I sat up and felt around for my clothes. She asked me where I was going, and I told her back to my own tent. “That’s probably a good idea,” she said. She watched me as I dressed, contorting myself this way and that in the cramped space. She traced strange designs on my bare skin with her fingertips until the skin was hidden by clothes. At the mouth of the tent, just as I was leaving, a thought came to me. I turned towards her. “Shayat, do you think this will happen again?”

She shrugged. Her body was strewn out across the floor of the tent, languid and supple as a giant cat. She smiled. “Maybe. If you’re lucky.”

I grinned. I blushed. “I have to be stoned for it,” I said.

“What?”

“I want to be stoned for it if it happens again. It’s to do with the gift.”

“Oh.” She sat up, studying me with her head cocked slightly to the side. “Good to know.”

Chapter 25

CHAPTER 25

When I woke the next morning, Sorcha was already awake and dressed. He grinned at me. “You and our fearless leader, eh?”

“How did you know?”

“I can smell her on you,” he said.

“Oh.”

Sorcha laughed. “Good on you, Ariah. I mean it. Let’s get breakfast.”

We fell out of the tent one after the other. Sorcha left me there to wrestle the tent into submission on my own while he secured us rations. Shayat was already saddling her camel, her back turned to me. A grin spread across my face at the sight of her. Sorcha laughed and clapped me on the shoulder.

Tamir crouched by a pack of rations. He looked over at the sound of Sorcha’s laugh. His good eye fixed on me, and I fell into him. His anxiety poured over me like scalding oil. “Hey!” Sorcha waved at Tamir to get his attention. “Hey, Tamir, how long until we hit the desert?”

Tamir stood to his full height and peered down at Sorcha. He popped a dried date in his mouth. He chewed for a second, then turned and walked to his camel. Shayat answered without turning around. “Not long,” she said. “Three, four days. We’re making good progress.”

“And then what?” Sorcha asked.

“Then it’s the Mother Desert,” Shayat said.

“Then it’s the Mother Desert,” Tamir said, “and with her a set of new dangers. No comfort there.”

“What’s in the desert?” Sorcha asked.