“Well, we obviously can’t stay with Kelo’s mum, unless we want to get really close really quick,” Lark chuckles.

  The group stands in a disheveled circle outside the doorway of the small stucco home, shielding their eyes from the sun and sand. Anarah’s loincloth whips in the wind, warm and stifling. Everything from the ground to the people walking over it are different shades of beige, and each person she catches sight of seems to be in a different stage of exhaustion. The heat settles with noticeable weight over the linen cloak covering her shoulders.

  “You’re not wrong,” Nathis tilts his head, brushing his forehead with three dirty fingers. “Silon said she would send the next trade ship four days after we left the shores of Denand, to give us some time. I would say we have about a day and half until it arrives.”

  “A day and a half more in this boiling pit of sand?” Tygoh groans.

  Anarah scouts the marketplace just outside Wrena’s hovel, searching for any vendors with unusual guests. “There must be an inn somewhere nearby. Hopefully with a library.”

  “And cold water,” Nathis squints into the haze.

  “Where is Drair?” Lark says, fiddling with her braid. “Maybe she found something while she was out.”

  A quiet scoff bubbles from Kelo. “You’re not going to chastise her for not being here?” The corpse boy smiles, and a smacking noise can be heard as the girl’s hand collides with his arm.

  “You’re the newbie here, bub. Better watch your tone with your elders,” the blacksmith chides.

  Anarah, turning away from her search of Izevel, replies. “Actually, if I’m following the timeline correctly, Kelo is older than you, Lark.”

  The blonde-haired girl grimaces, showing her teeth. Her scar crinkles. “You’re not in this. Bugger off.”

  Tygoh, standing next to Anarah, brings a tan skinned hand to his brow, peering under the sun. He clears his throat. “There she is,” he says, pointing into the smoky distance.

  The assassin steps into the light of the road from around the corner of a blacksmith’s forge, sauntering toward them. She looks untouched by the heat, but her clothes are dusted with sand. Anarah waves into the sun, but the dark woman’s eyes have already found them. Anarah feels a twinge of jealousy at Drair’s dark skin, surely a respite from the heat, before she remembers the privilege of her pale flesh. She glances at Tygoh. Her own children would have Xelinite blood.

  “There is a place we can stay,” Drair hums as she approaches. She investigates the market with her uncovered eye. The sun, shining through her brown iris, brings out shimming golden hues. “But we’d better bring hand pies. And perhaps our own bedding.”

  “Anything else? Might as well build our own inn at that point.” Tygoh heaves his pack over his shoulder, readjusting its weight.

  Drair looks back at them and one corner of her lips upturns in a smirk. It looks foreign on her features. “I hope you like children.”

  The woman leads them into the alleyway, each carrying their own pack, shuffling sideways through the narrow lanes between buildings. Refuse litters the ground, and the occasional crouched civilian is given a careful bypass, but shade from the towering structures above is welcome. The buildings of the desert are plain faced, but with arched doorways and domed roofs unlike anything in Larynth. Each brick placed perfectly, each window straight and wide. Traveling further into the city, the roads become pockmarked, and the smell of filth and smoke permeates, accompanied by the sound of shouting children.

  Two blocks back from the market, the group arrives at a towering building with many open windows, a third of which have various children hanging out of them. Anarah spots a young boy with the same decaying hand as Kelo sitting on the front steps.

  “Aslo, we’re going to need a room,” Drair calls, and the boy stands up, brushing his pants free of sand. He smiles sheepishly, waving two other children away into the building. Unlike Kelo, there is heat in his cheeks, but his hands are peeling away like birch bark, pale and dry.

  “Thought you’d never come back,” the boy chimes in, scowling at the assassin. “They have more money, yeah?”

  “Yes,” Drair hums, looking away.

  “Looks like you’ve got yourself some new friends, eh?” Nathis offers a gnarled hand to the boy at the steps. “Nathis Stoles,” he says, “General of the Larynthian militia.”

  Aslo looks the general up and down. Then a grin stretches his lips, and he grabs Nathis’s hand, shaking it forcefully. “An army general,” Aslo almost shouts. “I’ve never met an army general before. I’m Aslo.”

  A nudge from Tygoh draws Anarah’s attention. “We’re staying here?” he whispers, leaning close, his dark eyes pointing to the crumbling building in front of them.

  “I suppose,” she replies. “Maybe I’ll ask the kids if there is a library nearby.”

  Drair interrupts, speaking over the group. “Aslo and the rest know just about everything about Izevel. If you’ve got questions, ask the short bald one.”

  Aslo reels. “Hey! I’m not bald!”

  Anarah looks the children over as the group is led up a flight of steps, smooth from little feet, and through a heavy stone doorway. Most of the boys are shirtless, their skin reddened from the sun. The girls, as filthy with sand as the boys, have ratted hair in various styles. Their home is dark, with floors covered in grit. As children run up and down the steps leading upstairs, their shoeless feet skid along the stone as they chase one another down the halls.

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  Aslo leads them up the stairs, stepping around the numerous children using them as seats. His voice calls loud over the bustle. “You’ll have to take one of the lower rooms. No one wants them. I haven’t been in these for a while, so sorry if they’re a mess.”

  As the group ascends, children begin to gasp and point. Kelo, behind the rest of the party, is getting more fans than the Xelinite. A girl with a pinched, rabbit-like face runs to his side, her black hair knotted on top of her head like a nest.

  “Yours is so bad!” she says.

  Anarah catches a glimpse of Kelo’s expression. His eyes are fearful, and his chapped lips are upturned in a sheepish smile. The girl continues.

  “We’ve never seen anyone with so much gone.”

  More children begin to follow the king’s brother up the stairs, commenting on his skin. They grab at his sleeves and reach for his hands, laughing as if he were an old friend returned. The party makes their way up the stairwell to the first floor. Four open windows line the western side of the hallway, aligned with four doors on the eastern side. A warm breeze billows in, scattering sand along the floor as they file through the last door, an empty room with one window facing into the alleyway. The children follow Kelo, carrying his bag.

  “It looks like you’ve got yourself a welcome party,” Anarah says, setting her bag down near the window. Tygoh tails behind her, dropping his bag to rewrap his hair, dark tendrils framing his face. The others choose a location on the floor around the room, setting up their temporary home.

  Kelo does not look up, but Anarah catches a smile forming on his face. “I lived here for a short stint,” he replies, his voice quiet. “After I left my mother’s, I had to wait for an outbound ship. That was three years ago, I think. Aslo was tiny then.”

  The children following him leave the room in pairs, waving to Kelo as they go. Aslo ducks his head at Drair, and the assassin closes the door behind him.

  “I was an older brother for most of them.”

  Lark, sitting on the floor next to her bag, knits her brows together. “I don’t think any of us have ever asked how old you actually are. I don’t know the details around how you’re Taeg’s brother or anything, so...”

  Kelo turns, brushing a few strands of thinning hair from his pale forehead. “Twenty-four.”

  “So you’re older than Taeg?” the blonde asks. Anarah opens her mouth to change the subject, but the blacksmith’s eyes fill with recognition and her pale lips part. “You’re the heir!” Lark’s voice climbs an octave, echoing off the walls and out the window.

  Anarah purses her lips, exhaling a soft chuckle. Tygoh sighs next to her. Nathis is carefully stacking his armor against the wall in the corner next to Anarah, laughing.

  “Technically, yes,” he looks at the girl. Lark is frozen, her legs crossed, back straight. Her eyes move to the floor. “Not to worry,” the general lays a heavy hand on her head. “Taeg is our king.”

  Kelo looks from the older man to Anarah and back, shirking his eyes at the blacksmith on the ground. “Did I say something?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Tygoh calls, waving a hand. “She has these episodes pretty regularly, although they usually come with a good helping of yelling. Count yourself lucky.”

  The group settles into silence as they unpack their belongings, dressing up their makeshift beds.

  “This is a far cry from the Guard rooms at Erah,” Anarah breathes, brushing the dust from her sleeping linens. She pulls a book out of her bag and sits it next to her pillow. It is falling apart at the spine, the gold calligraphy title, “Alchemists of Vaeba”, fading. She had brought it in the hopes of learning how to reverse the curse they had placed on the corpses, but so far, she had only learned of the oldest alchemists in Vaeba’s history, then called warlocks. The castle’s library was absent of alchemist grimoires other than the vague recollections of the Lynac, the Crown’s own Mark, and the far beginnings of magical roots.

  “So, what’s the plan?” Tygoh shakes his linens free of dust, inciting a low growl from Lark, who has awoken from her shock to swipe the sand from her bed sheets. “Nathis?” he asks.

  The older man sighs, taking a seat in the windowsill to stare into the darkened alley. “Under the pretense that we’ve remained unnoticed, I would assume our next move is to learn how this works. To learn how they’re taking the Xelinites and how it fixes the corpses.” He looks at Kelo with a shrug. “Sorry, boy.”

  Kelo shakes his head, his thin lips pursed. The group is silent for a moment, each taking in their new quarters. The room is small and dusty, the only light seeping into the open east-facing window around Nathis’s form. The sounds of children scuttling in the sand rises through the opening.

  A small hum comes from Anarah’s throat. “If I can present myself as a curious physician, perhaps they would let me comb through their grimoires?” She shrugs.

  “Wishful thinking, my dear,” Nathis coos. “The alchemists ne’er so much as shared their mother’s gingerbread recipe with anyone other than their guild members.”

  “Then we need to attend,” Kelo says. He is playing with the hem of his cloak, seated cross-legged on the far side of the room.

  Lark’s light eyes are peering at him, the scar in her left brow scrunched. “Attend the ceremony?”

  “Yes. It’s the only way to see their runes, salt lines, whatever it is that these men use to draw on such dark power. Anarah, I’m sure you’d be able to decipher them.” Kelo nods in her direction.

  Anarah can feel all eyes on her and heat flushes in her cheeks. “Sure.” Her eyes bounce from one man to the other. She should have scoured the library, prepared herself better. Nathis returns her look of panic with a smile.

  “We’re not expecting you to become a witch overnight, love. We just need to know how they set the stage. Maybe we can find an alternate source of power to reverse the magic.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Kelo says, his voice a little too loud. He is looking straight at Nathis, the dark pools of his eyes wide.

  The blonde across the room from him scoffs loudly, chewing on a nail. “They’re going to sacrifice a Xelinite-”

  “I know.” His eyes are pressed closed.

  Anarah catches Lark staring at the dark-skinning assassin in the corner, who is busy oiling her katar, seemingly oblivious.

  “Then what the hell are we doing?” Lark sneers.

  Nathis shakes his head, throwing his hands up and slapping them onto his thighs. “I will sleep on it. Maybe I’ll throw in a little Grand Master on the plan, slaughter the lot of ‘em.” The older man heaves himself from the windowsill and bends to his bedding with cracking knees. “Do what you will. Don’t forget to sleep.” His eyes avoid the others in the room, and he pulls back his blanket to crawl underneath.

  Anarah watches as he breathes raggedly in his sheets, staring at the wall with blinking eyes. His left arm is outside the cloth, pressed against his side. His skin is a pale yellow, forming a sickly backdrop to the darkened sunspots that travel down his leathered forearm. As the sun falls below the horizon, a quiet chill envelopes the room that drives the others to their beds one by one, crawling beneath the linens for a night of restless sleep.