WE FLED LIKE broken things flee. The way a struck bird beats its wings against the ground, knowing only that stillness means death.
In my left hand there was only a pulsing heat that matched my heartbeat. I had wrapped it in torn cloth, but blood still found its way through, leaving a trail of dark coins on the stones. Behind us, thunder that was not thunder and light that burned without flame tore holes in the night. Around us, every scrape sounded like something worse.
Denna leaned against me. My legs ached with each step, but her weight meant she still lived, and that was enough to keep them moving. Her hand pressed against her stomach where Cinder’s blade had gone in, and between her fingers seeped a darkness that would look black even at dawn.
“I can walk,” she whispered.
“Of course,” I said, but kept supporting her anyway.
We both knew how to lie when lying was a kindness.
The mountain gave way to foothills as the first light touched the world’s edge. We found shelter in a copse of ironwood and desert willow, their branches making a meager shade. It was enough to let us breathe. Breathing seemed important. Breathing meant we were not dead.
While we rested I took time to examine Denna’s wound. It was worse than I’d feared and better than I’d expected. Worse because it went deep, the kind of deep that speaks of organs and arteries. Better because Denna was still conscious, still herself enough to try to smile when she caught me staring.
“That bad?” she asked.
“I’ve seen worse,” I said. Another lie. Another kindness. In the Medica, I’d seen wounds like this. The slow waltz toward fever and infection and the sweet smell that meant the body had begun to surrender.
I tore strips from what remained of my shirt, the fabric already more memory than cloth. My hands knew this work from the Medica. They did not ask my mind for help. The stitching was rough work, rougher still with only a thumb and finger to pinch the thread. Each pull drew a sound from Denna that she tried to swallow. I kept stitching. There was nothing else I could do for her, and doing nothing would have been worse.
When I finished, I wrapped my shaed around her shoulders.
I’d worn it through summer days and winter nights without harm, but I’d never asked it to endure a desert. The sun here was different. It beat down on us, and my shaed had begun to fade at the edges, thinning like cloth worn past its last thread. But what remained still held its nature. It was cool against her skin and dark enough to shield her from the worst of the desert’s attention.
By the time I’d bound her wound and settled the shaed around her, my hands trembled and sweat ran into my eyes. I pressed my palms against them, hard enough to see stars. Then I breathed until the breathing was all there was.
Denna looked at the dark threads holding her together. “I look like something from a story,” she said.
“The heroine,” I agreed. “The clever one who outsmarts death.”
She smiled, just barely. “You’re a terrible liar.”
“I’m still learning,” I said. “I’ve had a patient teacher.”
The desert stretched before us, an emptiness with no edges. The sand was the color of old bones, and the heat rose from it in waves that made the air shimmer and lie. I held the shaed above us when I could, trying to shield Denna from the worst of the heat, but it tired quickly beneath the desert sun. Each morning it would emerge from my pocket whole but weary. And each day it would falter, tiny holes opening like small wounds, growing slowly wider until I had no choice but to let it rest.
By the second day, the shaed barely lasted through the afternoon. By the third, I was tucking it away before the sun reached full height. Even magic could not endure the desert’s hunger.
“Bad luck?” Denna asked.
“For the shaed, maybe.” I gestured toward the sand. “Just a bit farther.”
She laughed, or tried to. The sound had no water in it. “You’re a terrible liar when it matters.”
“I’m an excellent liar,” I protested. “I’m just choosing not to be.”
“That’s the worst lie yet.”
We walked on. Denna leaned against me more and more, her fever coming on slowly, until at some point I stopped noticing when her feet left the ground. My legs had stopped feeling like legs sometime the day before. Now they were just things that moved when I told them to, automatic as breathing, reliable as pain.
I played the games that desperate men play with themselves. Count to one hundred steps and you can think of water. Count to fifty and you can remember shade. Count to ten and you can keep walking. Count to ten again. Again. The numbers became a song without melody, a prayer without words. My world narrowed to the rhythm of footfalls in sand, to the weight across my shoulders, to the next step, the next breath, the next thing I pretended to believe.
I was watching my feet, counting steps without knowing why, when a voice cut through the desert silence.
“Ho there! Stragglers in the sand!”
I looked up, certain the heat had cracked something else loose in my head. But the figure grew more solid with each blink, more real, until I could make out the pack on his back, the brass pots catching the sun and throwing it back, the wide-brimmed hat that cast a shadow you could trust.
By the time we reached him, Denna was barely conscious. “Water,” I croaked.
He handed me a leather skin without being asked. I poured some into Denna’s mouth before taking a swig myself. It tasted of sweat and old leather, but nothing in my life had ever tasted so much like living.
“I have little else to spare,” the Tinker said, gesturing to his pack. “Some bread hard enough to drive nails. Cloth for your faces against the sun. The desert gives less than it takes, I’m afraid.”
I reached for my purse, though I knew what I would find. Three iron drabs. A broken gear from some forgotten project. A button that had once belonged to my father’s cloak, though I’d never told anyone that, never admitted I’d kept such a useless thing for such a sentimental reason.
The Tinker’s eyes didn’t linger on my poor offerings. Instead, they found Denna’s hand, where her silver ring caught the light.
She saw his look. Her fingers found the ring, turned it once, twice. A gesture I’d seen her make a hundred times when she was thinking, when she was nervous, when she was about to run. But there was nowhere to run now, only the desert stretching endlessly in every direction.
“Take it,” she said, pulling the ring free before she could change her mind. “It was never really mine anyway.”
The Tinker hesitated, that moment of pause that exists between kindness and commerce. Then he took the ring, and gave us what he could spare, and pointed us northwest. “Follow the dunes until they dip,” he said. “Half a day’s walk, you’ll find the Tahl. They’re good people, though strange. They’ll help if they can.”
As he walked away, pack jingling with the music of small trades and smaller profits, I looked at Denna’s naked finger. There was a band of pale skin where the ring had been.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be,” she replied, but her voice was smaller than before.
We did not find the Tahl in half a day.
Denna had gone quiet in the way that people go quiet when they’re saving their strength for one last thing, though they haven’t decided what that thing will be.
I carried her when my legs would let me, though they had begun to betray me too. They trembled with each step, buckled without warning, sent me stumbling to my knees again and again. Each time I fell, it took longer to stand. Each time I stood, I could carry her a shorter distance.
I talked to keep us both alive. Told her stories of the University, of my friends, of all the times I’d been clever and all the times I’d been lucky and all the times I’d confused one for the other. I told her how we would escape this desert, find water, find shelter, find a bed where she could rest and laugh at how close we’d come to ending.
When I fell the last time, I knew I wouldn’t be getting up again.
The sand received me without judgment. It would be easy to close my eyes. I’d fought well.
I wrapped my arms around Denna and held on. Above us, the sky stretched too blue to look at, too wide to matter. The sun pressed down. It had all the time it needed.
I thought of my mother singing while she cooked. My father’s hands painting stories in the air. I thought of Denna, who was worth more than the moon on a long night of walking.
The desert waited.
I closed my eyes.
I held her close.
I listened to two hearts beating, growing slower, growing quiet.