At last his parents stepped away.

“Do not return to us,” his father said. “Either succeed in your quest and give your body to Sendar, or do not return at all.”

Liyana saw a flash of an emotion in Fennik’s eyes—surprise perhaps, or hurt—but he recovered quickly. “I will not fail!” Fennik said. Raising his hands to wave at his people one more time, he shifted in the saddle. The horse surged forward. Sand kicked up behind him. He galloped south in a plume of sand and dust.

Korbyn squeezed his knees around the barrel of his horse, and the horse trotted forward. Liyana kicked her heels into hers. After three kicks, the horse lurched into a walk. She followed Korbyn and Fennik, and the cheers of the Horse Clan faded behind them.

All the farms in the west had withered. Mounted on a roan war- horse, the emperor rode at the front of the army caravan and forced himself to look at each dry field, the shriveled rows of dust and the twisted sickly trees. He rode past abandoned farmhouses and some that looked abandoned but weren’t. Men, women, and children clustered in the doorways and watched the army march by. Their faces wore the pinched, hollow look that he’d come to recognize as the look of his people, and their hungry eyes devoured the caravan.

At the first few farms, he’d quietly had his soldiers shuttle food to the families. But after a while . . . He needed the supplies for the army. Just as quietly, he’d had his soldiers stop.

Still his people drank in the sight of the army, consuming it with their empty eyes.

“You give them hope,” General Xevi said. His two best generals flanked him. General Xevi, an older man who had counseled the emperor’s father, rode on his right. General Akkon, an even older man who had known the emperor’s grandfather, was on his left.

“False hope,” General Akkon said.

“Hope is a powerful tool if it is not abused,” General Xevi said.

The criticism was there, unspoken. “You think this is madness,” the emperor said.

“It is not my place to cast such judgments,” General Xevi said.

The emperor’s mouth quirked. It was almost a smile, though it didn’t warm him. “Of course it is. I trust you to advise me, and that includes speaking up if you believe that I am acting like a nightmare-addled lunatic.”

“To base so much on a dream and a myth—”

“And the claims of a madman,” General Akkon added.

“The magician is not mad,” the emperor said, “though I admit he has his moments of . . .” He cast about for the proper euphemism, and words failed him. The magician was indeed flawed. “You did not speak your concerns before.”

“The court is filled with fools,” General Xevi said, “but they are powerful fools. You needed the full confidence of the military when you stood before them.”

“And do I have the full confidence of the military?” the emperor asked. He did not let either his voice or his face betray the way his insides clenched.

For a moment, General Xevi did not answer. They rode past another farmstead. The wooden door swung open and shut in the wind, as if in rhythm with the footfalls and hoofbeats of the army. Torn curtains fluttered in the windows. But no family came outside.

“You have our hope,” General Xevi said.

The emperor nodded. It was enough. “I will not abuse it.” He twisted in his saddle. Dust rose in clouds from the road, and his army stretched into the distance. “Send a scouting party ahead. Secretly, if you can, so as not to admit any doubt. Send them to the desert mountains. . . . And let us see if they find false hope or true.”

Liyana laid her cheek against the horse’s neck and wished she didn’t hurt so much. With every step the horse took, she felt a throb of pain from her scar, and she had fresh bruises and blisters on her thighs from the saddle. She’d named her horse Misery. Misery collected dust on her hide that mixed with horse sweat. This dust clung to Liyana’s skin—clogging her pores, filling her nose, itching her eyes. Trailing after Korbyn and Fennik, she listened to them argue about what route to take.

“Five days,” Fennik promised. He was pushing for a route that would take them north of the salt flats. He claimed he could hunt there, plus there would be occasional springs of water between the rocks.

Korbyn shook his head. “We cross the salt flats. Three days.”

“They’re a wasteland,” Fennik objected. “Zero animals. Zero plants. I need fresh meat for optimum strength.” He flexed his arm muscles.

“We have supplies,” Korbyn said. “What we don’t have is time. We must reach the Silk, Scorpion, and Falcon Clans before their ceremonies fail. We cross the salt flats.” He kneed his horse and trotted ahead of them, effectively ending the discussion.

To Liyana, Fennik said, “I always pictured the trickster god as more jovial.”

Liyana didn’t reply. Since Fennik had joined them, neither Liyana nor Korbyn had talked much. Instead Fennik had regaled them with tales of breeding horses, training horses, and selling horses. At first Liyana had tried to interject stories of her own clan, but Fennik hadn’t been interested in listening and Korbyn had seemed preoccupied. As her sores from riding all day worsened, it became easier to stay quiet. She missed the conversations with Korbyn, though, and she caught herself watching him as they rode. He wasn’t sleeping well—she’d woken him from nightmares twice last night, squeezing his shoulder so he’d wake without alerting Fennik.

Fennik babbled as cheerfully as if she had encouraged him. “My clan tells the tale of when the trickster god attempted to trick Sendar into trading his favorite horse for a scorpion. The scorpion recognized Sendar’s strength of character and refused to act against him. He stung the trickster instead.” Fennik laughed, a booming sound that seemed to roll across the desert.

On the crest of the next sand dune, Korbyn waited for them. Catching up, Liyana and Fennik reined in alongside him. The other horses, guided by Fennik, slowed as well.

Stretched out before them were the salt flats. Heat waved over the white surface. Liyana felt her eyes water from the glare of the sun on the bright white. She shielded her eyes. Despite the name, the salt flats were not flat. The crumbling flats were split by cracks, the work of salt worms.

Liyana had never seen a salt worm, though she’d heard stories, of course. In most of the desert, they lived so far below the surface that they might as well be myth. But here . . . they tunneled vast networks just below the crusted earth, excreting both salt and the fine threads that the Silk Clan collected for their famous cloth. They also left in their wake a chopped, treacherous terrain. Liyana pointed to one of the broken areas. “What do we do about the salt worms?”

Korbyn shrugged. “We avoid them.” He dismounted and offered water to the horses. Then he redistributed the packs while Fennik checked the hooves and fetlocks of each horse.

“Stories say that some worms can grow up to fifteen feet long,” Liyana said. She ran a curry comb over Misery’s hide. The horse heaved a sigh when Liyana didn’t remove the saddle. She wanted the most placid horse possible for this terrain. “Large enough to swallow a man whole.”

“Stories can lie,” Korbyn said as he mounted a different horse. This one, a sorrel mare, whickered at him, clearly pleased to be exchanging the water containers for a rider. “Your precious Sendar ordered the scorpion to sting me while I slept. He’s not as noble of character as you’d like to believe.” Without waiting for a response, Korbyn kneed his horse, and the mare lurched forward, descending the sand dune. Over his shoulder, Korbyn added, “And the worms can grow much longer than fifteen feet.”