‘Two days.’ Cam did the sums in his head, looking into the bag of supplies. ‘No food, but plenty of water. Should we wait until night-time to leave?’
Shilah peered back into the dark chamber, the shadows flickering and ominous. ‘Not sure we’ll have until night.’
Pressing my fingers against the door, I found that it didn’t have much give. There was no latch to undo, and the hinges told me that it was set up to swing outwards.
‘We need to push together,’ I said.
Gathering ourselves, we gave the door a hard, collective shove. The pressure should have made the wood budge at least, but it was immovable.
‘Is it locked?’ Cam asked. ‘Want to try the trick with Ice in the lock again, Spout?’
I ran my fingernail around the cracks at the edges of the door, noting the gritty sand. ‘I don’t think there’s a lock. Just ten years of sand pressing down on the other side.’
‘You think we’re under a dune?’ Shilah asked, crossing her arms.
‘I took a girl to see the Drylands once,’ Cam said, looking down and scratching the back of his neck. ‘And from what I remember they’re pretty barren, but it’s possible the dunes have shifted.’
Shilah put a hand on the door, as if to ask it through touch. ‘I don’t think it would let out so close to the dunes. Maybe the Khat barred it from the other side when he found out?’
Cam put both arms on the door and shoved again, the vein in his neck showing heavily through his light skin. He started pounding on the door with his shoulder to try to get more leverage, but I quickly put a hand on his arm to stop him.
‘We have to be quiet and strong,’ I said. ‘We don’t know what’s out there.’
We all tried to push at the same time again, but the door wouldn’t budge more than a hair upwards. It was then I noticed the middle of the wood distending inwards, gently caving under all the weight.
‘Wait,’ I said, remembering myself. ‘Let me see that knife.’
Shilah reached under her dress and unstrapped the knife from her thigh. She handed over the blade and I tried not to think about the heat lingering in the metal.
Cam stared at the blade, his eyes softening.
‘In case of the Vicaress?’ she asked. ‘You still think this is a trap?’
‘No,’ I said, going to work on the door’s hinges. ‘I’m just trying to think like an Inventor.’
Leroi had taught me that when it came to tinkering, sometimes the best answer was also the simplest. The door may have been intended to open upwards, but Inventors worked with their own intentions. After a flurry of careful twisting and prising, the hinges groaned, letting me know things were about to give.
‘Get back,’ I warned, heart pounding as I gave the blade back to Shilah and reluctantly handed the Coldmaker over to Cam.
I made the final twists by hand, and the metal cracked, the horizontal door giving way under an explosion of sand. An entire dune practically spilled into the cavern and pushed me backwards. Smacking my head against the wall, everything went a hazy beige as I tumbled to the ground, instantly buried up to my waist.
Things settled, and my head throbbed as I spat the sand out of my cheeks.
Arms threaded beneath mine, helping me up and out of the slice of dune, and hoisting me through the threshold. Shilah said something by way of appreciation, but my head was still ringing too heavily to make it out.
My friends kept a steady hold of both my sides, carrying me back into the glaring Sunlight, where I shook the sand out of my ears. Indeed, we had emerged North of the city, the brown land compact and walkable. There were plenty of boulders for cover, although the air up here tasted more dead and dusty than I was used to. Once I had found my footing, I took a look back at distant Paphos, just barely able to make out the web of streets and monuments and barracks and shops and temples and walled gardens and High Noble Manors and the First Khat’s Pyramid, all built on the backs and blood of my people.
‘Come on, Inventor,’ Shilah said, gripping my elbow. ‘We should get moving. We won’t be safe until we get to that shack.’
I nodded to the city, promising I’d be back to set it free.
And then we marched North.
‘Sunlash and blisters,’ Cam said, hunching over as we reached the rocky face of the next hill. ‘How many is that now, Spout?’
I paused, trying to come up with something poetic. ‘As many as the freedom songs they sing in Langria.’
Cam tried to smile, but ended up wincing, his lips crimson and blistered. He had one of Mama Jana’s sunscarves wrapped around his head, keeping his delicate yellow hair tucked away. There were other shirts in the bag, but Cam insisted on wearing a green blouse pulled over his robe, as he claimed it let in more air.
‘I like that one,’ Cam panted, covering his lips with his fingers. Sweat dripped down both his cheeks, which had begun to freckle.
I nodded, continuing to hum under my breath with each step. I finally realized that I’d been humming the Jadan’s Anthem along with each step. It was the song Moussa, Matty, and I had created in my barracks, back when my childhood was torturous, yet somehow strangely whole.
The melody was sharp and painful. I didn’t stop.
Cam took off his glasses and wiped the sweat from the lenses. His red face and struggling frame made me realize how well my people had adjusted to this harsh world. How we had been forced to adjust. My skin was dark and leathered, hardened by the strong glare of the Sun, and I was still wiry from the years of scavenging the city for tinkering supplies. Even though Cam’s people were deemed ‘Worthy’, it was the Jadans that could withstand treks under a merciless sky.
‘How long do I have to wait before the next one?’ Cam asked, wincing against the Sun.
‘Not long,’ I said.
To pass the endless monotony, we’d invented the Game of Paces. Since there were really no landmarks to judge how far we’d gone, we decided to keep track of the steps taken. There was a distinct possibility that there was nothing out here, that the shack had been swallowed by the dunes or burned down by the Khat, and that we would need an escape plan. So for fun we matched our steps to certain things in the World Cried, starting with small numbers like figs in a garden and stones in the Pyramid. By the end of the first day we had reached things like beetles in Paphos and Jadan whippings. Now, on the second day of hard walking, our numbers were so incredibly high that we had to get creative.
Water rations were tight, and since we found nothing living in the sands, our stomachs had already begun to harmonize their grumbles. The hunger hadn’t been so bad last night, as we’d all passed out at the sight of good shelter – three huge boulders that came together to make a little nook – but it was hitting hard today. Cam had taken to chewing on strips of boilweed, and Shilah had begun to spend more and more time with her hand resting on her stomach. I’d been trying to keep track of how much water we went through each stop, and judging by the diminishing weight of the skins, I knew that soon we were going to buckle against the point of no return. The Sun was laughing at us, only