“Hold.” Djola gripped their spears before they did anything foolish. The elephant trumpeted. “Run.” Djola spoke Anawanama, his mother’s tongue. The guards wouldn’t know a northern language, but the elephant might. “Leave this city while you have the chance.” The elephant raised her trunk, beckoning him to join her. “No. I must stay.”

A scrappy guard pulled his spear arm free and said, “Did a caravan lose this beast?” Djola blocked him. The elephant lumbered down a path to the foothills of Mount Eidhou. She must smell fruit trees and mountain springs. The passageway was wide enough for her, and Mountain Gates would open for an escape. Djola smiled at good decisions. The scrappy guard grimaced. “Someone has lost a fortune.”

“That’s a wild one,” Djola said.

“There aren’t any wild elephants left.” He smirked at Djola.

“Poison desert is chasing the last few into the city,” Djola declared. “A pity.”

“Why waste pity on lumbering beasts?” Nobody wanted to hear about elephants and bees dying off. Samina and Nuar were right about this. “Our children starve.”

“Zst!” The second guard hushed his comrade with a curse. A guard shouldn’t argue with a master—even a clean-shaven northlander like Djola.

“I love my children too,” Djola said, defensive. Everyone assumed northlanders sold or abandoned their daughters and sons without a thought.

The second guard managed a smile. “Petitioners are waiting.”

“Yes.” Djola watched the elephant disappear. “I make a map to tomorrow for all.”

Forest-dwelling Anawanama, desert-rogue Zamanzi, and other so-called savages north of Arkhys City had grown restless under the Empire’s fist. Djola couldn’t say or think savage without wanting to argue with the word, take it back, turn it around. Why should proud people slave and starve to feed greedy Empire citizens? Southern thief-lords around the Golden Gulf also chafed against taxes, desert winds, and the rule of law. They preferred to let the best blades claim the most riches.

Samina once saw Djola as the architect of peace, a hero who turned northern tribes and southern thief-lords into loyal subjects of Emperor Azizi. She fell in love with a master of the impossible. Everybody was ready for peace back then. Twenty years gone by and Djola’s peace had frayed with each dry riverbed and bleak harvest. Southern barbarians grew bolder, raiding Empire caravans and tree-oil strongholds. Northern tribes did the same. And now there was a plague of void-storms. Nothing to lose with death coming from every direction. Samina was right to worry.

Djola refused to scratch his hind parts, tug his mustache, and wait for someone else to act. “We save each other,” he declared.

“Is that so?” The scrappy guard drew Djola into a dark archway and blindfolded him. “Jackals roam these corridors, and hyenas. They chew traitor hearts and suck spy bones.”

“What a way to die,” the other guard groaned. “We know the safe route.”

“Safe?” Djola muttered.