As the storm died down, we made our way to the city. Cion said they didn’t usually travel in large packs like this. It would make it too easy for the guards to catch them going in and out of the main gate.
Normally, he’d send the boys to slip into the city through cracks and holes in the wall over the course of a few days or hours so they’d be in place for a raid. But with the sandstorm as our cover, he was willing to chance it, especially since we were carrying buckets of water back across the desert for the townspeople still waiting on the extra rations they hadn’t received after my guards and I had interrupted the last raid.
Boys struggled under the weight of the buckets they’d covered with thick cloth and spider silk netting to keep the flying sand out, yet not a single boy uttered a complaint.
Cion had made a few boys who looked particularly haggard stay behind. Their gaunt frames probably would’ve blown over in the storm. And with their chapped lips, I don’t know how they would have resisted chugging the water. Even I eyed the buckets, longing to quench the thirst that had been gnawing at me. I felt so dried out. I was surprised the sandstorm didn’t erode me away piece by piece.
We snuck into the city in small groups after Cion gave instructions on where each bucket was to go and where each boy was to be stationed for the raid.
I followed Cion as we dashed into the city with the last few gusts of sand.
The streets were deserted, each window patched with whatever was available to keep out the sand—rugs, pieces of cloth, even a perfume bottle was wedged into a crack in a wall. Achrans were once again adapting to whatever the desert threw at us.
I got lost in the streets I’d never explored. Blasts of sand hit us every time we crossed a new street. I couldn’t have been more grateful when Cion handed me one of the buckets he was carrying and rapped quietly on a door weathered by the elements.
A small man opened it barely wide enough for us to slip inside. His presumably once-dark hair had whitened considerably. Wrinkles hung across his face and under his eyes, each deeper than the valleys between sand dunes. Upon seeing Cion, his wide smile displayed several missing teeth. His lips had receded with age, curling in on themselves, and it didn’t seem like he could speak anymore. He ushered us in by waving his arms.
The room was smaller than my arena prep area. Across the floor lay a rug so worn I couldn’t tell what the pattern had once been. Several misshapen pillows rested in the middle around a central unlit brazier, and a tapestry that perhaps should’ve been hanging on the wall covered the only square window in the room.
Without any breeze, everything smelled spoiled and hot.
The man bent over and brushed the sand from Cion’s feet, an honor usually reserved for royalty. Many nobles had done so with me after I’d won my first match in the arena. They were all trying to show their loyalty, to show they knew I would win. Of course, they’d be just as quick to congratulate any man lucky enough to beat me in the same manner.
But this man wasn’t wiping Cion’s feet to curry favor. No, there was something more meaningful in the glances he cast upward.
Cion gently helped the man to his feet. “Thank you, Lison,” he said. “You don’t have to do that.”
The old man merely smiled and patted Cion on the shoulder.
“I’ll drop this in the back.” Cion held up the bucket.
Lison motioned for him to go ahead.
Cion headed through a curtain hung at the back of the room. I didn’t know if I should follow or not. The man looked at me with bright eyes as he sat on one of the pillows and picked up a small hammer and slats of wood no longer than my forearm, which looked rotted and ready to break under the slightest touch.
His knobby fingers shook as he ran them over the wood until he found a spot he liked. He picked up a nail and started driving it through one piece and into another. I bit my lip to keep from telling him that he was going to break the wood.
But his smooth tapping slowly drove the nail in without breaking the planks. He picked up another couple slats and added them to his project until he’d formed a small box.
Before I could figure out what he was making, Cion reappeared through the curtain and held his hand out for the bucket I was carrying.
I hastily followed him through the curtain.
Inside, an older woman with hunched shoulders turned to greet us. In her arms was a tiny bundle.
A baby.
And all behind her on the floor were misshapen wooden boxes, each one containing a small form.
There must’ve been at least twelve or fifteen. But it was dead silent in the room. I couldn’t understand why none of the children were crying or fussing.
Coffins.
The man had been building coffins.
But no, one of the babies kicked, and another stretched its tiny fist into the air defiantly.
I let out a relieved sigh. They weren’t dead, but they were weak. And there were just so many of them. I couldn’t fathom what they were doing here.
“This is Lison’s wife, Insa,” Cion said.
Insa was a bit taller than her husband, though her hunched shoulders hid her true height. Her hair had also gone white, and she wore it tied up off her shoulders as most women did to escape the extra heat. Her weathered skin was visible in the holes in the shoulders and hem of the simple shift she wore.
Yet she wore a smile more vibrant than the sun when she turned to look at me. She gave me a small nod so as to not disturb the infant in her arms.
“She takes care of the abandoned children,” Cion continued.
His words rang through me. Abandoned children?
I knew the Desert Boys were mostly abandoned children or third children their parents could no longer hide, but they could care for themselves. These were babies, children tossed away by parents who had to make the choice of which child to give water to, which one to save, when rations got cut further because of the drought. Their only crime was being born after their siblings.
“They’re so quiet,” I said.
“They stop crying once they realize no one will answer them,” Insa supplied. “But it’s better that way. The less the guards hear, the better.”
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from their tiny frames.
Their mouths opened and closed, looking for food, water, something to sustain them.
Two buckets. That’s all we’d brought for these children. I knew we were doing another raid, but would any of that water be brought to Insa and the infants in her care?
I’d drunk more water in a day than those infants would get in a month. I’d bathed in bucketful after bucketful of water until the tub was so full water spilled over the sides and was swallowed by the earth. I’d been so wasteful.
I finally understood what Cion had meant that first day at the well, that people would’ve killed to drink the bloody water Sievers had used to wash my wounds. You’ll drink anything when it’s your only chance at survival.
The pressure of that knowledge combined with the heat of the room and lack of water over the past few days made everything start to spin. Cion caught me before I could drop my bucket of water. He gently took it and handed it to Insa.
“Maybe you should rest a moment,” she said, her eyes wrinkled with concern. She shot a look toward Cion, who nodded at her as though he agreed that was best.
“Take all the time you need,” she said as she disappeared through the doorway.
I wanted to cry that I didn’t need to rest. But my throat was so dry and my legs didn’t want to hold me up anymore.
I knelt down next to the closest makeshift crib. A baby slept peacefully, his chest slowly rising and falling.
I never saw babies around the palace. Most nobles had maids who cared for the children, keeping them out of their hair until the children were old enough to behave.
The baby’s tiny hand rested atop the woven blanket. I placed my hand over it. His face scrunched together, but he didn’t wake. I wondered if that’s what my brother would’ve looked like. I couldn’t stop tears from springing to my eyes.
“Are you okay?” Cion knelt down next to me.
I hastily wiped the tears away. I’d steered away from this topic on purpose. “It’s nothing.”
“No, something’s wrong. What is it?”
I looked at him. His face held the same concern Insa’s had. I wanted to ask him why the Desert Boys had killed my mother and brother, two innocents in this fight. I wanted to believe we could somehow move past it, that these past few days had changed things. But they hadn’t.
I shook my head and looked away.
“Kateri,” Cion said. “Please tell me.”
“I . . . was just thinking about my brother.” I shoved off the crib and moved toward the door. “We should go before the other boys miss us.”
But Cion didn’t move. He stared down at the baby in front of him.
“Your brother?”
“Forget I brought it up,” I said, moving toward the doorway. But Cion’s next words stopped me cold.
“What brother?”
My stomach twisted. How could he pretend not to know? Cion had said he’d joined the Desert Boys when he was older, so maybe he wasn’t part of the raid on the palace. But he had to have heard about it.
I swallowed down my anger and straightened my shoulders. Defeating Rodric was more important than having it out with Cion.
Realization dawned in Cion’s face. “You can’t believe the tale that claims the Desert Boys killed your mother and her baby.”
I slowly turned around. Sweat trickled down my back. I could feel the camaraderie melting between us as he faced me.
“Are you saying they didn’t kill them?” He should’ve at least been able to admit it.
“It never occurred to you to question what you were told?”
I shook my head. I didn’t know what he was talking about.
“You really think the Desert Boys raided the palace even though they’d never gotten inside before or since then? You think they moved past all the guards without a single one noticing? And you think the only thing they would take from the palace is the life of a woman and child?”
His words pounded through my head. They struggled to fit in with what I knew of the past—of what I knew about the Desert Boys now.
“The Desert Boys didn’t kill your mother and her baby,” he said. “Your father killed his newborn daughter and the wife who didn’t produce any sons.”