Ahmed swallowed, tried to wet his mouth. “Could I have some water?”

Nyx pushed some kind of fist-sized bug toward him. He flinched. It had a bulbous back end that had been gouged open.

“Go on,” she said.

Ahmed raised his head and sniffed at the ass-end of the mutilated insect. The tantalizing promise of water overwhelmed his initial repulsion, and he drank. The carapace of the insect was soft and papery, but the water was cool, familiar, and unexpectedly tasteless.

“You must go. You are not far from the Wall.”

Ahmed translated.

“The wall? What’s the wall?” Nyx asked.

The woman told him. Ahmed translated, “The end of the world.”

“Well, that’s fitting,” Nyx said.

“It does sound promising,” Ahmed said. He tried to get himself up on one elbow. He squinted in the dim light. It felt like they were in a cave. Eshe stood behind the foreign woman, dressed in strange clothing. His nose was newly broken; the blood and bruising was still fairly fresh. Ahmed saw other bodies around him. He realized they were what remained of Nyx’s team—Kage, Isabet, Khatijah.

Ahmed asked the woman, “Where are we?”

“These are our prayer niches. Your companion stumbled into one, drawn by the call of the ravens that nest here. You should go. If we tend to you, you must pay us in blood or bugs. You have neither. You must go, or you will indebt yourself to us. The boy already paid in blood.”

“What she say?” Nyx asked.

“We thank you for the hospitality,” Ahmed said. He tried to remember the Khairian social mores regarding hospitality, but his mind was still muddy. Indebted to them? What did that mean, exactly? It had the weight of something far more menacing than some social nicety. He was reminded of the strange two-faced language of Tirhani false politeness, and realized there may be something similar happening here that he didn’t understand.

“Do not use that word. We have given you nothing. You must go.”

“We’ll die in the desert,” Ahmed said.

“What is she saying?” Nyx repeated.

“You are only a few days from the Wall,” the woman said. “I do not know your destination, but there is little past that. You can purchase or sell all you like at the Wall. But not here. You must leave.”

“How many days?”

“The way you travel?” Her gaze moved across his body. She shook her head. “Three days.”

“She thinks it’s pretty important that we leave.” He regarded the others. “How are they?”

Nyx shook her head. “Khatijah woke up a while back. I hydrated everybody best I could before I went out again.”

“You… went out again?”

“Eskander kept saying the settlement was only a few days away. I held her to that. I left you here and kept looking.”