Return and I’ll pick your bones clean.
She heard Lord Mercury’s voice in her head, clear as the stars in the inky black. Their citadel was to the north, too far to see, miles off on the coast, where sands met cliffside. But she dared not look. The horse might shift beneath her, the path might change. Sorasa Sarn might lose all control and bring her bones home.
Dawn was a curtain of heat like the opening of an oven. Sorasa kept them moving as long as she could, pushing the outlanders to their limits. Until the sun was too high, too strong, the shadows pocketed in the dunes nearly gone. The horses gleamed with sweat, flagging in their perfect steps. Even Dom breathed a sigh of relief when Sorasa called for camp.
She dismounted into sand hot enough it seared through her boots. A scrabble of rocks at the base of a dune provided good shade. It was still boiling hot but bearable, and the others used their cloaks to prop up little tents for more shadow. Andry was asleep in an instant, snoring as soon as he lay down. Charlie was quick to join him, while Dom took watch, his face buried in the dark of his hood. Valtik dug at the sand, building herself a nest in the cooler layers below, before waving at Corayne to join her. Sorasa quirked a brow at her, but did not bother asking how a northern witch learned desert ways.
“They’ll have a watch on the canyon,” Sigil murmured, shucking off her armor. She was just as big without it, all muscle and thick limbs. “Archers, crossbows. It won’t be pretty.”
Sorasa shaded her eyes and squinted at the horizon, the bright, blue sky meeting shimmering gold. Though she wore muted clothing, black and brown and dirty gray, blue and gold were her favorite colors. The royal blue of the flag. The gold of sand. The clear cerulean of the endless sky. The yellow wink of coin. They were Ibal. They were home.
It was early autumn now. The others could not feel the change in the winds, the miniscule drop in temperature. But a daughter of Ibal certainly did.
“I can handle the canyon,” she said, patting Sigil on the shoulder.
The bounty hunter replied with a gruff laugh. “Good. I’d rather not have to save your skin again.”
As they made their way forward, they slept through the worst heat of the days, rousing before dusk. It was exhausting, even for Sorasa, who had been long from home. Corayne’s lips cracked and bled. Dom swathed himself from head to toe, sweating in his cloak and hood. Poor Charlie nearly fainted every morning, ruddy from finger-tips to toes. Sigil sweated through her armor, her face shining, and Andry didn’t drop his hood for days, shading his eyes. Only Valtik was somehow unaffected by the heat or sun, her ivory skin never changing, her head bare and eyes wide open. Some Spindle-rotten trick, Sorasa assumed.
The sun sapped their strength, leaving their nights quiet and swift. A week passed in near silence, their waterskins growing lighter, their stores of food running low. The apples bought in Adira were long gone, the sweetness of them only a memory.
Sorasa did not worry. It was no longer summer and the red line appeared on the horizon as it should, growing with every passing hour. The cliffs cast long shadows, bathing the desert in cool air, the earth cracked by a seasonal lake. It would be months before winter rains brought it back. A few hardy plants still wormed up through the cracks in the dirt, fed by an underground water supply, seeping through the dirt and sand. The sand mares tried to nose at them as they walked, lips reaching for any hint of green.
“Either you intend to go around,” Dom said one morning, his immortal eyes on the cliffs still miles off. They stretched the length of the horizon, jagged from north to south, a wall of rusty stone. “Or go through.”
“Around would take weeks. The Marjeja rings the Aljer like a crescent moon. We’ll take the canyon.” The horse’s flank was smooth beneath her hand, steadying as an anchor. The sand mare shuddered at Sorasa’s touch, leaning into it. “And we won’t be the only ones.”
Sorasa finished braiding her hair into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. With a will, she raised her eyes to stare at the horses spread across the dry riverbed, the canyon a gash in the wall of cliffs half a mile on. Though she was still, her heart rammed in her chest and her stomach twisted. There were two hundred Shiran at least, in all colors, from cream to sand to blood red and even a few obsidian black. They grazed across the cracked earth, hunting in the growing shadows of the cliffs. There were only a few stallions, the rest intelligent mares and colts still growing into their gangly limbs. They looked akin to sand mares, but any Ibalet knew them as a beast apart, stronger and faster and infinitely more wild than their domestic cousins. This is wrong, Sorasa thought, feeling shame already. This is unholy, a strike against the gods and the realm.