Vessel

himself in a trance to summon water and food. After drinking away their supplies in the wake of the failed ceremony, the Scorpion Clan had had little to spare.

Liyana pitched the tent and started the fire. All the while, she kept her eyes on Raan. The others, she noticed, did the same.

Huddled by the tent flap, Raan was glaring at Korbyn as he caused a bush to sprout leaves. “It sickens me,” Raan said. “Killing people so they can play at being human.”

Pia clucked her tongue but didn’t quit brushing her hair. “Without the gods, we’d perish. We need them to revitalize our clans—to fill our wells, bring life to our herds, and instill health in our children.”

“Or we could simply move somewhere we don’t need gods,” Raan said. “Move to where there’s water. And fertile land. Leave the desert.”

Pia dropped her brush.

Liyana heard the words but they sounded foreign. Leave the desert? But they were the desert people! She couldn’t imagine not feeling the sand beneath her feet or the wind tangling her hair or the heat searing her lungs. It was a part of how she breathed. Outside the desert . . . she’d shrivel like a ripe date in the sun.

Fennik had quit currying the horses. “If we leave, we lose ourselves.”

“Better than losing our lives,” Raan said.

“We’d lose our way of life!” Fennik said.

Raan snorted. “Oh, and that would be such a loss. Half my clan poisons themselves with alcohol. The other half works themselves to death trying to squeeze life out of dry rocks. We can’t heal our own sick. We can’t save our babies. I lost two sisters because my mother’s milk wouldn’t come. She didn’t have enough water to make milk. Yet her brother was drunk every night. He drank away my sisters’ lives. And you want to preserve this? Haven’t you ever wondered if there could be more out there? If life could be better?”

“I have all I could wish for,” Pia said. She resumed brushing her hair.

“This is a pointless conversation,” Liyana said. She tossed a handful of dried horse manure and then a clump of dried leaves onto the fire. The leaves crackled and fizzed. “Fennik’s right. We are the desert.” She wiped her hands clean and crossed to Korbyn. Dropping down next to him, she closed her eyes.

Picturing her lake, she inhaled. She felt the water fill her like the sweetest air in her lungs. She reached out toward the desert—her desert, her beautiful home that she would never leave because it was as much a part of her as her body and how dare Raan even consider leaving! How dare Runa even suggest that their choice was wrong! Liyana had spoken the truth—she was the desert! She was the sand. She was the sun overhead. She was the hot wind. She was the cracked earth and the rocks, the barren hills and the stone mountains. She was the brittle bush that held its strength coiled tight inside, waiting for the moment to unfurl its leaves. She was the snake that hunted for a desert mouse in the cooling evening air.

As if from a distance, Korbyn’s voice drifted toward her. She sensed him, a shimmer that spiked inside flesh, and she touched the other vessels, smooth swirls of energy within their bodies. She could tell the difference between mortal and divine souls, as Korbyn had claimed. “A snake hunts near us,” Korbyn said.

“I feel him,” Liyana said.

“Draw him closer.”

She felt the snake slither over the sand. It hitched its body sideways. Its tongue tasted the air. This way, she coaxed it. She felt the snake slither, felt the sand on the scales of her belly. She inched across the desert, closer, closer.

“Now think of the shape of your body and the feel of your own skin,” Korbyn said. “Reshape yourself inside your body, and release the excess magic.” She remembered the length of her arms and the curve of her legs. She felt sweat clinging to her back and prickling her armpits. She poured herself back inside her own skin. She imagined the excess magic flowing away from her, and she felt it dissipate.

Opening her eyes, she wiped her forehead with her sleeve. “Did it work?”

“You tell me.” He pointed.

Fennik raised his bow and aimed an arrow at the sand. The horses rolled their eyes and stamped their feet. Pia stroked the neck of the closest horse, cooing to it.

“I felt the magic,” Liyana said, awed. “I summoned it.”

The cobra reared.

Fennik released the arrow. It pinned the snake to the sand. He stared at it. So did Liyana, Raan, and Korbyn.

Raan found her voice first. “You . . . But you’re a vessel.”

“She finally did it,” Pia said. “Sacrilege.” But the word lacked heat.

“Tasty sacrilege,” Korbyn said, picking up the snake.

Liyana collapsed backward in the sand and smiled up at the stars.

* * *

At dawn Liyana used magic to locate tubers buried beneath the earth. She dug them up and had them shredded and fried before Korbyn finished summoning water. She also located a second snake, the mate to the prior night’s dinner. She failed to coax it into moving—she wasn’t strong enough to overcome its natural instinct to lie on a rock to soak in the early sun—but she was able to direct Fennik to it, increasing their food supply.

“Nicely done,” Korbyn said, handing her a full waterskin.

Liyana felt as though he’d handed her the moon.

“Keep the heads away from Raan,” Korbyn told Fennik. “We don’t need her getting any clever ideas about poison.”

“Unlike some, I don’t kill to get what I want,” Raan said.

Stiffly Pia swept toward the horses. She did not feel her way as she normally did, and Raan was forced to scoot backward. “Korbyn’s vessel was a sacrifice,” Pia said.

“Convincing someone that murder is justified doesn’t make it any less murder.”

Fennik hefted a saddle onto a horse. “In my clan, such talk would have gotten you punished a long time ago.” He cinched the saddle around the horse’s stomach.

“Ooh, the big, strong warrior is afraid of the truth.”

He strapped his bows onto the horse. One bow, two, three. He handled them as if he wanted to use them on Raan. “I don’t fear words. Or death. Only failure. That, I fear. But your fear . . . your fear will condemn your clan. Don’t you have anyone you care about other than yourself? What about your parents? Brothers or sisters? Cousins? Friends? What about the children in your clan? The babies? The not-yet-born?”

“She had sisters,” Pia said. “She said she had sisters who died as babies.”

Raan leaped to her feet. “I am thinking of them! You have no idea—”

“Enough,” Korbyn said. He sounded colder than Liyana had ever heard him sound. “I never expected to have to babysit humans. We’ve already lost more time than I’d planned.”

“What is your plan?” Raan asked. “Where are the deities? Who has them? How are they trapped? Can they be rescued? You could be leading us to our deaths while our clans wait and wither—”

Korbyn laid his hand on her shoulder, and Raan slumped to the ground. He then picked her up with more care than Liyana thought she would have, and he placed her in a saddle. He looped the reins around her so that she wouldn’t slide off while she slept.

Pia smiled brightly at them, the sky, and the desert in general. “The day has become so much more pleasant!” By feel, she located the horse that Fennik had saddled for her, and she mounted without assistance for the first time.

As they rode away from their campsite, Korbyn kept his horse beside the sleeping Raan. Liyana matched his pace. Once Fennik and Pia pulled into the lead, Liyana said, “Raan did raise valid questions in her rant.”

Korbyn nodded gravely. He then leaned and checked the strap that secured Raan to her mare. “To answer her: You follow me because I am charming. And yes, I do know where we are going.”

“You could share that information with us,” Liyana said.

He rode for a while without answering. She waited and watched the sand swirl in the wind as if twirled by an invisible finger. Finally he said, “Not yet.”

“You should trust us. We want what you want.”

He looked pointedly at Raan.

“She’s asleep,” Liyana said.