The Last Hour of Gann (167 page)

She put her
arm around him again.

“I know I should be more worried about my soul,” he said in a quick, almost embarrass
ed way. “But I think I have one and I don’t think I’ll care if I’m wrong when I’m dead. What frightens me is knowing I’m alone now. When it matters.”

She nodded, gently rubbing at his bicep, right above his sabk, and feeling his scales scrape at her palm. “I know that nothing I say is going to fix what you’re feeling right now, but listen to me, Meoraq, please. If there is no God, then you’ve been making all the decisions up until now and you’ve done just fine.”

He made a sound of lackluster agreement, not looking at her.

“And if there is a God, He’ll be there, the way He’s always been there,” said Amber. She hesitated and then softly said, “If there is a God, He’s with you now.”

Meoraq flinched a little. He looked up, searching the sooty ceiling as his spines slowly came all the way forward. He wiped at his eyes, glanced at his damp fingers, and stood up. “Let’s go.”

“Are you going to be al
l right?” she asked, following him to the door.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But at least I have the comfort of knowing nothing
worse can possibly happen.”

And with that, he
pushed open the heavy door and stepped out into a pool of blood. He looked down; the hilt of a kzung came whistling down and cracked against the top of his head. Hands seized her, pulling her roughly out into the light over Meoraq’s crumpling body, and the first thing she saw—perhaps not unsurprisingly—was neither the raiders nor their captive nor even the dead man at their feet, but Nicci in their leader’s grip.

Amber let out a cry and lunged, but all this accomplished was to catch the leader’s eye. He looked at her, cocked his head, looked more closely at Nicci, and then tossed her carelessly aside for one of his men to catch. He smiled.

“Hello, Eshiqi,” said Iziz.

11

N
icci didn’t cry. She didn’t fight, either. She only stood in the bruising grip of the raider who held her, looking back at Amber with their mother’s eyes. There was as much of Bo Peep’s aimless, haggard accusation in that silent stare as there was pain, but there was no confusion. She didn’t ask who these men were or what they wanted. She didn’t ask Amber to make them go away. She just stood there.

“It’ll be all right, Nicci,” Amber told her, just as if she weren’t also in the unbreakable grip of a lizardman, just as if Meoraq weren’t lying on the ground being tied up while he was still unconscious. Just as if there were some chance it might be true.

“It will
not
be all right, Nicci!” Iziz snapped. He did not falter over her name and why should he? He had been born into Gann’s world. Creation was not sacred to him; nothing was. “No matter what happens, it will not go well for you!”

Nicci did not shiver, did not even look at him. She turned her face away from Amber and watched the waves roll in from the sea.

Iziz spared this emotionless response a glance, but no more than that. Whatever he was looking for, he wanted it from Amber. “You look good, Eshiqi,” he said, with surprising mildness following the venom of his other words. “I mean that. I didn’t think you would. You are so fucking ugly and I hate you so fucking much, I am truly astonished by how glad I am to see you. So often, the things you look forward to the most are just sparks, eh? A flash, a little heat, and nothing but ash for the rest of your life. But you look good. Come here. Let her go,” he said to the raider holding her. “She won’t run. Come here, Eshiqi. Right to me.”

The hands gripping her arms loosened and finally fell away. Amber walked on legs like water past Meoraq and Nicci both to stand before Iziz, close enough for him to hit her if he wanted to. She didn’t think he’d kill her yet, but hitting was definitely an option. Her heart was pounding worse than it had ever done on the Candyman’s humming little injections
a lifetime ago, punching at her ribs from the inside so hard she couldn’t believe that he couldn’t hear it too.

But if he heard it, he ignored it. He gazed into her eyes like a lover—smiling, marveling, savoring. Then he reached one hand into the pocket of his sword belt and held up an insignificant slip of bent metal. He pulled a bit of mganz-wood off one sharply-pointed end and there it was
: a fish hook.

Iziz looked at it. He started to speak, then just stopped and sighed instead. He looked at her.

Where was he going to use that? On her neck, on the vein that had to be throbbing there in this panicked pulse as thick as a subway tube? In her eye, or even both eyes, before the real fun began? Or would he try to use it like she’d used it on Zhuqa, and how much damage could he do down there, ripping at her insides in search of a vein she didn’t even know if he’d find?

“He was my friend,” said Iziz. It was not an easy admission for him and he made it like they were the only ones
there to hear it. “He was our leader, but he was my friend. How many of those do you think I have, Eshiqi?”

Behind her, Meoraq groaned against the ground. Amber
strained in vain to see him through the raiders and it was only because she did that she finally saw the body and recognized it as Crandall.

“Little piss-licker took a
jump at me,” Iziz remarked, watching her reaction. “Friend of yours?”

“He did?”

“Seemed to think he’d have help.” Iziz ran his eyes over the few remaining humans, ably held by his men. “And if he’d had it, maybe they could have had me. Not all of us, but me for certain. But they let him jump alone.”

She looked for and found Eric and Dag with the raiders. They wouldn’t look at her.

“I didn’t kill him right away,” Iziz was saying. He turned around so that he could stand at Amber’s side, see what she saw and think his own thoughts. “I told him he could live if he’d raise a fist to me. You may be ugly, but you can still be useful. So I gave him the choice: Keep my camp, carry the tack, catch a few cocks or show me he can fight them off, and who knows? Maybe someday he could have a sword on his belt and a slave for his own. It’s the sort of thing Zhuqa would have done,” he added meditatively. “So for his sake, I offered. He told me to fuck myself. But the rest of your men put their fists right in the air when I slit his throat, didn’t they…what’s your name? Nicci?”

Nicci did not respond. She and the ocean were in their own world.

“I thought she was you until you came out,” said Iziz, studying the two of them, first Nicci, then Amber. “I thought she was you and that maybe we’d killed you after all. They say the dead can walk again if they aren’t burned and Gann won’t have them. She looks like you,” he mused, eyeing Nicci slowly up and down. “But she bent her neck for me and you never would. Or would you?”

Behind them, a sudden scuffling as Meoraq tried groggily to rise and was beaten back down to the ground. It took a lot of beating. Iziz watched. Amber didn’
t dare to, no more than she dared to look at Nicci. Iziz still had the fish hook in his hand; he was just looking for the best place to stick it in.

“
What would you do, Eshiqi?” Iziz asked. His voice was low and too close to her left ear. She could see the dim dazzle of cloud-covered sun on the fish hook on her right. “If I told you I would let him go, would you raise your fist to me?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’d be lying.”

He grunted, a soft paff of air against her neck, and combed through a few strands of her hair with the hook. “I suppose I would be. Get him out of here. And don’t get stupid with him. That’s a Sword of Sheul you’re handling. Tie him up, keep both eyes open, and leave him the fuck alone until I say different. Go on.”

Two of them went, dragging Meoraq between them. He let himself be
taken without resistance, but his eyes were open and they were not defeated.

She knew better than to ask. She knew and she asked anyway.

“What are you going to do to him?”

“Do you expect me to answer honestly?”

“Zhuqa would.”

His glance was ice on the edge of a knife. “He probably would. But he’s dead. And his killer is talking at me like that’s a safe or even a sane thing to do. Do you really want to know what I plan to do? Do you really think that will somehow help while you wait for it to happen?”

His throat was still black. She risked another question. “Did you burn him?”

He leaned back. “Who?” he asked, but his eyes told her he knew who.

“Zhuqa. Did you burn him at the funeral?”

Some of the raiders close enough to hear exchanged glances and murmured to others further back.

“What makes you think he even had a funeral?” Iziz asked finally.

“Because you were his friend and he would have wanted one.”

He stared at her. No one else moved. No one else spoke.

“That was a damned good hit,” Iziz said at last. “I mean it, Eshiqi. You aim for the gut like a fucking tachuqi. Yes, we burned him. You want to know how long it took or how it smelled?” His voice was rising, but she didn’t need it. The yellow
was coming in at his throat now and coming in strong. “You’d think it would smell like meat cooking, wouldn’t you? But it doesn’t. It smelled fucking awful. Gann’s
breath
could not be more rank than the smoke from my only friend’s funeral. Why would you even ask…” He trailed off, his head tilting by degrees, like the head of a clockwork toy. “You want to make me angry, is that it? You think if I’m angry I’ll just spit up everything I’m going to do to you and you can make a plan. What do you need to plan for, eh? Do you think I’m going to kill you?”

“Eventually.”

“Oh, that’s a good word. Eventually.” He circled back to where he could stand and face her, folding his arms to tap the point of the hook against his own arm. “You haven’t asked how I know your language.”

That startled her. She hadn’t thought about it. With everything else there was to see and hear and wait for, the little matter of a lost language barrier had not even begun to send up its alarms.
Iziz raised a hand and gestured without taking his eyes from Amber. He watched her while she looked and saw raiders drag a slumped, limping human unwillingly out into view.

He was naked, except for leather strips wrapping his feet and the metal band around his neck to which a chain might be attached if the need arose. His arms had the washed out color of a man who used to get a lot of sun before being stranded on this sunless world. The rest of him was a grub-pale pinkish-white, where he wasn’t bruised or scraped or just plain filthy. He stood where they made him stand and put his hands over his groin and stared at the ground.

“We call him Druud,” said Iziz. “He’s been very helpful.”

“Are you all right,
Scott?” Amber asked finally, knowing perfectly well that he was not. They weren’t starving him. He had no scars, no branding burns, no obviously broken bones to show for his time in captivity, but he was not all right.

Iziz waited with her for an answer that never came, then took two easy strides forward and slapped
Scott hard across the face, knocking him back into the chest of another raider, who had to catch him before he fell to the ground. “Eshiqi asked you a question,” he said.

“I’m fine,” said
Scott. He didn’t look at Amber.

“Eh. He’s a liar.” Iziz gripped
Scott’s chin to make him face this way and that before shoving him away again. “At his best, he’s never even close to fine. What would you say, Geozh?”

The raider holding
Scott uttered a considering grunt. “He’s a hot grip when the urge comes on. That’s fine enough for me, sir.”

Scott
flushed and stared fixedly at the ground.

“Zhuqa once said you were like a slow fuck into God
, Eshiqi. I confess, I was expecting better, but Geozh is right. This one’s nothing but a little soft meat and a squeeze. He doesn’t even squirm anymore.” Iziz gave Amber a long, assessing glance, but did not seem to find what he was looking for. He grunted and stepped back, rubbing at his throat and frowning as he studied her. “I suppose you cast him out for a reason,” he said at last. “What did he do?”

Amber didn’t answer, not out of any planned defiance, but simply because she didn’t know what to say. There was no satisfaction in seeing
Scott the prisoner of these horrible people, only the same sick horror she had felt in their grip herself. She’d survived it and he could survive it too, assuming any of them walked away from this…but she’d had Meoraq to take her in, to tell her she was his, to make her believe it. Scott had nothing and she had nothing to give him except silence when Iziz might be asking for a reason to hurt him.

Iziz grunted mildly after a suitable span of time had bled itself out, then turned around and walked over to Dag and
Eric. “What did he do?”

“He tried to kill her,” said Dag.

Iziz flared his spines forward. “Truth?” he asked, almost but not quite laughing. “And all you did was exile him? You didn’t stab him in the head first?”

“She couldn’t,” Dag told him. “She was, um, hurt.”