Neighbors still smiled at her. People waved to her from high on the cliff, where they were perched to get a good view of the royal caravan. The tale of what had happened at the showroom must not have traveled to them yet, or else they would be laughing.
As for Silver, she wasn’t sure she would ever laugh again.
Her suit had been a failure. Her father was furious. Calidia was farther away than it ever had been. But the worst thing of all was …
Sagittaria Wonder.
At first glance, Sagittaria had been everything Silver had imagined. Strong, confident, mysterious. Impossible to miss. Waves of power flowed off her. She was the hero of Silver’s dreams. She had even called Silver ambitious!
After that, though, her cruelty was like the bite of a scorpion. Fiercely painful at first touch, then spreading throughout Silver’s body until she was overtaken with shame. How could her hero be so awful?
Silver wiped her nose with the back of her hand and crunched up the flight of stairs she’d toppled down earlier in the day. All her aches and bruises were returning, now that there was nothing to take her mind off them.
She slammed the door of her house open, then slammed it closed behind her. In her room, she peeled the suit off and tossed it on the floor. With a cry, she tore the drawings off her walls and threw them down, too.
“Where were you, Nebekker?” she sobbed.
Her mother was still at the yarnsladies’ tents and would probably be all night. There would be parties for the Calidians, with delectable finger foods, and musicians pounding drums and plucking strings for dancing. They would celebrate their sales, their friendly relationships, and the very beauty of the harsh but generous desert.
Silver would stay in her room for all of it. She looked out the window the rest of the afternoon, fat tears making tracks down her cheeks.
“You’re as dumb as a dung beetle,” Silver told herself.
Everything she had done, all the people she had disappointed—it was all for nothing.
In the distance, the sun’s colors blurred into a muted yellow, then orange and pink as evening approached. And still the winds blew. The sleepless night and wounded emotions of the day overcame Silver. She sank into a restless sleep.
When she opened her eyes again and went to the window, it was dark out. Very dark.
The moon and stars were hidden. People outside carried the colorful gem lanterns of Jaspaton, or the intricately patterned metal lanterns of Calidia. But the light they gave off was dimmed by all the sand in the air.
Were this a normal night of storms, everyone would be tucked away in their homes. Tonight, though, was for celebration. Partygoers were dressed in their finest, but by the end of the night, Silver knew their most beautiful scarves would be frayed and torn by the sands.
The winds settled briefly and a sliver of moonglow broke through the clouds. A deceptive calm. Everyone hurried to their festivities while there was a respite from the weather.
Silver squinted. Down on the desert floor, a dark figure shadowed by a lantern’s soft light began trekking out toward the deep desert. Three more people followed, their backs heavy with packs. Who was ignorant enough to leave the city on a night like this?
She dashed out of her house and crossed the road to get a better view. The lead traveler was tall and slender. Dressed all in black, with long black hair whipping out of a scarf hastily drawn up. Silver knew that confident walk.
Sagittaria Wonder was heading into the desert. And, when the storm resumed, as it surely would, to her death.
Silver raced to get dressed. The great water dragon racer was right: Silver was ambitious, and she would use this opportunity to convince her that she was worth taking a chance on. Even if it meant risking her life.
She started to put on her trousers, but the desert was frigid at night. Her riding suit would keep her warm and keep the whipping sand from blasting a layer of skin off her body.
She snarled at the suit. The awkward, ugly thing had earned her only Sagittaria Wonder’s scorn.
Still, she slipped it on, then added the trousers and a flowing tunic over the suit, boots, and a scarf wrapped around her face and head. Grabbing a lantern, she burst out of the house and raced down the stairs and roads to the lower levels.
Already, Sagittaria was out of sight. But Silver knew what direction she had taken. It was a trail toward the sand dunes where she’d surfed. It shouldn’t be hard for her to catch up. Silver knelt and struck flint to light her lantern. When the oil-soaked wick caught, she flew with the speed of a diving hawk disappearing into the dark of vast night.
TEN
“Sagittaria Wonder,” Silver called into the night.
The calm was eerie. Electricity zapped through Silver’s body as she trotted down the trail to the dunes. She knew the stillness wouldn’t last. The sand had settled enough for the moon to be seen again, but the stars were still hidden.
She had underestimated how much of a head start Sagittaria had gotten, but Silver was a deep-desert girl.
What was the dragon rider doing out in such a storm? Even the foxes and scorpions were tucked away in their underground burrows. Sagittaria would get herself hurt, or even killed.
Why should I help her? As soon as the dark thought entered her mind, she pushed it back out again. Silver would never live down the shame she’d felt in the workshop, but that wasn’t reason enough to wish Sagittaria harm. Especially not at the hands of a desert storm.
Silver—and probably everyone in Jaspaton—had a deep fear of dying out in the desert. The best option was for hundreds of scorpions to poison you. It would hurt, at first, but then a deep sleep that you’d never awaken from would overcome you. The scavenger birds would find your body eventually and make several meals out of it. But the worst option …
Silver shivered. Family members gone missing in a desert storm, their bodies discovered days later after the dunes finished shifting. They’d been buried alive, their ears and eyes and mouth and nose filled with sand. Suffocated.
A blast of wind scraped sand across Silver’s lips, and she yelped. The storm was picking up again.
“Sagittaria!”
Silver marched on. Past the dunes, which would look different in the morning as they shifted in the storm. Past the end of the trail. Into the vast desert, where her feet sank into the sand and she had to wade through the dunes with aching legs.
Calidians! They might have great palaces and universities, they might interact with peoples from all across the globe, but when it came to deep-desert smarts, they had none.
“Sagittaria!” Her voice was going hoarse. Sand collected in her nostrils in little balls. She snorted them out. Sound muted as her ears filled with sand, too. Who was she to call the Calidians stupid when she had run into the storm just as unprepared?
Silver dropped to her knees. The lights of Jaspaton were now too far to see. Even the dark, shadowy mounds of the dunes had disappeared. She was farther into the desert than she’d ever been before.
She could go back. She should go back. It wasn’t her fault Sagittaria thought she could take on a sandstorm. But as Silver looked in a slow circle, she realized she had no idea which way home was. She was lost.
“Don’t panic,” she whispered. She looked to the sky to guide her way home. “Stars, where are you?” There were no astronomical markers to be seen.
It had been many, many generations since anyone but the most remote of nomadic desert peoples believed in the ancient goddesses, but just then, Silver closed her eyes and imagined the arms of them scooping her up from the desert floor and swifting her to safety back in Jaspaton.