CHAPTER 26
Kadin
IFELT LIKE I’Dheld my breath the entire afternoon. My chest hurt from the effort. I’d fixed my eyes on the dirt road and blue skies ahead of us, but my crew kept asking Gideon the most inappropriate questions!
“Where are you from?” Bosh had begun hours ago.
“Hush,” Illium hissed before he’d even finished.
“It’s alright,” Gideon waved a thin hand in the air smoothly, managing to look like it was part of a dance. “I have traveled much of the world, but I hail from Jinn, like most of my kind.”
“But what made you come here?” Arie asked, just as innocent and wide-eyed as Bosh.
Stop bothering the Jinni,I thought at her as hard as I could, though of course, she couldn’t hear me. Gideon surprised me again, by turning those pale eyes in my direction, studying me the way a bard might examine a new instrument. Once again, I imagined throwing up all manner of mental walls in an effort to shield myself, though for all I knew, they could be as impenetrable as water.
“I’m terribly sorry,” Arie said in the silence when Gideon paused. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“Not at all,” Gideon’s lips stretched in a thin but genuine smile as he turned back to Arie. “It’s quite a long story, but suffice it to say I’m on a mission to find a small number of lost objects.”
“Like the lamp,” Bosh interjected, and he grinned when Gideon nodded. Ryo, Naveed, and even Daichi were warming up to the Jinni, less anxious now. Illium, on the other hand, had resorted to a sullen silence on the far side of the wagon—although he let them pester Gideon, since the Jinni had made his wishes clear.
When they asked if there was any significance to the lamp we’d purchased, Gideon simply said, “There is.”
Naveed’s eyes darted to mine more than once, whenever a question veered into unsuitable territory, which nearly all of them had, and I frequently glanced back at him. What had we gotten ourselves into? I could only hope the next day and a half would pass quickly.
The scenery changed as we traveled. Trees and undergrowth thinned out until they disappeared entirely. Eventually only scorched, rocky land stretched empty and infertile for miles in every direction, except for the occasional rock formation. In the rainy seasons, the valleys filled with water, but now it was dry as a bone.
“Keep an eye out for dragons,” I told everyone over my shoulder.
“What?” Bosh squeaked. “You didn’t say anything about dragons!”
“They’re rare in Baradaan,” I reassured him. “Very unlikely.”
“Is that so?” Illium growled, pulling out his pipe.
Only seen a few in my life,Naveed signed.They almost never come this far south.
I nodded, glancing at Gideon who simply observed. Did they have dragons in Jinn? He didn’t seem concerned. “It’s just good to be prepared.”
“Prepared how?” Bosh asked, ready to jump. “What do we do if we see one?”
“Not much you can do, except spread out,” Ryo said with a smirk.
Daichi nodded gravely, and Bosh paled.
After that, we had no shortage of eyes on the sky, no matter how much I reassured them.
Normally the open spaces relaxed me. Cities were so claustrophobic compared to the desert. This was my home. But the comfort was ruined by the tickle of a Jinni’s eyes on the back of my neck.
We passed another towering ridge of rocks bleached almost white from the sun; they blended into the sand, creating the sense of wandering through a strange maze that was missing half of the lines.
The city was visible long before we reached it. Built directly into the stone of the mountain, the homes and even the castle were all the same desert sand and rock color that made them nearly invisible if you didn’t know where to look.
The others had never been here. Only Naveed and I, and not since we’d left four years ago. Since we’d lost everything.
When our wagon drew closer to the mountains, the homes carved into the face of the cliffs began to take shape. The city stretched all across the base of the mountain with the castle on the far side, higher up and more protected.
