Kai slowed his lap of the windship, unable to keep his eyes off the mountain of bones growing ever taller.
The Graveyard was comprised of the dead bones of mythic dragons, hundreds of them that matched the size of the Great Elder, each one an entire mountain unto itself. Back atop the mountain range, the Graveyard had looked like a hill of bones, one shift of wind from toppling over. But now, as they crept into its shadow, Kai was awed by its monstrosity.
While the bones of the Great Elder were white and cared for by the scribes, the Graveyard had whole ecosystems flourishing in their shade. They were much larger than the dragon Kai and Rasia were currently hunting, like comparing a hill to a mountain, but both a task to climb.
“Sometimes I wish they were still alive,” Rasia said as she joined Kai at the railing. “I’ve dedicated seasons preparing for a hunt, so much so that when it’s all over, I feel empty. To defeat an elder dragon would take more than seasons, possibly even years. I’d dedicate my entire lifetime to defeating one, and I think I would be happy with that.”
“What happens after?” Kai asked, never doubting that if Rasia put her mind to it, she could defeat anything. “When you’ve defeated the strongest predator the world has ever known, and everything else seems like grubworms, what then?”
“Then I’ll have you.” Rasia smirked. Her words brought his thoughts back to that night two days when Rasia turned him down. He knew it had been a long shot. She nudged him in the shoulder. “Hey, you’ve still got seventeen laps to go.”
Rasia moved to slap him, aiming for the butt. She hesitated and lamely patted his back, afraid of sending mixed signals. She pushed him into movement, and Kai continued his jog around the windship.
It was weird. They were friends. But the boundaries were more twisted, looped up, than ever before.
Kai shook his head and focused on surviving the morning’s exercises. He hacked his way through the lunges, and sit-ups, and pull-ups, and crunches until he collapsed.
“Stop being so melodramatic. Come on, eat.” Rasia nudged her foot against his thigh.
He reluctantly bit into the sour gooseberries and wild celery cooked with their stash of dried scorpion meat. It made him sick to eat sometimes, not in the bubbling nauseous way it used to when he started eating full meals, but sick in his bones to know that his little jih was back in the Grankull eating rations that didn’t fill their belly. Every time he allowed himself to think about the amount of food he consumed now, it gagged him.
Kai finished his meal as Rasia steered the windship into the shadow of a large sand dune, keeping them out of the Graveyard’s line of sight. She crouched in front of him with her map spread across the deck.
Her eyes narrowed, like a jackal who’d gotten the scent of prey. Kai straightened to attention.
“We lose three days if we go around, so we have no choice but to go through. If everything goes according to plan, it should only take a day. There are trails large enough to bring in the windship, but they are few, and it’ll make us a target. If we want to make it out alive, we have no choice but to strike a deal with the scavengers.”
“What’s it like in there?”
“There are only two places in the entire Desert with enough water able to support life, the Grankull and the Graveyard. But the Graveyard sits right at the crossroads of the gonda breeding grounds, the Dragon’s Coast, and the silk spider mines, so you would either have to be desperate or crazy to live there.”
“Would you?”
“Too crowded,” Rasia answered, as if she had already given it some thought. “The scavenger bands are always at war with each other over control of the whole Graveyard. Last time I cut through this entrance, the Han in control of this territory was somewhat reasonable, but I can’t say if that’s the same or if the same scavenger group is still in charge. So. This is what we are going to do—we’ll dig in and hide the windship here. Then we go in and make a deal with whatever scavenger group has control of this territory. Hopefully, it’s the same group I encountered before. Better the enemy you know, than the enemy you don’t. Once we guarantee our safe passage, we come back for the ship and continue through.”
Rasia handed Kai one of the extra scimitars from the equipment hatch.
“I know you’re still shaky with a sword, but we don’t want to look like easy targets. If we look tough, they won’t trouble us. We’re just kids on our Forging. We’re not worth the effort. And don’t forget to hide the weapon you are good at under your clothes.”
Kai nodded as he pulled himself up on aching legs. He placed his dagger under his shirt. He watched as Rasia strapped her double khopesh to her back, slung a bow over her chest, and buckled a scabbard to her hip. Kai’s hands trembled with fear.
“Sometimes there’s no avoiding a fight,” Rasia said, mouth set in a serious line. “You ever kill someone, Kai?”
The situation required the question, but it still caught Kai off guard. It brought Kai back to that alleyway, helpless and afraid and suffocated by bodies trapping him in on all sides. He remembered the frantic way he washed his dagger of blood afterward. Unconsciously, he pressed his hand to the scar on his stomach, the one he had stitched himself to keep Nico from finding out.
“Yes,” Kai told her. He waited to fold under her judgment. She glanced toward his stomach, where Kai held himself, over the scar she’d kissed on multiple occasions. She nodded in approval, jumped from the windship, and marched toward the Graveyard.
The road they entered had obviously been paved to allow for windships to come through. Trees and animals Kai had never seen were flourishing within the Graveyard bones. Flowers sprouted from cracks between the ribs. Large hawks made their nests in the broken hollows. Trees grew large and wild and untamed. Green had twisted and dominated this place. It looked more like a forest than a memorial to the dead.
“The stories say the dragons fought amongst each other. That this had been the battlefield marking the end of their age,” Kai said.
“I don’t know about that. There’s no . . . wounds or scars on the bones,” Rasia said. “Almost as if all the dragons laid down and died. It’s weird. And look at the rate of decomposition. These bones are thousands of years older than the Elder.”
It was all strange and a little fascinating.
“They don’t sing like the Elder,” Kai said. “These bones are empty. The magic has been stripped away from them.”
Kai stepped toward one on a whim and touched his hand to the yellowed bones. He heard them, whispers, a warm greeting, a swirl of happiness, then warning, warning, dread.
Kai gasped when Rasia physically yanked him away.
“What was that?” Rasia asked, glaring at the bones with suspicion. “Your eyes glowed, and they never glow in this light.”
“They don’t?” Kai didn’t feel when it happened and never knew what prompted it.
“Yeah, it’s weird. They glow in the sun, but not in the dark. Come on, Kai. You can fondle the bones after we find whatever scavenger group is in charge of this entrance.”
“Wait, Rasia.” The air had shifted. Something had been displaced. “Someone spotted us. They’ve gone to get reinforcements.”
“Scouts, no doubt.” Rasia surveyed the area. “We don’t know how many they will bring back. Even though we are on their territory, it’s best to meet them on our terms. This is a good place. The growth covering the ribcage will protect us from snipers, and the space is limited here, which will help against multiple attackers if things go wrong. Here, help me set some traps.”
Kai nodded, and they got to work digging holes to cover with brush.
“Maybe you can’t control your magic, and it’s not as big and loud as Nico’s, but it is useful.”
Kai hadn’t yet admitted to Rasia that he had a bit more control over his magic than before. She was still under the impression that Kai’s use of magic to reach Nico had been accidental. Despite the lake’s bold declarations, maybe that was all Kai’s magic would ever be—knowing the wind direction and sensing the occasional enemy’s location. Kai would have missed the scout if he hadn’t been so hypervigilant since they’d stepped into the Graveyard.
“What’s the range on it? Can you sense animals too?” Rasia asked as they worked. Others would have been dismissive about Kai’s “feelings” because it wasn’t the sort of magic they had come to expect, but Rasia poked and prodded, interested in the mechanics to break down all the parts to find anything of value.
Kai concentrated on what he typically considered background noise. He tried to feel with the sixth sense that had been such an unquestioned part of his being. Once he gave it attention, the range widened and expanded so quickly Kai gasped at the sudden onslaught of information. He crouched, as if tightening himself into a ball could help him contain it.
“Focus, Kai.” Rasia grabbed him by the face. He sucked in a breath and focused on the pressure of her hands. The startling noise dimmed to the background. Rasia asked again, her nose touching his, demanding, “What’s the range?”
“No range.” Kai elaborated after catching his breath. “It’s everything. I sense everything. I sense all the way to the Grankull.”
“Control it.”
“I can’t.” Kai squeezed his eyes shut. “I can’t.”
Nico would have given him space. The Council would have beaten it out of him. Rasia demanded better. “This could be life or death, Kai. You do not have the luxury of giving up. Try again.”
It wasn’t the pain that frightened him. It was the too much of it all. But Rasia was right. Knowing how many were coming for them could be the difference between life and death.
Kai braced himself for the onslaught of information. It was better, now that he was expecting it, but it was so much to sort through and make sense of—pebbles of sand, shifts of movement, intakes of breath, running, gasping, wheezing—Kai was a sweaty, shuddering mess by the time he reined in the range. “Three. There are three coming for us. Two vibrations out.”
“Good.” Rasia patted his cheek. She stood. “That is good. They sent five to welcome me last time. We can handle three. You okay?”
“Eventually.” Kai dragged himself to his feet and eyed the trees. Two vibrations weren’t that far out.
Rasia posted against a rib, waiting. She wanted to throw them off guard, to show them that she was expecting them. Unlike Rasia, Kai didn’t know what to do with himself, so he stood there awkwardly when two scavengers finally appeared through the trees. Both scavengers wore elaborate, red-painted bone masks, broken off around the eyes. The third, a sniper, stuck to the canopy.
“Shit,” Rasia cursed and drew her swords.
Kai didn’t understand why Rasia’s confidence had turned sharp and alarmed. They didn’t look much different from anyone in the Grankull, other than the scarred lines etched onto their arms.
“Look,” Rasia said, “we’re just passing through on our Forging, and we have four bricks of scorpion jerky we are willing to trade for safe passage. I didn’t think that required the attention of facehunters.”
A chill ran up Kai’s spine. He never thought they’d encounter facehunters, specialized scavenger assassins whispered of in stories. Kai stared back at those scars, hundreds of them, lining the facehunters’ arms, marking the number of people they’ve killed.
“We’re here for the runt,” one of the facehunters said.
“What? Why? He can’t do magic like the ohani. He’s sickly and isn’t worth anything. He has no value to you.”
“It’s none of your business what we want with him.”
“My name is Rasia, child of Shamaijen Windbreaker. Your Han, Timar, knows me. We can figure something out.”
“Move aside or die.”
Rasia snapped so fast Kai barely tracked her movement. She threw one of her khopesh like a throwing knife, almost catching the front scavenger in the chest if they hadn’t begun to evade. The blade thudded into their shoulder with a resounding, “no,” in answer.
The facehunters tempered their surprise, and the first quickly faced Rasia as an opponent worthy of their attention.
The second scavenger came after Kai. Kai stumbled back against the rib, eyeing the curved sword in the facehunter’s hand. The scavenger stumbled and buckled their knee in the hole Kai and Rasia had dug earlier. Kai dropped the helpless act, snatched his dagger from under his robe, and stabbed the blade under the scavenger’s ribs.
Warm blood drenched Kai’s forearm. Kai twisted the dagger free, and the scavenger slumped to the ground. At the same time, Rasia feinted, ducking underneath the other scavenger’s wide swing, and thrust the khopesh’s sharp end into their stomach.
An arrow flew out of the canopy straight toward Rasia. Kai sucked in an alarmed breath, and a gust of wind bounced the arrow away.
Rasia loosened her sword from her opponent’s chest, and all in one smooth motion, unswung her bow and aimed it up toward the scout. “Kai. Where?”
“Two feet headward.” The brambles were too thick for the arrow to get through. A branch wobbled, then stillness. “They’re gone.”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Rasia said, turning. She grabbed Kai by the hand and ran. “What do they want with you? And why would they send facehunters after you? It doesn’t make any sense.”
If it weren’t for Rasia’s preparation and foresight, Kai doubted he would have made it out of that encounter alive.
Despite all the drills and laps Kai had made around the windship in the past couple of days, his lungs burned at the edges as they ran. Kai fought through it, focused on placing one foot in front of the other until they shot free of the Graveyard’s vines. Kai stumbled to his knees.
“We’re not safe yet. We have to make it to the windship.”
The distance between Kai and the sand dune where they hid their ship yawned further the longer he stared. Rasia studied Kai, analyzed the situation, and in an instant decided. “I’m going to run ahead for the ship. You keep running. Don’t you dare stop, or I swear I’m going to kick you in the balls.”
Kai nodded, unable to catch his breath enough to answer her. Rasia sped off, like lightning, revealing just how much Kai slowed her down. But he kept his promise. He forced one foot in front of the other, dragging them along like anchors.
Rasia curved the windship beside him.
She didn’t slow.
Kai jumped using the last of his strength and caught the steps. Rasia grabbed ahold of his arms and helped him climb aboard.
Kai collapsed back, chest heaving, utterly spent. Kai was more than a little happy to put some distance between himself and the Graveyard.