Together, they could do anything.
Silver looked toward Calidia as Hiyyan took to the skies again. Outside the city, orchards of palm and yucca created a green space. She could just see low sandstone buildings among the trees. They spread out quite a way before meeting with several rows of slightly taller and closer-together sandstone structures. Those structures then connected with what she assumed was the heart of Calidia: tall stone-and-metal buildings, glinting brown and silver and white in the sun. Somewhere in there was the great palace, but it was obscured by everything else. Unlike Jaspaton, which was a vertical city, and so it was easy to see everything, Calidia greedily ate a wide swath of the desert floor.
Silver squinted up at Hiyyan. You’ll have to come down before someone from the city sees you, she said silently.
He gave one last swoop. This time, his landing was a roll. He breathed heavily from his unfamiliar exertion. He sent Silver a host of new scents, including one that was particularly damp and salty. Hiyyan’s longing was strong.
“The sea.” It was close by. Perhaps just on the other side of the city. Silver put her hand on Hiyyan’s side. “I know I keep saying ‘soon.’ I know I keep promising things. But I will keep all my promises. You’ll see the sea. Soon. Promise.”
She picked up her bag and put her arms through the straps. It was lighter than ever before. Empty of supplies. Her stomach screamed at her. She was desperate to get to the city, if just to get something to eat. Something hot, something rich with a sauce, something …
Her stomach protested again.
“We have to go into Calidia first. Which means you have to stay here and hide,” she said to Hiyyan.
Hiyyan peered over his shoulder to the wide hole in the ground. He knew what Silver was thinking.
Silver dropped to her knees and cradled Hiyyan’s head in her arms. “I’m so sorry,” she said. Her eyes welled with tears. “But it’s important that you stay hidden. Remember what Nebekker said? ‘Theft runs rampant before major races.’ I’m not losing you.”
Hiyyan’s mewl was as soft as a fox’s. He lay on the ground and let the back half of his body slide back into the hole. Then he looked up at Silver hopefully.
“Okay. Halfway in should be good enough. But if you hear or smell any other humans, you have to go all the way in, all right?”
Silver fought back her tears and prepared to go. But then, as though pulled to him by a rope, she ran to Hiyyan and pressed her cheek to her Aquinder’s face.
Finally, she stood and faced the orchards ringing Calidia.
“Let’s go,” she told Brajon, and she took her first step toward the great royal city.
TWENTY-TWO
The walk took longer than Silver had anticipated. A common trick of the desert, to make distances appear shorter than they really were. But she kept her gaze focused forward and spoke little to Brajon, to conserve energy. When they finally emerged from the open desert, they discovered a rough road outlining the orchards. Silver rubbed her hand across her face.
“Follow the road or cut through the trees?” she asked her cousin. “If we take the road, we might get there faster, but we also might be seen.”
“On the other hand, we could get lost in the orchards,” he said.
“Or we might get found by an angry farmer wondering why we’re cutting through his land,” Silver said. “We certainly look suspicious.”
She raked her eyes over Brajon. His clothes hung on him. His skin was paler than usual, at least what was peeking out from under a layer of river cave muck. He looked hungry enough to eat the contents of Aunt Yidla’s entire kitchen. Silver probably didn’t look much better.
The cousins agreed that the best option was to follow the road but to keep close to the tree line in case they needed to duck and hide. As the desert heat baked into their bones, Silver looked at the cool shade of the orchard with longing. There was no breeze to kick up their tunics and trousers and keep them cool. They wiped their sweaty faces with their scarves, which were soon the color of mud. Without any water left, they snuck a few leaves from yucca trees and chewed them for moisture, making faces at the bitter flavor.
As city noises built up around them, Silver’s stomach went tight with nerves.
“Give me your scarf,” Silver said. She wiped Brajon’s face even more and tried to tidy his hair. She smacked the dried muck out of his clothes with the side of her scabbard. “That’s as good as it’s going to get until you have a bath. Now do me.”
Brajon cleaned up his cousin, but his fingers caught in her tangled hair. “Your hair’s really knotted, and there’s … monster sludge in here. What happened to the comb I gave you?”
“I forgot about it.” Silver reached back to try to braid her hair, but despite pulling and ripping, the matted mess remained. She reached for her knife.
“You’ll have to cut it off,” Silver said.
“All of it?”
Silver hesitated. She hadn’t realized before this how much she loved her long locks. On Jaspaton evenings, she and her mother would sit and watch the sun track across the desert into twilight. There would be neighbors stopping by to chat and the smells of evening meals floating lazily up to them. Always, there was the rhythm of Silver’s mother pulling a brush gently through Silver’s long hair.
But Silver knew that short hair would be another layer of disguise. Silver wouldn’t be as recognizable, and that would make it easier to find out where Kirja was being kept.
With a steady, sure hand, she passed Brajon her knife.
“Up to my neck, at least,” she said. Were there any girls in Calidia with short hair? It was unheard of in Jaspaton. “Do it. Quickly. Before I change my mind.”
There was the pressure of Brajon grabbing her hair in his fist, then the sound of the knife slicing through the mess. Her head went weightless. It felt like many pounds of hair fell to the ground. Silver had never realized how heavy it all had been. She rubbed her neck, startled to feel the air against it. There was a new coolness there.
“You look really different,” Brajon said.
“Good. Is it even?”
“Mostly.”
Silver fought back an impish smile. Her cousin still seemed uncertain, but she felt a new sense of freedom. She pulled out the forgotten comb and untangled the few remaining knots as best she could. The freshly shorn ends were starting to curl around her ears.
“This is as tidy as we’re going to get,” she said. “Let’s go.”
The melodic rustling of the trees faded away as soon as they slipped out of the orchards.
“Look.” Silver pointed at a great sandstone arch that led into the first ring of the city. Her heart skipped with joy.
Across the top of the arch, tiles read: THE ROYAL CITY OF CALIDIA: GATEWAY TO THE SEA. All down the arch, someone had attached the same flyer that had fallen out of Sagittaria Wonder’s bag, back in Silver’s father’s showroom.
The columns of the arch were inlaid with hundreds of jewels, in every color of the rainbow, all arranged to create mosaics in the shapes of water dragons. Silver reached her fingers out, her eyes sparkling, but Brajon pulled her back quickly.
“Don’t.” He pointed.
A weatherworn sign featured a drawing of a man prying off a jewel in one panel, followed by a panel of that same man being tossed into the sea, rocks tied to his legs.
“They’re serious about their punishments here, aren’t they?” Silver said, taking a hasty step backward.
“Ready?” Brajon said.
“Ready.” Not even the warning to thieves could keep Silver’s blood from racing with excitement.