Rhys’s appeal to Elahyiah had won him her company on the journey, but she had not spoken to him since they began. She spent her time in their cart with the children. When he spoke to her, she didn’t look at him.

He believed all she needed was some new perspective. A fresh vista.

Rhys rode along with the caravan, sitting on the back of a caterpillar-pulled cart, while the heat soaked into his bones and water ruled his dreams.

At night, he sat with the other men at the fire and traded stories. When he bedded down with Elahyiah and the children, he began to take some joy in Rahim’s constant squalling. The crying meant Rahim was alive, they were all alive, even after all the grit and horror the world had thrown at them.

Rhys put out his cigarette and tucked the remainder into his pocket. He walked back to the ring of firelight where the men spoke in low tones. There were two other families on this trek, one of them relocating to a settlement called Tejal and the other paying their way to join family in another Chenjan settlement just a few more days north.

Beyond the ring of firelight, Rhys could see the darkness around them writhe. He shuddered. There were more insects out there, and… other things. Larger, more fearsome, and more terrifying than what ended up in the pot every night. They had encountered one of the mauta kita the day before, a monstrous creature fifteen feet long, banded in purple scales, that had devoured one of the fat, slow-moving caterpillars that pulled the carts.

Rhys trudged into the warmth of the fire’s circle. He saw the men passing around a bottle. They drank a terrible concoction of fermented cats’ milk called ashora that turned Rhys’s stomach just to smell it.

“Would you like some ashora, Rhys?” one of them asked. He was a Tirhani man called Rafshan.

“He is Chenjan. He does not drink,” said one of the Khairians, Abhinava.

“The atishi baluka may strike at any time,” Rafshan said. “You should enjoy the time you’re given.”

Atishi baluka was one of the first foreign terms Rhys had learned when coming to the north. It referred to the flesh-eating sand, the sand that burrowed into wounds to devour the blood within, leaving behind a gutted, deflated corpse. Rhys had yet to see any of it out here, but he had witnessed a variant of it in action at a church in Tirhan a long time ago. He had no interest in encountering it here.

Rhys sat with the men in the sand. Somewhere nearby, a caterpillar snuffled.

“That boy of yours is quiet tonight,” Abhinava said.

“God is good,” Rhys said.

“Watch your family as we go further north. Be sure your girls do not wander of,” Abhinava said. “It is easy to get lost here, and some of the nomads take slaves.”