“All right,” he finally said. “You can come.”

CHAPTER

14

As the storm died down, we made our way to the city. Cion said they didn’t usually travel in large packs like this. It would make it too easy for the guards to catch them going in and out of the main gate.

Normally, he’d send the boys to slip into the city through cracks and holes in the wall over the course of a few days or hours so they’d be in place for a raid. But with the sandstorm as our cover, he was willing to chance it, especially since we were carrying buckets of water back across the desert for the townspeople still waiting on the extra rations they hadn’t received after my guards and I had interrupted the last raid.

Boys struggled under the weight of the buckets they’d covered with thick cloth and spider silk netting to keep the flying sand out, yet not a single boy uttered a complaint.

Cion had made a few boys who looked particularly haggard stay behind. Their gaunt frames probably would’ve blown over in the storm. And with their chapped lips, I don’t know how they would have resisted chugging the water. Even I eyed the buckets, longing to quench the thirst that had been gnawing at me. I felt so dried out. I was surprised the sandstorm didn’t erode me away piece by piece.

We snuck into the city in small groups after Cion gave instructions on where each bucket was to go and where each boy was to be stationed for the raid.

I followed Cion as we dashed into the city with the last few gusts of sand.

The streets were deserted, each window patched with whatever was available to keep out the sand—rugs, pieces of cloth, even a perfume bottle was wedged into a crack in a wall. Achrans were once again adapting to whatever the desert threw at us.

I got lost in the streets I’d never explored. Blasts of sand hit us every time we crossed a new street. I couldn’t have been more grateful when Cion handed me one of the buckets he was carrying and rapped quietly on a door weathered by the elements.

A small man opened it barely wide enough for us to slip inside. His presumably once-dark hair had whitened considerably. Wrinkles hung across his face and under his eyes, each deeper than the valleys between sand dunes. Upon seeing Cion, his wide smile displayed several missing teeth. His lips had receded with age, curling in on themselves, and it didn’t seem like he could speak anymore. He ushered us in by waving his arms.

The room was smaller than my arena prep area. Across the floor lay a rug so worn I couldn’t tell what the pattern had once been. Several misshapen pillows rested in the middle around a central unlit brazier, and a tapestry that perhaps should’ve been hanging on the wall covered the only square window in the room.