him.
“Such impatience.” The voice felt familiar. “Not the temperament for desert travel.” Water dribbled into Eyul’s mouth and the man continued, “Your friend is alive.”
Eyul ceased his struggles. “Where is she?”
“Elsewhere.”
“I need to get to the hermit.” Laughter rang out around him.
“You don’t know my voice, assassin? You have arrived. And once you are well enough, you will have a choice to make.”
Eyul lay on his back and allowed the hermit to tend to him. First the old man rubbed a harsh-smelling salve on his burned hand. Then he washed the wounds on his face and leg with cold water. Eyul considered the hermit’s words. An assassin didn’t make choices.
“Does your role still fit you like a tight slipper, Eyul? Do those boys still haunt your dreams?” The tone was conversational. Eyul didn’t reply. He remembered the last time he’d come to see the hermit. The hermit couldn’t stop the nightmares, but he’d offered his water pipe, and that had eased Eyul’s mind for a time.
Fabric rustled as the hermit finished his ministrations. A waft of air told Eyul that one of the nomads had either come in or gone out of the tent.
“I regret what happened in the desert. I was powerless to change those events.” The hermit’s voice was still close.
Eyul considered this a moment. “You saw?”
“I saw,” the hermit said.
Eyul tried to gauge how many people were listening. The nomads could hold their silence for hours if they needed to, a skill gained from years of hunting sandcats or ambushing hapless merchants. They could sit motionless in their dun-colored robes until their prey was tricked into foolishness. His mother, from the sands herself, used to sit by his bedside with the same rocklike silence.
“A taste of what you’ve come for,” said the hermit. “The Carriers share a common vision: what one sees, they all see. Each Carrier is a piece of the whole, a part of a larger pattern, and the pattern itself is like a river, or a song, flowing into itself, writing itself, making itself heard.”
“The pattern is of nature?”
“No, the pattern is man-made; that is for certain. But that is not to say it doesn’t have a life of its own.”
Eyul listened again, but heard nothing but the hermit’s slow breathing. He would not ask Tuvaini’s question; the hermit could not live past answering it, knowing the pattern had found Beyon, and Eyul doubted now that he could kill him.
“Who is the enemy?” Eyul made a new question.
“Ah, now you are riding ahead of me.” A whisper of sand, and then the hermit’s voice came from above him. “You will learn more after you’ve made your choice. I give no information for free, Eyul, especially to those who’ve come to kill me.”
“I am not here to kill you.” Eyul spoke the truth.
“Disobedient in your old age?” The hermit didn’t wait for an answer. “I require the wizard’s protection. Leave her with me and I will tell you what you need to know.”
Eyul rolled his head from side to side. “That’s not my decision to make.”
“It is now,” said the hermit. Cloth rustled, and Eyul caught another gust of fresh air. He was alone.
“Amalya,” he said out loud. Nobody answered.
Mesema kicked the sand beneath her slippers. It still held the night’s chill, though the sun threatened in the east. She could see why Arigu called this land the White Sea: its waves, some cresting higher than ten horses, rippled away into the western darkness. The Bright One blinked above them, making his last few steps towards the moon before the sun chased him away.
Eldra brushed Mesema’s elbow with her fingers and offered a fig. They stood together, taking small bites, facing the west. Once, Mesema had seen Eldra as a woman and herself as a girl, but now when she looked at their shadows she saw the same curved hips, the same narrowing at the waist. They were of a height, and sand-coloured curls fell around both of their faces. A stranger might take them for twins. A Red Hoof and a Windreader; it was no longer so strange.
“Tell me about your prince,” said Eldra.
Banreh had asked Arigu about the prince, but he hadn’t received an answer. Perhaps Arigu didn’t know him, or maybe he kept silent for another reason. She told herself it didn’t matter—only the child mattered. “You know as much as I do,” she said.
“Maybe he has the nose of a rat, or the wool of a sheep,” Eldra said with a