The Last Hour of Gann (89 page)

He could not be angry with them, although he wanted to be. Grief, like so many things, was a luxury in the wildlands. And as the first hour of the new day stretched into the second,
Meoraq’s heart began to understand what his head had been telling him all night: It may be within his power to prolong Amber’s life, but he could not prevent her death. The longer he tried, the more she—and all the rest of her people—would suffer for it. Between the hated living and the beloved dead, said the Prophet, look to the living, for the dead have done their service and rejoice in Him, but the living may have long roads yet. How many loved ones had Lashraq burnt and left behind him before he came at last to Xi’Matezh and saw his Father’s face?

It was surprisingly little comfort to him, but still Meoraq knew what he had to do.
“Take her then,” he said, stroking the smooth curve of Amber’s brow. “Take her, O Father, and receive her well. She is a good woman.”

Then he left her and went out into the bitter cold of Gann’s world.

The humans were waiting for him, all of them clustered around Scott’s fire to share its warmth and whatever was left of the previous night’s meal. They’d struck their tents and taken up their beds, filled the flasks and were even now loading their packs onto the sleds. Scott came to meet him, as he had known he would. “How is she?” he asked, pretending deep concern.

Meoraq looked past him to Nicci, standing small and pale at
Scott’s side. “Do you wish to speak to her?”

“I
s she talking?” Scott asked, looking so surprised as to seem alarmed.

“No. But perhaps she will hear you.”

“I…” Nicci looked at Scott. He put his arm around her. She bent her head and trembled. She did not go to Amber’s side.

So be it.

Meoraq drew the knife of his fathers from the sheath over his heart. It was the best he could offer her. “Gather fuel. As much as can be carried. The fire will have to burn all day.”

“What are
you going to do with that?” Nicci asked, staring at his father’s knife.

He looked at h
er, knowing that even she couldn’t really be so ignorant as to ask that. And she was crying already, so yes, she knew. “It will be quick,” he promised. And, as much as he detested her, his heart thawed a little, enough to give her an honest tap at her smooth brow with the hand that did not hold a killing blade. “Don’t grieve. She will see her true Father’s face soon and I believe His arms will be open to her.”

“Don’t let him do it!” Nicci begged, clutching at
Scott’s arm. Water ran out of her eyes in fresh streams. “Please, make him stop!”

Scott
nodded, patting at her back. “You’re not going to kill her,” he told Meoraq.

The words should have carried some hope to him, but
Scott’s look of somber joy never faltered. “I don’t mark you,” Meoraq said, sheathing his father’s knife.

“We’ve discussed it.”
Scott put Nicci aside and, as she sought out another chest to support her, put his hand on Meoraq’s arm and led him a short distance from the others. A very short distance. He still wanted to be seen. He still meant to be heard. “We’ve decided to leave her here with a few supplies…some water…maybe a blanket…In case she wakes up.”

“I don’t…” Meoraq stared for several breaths, uncounted, then shook his head clear and tried again. “I don’t mark you, human.”

“She could still pull out of this,” Scott said, and actually patted Meoraq on the arm as if he were a damned child in need of comfort. “I wish we could wait for her, I truly do, but she could be contagious. I have to think of the greater good.”

“
The good? How…How can it be good to leave her to die?”

“We don’
t have a choice,” Scott said. “It’s not just about her slowing us down, although she would. Right now, the way she is, she’s a health hazard. You may not understand that, but you have to accept it.”

“I accept that I can do nothing for her but to send her to our
Father gently and give her a decent funeral.” The terrible truth in that sank into him until it found something even more terrible and without thinking, he suddenly spat, “Isn’t that enough for you, S’kot? Can’t you just be happy she’s dead? Do you have to see her damned before you feel like you’ve won?”

His flat, ugly face first paled, then flushed a dull red. “This has nothing to do with me. This has to do with common human decency, something you clearly can’t comprehend.
Because she is a person, like you said, she’s one of
my
people and I am not going to let you murder her when there’s a chance, however slim, that she could recover from whatever this is and rejoin us. No,” he said, turning his back on Meoraq to address the pack of animals that had made him their abbot, “we can’t afford to sit around and wait for her to die. I wish we could. I wish we had doctors and a hospital or even just a safe, dry place to hold our vigil over her, but the fact is that she’s sick and she’s potentially contagious. Nobody wants to leave her, but this is our reality.”

“Piss on your reality
!” Meoraq said, loudly enough that many humans looked uncomfortable, but still none of them spoke. “I won’t expose her on the fucking plains like a…a runty calf! This is a person! This is one of
your
people! How can you even speak of leaving her body to…to rot like an animal’s! To be scavenged and…and lost to the grey hells of Gann? That is worse than murder! That is obscene!”

“I
f she wakes up, she can rejoin us and be perfectly welcome. If not, at least we’ll know we did our best by her, right?” Scott nodded at his people expectantly and they nodded back at him, even as they shuffled on their feet and cast Meoraq uncomfortable glances. Scott turned back to him and took Nicci again under his arm. “So we’ll leave her some supplies. A blanket, some food…I’m sure she’d appreciate it if you left one of your water flasks.”

“I want no part of this murder.”

“No, the murder you want is the one where you slit her throat. Or the one where you hold us here until we all become infected with whatever she’s got. I understand your feelings, Meoraq, but what it comes down to is, you can’t put her life above all of ours.”

The urge to stab him right through his profaning, poison-dripping mouth was strong, but on the slim chance that it came more from Meoraq’s clay than from his higher spirit, he restrained himself. He bent his head. He
breathed. He cleared his mind of all emotion. He looked up and said, “I have seen many deaths, human. I can imagine none worse than to be torn open, alive and helpless, by wild beasts. I will pretend to believe you when you say you do not wish for her to suffer,” he added acidly, and Scott’s pink face flushed a darker red. “So I will give her an easy death and I will see her soul to Sheul’s halls with an honorable funeral. You need not witness it if you do not wish to show respect we all know you do not feel.”

“I have plenty of respect for her,” said
Scott, staring him down. “Too much to stab her in her sleep and call it kindness. You talk like a religious man. Now act like one. If you really believed in God, you wouldn’t hesitate to leave her in His hands.”

Many humans had gathered by now. Meoraq looked at them, these people, these children of Sheul. He gave each face the weight of his stare. He watched each eye drop away from his. He gave each mouth a chance to speak. He listened to each silence.
Last of all, he turned his head and looked at the sleds, stacked deep with the humans’ provisions. Amber’s distinctive saoq-hide pack was there, along with her bedroll and her spear.

“You will leave water,” Meoraq said, studying the sleds. All of his flasks were there, excepting only the small metal flask given to him by the gatekeeper of Tothax, which hung around his neck.

“Yes, of course.”

“And provisions.”

“Yes.”

Now Meoraq looked at
Scott, although he had to clench his hands into fists to keep them from his swords. “Show them to me.”

Scott
half-raised a hand to gesture vaguely at the empty ground around the ashes of Meoraq’s fire, where Amber had last been sleeping. His gaze wavered toward the sleds, but did not quite reach them. The pink tentacle of his tongue peeked out to slick his lips, but he said nothing.

“Tell me your name,” said Meoraq quietly, “and the name of your father.”

Scott blinked several times, glancing around at the others, but his people defended him no more than they defended Amber. “Uh…Everly Scott? My father’s name was Richard? Why?”

Meoraq closed his eyes and counted six breaths. He was calm. A Sheulek is always calm. He said, in the darkness, “Var’li S’kot, son of Var’li Reshar, you are a liar and a thief.”

“Hey!”

Meoraq opened his eyes, swung his arm and slapped
Scott as hard as he could. As Scott sprawled in the mud with blood beading up over the side of his staring face, Meoraq walked through the silent crowd to the sled he had himself built and took back one of his flasks. Just the one. He slung it over his shoulder and moved to the other sled, where he tossed packs roughly aside until he had uncovered Amber’s things.

“
Xi’Matezh lies to the east,” said Meoraq as he claimed them. “Hold to the path of the sun until you reach the mountains. Cross through and hold your course. You will come to the end of all the world. Go north along the Ruined Reach and you will find the temple. Go now and go with God, if He will have you. I will not.”

Now they protested, these creatures who would not even give her a gentle death but who would leave her to be savaged alive in
this strange, cold fever by tachuqis, by ghets, by
beetles
! And when it was done, what next for her but to be left lying in the mud, screaming for all eternity unheard as she rotted back into the clay. Her own kind would do this, her own blood-kin!

“You can’t do this!” Nicci pushed through the crowd to catch at his arm. He slapped before he could stop himself, but she only fell at his feet and clutched his boot instead
. “You promised to take us to the skyport! You can’t leave us here!”

“Take your hand off me, you
clay-fucking
monster
! I am done with you! All of you! Go! And especially you!” He shook Nicci off his boot, but managed with Sheul’s aid not to raise Amber’s spear in his hand and drive it through her hateful, ice-filled heart. “Wailing, useless…she-bastard! You do not deserve her!
And she did not deserve you
!”

“Go ahead and kill her,” said
Scott, scrambling to his feet and out of Meoraq’s easy reach. “I mean, if it’s that important to you. Shut up, Nichole. Go on. We’ll wait.”

“Start walking, human.”

“But you can kill her now!”

“Get out of my camp.”

Scott backed away, hands up, licking at his mouthparts. “Okay, but you’re going to catch up with us after she dies, right? We…Come on, you can’t do this! She’s already dying! If you leave us, you’re killing us!” He looked wildly around, his eyes coming at last to the tent where Amber lay, and Meoraq saw the very moment that Gann whispered. “At least pray about it first,” Scott said suddenly, pointing a shaking hand out into the wildlands. “You go pray and we’ll wait here and we’ll…we’ll just let God decide what to do.”

Meoraq studied him as the humans around them offered their own promises, bargains and pleas. Their voices meant nothing to him.
There was a blackness inside him and he thought that if he closed his eyes and let it out, he might open them again to find an hour gone and every human dead, and that was, in this moment, a very fine thought. Instead, he took six breaths with his eyes open and Scott as full in his sight as Meoraq himself was in the sight of Sheul, and then said, calmly, “I should have killed you long before this.”

Scott
said nothing. What was there to say?

“I’ll pray,”
said Meoraq. “And so should you. Hear Uyane: If Sheul tells me to end her, I will build the pyre and see her to His eternal embrace.”

Scott
nodded once, his face straining with the effort of showing so much concern.

“And then I will kill you,” Meoraq concluded thoughtfully, “and leave you to lie on the open ground with your blood rotting in your veins. But I will take your people on to Xi’Matezh. For her sake.”

Scott’s mouth worked, but no sound came out.

“However, if Sheul allows me the hope of her life, I will give you yours and let you lead your people out of my camp. And if she dies, so be it. I will not follow you. I will take no more vengeance. I will go to Xi’Matezh alone and if I see you there, I will not even draw this blade—” He patted the hilt of his beast-killing kzung. “—and gut you like the ghet you are.
So. I will pray.”

He turned around and immediately
Scott retreated, hissing at his people to get away from here before the crazy lizard started killing them. Some obeyed. Some protested. Some even followed Meoraq away, but he ignored them all. He entered his tent and knelt in the darkness there and picked up Amber’s limp, heavy hand. He shut his eyes on the sight of her white, waxen face. He counted off six breaths listening to the thick, laboring sound of her own. He prayed.