-colored skin of her stomach. She sat there, clutching his tunic and waiting for it to be over.

“You’re very quiet,” he remarked, prodding inevitably right where it hurt the worst.

“Does anything I say matter?”

“What would you say if it did?”

“We have to keep moving.”

“Then, no, it does not.” He dropped her shirt and pinched her chin again, having another look at the side of her face. “We leave at my command, and I wait upon our
Father’s. No more arguments.”

Amber shut her eyes and waited until he was done thumbing through her hair.

“I have tea and a little stew I want you to take,” he said at last, releasing her. “And then I want you to rest.”