After Sand Haven, Pezarrat hid the fleet in a cove to avoid paying Azizi his share. Orca climbed a mast without Djola. Vandana walked the deck and shouted to the stars. The old healer went off drinking with the steer-man. Djola sat alone in sick bay, puzzling poison sand, refusing to give up. Every mystery could be solved. Yari said this. Djola closed his eyes. He drifted close to sleep, calm, sober, his thoughts sharp. The puzzle yielded: void-storms appeared like Grain’s letter, not from nowhere but perhaps from a wise-woman corridor or a bit of folded space.

Djola sipped a cup of soup. At the second mouthful, he spit it out. Too late. The bitter taste of lethal mushrooms hid behind garlic and honey. He carried antidotes for common toxins in his Aido bag, but these were potent, fast. One mouthful, and Vandana found him convulsing, an antidote clutched in a paralyzed hand. She helped him choke it down, babbling Mama Zamba sagas until his heart slowed, his breath was steady, and his strength returned. They took long breaths together.

“Basawili.” He thanked her and the crossroads gods.

Vandana hugged him. “I wish no death on you.”

Djola drew knives from his sleeves and raced to the galley. Vandana followed, wielding long, diamond-tipped blades he’d never seen. They confronted the cook—a young idiot paid off by Council no doubt. Djola forced him to guzzle a bowl of his mushroom brew. In minutes, the cook foamed at the mouth, choked, and died. A kitchen boy cowered under a table. Vandana blocked Djola and let the boy run away.

“Little one not against us,” she murmured in Lahesh.

Djola’s hands trembled. “The cook killed himself.”

“When do we go to home?” Vandana held his hands till rage subsided.

Djola couldn’t go home without an answer to poison sand. He was certain it traveled through folded space, but why, how? “Soon I hope.”

“Be quick, catch good weather. It’s a long walk over ice walls, each one higher. Many steps to cross the backbone.” Lahesh called the mountains that ran from Arkhys City to Holy City their mother’s backbone, Mama Zamba. “Then is dry sand, stealing water from skin and eyes, no matter what you’re drinking.”

Beyond the mountains was the end of maps. Few travelers survived the sweet desert and glaciers to reach Arkhys City. Besides Yari, Vandana was the only one Djola knew. Warrior women with dagger teeth and diamond blades had been a tall tale he doubted until he met her.

“I must understand something first,” Djola said.

“I know. I am patience. I have good to do in the meanwhile. That is living.”

21

A Broken Tusk

Pezarrat marched into the galley with a phalanx of guards trailing behind him.

“Empire spy”—Vandana pointed at the cook—“dead from his own soup.”

Pezarrat thrust a bark-paper scroll at Djola. “A letter appeared.”