The wind blew dry and hot all night. It rolled down distant slopes and dried across a thousand desert miles, until at last it bore nothing but itself, not even dust. Children in clapboard houses sweltered through sandstorm nightmares. Fights in bars by Monicola Pier boiled onto the street, human beings transformed to tangles of fists and feet and teeth. Even Wardens paused before breaking up brawls that brutal. Better wait for the drunks to bleed it out. Hospital surgeons sharpened scalpels and took drugs to stay awake.
Temoc stared at his ceiling and snatched for the frayed edges of the dream he’d left behind. Fire. Screams. Death. And above it all, a sense of grim inevitable fate.
Mina curled beside him, and uncurled, and yowled catlike in her sleep.
He stood without waking her, and walked their house alone. Caleb’s door had drifted open. Temoc considered going in to watch his son asleep. Decided against it, for the same reason he’d not woken Mina. No need to inflict this wakefulness on another.
There were prayers for such nights and such winds. The sky outside the kitchen windows was yellow-orange and higher than usual—the sorcerous clouds Craftsmen used to protect their precious starlight from the city’s glare had retreated from the dirt. Still the wind blew on. A bad omen. People waking in Chakal Square tonight would fear for their souls. These winds issued from wounds in the world. Demons rode them.
He drank three glasses of water, which did not help. His heartbeat slowed.
He stepped out of the kitchen and saw Caleb at the dinner table, watching him. He swore, and drew back a step. An apparition? A message from the gods?
But the boy said, “I couldn’t sleep,” and was his son after all.
“Hells, Caleb. We should teach you to hunt. You won’t even need a weapon. Just do that to the deer, and they’ll fall down dead.”
The boy didn’t laugh. “I’m sorry. I thought you saw me.”
“Would you like some water?”
“Yes, please.”
Temoc poured him a glass, and refilled his own. They each dipped a finger in the water, and shed a drop on the table. Water in the desert, Temoc said, and Caleb replied, a generous gift. They sat, shadows inside shadows, encased in dry, charged air. “Do you get bad dreams, Dad?”
“I do.”
“Do they scare you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“There are two kinds of dreams. Most are false, with no more substance than a lie. Some dreams are true, but truth is barely more substantial. A dream can neither wound nor kill. Why fear it?”
“Mom says dreams connect. Mom says we’re all tied together in dreams, and sometimes stuff spreads from one person to another.”
“Perhaps.”
“So you’re not scared?”
“I am not.”
“Then why are you awake?”
Because, Temoc thought, fear and dread are not the same. Because to say I’m scared suggests that something has scared me, that I know the shape of the beast that chases me down dream corridors. That my fear has an object, and that object has a name, and this name is known or at least knowable to me. One cannot fear a dry hot wind, one cannot fear to lie in bed awake beside one’s sleeping wife, one cannot fear one’s child. To say I fear suggests that something makes me fear, and I have never yet encountered a thing I could not break with my bare hands.
And yet this boy watches me with my own eyes under my own brows above his mother’s cheeks, and when he questions me I reel. I am Temoc. Once a goddess set her palm upon my brow, once I slew a scorpion the size of a mountain, once I fought demons to a standstill on a bridge over a chasm as deep as death. I preach to those who stand against the King in Red. I am Temoc, father, and husband, priest, and I cannot be all those men at once. What father leaves his wife and child to seek war? What father sets aside his son for an ideal?
Temoc leaned across the table, and ruffled Caleb’s hair. The boy squinched up his face and pushed Temoc’s hand away. Wiry, lacking Temoc’s bulk—but still strong. Strong enough.
“I’m worried about you.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“I hope so,” Temoc said. He lifted the boy from the chair and embraced him. Caleb squirmed, then understood, and hugged his father back.
Outside, that dry, demonic wind blew on.