Tamir and Sorcha broke down the camp while Shayat looked me over one last time. She saddled my camel and helped me onto it. I nearly toppled off when the camel rose, but she caught me and kept me in the saddle. She whispered to the camel and stroked its neck to calm it. “Shayat,” I said. She looked up at me. “You saved my life.”

“We’re even, then,” she said. “We would have been slaughtered had it not been for your gift.”

* * *

I was in bad shape when we reached Iyairo. The wound on my shoulder was deep and vengeful, and the meager supplies we had did little to help me heal. I spent days in a fever. The desert, I found, is a terrible place to have a fever. My memories of those days are hazy, but I know at one point, delirious and frightened, I wandered down the River alone while the rest slept. I was found half-naked and badly sunburned. I know one night as we rode I was taken by shakes, my teeth chattering a clack clack clack that echoed through the night. I shook so violently I had trouble staying on my camel. Shayat drove us hard, and the last two days we traveled as far into the burning heat of the day as we could before fatigue got the better of us and the camels.

We reached Iyairo soon after dawn, roughly six days after the bandits’ attack. The Lost River hides Iyairo from view until the last possible second. Iyairo was a small, dusty desert town, which sprang up on the banks of an oasis. Its fortunes have waxed and waned according to trade routes, and when we passed through, the rails were still only about five years old. They were new enough that Iyairo was not yet the bustling trade stop it is today. We came up via the Lost River, through these impossibly tall dunes. The River turned us sharply to the west, the dunes opened, and there was Iyairo. Qin patrols stopped us before we entered the town.

Sorcha tells me I nearly got us all detained. I remember very little of it, but I am told I refused to let the patrolmen see my papers, and that when I was ordered down off my camel I laughed at them and spat at their feet. I am told I spoke to them in High Qin, and that when I did so, I quoted their scriptures to them, belligerent and mocking. They tried to arrest me, but Shayat intervened and showed them my wounds. She made them feel the burning heat of my skin. Eventually, she bribed them. They took two of our camels.