Kushiel's Avatar

scant provision.
    Other items as well we purchased: skinning knives, soap, butter, a pair of lanterns, an aromatic unguent reputed to keep lice at bay, satchels, woolen blankets, needles and thread, and bits of hide and thong for patching boots and tack. Joscelin, who’d regretted the lack on the river, bought a set of fishing hooks and sturdy line, which made me laugh, bound as we were for the desert.
    We hired four guides and twelve camels, and I cannot count how many Kaneka interviewed before she found a company that suited her exacting requirements. The marketplaces of Majibara are difficult to endure, spread beneath the baking sun and stinking of camel dung. I was glad when it was done and Joscelin measured out five links of chain, prying them loose and paying them unto the guide-master under Kaneka’s judicious eye.
    “Eat well,” she said when the deal was concluded, “drink your fill and visit the baths, for tomorrow we enter the desert.”
    There was music that night at the inn, a percussionist playing on goat-hide drums to the accompaniment of some wailing stringed instrument, like unto a harp but with only four strings and a looser tone. We sat up for a time and listened, lingering over cups of beer.
    “In the Cockerel,” Joscelin said, smiling, “there would be dancing.”
    “And wine.” I laughed. “Do you remember the headache I had?”
    “The day we set out for Landras? You looked the way I feel at sea.”
    “We were toasting Hyacinthe,” I remembered. “At least I was, and Emile. Imri, I never told you, but if it hadn’t been for the Tsingani, we would never have found you.” I told him, then, about asking for Emile’s aid and how Kristof, son of Oszkar, had brought his kumpania to find us at Verreuil.
    “Because of Hyacinthe?” he asked when I was done.
    “Yes,” I said. “Because of Hyacinthe.”
    Imriel thought about it, frowning his Courcel frown. “Then it is right that I am here, trying to help him. Whether he knows it or not, I am in his debt. It is right and fair.”
    It would have been humorous, coming from anyone else his age.
    This boy could be dangerous. Or he could be something else .
    “Yes,” I said. “It is right, and fair.”
    In the early morning, when the sky had lightened to a leaden grey, the stars still visible, we assembled our caravan and set out across the vast wasteland of the desert.
    It was my first experience at riding a camel, and I must own, for all I had boasted of my hard-won horsemanship skills, this was somewhat completely different. At the guide’s command, my mount lowered itself to its knees, huffing prodigiously. With some apprehension, I clambered into the stiff, high-backed saddle and the camel rose, swaying. I felt very far above the ground, and in no way in control of the strange beast.
    “Very good!” said Mek Timmur, our Jebean caravan-guide. “Very good, lady!”
    I looked at Imriel, clinging to his saddle and grinning fit to split his face. On the other side of me, Joscelin sat at his ease, wearing a white burnoose with the hood lowered and looking for all the world like he’d ridden a hundred camels. Kaneka and Safiya were as comfortable as if they’d been lounging on couches. Well and good, I thought; if they could manage, so could I.
    After the first few miles, I ceased to worry about riding a camel. The challenge of the desert was overwhelming enough.
    For one who has not endured it, it is hard to describe. Words like “heat” and “sun” lose all meaning. The desert was a vast expanse of yellow sand, flat as a board, stretching in all directions. As the sun cleared the horizon and began to climb into the sky, the heat mounted, relentless as a hammer . When it was still, one prayed for a breeze; when the breeze came, it was like the breath of a furnace, hot and parching. I perched atop my shambling camel and withered, feeling my skin, my mouth, my very eyeballs sandy and desiccated.
    Here and there, we passed barren hills, pyramids of black basalt jutting forth from the flat sands. At midday, Mek Timmur declared a halt of two hours in the shadow of one such. The respite afforded by the shade was offset by the heat of the stone itself, radiant in the sun. I leaned against an outcropping of rock, fanning myself with my broad-brimmed hat and clutching the cool, sweating bulk of a water-skin.
    “You see?” Kaneka said cheerfully. “Safer than Nineveh.”
    I was too hot to do anything but nod.
    The rest of the day