Her head hurt. The sun was blinding. She was thirsty enough to consider carving Isabet up and drinking up all the coppery liquid that spilled from her fragile little body, the way she had with Eskander. Had that really happened? She wasn’t even so sure.

She dropped Isabet. Shed a great burden.

She yanked one of the bloody bulbs from her bandolier, uncapped it. Brought it to her lips. The blood had congealed. Her stomach roiled. She dry heaved, and the bulb fell onto the sand, oozing

Why am I carrying her? Nyx thought. She gazed off toward the mountains again. She could make it. Surely. Alone, she was much stronger. Alone, she could make the mountains, and the promise of water. She could achieve so much more, alone.

She would never have come here if she’d been smart, and lived out her exile alone. It all came apart once you starting caring for something outside yourself.

She stumbled forward, half the distance to the playa, before she fell headfirst into the sand.

She grappled back up. Dragged herself forward.

The sun was moving off into afternoon. She heard the hiss and scuffle of some insect, and a giant amber beetle reared up at her in a gush of sand.

Her foot caught at the edge of the seam of the playa. She fell again, this time on the hard, cracked red surface. Her head thumped against the dirt. Her legs went numb. She tried to move her arms, to claw forward. They didn’t respond. The beetle pounced. She yelled and smacked it with her head; it scuttled off.

Dying always felt so peaceful.

She came to in the dim blue light of dusk. The ground was still warm, but the air had turned terribly cold. A sharp wind blew sand granules into her face. She coughed, and realized with a surge of hope that she had a terrible urge to urinate.

Nyx yanked her collapsible stew pot out of her pack and pissed in it. She brought the pot to her lips without hesitation. It wasn’t the first time she had to drink her own urine.

After, she lay on her side, chewing on her last strip of sunbaked worm until the final sun went down.

Then she was up again. How, she wasn’t so sure. One minute she was on the ground, and when she came to next, she was walking again, plodding forward like some half-dead, cancerous wanderer.

Then she raised her head and saw a black form winging its way across the night, just there at the edge of the surge of blackness in the northern sky, visible only because as it moved south the stars carpeted the sky behind it.

It was a raven. It alighted on her shoulder.

She blinked, and the bird was off again. For a moment, she wondered if she’d just made it up. Some blotchy darkness that her mind had turned into a bird.