Safiyah wrinkled her nose. “Colonial magicians may use them to traverse cities. But First Families can use them to cross the world.”

Nyx looked at her sidelong. “You mean powerful First Families with powerful fucking magicians. Even if we’d known the tunnels came all the way up here, all the entrances in Nasheen are protected. There’s no way we’d get in.”

“So many words. Words, words, words. Come now, we’re losing the light.” Safiyah strode boldly toward the mound, three hundred paces distant. Clouds were rolling in, and the wind was picking up. Nyx admitted she wasn’t looking forward to the cool dark of the tunnels after Bomani.

Beside her, Isabet and Ahmed were talking in Ras Tiegan, presumably to clue Isabet into what was happening. Nyx secretly hoped she would die next, eaten by some bug or taken out by some bullet. Every time Isabet looked at Nyx, she thought of Eshe.

Safiyah stepped boldly into the mound—and disappeared. The same way Nyx had disappeared when she fell into the prayer niches at the settlement before Kiranmay.

“Gotta love a good glamour,” Nyx muttered. “C’mon, let’s keep up.”

Above her, the sky rumbled—so close that the ground itself seemed to shudder. A jolt of lightning lit up the sky.

“Fuck,” Ahmed said.

Nyx watched the desert where Safiyah had disappeared.

There was something moving near the mound.

Rhys came up short beside her.

A massive arthropod humped its way past the entrance to the tunnels.

The giant, undulating arthropod was bigger even than the one that made up the bar of the tea house back in Kiranmay. As Nyx watched, it surfaced just two hundred paces from them. Its massive head sprouted six nasty, needlelike protrusions. Then it dove back into the sand.

“Maybe we should wait this one out,” Nyx said. She could have really used a sniper. Goddammit. Not that I can blame her for going, Nyx thought.

“I can control it,” Rhys said.

“No you fucking can’t.”

He strode out across the crackling desert. The lightning storm sent jagged arcs of electricity over their heads. The whole sky was a wash of white and purple heat. And there, visible in the flickering light, was the massive segmented form of the… thing. It undulated just beneath the desert’s surface, pushing up crumbled heaps of clotted sand in its wake.

Nyx wondered what exactly Rhys wanted to do with the fucking thing—ride it? Or just get it out of the way? She was content to find a fucking rock to stand on and just wait it out, but there he went, forging down into the desert like some stupid kid. We are too fucking old to act like idiots, she thought. But she pulled her sword and went after him. Just like a fucking idiot.

“Rhys!”