They trot along walls covered in a filigree of silver-mesh as in Holy City. Artisans have crafted crossroads Vévés to call down spirits and hold them. Djola curses and Kyrie sucks her teeth. Fannie neighs, agreeing with their distress. Silver-mesh corrals stretch around the city, a promise, a threat, not yet animated by haints or spirit slaves. They reach a wall that is being rebuilt with silver-mesh. Djola and Kyrie hunch down on the elephant to pass under a dilapidated archway into the city. Empire guards, tottering in a drunken stupor, motion them down cracked marble stairs. Fannie’s iron shoes skid on the slick surface. She looks back to mountain cliffs and freedom.

“Rebels should stay alert,” Bal hisses at the guards.

Soon there will be sober warriors and locks on sturdy corral gates. Why turn themselves into prisoners? Somehow Fannie must get Bibi and their big herd free again before Arkhys City is as dead as Holy City, before there is no escaping poison desert. She snorts stinging granules from her nose and lifts her head. Awa strokes her neck. The Amethyst River is wrong about Awa and Djola. Fannie knows their hearts. In the face of great danger, they seek help in Arkhys City to save the herd.

The city’s guard towers are dim and spooky. No tree-oil lamps light the way. Too many faces hide in dark recesses. Who can tell what ambush desperate citizens might plan? As dawn colors the sky, Mount Eidhou casts circles of red light up into the clouds, a fiery crown atop blue glaciers. Good citizens in doorways and windows glower and drool as if they want roast dog, horse, or even grilled elephant for breakfast. Hunger makes fools of us all. Soot stays close to elephant legs. Fannie would stomp any fool trying to snatch him.

Musicians raise a racket in the distance. Fannie hesitates. The elephant matches her bellows to the music and picks up speed. Djola’s grumbling fades. Bal adds harmony to the music as they amble closer to the market. Onion towers on the emperor’s sandstone citadel gleam with hints of dawn. Tree-oil lamps in a hundred windows wink at them. Banners catch a breeze and stir up birds roosting in high windows. They fly through dust demons, squawking. Fannie hates the sand in her nostrils.

Once lush, Arkhys City is now a desert town in the rain shadow of the mountain. Fannie lifts her ears. Thunder River clatters down from glaciers through rock culverts and separates the oasis at Rainbow Square from the emperor’s citadel. Deep roots drink from the river. Pendulous white and purple blossoms sway in the breeze. Raintrees in bloom on the banks of the river are impervious to void-winds. For now. Songbirds offer finicky lovers sand beetles and chirps.