Страница 53 из 228
“—but I’m glad you’re here, because we’re all going to die without you.” That sounded a lot more true than she liked. She tried to hide it with a smile, but it wouldn’t stick. “Everything is so hard. I’m tired. I can’t…do this forever.”
He stood up, saying something she mostly understood without guessing: “Things will get easier when we can speak more freely.”
“Easier is a relative term, lizardman.”
“Truth,” he agreed in lizardish. “But then, life is in the journey. If you ca
“That needs to be a fortune cookie,” said Amber. “I don’t know how my story can possibly be more interesting than it already is without…well, I was going to say alien invasion or a giant lizard, but we appear to have those bases covered.”
He grunted and gazed into the fire.
After several minutes—she had all but forgotten he was there, lost in her own relentless playback of the whole rotten day—he nudged at her arm. When she glanced his way, he was holding up that square of jerky and staring straight ahead into the fire.
She took it. “Thanks. What is this stuff, by the way?”
“Cuuvash.” He clasped his empty hands and watched the embers.
She repeated him, pretending not to see the way he rolled his eyes at her pronunciation, and gnawed off a piece of the dried meat. Her jaws were still sore from the last time he’d shared this stuff, but it was still pretty good. Like jerky, only not as salty, with a richer flavor and a weird undertaste almost like cheap wine. She ate, eyeing him suspiciously. “You’re not having any.”
He said no again, but in a different way. Not yet, maybe. Then he stirred, rubbing at his brow-ridges, and looked at her. “It’s time to go,” he told her.
An icy stone dropped into her belly. The jerky…the cuuvash got stuck in her throat. She swallowed hard, coughed, and managed, “You’re leaving?”
He told her yes in some complicated way, said something about the weather and something about mountains, and that he’d only waited this long so that they could learn to talk. “Tomorrow, we leave,” he said at the end of it. It was not a question.
“We?” Part of the knot in her throat relaxed a little, but her stomach stayed tight and sickly-cold. “You mean all of us?”
“Yes.” He sent a black glance over his shoulder and cupped the end of his snout, muttering something with Scott’s name in it. He told her it would be a long journey.
“And an interesting story,” Amber guessed, rubbing at her stomach to try and ease up the rest of that rock before she had to puke it out.
His gaze shifted to watch her hand. He frowned and looked away, feeling idly at the buckle of his belt as if mimicking her movements. “You will tell S’kot to have his humans ready to travel tomorrow.”
“Sure, why not. And I’ll be ready, too.”
The corners of his mouth flicked up in a smile before his usual fierce frown replaced it. He leaned toward her, aggressively close, the way he’d been before the slaps started flying. He said something about Scott and the others…no, he said, “When you are S’kot’s human, you may disobey him all you like. When you are mine, you do as I say.”
He waited, but apparently took her lengthy efforts to translate as a sign of submissive assent. He grunted again, but in a pleased way, even though his scowl stayed fixed to his face. He leaned even closer, filling her field of vision with nothing but his scowling, scaly face. “And when you are mine, if you ever leave my camp to—” Something…and probably not flattering. “—I will—” Again, she had no idea precisely what the threat was, but, “—you may never walk again,” gave her the gist of it. He paused and frowned a little. “Did you mark that?”
“Most of it.”
“Then I have your obedience.”
“I didn’t exactly plan to go anywhere this morning,” she told him testily. “But I wasn’t lost. I was just hunting. And I wasn’t in trouble.”
“Human, you are not yet out of trouble.” But he leaned away from her and looked up at the sky. He said something she couldn’t catch in an inquiring tone, then gave her a rap to the knee with his knuckles. “God sees us both and we can both show Him improvement. Tomorrow.”
“Right.” Amber popped the last of the cuuvash in her mouth and went to work on it, poking at the coals so the fire wouldn’t die. She woke a few flames up. They crawled along the saoq bones, releasing a great smudge of black, foul-smelling smoke directly into her eyes and then went out.
Perfect.
Amber tossed down her coal-stirring stick. “God sees us, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Right now?”
He seemed puzzled by the question. “Now and always.”
Amber looked at the clouds. “Could you possibly make this day any worse?” she demanded.
A drop of rain hit her in the eye. Then another. And then the skies opened up and began to pour, killing the last coals in just a few steam-hissing seconds and drenching her to the skin.
Meoraq threw back his head and roared with curiously hoarse and chuffing laughter. His hand slapped at her back once, nearly knocking her cuuvash out of her mouth, and he got up, still gri
“And I’m still an atheist!” she shouted, swiping water from her face.
So there.