I fled toward the desert.

CHAPTER

6

My empty water skin flopped against my legs as a reminder I wouldn’t survive the dangers of the desert long if I didn’t have any water. I had no idea how much time it would take to find the Desert Boys.

I veered off toward the western marketplace, hoping to go unnoticed in the evening crowd as I stopped at the well. I ignored the fact I didn’t have a ration coin. I’d figure something out.

I pulled the hood up on my cloak and slunk onward. I twisted through streets lined with squat houses. Beneath a layer of sand, a few patterned tiles still clung to some of the houses. The small channels that ran in front of each house and down the sides of every street, which used to carry fresh water from the lagoon throughout the city, were clogged with sand. The clay bricks that had walled them in were visible as little more than rocks in the sand.

It was still early enough that many of the houses had their wooden window covers propped open by sticks to let in what little breeze there was.

Mothers shouted at their children to knead the dough for that evening’s bread and husbands yelled for their wives. In one house, a woman not much older than me alternated between staring out the window and at the small gold bracelet dangling off her left wrist.

She must be newly engaged. Peasants typically only wore the engagement bracelet and wedding bracelet. These days, they didn’t have the money to spend every year on a new one to add to their collection. Metal was better used repairing holes in walls or leaks in buckets.

That’s probably why Latia was always staring at my mother’s bangles in my dressing room and why she and her soldier hadn’t gotten engaged yet. If golden bracelets weren’t passed down through the generations, getting one was very expensive.

I kept my head low, realizing too late I hadn’t taken off the metal cuff around my neck. I pulled my cloak tighter to conceal it. I stepped over the bits of brick that had eroded from the houses and followed the crowd forward.

The well was located in the open square at the heart of the market. A maze of streets and vendors lined the way. The heavy scent of ground cactus root made my mouth water as men and women cooked in large dishes on the edges of the market.

A few camels were tied off in clumps at various locations around the street. One vendor had water beetles crawling over one another as they fought to the top of the pile. Their little blue wings clicked against each other as they became more agitated. Of course, the vendor hawked their agitation as a desire to head straight for water. I didn’t believe his lies for a second. If water beetles actually led us to water, we wouldn’t be in this mess.