“Shut up, Reggie,” Marisa said.
“You sail the pirate sarfer off to the east,” Peary said to the Poet. “At least a couple of miles. I’ll follow you and pick you up, and then we’ll come back and do it again with the second sarfer.”
“You do everything the long slow way, diver,” the Poet said. “We have four people who can sail—at least enough to get us a few miles. We could drop the Legion sarfers and head straight south from there.”
“The sandal hop isn’t strong enough to sail, which means I’d have to leave him here unwatched, which isn’t going to happen. So Marisa has to stay here too and keep an eye on him.”
The Poet shook his head. “Your way will take hours.”
“You’re right, it will,” Peary answered. “But not long after that, we’ll be rich.”
“Have you thought about what’ll happen if someone sees us in a Legion sarfer?” the Poet asked. He jerked his head at the red sails: the signs of the Low-Pub Legion.
“Listen, Poet,” Peary said, “That’s a problem in either case if we’re seen, but we can leave the sarfers here for all I care. But if we do, you can surely kiss your riches goodbye. Someone will dive here just to find out what happened.”
The Poet shrugged. “It looks like I’m destined to lose my life savings.” He held up a closed fist. “Over three hundred coin.”
Peary sighed deeply and tried his best to understand things from the Poet’s point of view.
“I realize it will take a monumental amount of faith and trust for you to believe I’m going to cut you in on the coin from the Danvar salvage,” Peary said. “But you can trust me. If I didn’t want you around, I could have left you in that sand box.”
The Poet nodded, and Peary continued.
“But if you can do it, if you can trust me, you’ll soon realize that what you have down there, however much it is, is only a drop in the bucket. We don’t need it.”
“A bird in the hand,” the Poet said. “All these nonsense sayings we have. I don’t even know where we get them.”
Peary shrugged. “From the before, most likely. From the time of the old world, when Danvar was a populous city-state, gods walked the earth, and water fell from the sky.”
The old man looked at Peary and narrowed his eyes. Now who’s being poetic? “We leave the Legion sarfers, then,” the Poet said. “Be easier and faster that way.”
“Yep,” Peary said.
“There’s another problem buried down there, diver.”
“What’s that?”
“Men have been killed by sand used as a weapon,” the Poet said. “Leaving the sarfers here is a sign. It’s plain what happened once you look at it, and using the sand for that kind of thing is a killing offense.”
“I’ve seen men die in all sorts of ways,” Peary said, “just in the last few days.” He looked off to the west, toward the mountaintops in the distance. “Something tells me the rules have changed, old man. Be a lot of dyin’ before this all gets sifted.”
Six days later, the four of them looked down from a high dune onto the trader village, a mobile tent town that had sprung up like a sand fern from the depths. It had taken twice as long as Marisa had thought it would to find her uncle’s trading camp out here, south and west of Low-Pub. Hauling a wounded man really did slow things down.
Peary noticed that there were fewer sarfers flowing in and out than there ought to be—most of the divers and salvage teams must still be out and on the hunt for Danvar, he guessed. Still, commerce continued, and here and there sarfers and smaller sand-skidders moved through the valley or were staked out with ties while the owners visited the coin-changers, the merchants, the pub tent, or the camp whores.
Peary liked the feel of Marisa’s hand in his, even through his sailing gloves, and he wanted more than anything else in the world for the two of them to be free of this world of sand. Perhaps out there—out west—they’d find a place where they could live without the constant danger and darkness that pervaded their lives. Like the sand fern, they just wanted to poke their heads up somewhere—someplace where poverty and oppression weren’t in the very air they had to breathe. Maybe there really are oceans out there, he thought, or wide-open spaces where the sand hasn’t covered everything like a blanket. Maybe there’s a heaven.
He looked down at the sand and kicked it with his boot. Only a devil would tell me that this is all there is.
“I’m a little sore,” Peary heard Reggie say.
“You’ve been shot,” said the Poet. “That doesn’t just go away after a handful of days. I was wounded in the head only a little more than a week ago, and you don’t hear me whimpering. Do you have a fever?”
“It’s hard to say,” Reggie said. “Does a fever include hunger for roasted lizard and the desire for enormous quantities of beer?”
The Poet waved a hand at the sandal hop. “You’re doing fine. Shut up.”
Reggie gave the Poet a dismissive look. “When I’m rich, no lizard for you, old man.”
Peary pointed down at the camp. “Marisa and I will go in to see her uncle with the Danvar goods.” He lowered his hand and then stretched his back and neck, trying to relieve the stress. “Hopefully we won’t attract much attention. We’ll make a good deal, get paid, and then meet you all back up here as soon as we’re able.”
“What about the beer and the lizard?” Reggie asked.
“We’ll pick you up some meds and bandages, and some caravan staples for the trip,” Peary said without looking at the wounded man.
“Caravan staples?”
“Jerky, cured fat. Berries. Some protein crumbles for a soup.”
“Damn,” Reggie said. “Being rich sucks.”
The old man put up his hand to speak, and Peary looked over at him and nodded. “What say you, Poet?”
“I think you should leave the salvage here. Make your deal, and when you’ve agreed with Marisa’s uncle, come get the cases.”
Peary glared at the old man. “So you can steal them again?”
“I think I’ve earned your trust by now, diver.”
“Your standard for earning trust is too low.”
The old man looked at Peary and blinked his eyes slowly. “Then you do whatever you think you need to do. I’m just saying that there are brigands down there, too. That kind of wealth would be tempting for any man to steal.”
“We can trust my uncle,” Marisa said.
“I don’t doubt that,” the Poet answered, even though he did. “But there are men who work for him, and other pirates and scofflaws who dig into every tent like sand fleas. Ears opened. Waiting to hear news of Danvar.”
Peary exhaled deeply. “We’ll work it out, Poet. Your concern is noted.”
“Don’t get killed, is all I say,” the Poet said.
Peary nodded. He was weary of the constant warnings. “That’s definitely a priority.”
Marisa and Peary approached her uncle’s tent, trying to act like regular traders coming to buy goods or sell salvage. Just outside the door, a man reclined on a makeshift chair, spinning a dive knife in one hand. He didn’t move as Peary and Marisa approached, but he looked at them through narrowed eyes—an implied threat—and spun the knife again.
“What’s your business, divers?” the man said in a low, threatening rattle when the two had gotten close enough to hear him. The spinning knife dropped perfectly into the man’s hand, speaking its own language of blade and blood.
“Our business is none of yours,” Peary said.
When the man moved to stand, Peary met him halfway and got directly in his face. “This is family business,” Peary said coolly, “not for the ears of two-coin haulers or hired hands, got it?” He looked the man in the eyes, seemingly unaffected by the fact that the man was holding a dive knife.