In case I didn’t have time, I moved toward the well, casting quick glances in the boy’s direction to be sure he wasn’t going to leave anytime soon. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going and ran into the back of a large man holding two water skins. He turned and gave me a disgruntled look. I backed away, or at least I tried to, but a crowd had gathered at my back.

“What do you mean the king has reduced water rations to one bucket a day?” someone shouted at a soldier close to the well. “How does he expect us to survive?”

“He doesn’t,” the man I’d bumped into shouted. Sunlight glinted off the metal molded over his ears. He must’ve been one of the Lorians passing through on a caravan who got caught here when the drought started—much like the lizard trainer I’d passed. Lorians were famous for their ability to carry large weights using their ears. I’d never spent enough time in the marketplace to see them weaving through, but others had told me of seeing a jar of beetles and lizards hanging from one ear and a cooking bowl full of hot coals on the other. This left the Lorians’ hands free to cook the beetles and lizards, change money, and roll up their delicacies in spiced shed snake skins.

He was probably angrier than the average Achran at the drought because he’d been forced to make a new life here after the lack of water made travel back to Loria impossible. I wished I could’ve moved away from him, but there was nowhere to go.

Next to us, a woman collapsed from the heat. Or maybe it was from dehydration.

A frail man next to the woman attempted to catch her as the crowd swallowed them both.

The smell of unwashed bodies was overwhelming. And I’d never realized how long the lines were at the wells.

The Lorian man charged forward, using his bulk to force others out of the way so he could move to the front. “I’ve been waiting for hours to get my two buckets, and none of you are going to stop me.” He tossed his ration coin at the guard’s feet and moved toward the well.

The ration coin winked in the late afternoon sun, all but forgotten as the guard stared the man down while he filled up his first skin.

I made my way through the crowd in the man’s wake, ready to go for the coin when there was an opening.

As soon as the man produced a second skin, the soldier pulled out his sword. “I don’t care how long you’ve been waiting. One bucket from now on. If you don’t like it, take it up with the Desert Boys who drained the eastern well earlier today.”

“The Desert Boys are the only reason we survive,” the man said, and dipped his skin into the bucket he’d pulled up from the well.

I didn’t have time to figure out what he meant because the guard stepped forward and readied his sword. The man had his back to the soldier and wouldn’t even see the blow that would strike him down.