Lion Head Mesa infensus

it was not satsu who moved to command.

the woman slate spoke decisively. she caught the healer's eye and was reminded that they had both been with maggie when she passed from this world. was it not a sort of bond between them?

she scrambled away from crowfeather, meaning to run for the entrance to akashingo.

pharaoh suddenly filled her vision; she was the casualty of his long legs, thrust aside and directly into the shadows where @Sihaya loomed. the girl bit the inside of her jaw and slithered from between them both, pharaoh's command booming in her ears.

she would do both.

tamar did not stop until she had reached the rough camp of the bear-worshippers. merrick lay close. a shrieking rabbit lay pinned beneath one hard wrist. the girl blinked and yanked her gaze away as blood began to coat his jaws.

sickened, shaking, she rushed to gather any medicinal-seeming thing: twigs, globs of collected cobweb, berries, grasses, leaves of a dozen different shades. tamar stuffed them into a ragged piece of torn skin, hardly daring to breathe or look at the bear king. "pharaoh wants — has asked that you come to the palace. now."

she heard merrick scoff, felt him uncoil in a snakelike way nearby, sensed the burn of the unnatural single eye. but tamar was off again, scudding across the mesa-plain until she had reached the arch, the anteroom, the hallway, and slate's side once more. "here," she gasped, unrolling the skin near crowfeather's head. "i will go — again — if it is what you need."