I scanned the foothills ahead, trying to concentrate. Trying to push my mind back to where it should be. I had ridden this way before but had never walked it all on foot—especially not barefoot, chained, and half starved. It was hard to judge distances. How much farther was it? Was there any chance of getting back before they sealed the tomb? What was going through all of their minds? Where the hell is Jase? No doubt search parties had been sent out, but no body had been found. I was certain that the Rahtan with Kazi were in my brothers’ custody by now, being interrogated. Mason could squeeze information out of anyone, but even Kazi’s companions wouldn’t have any hunch about what had happened to us. They couldn’t have known about the labor hunters any more than Kazi and I had.
Her comment, I saw the damage myself, kept resurfacing in my mind, the burning of the fields and the theft of all the settlers’ livestock. We had meant to scare them off. They had to leave. Our visit hadn’t been pleasant. The short horn had been a warning, a chance for them to gather up their things and move on, but that was all we took. Who took the rest?
Gunner was impulsive, his temper quicker than mine, and the days of standing vigil at our father’s bedside had left all of our emotions ready to snap. Gunner had always voiced his objections about the settlers more loudly than any of us—but I was sure he wouldn’t go off on a rampage without my approval, even if at that time I hadn’t officially been Patrei yet. He deferred to me in these matters. But if not him, who? Were the settlers or Kazi lying?
That was another reason my father gave for naming me Patrei. I was usually good at spotting lies, better than my brothers. But being able to discern lies didn’t necessarily reveal the truth. That took more digging—and I wanted to know what her truths were.
Dammit.
I wanted to know a lot more about her, and that was only asking for trouble. I needed her and the other Vendans out of my life sooner rather than later. Hopefully, we wouldn’t be chained much longer.
I glanced at her, tireless, her dark lashes casting a determined shadow beneath her eyes, her warm skin glistening, my gaze lingering far too long.
Maybe some trouble was impossible to avoid.
* * *
“What’s this?” I heard the trepidation in her voice as if she already sensed what was hidden in the half-mile-wide river of blinding sand.
We had crested a knoll, and I had misjudged when we would reach it. It was midday and the sands would be scorching and we were bootless.
“Sand,” I answered.
“That is not sand,” she said.
Not entirely. The bones were visible, small, broken, and mostly human. Dull, pitted teeth, the occasional whole vertebrae resting on top like a white lily on a shining alabaster pond. “It’s called Bone Channel,” I said. “They say the sand streams from a city that was destroyed in the flash of the first star. We can’t cross it barefoot in the heat of day.”
Shimmers of heat rippled upward. Kazi stared at it like she could see the ghosts entombed in the sand trying to claw their way to shore. Her attention rose to the distant foothills on the other side and the ruins that topped them—our first potential shelter—but a burning graveyard lay between us.
“Our shirts,” she said. “We can wrap them around our feet.” She began unbuttoning her shirt. “Take yours off too. We’ll need them both.”
“We can wait until night—”
“No,” she said. “I’m not sleeping out here in the middle of nothing when there are ruins in sight.”
She took off her shirt and ripped it in half. She had a thin chemise on beneath it, and I was both hoping she would and wouldn’t remove it too. Devil’s hell, get hold of yourself Jase.
“Your shirt,” she reminded me.
I wasn’t eager to rip it in half, but I didn’t want to wait until nightfall for the sands to cool either, and with the heat of summer we didn’t really need the shirts for warmth.
We wrapped our feet with several layers of fabric, tying them securely. We stepped out, the sand still feeling like a furnace beneath us, but the fabric did the job, keeping our feet from blistering.
It was harder to walk with the knotted fabric pulling at our ankles, but we synchronized our steps. I tried to make conversation, thinking of other legends to tell her, but I was distracted. It wasn’t that I had never seen a bare-shouldered woman before, or one so scantily clad, but somehow this felt different. She’s a soldier, I reminded myself. Rahtan. One who held a knife to my throat and was prepared to use it. It didn’t help. Halfway across I said, “Tell me a riddle.”
She looked at me, surprised. “Now?”
I nodded.
She thought for a moment, her hand gliding over her abdomen, then said,
“The less I have, the more I grow,
I swirl and twirl and make a show.
You can’t ignore me, though hard you try,
I growl, and scream, and wail, and cry.