She peeled her eyes open. A crop of palm trees in front of her glowed orange in the fluttering firelight and she heard the burst and crackle of sparks, but the noise seemed far away.
“What do you mean?”
“I was just thinking about, you know, what you said out in the desert. I figured it was mostly the fever speaking, but even still, I have this habit of saying things without really thinking about them, and with you being new to this whole socializing thing…” He trailed off, his arm tightening around her waist. “You’re awfully sweet, Cress. I don’t want to hurt you.”
She gulped, her mouth feeling suddenly chalky. Never had she thought that such kind words could sting, but she couldn’t help feeling that his compliment didn’t mean what she wanted it to mean.
She peeled her head off his shoulder. “You think I’m naïve.”
“Sure, a little,” he said, so matter-of-factly that it seemed less of an insult than being called sweet. “But mostly I just think I’m not the best person to demonstrate all the goodness humanity has to offer. I don’t want you to be too disappointed when you realize that.”
Cress knotted her fingers in her lap. “I know you better than you think, Captain Thorne. I know that you’re smart. And brave. And thoughtful and kind and—”
“Charming.”
“—charming and—”
“Charismatic.”
“—charismatic and—”
“Handsome.”
She pressed her lips and glared at him, but his mocking grin had swept away any hints of sincerity.
“Sorry,” he said. “Please, continue.”
“Perhaps more vain than I’d realized.”
He threw his head back and laughed. Then, to her surprise, he reached over and took her hand, his other arm still around her waist. “For having such limited social experience, you, my dear, are an excellent judge of character.”
“I don’t need experience. You can try to hide it behind your bad reputation and criminal escapades, but I can see the truth.”
Still beaming, he nudged her with his shoulder. “That on the inside, I’m really just a sappy, lovelorn romantic?”
She dug her toes into the sand. “No … that you’re a hero.”
“A hero? That’s even better.”
“And it’s true.”
He hid his face behind his hand, dragging Cress’s hand along with it. It occurred to her that this entire conversation was a joke to him. But how could he not see it?
“You’re killing me, Cress. When have you ever seen me do anything that would be considered heroic? Rescuing you from the satellite was all Cinder’s idea, you’re the one who kept us from crashing and got us through the desert—”
“I’m not talking about any of that.” She yanked her hand out of his grip. “What about when you tried to raise money to help pay for android assistance for the elderly? That was heroic, and you were only eleven!”
His smile slipped away. “How did you know about that?”
“I did my research,” she said, crossing her arms.
Thorne scratched his jaw, his confidence momentarily thrown. “All right,” he said slowly. “I stole a necklace from my mom and tried to sell it. When I got caught, I figured they wouldn’t punish me if they thought I’d been trying to do a good thing, and since I had to give the money back either way it didn’t really matter. So I made up the story about giving the money to charity.”
She frowned. “But … if that’s the case, what were you really going to do with it?”
He sighed dreamily. “Buy a hover-racer. The Neon Spark 8000. Man, I really wanted that.”
Cress blinked. A hover-racer? A toy? “Fine,” she said, smothering the twinge of disappointment. “What about when you released that tiger from the zoo?”
“Really? You think that was heroic?”
“He was a poor, sad animal, locked up his whole life! You must have felt bad for him.”
“Not exactly. I grew up with robotic cats instead of real pets, so I thought that if I let him out he would bow to my every whim and I could take him to school and be ridiculously popular because I was the kid with the pet tiger.” He waved his hand through the air, as if he could illustrate his story as he spoke. “Of course, the second he was out and everyone went running for their lives I realized how stupid that was.” He rested his elbow on his knee, cupping his chin. “This is a fun game. What else do you have?”
Cress could feel her worldview crumbling. All those hours of scouring his records, justifying his mistakes, certain that she alone knew the true Carswell Thorne …
“What about Kate Fallow?” she said, almost dreading his response.
He cocked his head. “Kate Fallow … Kate Fallow…”
“When you were thirteen. Some classmates stole her portscreen and you stood up for her. You tried to get it back.”
“Oh, that Kate Fallow! Wow, when you research, you really research, don’t you?”
She chewed on her lip, watching him for a reaction, something to say that in this one instance, at least, she had been right. He’d rescued that poor girl. He’d been her hero.
“Actually, I did have a little bit of a crush on Kate Fallow,” he said distractedly. “I wonder what she’s up to these days.”
Her heart fluttered, grasping at the slim strings of hope. “She’s studying to be an architect.”
“Ah. That makes sense. She was really good at math.”
“So? Don’t you see how heroic that was? How selfless, how valiant?”
The corner of his lips twitched, but it was halfhearted and quickly faded as he turned his face away from her. He opened his mouth to speak, but hesitated, before, finally, he sought out her hand again.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he said, squeezing. “Maybe there’s a little bit of a hero in me after all. But … really, Cress. Only a little.”
Twenty-Eight
They decided to spend an extra day in the camp, to make sure Cress was fully recovered, but set out early the following morning, packing up their tents and mats beneath a still-dark sky. Jina told Cress that they should arrive in Kufra by late afternoon, and that by getting such an early start, they would cover a lot of ground before the scorching heat claimed the sand. They ate a quick meal of dried meats, gathered some wild dates from the trees, and left the sanctuary of the oasis.
Though it required a lot of careful repacking of trade goods and equipment, Cress was given a camel to ride. She was grateful—the mere thought of walking made her want to break down in sobs—and yet she soon found that the beast was not the epitome of comfort either. Within hours, her hands ached from clenching the reins and her calves were red and irritated. The cloak that the caravaners loaned her kept her better protected from the sun, but as the day stretched on, there was no respite from the heat.
They traveled east, parallel with the mountains. Thorne stayed at her side, a steadying hand on one of the saddlebags and the tip of his new, lighter cane skimming the sand. Still wearing the blindfold, he walked with deceptive ease. Cress offered to let him ride the camel numerous times, but he always declined. She sensed that it was becoming a matter of pride. He was proving, perhaps to himself, that he could walk without assistance, that he could be independent, that he could keep a confident smile on his face as he did so.
They spent most of the morning in silence, and Cress couldn’t help losing herself in daydreams that mostly revolved around his fingertips tracing patterns on the inside of her wrist.
By midday, they were under attack by the relentless heat and windblown sand that pummeled them, trying its best to seep into the folds of their clothes. But the sun was no longer on their faces, and gradually the dunes gave way to a hard, rocky plateau.
In the afternoon, when the sun was at its worst, they came across a dried-up riverbed and stopped to rest. They found a shaded spot in the overhang of a squat cliff, and two of the men wandered off and returned a while later with all their water canteens full to the brim. Jina explained that there was a water hole hidden in a nearby cope of rocks that was fed from the same underground spring Kufra was situated on—the trading city where they were headed.
Climbing back onto the camel after the break was torture, but Cress reminded herself that anything was better than walking.
The afternoon brought more rocky lowlands, followed by a few hours of dunes. They passed a snake and Cress found that she was the only one who was afraid of it, despite Kwende confirming that it was poisonous. The snake curled up on itself and watched them pass by with lazy eyes, not even bothering to hiss or bare its fangs like the snakes on the net dramas always did. Still, from her vantage point, Cress carefully monitored where Thorne stepped and her heartbeat didn’t slow until the snake could no longer be seen behind them.
Then, when Cress was sure the insides of her thighs had been rubbed raw, Thorne reached up and fumbled around until his palm landed on her knee.
“Do you hear that?”
She listened, but all she heard was the familiar soft clopping of the camels. “What?”
“Civilization.”
She squeezed the camel’s reins, but it wasn’t until they crested the next dune that the noise separated itself from the dead desert silence, and she saw it.
A city sprouted up in front of them, unfolding in the desert among sheltering rocky cliffs. The buildings were all compacted together, but even from this distance Cress could see the blur of green trees sprouting between them. It did not seem possible—that a city could exist in the middle of such a harsh, unforgiving desert, and yet there it was, without any preamble. One step—desert. The next—paradise.
“You’re right,” Cress breathed, eyes wide. “We’re almost there. We made it.”
“What does it look like?”
“I don’t know where to start. It looks crowded. There are people and buildings and streets and trees.…”
Thorne laughed. “You just described every town on the planet.”
She couldn’t help giggling along with him, suddenly overcome with elation. “I’m sorry. Let me think. Most of the buildings are made out of stone, or maybe clay, and they’re kind of a tan, peachy color, and the whole city is surrounded by a tall stone wall, and there are a lot of palms on all the streets. There’s a lake that looks like it stretches right down the middle of the city, almost from end to end, and I see little boats in it, and so many trees and plants, and I think … to the north, beyond the houses, I think they’re growing crops of some sort. Oh!”
“What? Oh what?”
“Animals! At least a few dozen … goats, maybe? And—that one over there has sheep! They look just like they do on the net!”
“Tell me about the people.”
She tore her focus away from the creatures that were lazing in what shade they could find and tried to pick out the people wandering the streets. Though it was moving into evening, what appeared to be the main road was still teeming with small open-air shops, vibrantly patterned fabric walls fluttering in the breeze. “There’s a lot of them. Mostly dressed in robes like we are, but there’s a lot more color.”
“And how big is the city?”
“Hundreds of buildings!”
Thorne smirked. “Try to temper that enthusiasm, city girl. I told everyone that we met in Los Angeles.”
“Right. Sorry. It’s just … we made it, Captain.”
His hand slipped down her leg, wrapping loosely around her ankle. “I’ll be glad to get off these sand dunes, but there will be a lot more things to trip over here than in the desert. Try not to go too far, all right?”
She stared down at his profile and recognized the strained look of concern in the tilt of his lips, the crease between his eyebrows. She hadn’t seen that look since they’d stumbled across the caravaners, and she’d thought he was growing more comfortable with his blindness. But maybe he’d only been trying to hide his weakness from the others.
“I wouldn’t leave you,” she said.
It was clear from the moment they rolled into town that the caravan was well-known and expected and late. The caravaners wasted no time in setting up a spot amid the shops and unloading their goods, while Cress tried to drink in the architecture and details and beauty that surrounded her. Though the city had appeared bleached and sandy from afar, up close she could pick out vibrant swatches of orange and pink decorating the sides of buildings, and cobalt-blue tiles lining doorways and steps. Almost every surface was bedecked in some decoration, from gold trim to intricately carved archways to an enormous fountain that stood in the middle of the main square. Cress peered into the burbling water as they passed, mesmerized by the starburst pattern laid out on the fountain’s base.
“What do you think?” asked Jina.
Cress beamed. “It’s breathtaking.”
Jina scanned the surrounding market stalls and building fronts as if she’d never really looked at them before. “This has always been one of my favorite stops along our route, but you would hardly recognize it from a couple decades ago. When I was first learning the trade, Kufra was one of the most beautiful cities in the Sahara … but then the plague struck. Nearly two-thirds of the population was annihilated in only a few years, and many more fled to other towns, or left Africa altogether. Homes and businesses were abandoned, crops left to burn beneath the sun. They’ve been trying to recover ever since.”
Cress blinked, and looked again, past the beautiful ornamentation and vibrantly painted walls, trying to see the town that Jina described, but she couldn’t. “It doesn’t seem abandoned.”