“You’re sure it’s safe to eat?”

He studied where I’d cut off the spots. “Looks fine to me.” He bit a leg off of his own. “Mmmm, tastes like rat.”

My jaw dropped open. “Rat?”

“I’m kidding,” he said. “This is more like smoked scorpion.”

“Oh,” I said. I should’ve realized this was a delicacy to them. And that he probably had been forced to eat rat before.

“We always try to have a feast where everyone gets their own lizard after we initiate a new member,” he said. “Only we weren’t exactly planning on you dropping in, so we didn’t have enough on hand. The boys went out today to find more.”

I scanned the room. That’s why they all looked exhausted. They’d spent the day looking for a feast. For me.

And I hadn’t even wanted to eat the lizard.

I bit into the meat. It was hot and melted almost instantly in my mouth. It wasn’t so bad. The skin had a bit of a grainy texture to it, and it did taste a little like scorpion, but it wasn’t as bad as eating dried raw worms. Those exploded into small segments that felt like they crawled down your throat.

He shook his head. “They really don’t joke up there in the palace, do they?”

“If we had time for jokes, we weren’t training hard enough,” I said. “I haven’t really laughed since my mother died.” And it was true. All joy had gone out of the world along with the light in her eyes.

“Don’t you think she’d want you to laugh?” Cion said. He took another bite of his lizard. He’d almost finished all of it.

“I’m sure she would,” I said, “but I’m sure you’ve noticed that there’s not much to laugh at these days.” I swallowed down another hunk of flesh.

“Then you’ve come to the right place,” Cion said. “The Desert Boys know how to have fun better than anyone else. And you could do with a little loosening up.”

“I don’t need to loosen up.” I shoved a dangling piece of meat into my mouth. “I need to focus.”

“Focus can be woven into training in a way that is fun.” He licked the juice from the lizard that ran down the heel of his hand. “Dimic, bring that game over here.”

Dimic did as he was instructed. He balanced a long wooden board on one hand while refusing to let go of his half-eaten lizard in the other.

He picked his way through the tangle of boys and put the game down in front of us.

The pebbles clinked together and slid into one another.

“Are you going to play?” Dimic asked, eyes jumping between us. Even in the heat of the day, his hair still stuck out on all sides.

Cion shook his head. He pulled a crumpled piece of parchment from his pocket and glanced at it before shoving it back in. “I’ve got someplace to be,” he said. “So you’re going to play her.”