Hell or High Water by Unknown Page B

sliver of etiquette while the bulk of her attention was focused on figuring out what she was supposed to do now. “Of the Imjaka.”
    “Seyusth, of Haa-Ok. And I know you already, Ameyanda of Imjaka.”
    “Grandmother Sun’s blessings on—what? You know me?”
    “I know you, yes. I am, in fact, seeking you, not those.” He gestured with an empty hand toward the apish corpses.
    “Why?” Her own hand edged again toward her weapons.
    “I seek one of my clan, my…” He paused, blinking languidly, perhaps trying to recall the proper word, or to explain a concept that didn’t translate. “‘Cousin,’ is the nearest term in your language. You will help me retrieve him.”
    “Is that so? Seyusth, not only have I my own hunt to—”
    “You cannot find your missing human any time soon. You have no means of tracking him.”
    “Not only have I my own hunt,” she repeated through a cage of clenched teeth, “but why, by all the gods, would I involve myself in yours?”
    “Because, Ameyanda of the Imjaka, you owe me your life.”
    A pause; a blink; a breath.
    “Oh. You’re that lizardman.”
    ∗∗∗
    Ameyanda had no difficulty remembering. She still dreamed about it.
    She felt the crunch of twigs and fungi beneath her feet, saw the trees and fronds whipping by to either side, heard her own desperate gasps echoed in the panting of Mbamsi and Entandwi. She gagged as the ominous musk—not quite reptile and not quite avian, but distilled from the worst of both—seeped malevolently into those breaths, as if taunting. And she heard the cracking and snapping, hissing and spitting, as the pack closed far, far too rapidly from behind. They were smaller than most of the predatory thunder-lizards of the Mwangi, those raptors, but they were large enough, fierce enough, and horrifyingly cunning enough to take down prey far stronger than the three Imjaka youths. They’d already lost Xabadzi to the raptors’ initial ambush.
    Ameyanda and her friends would follow him soon enough.
    Or they would have, had the grasses themselves not come to the rescue. Wiggling like serpents, they intertwined with the pounding talons of the raptors. Yanked to a halt, some so swiftly that they toppled, the thunder-lizards began to slash and chew at the suddenly hostile flora.
    They might, perhaps, have gnawed themselves free soon enough, but the trio’s fortune had not yet run out. From a sky largely bereft of clouds, the lightning cracked. When the first of the raptors was seared, shrieking in pain, the others redoubled their efforts. By the time the third had suffered the same agonizing fate, the rest wanted nothing more than to be elsewhere. Finally ripping themselves free, the surviving members of pack scattered, their prey forgotten.
    For a moment, as Ameyanda had turned, wide-eyed, toward Mbamsi and Entandwi, she caught a glimpse of one of the mysterious lizardfolk, deep in the jungle’s shadows. Ameyanda knew little about magic, then, but she knew that what she’d witnessed had in no way been natural. Tentatively, she raised a hand in greeting.
    Her reptilian savior had solemnly returned the gesture before vanishing into the trees.
    ∗∗∗
    Ameyanda dragged her mind across the intervening half-decade and back to the figure she’d never thought to see again.
    “I owe you,” she admitted, her voice low. “And the Imjaka repay our debts.”
    “Good,” was all Seyusth offered in reply.
    Stifling a sigh, the huntress went to retrieve the woven satchel of supplies that she’d left in the hollow of a winding tree root before engaging the charau-ka. “You could explain yourself, at least,” she suggested sourly. “Why come to me? Could the other Haa-Ok not—?”
    “My people have no desire to assist me. Our journey may take us into the territories of the Terwa Lords.”
    “And those are who?”
    “The…” Again, Seyusth seemed briefly at a loss. “What is your term for my kind?”
    “Your…? Oh. Ah,