Outside, men and women milled between the tents, filling the spaces. Their stares felt like arrows. Pulling Korbyn by the elbow, Liyana strode in the direction of the horses.
A woman with a baby in her arms rushed toward them. “Please, help my baby. She’s sick!” She thrust the baby at Korbyn. Korbyn stumbled as he caught the child.
As if the woman had ignited a spark inside the crowd, others pressed forward. “The well is nearly dry,” one man said. “A few more months, that’s all we need.”
“The birds . . . The eggs won’t hatch right. Please . . . If you help them . . .”
“I broke my leg. Can’t work.”
“My husband is ill. . . .”
“Can’t find our usual prey. Hunting has gone bad. The drought . . .”
They clustered closer. The mother of the baby was pushed toward the back of the crowd, and in Korbyn’s arms, the baby began to cry soft mewling sounds like a hurt kitten. A few began to push and shout as requests switched to demands. Liyana tried to force her way through.
She heard hoofbeats. “Get ready,” she told Korbyn.
The crowd broke apart as the horses thundered through. Fennik grabbed Liyana’s waist and yanked her up in front of him. Clutching the horse’s neck, she shot a look behind them to see Korbyn swing himself onto one of the other riderless horses. With a tight grip on the reins, Raan led Pia’s horse as Pia clung to her mare’s neck. They pounded through camp and burst out the other side. Men and women chased after them.
Several miles away, at Fennik’s signal, they slowed, and then stopped. Fennik dismounted and began to care for the horses. All the horses had foam around their mouths. Sweat glistened on their sand-coated hides, and their sides heaved. Dismounting also, Pia soothed them, cooing to them as she stroked their necks.
The baby whimpered.
“You have a baby!” Pia cried.
“Her mother said she was sick,” Korbyn said. He held the baby away from his body as if he were afraid that the baby would bite.
“You have to help it,” Pia said.
“Did you think I planned to leave it for the sand wolves?” Korbyn said. “Of course I’ll help it.” He slid off his horse. A dried-out cactus crunched under his feet.
“You should have given it back,” Liyana said. She tried not to look at it, tried not to care, but at the baby’s cries, she felt herself twist inside. She thought of the babies in her clan, of the ones who needed Bayla.
The baby cried louder. Her face squished and reddened.
Pia scooped the baby out of Korbyn’s arms. “Let me.” Pacing in a circle, she sang a lullaby. The baby quieted and then began to utter a string of nonsense syllables, as if she were singing with Pia.
Korbyn lowered himself to the ground. “Give it to me.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Liyana said. But she didn’t say it with any conviction. If Korbyn didn’t heal this baby, no one would. The baby’s god wasn’t coming.
Still crooning, Pia lowered the baby into Korbyn’s arms. Immediately the child wailed louder than before. Pia scooped her up again and sat close to Korbyn. “Will this work?” Singing, she calmed the baby. Her tiny, pudgy fingers wrapped around Pia’s white hair.
As Korbyn focused on the child, Liyana sidled closer to Fennik and Raan. The three of them watched the camp. A plume of sand advanced from it. “He’ll collapse after he heals,” Liyana said. “He always does. It’s his worst trick.”
Both of them looked grim. “We are fortunate that the Falcon Clan does not have horses, but even on foot, they’ll catch up,” Fennik said.
“Loan me one of your bows,” Raan said.
“We cannot shoot unarmed people,” Fennik said. The sand cloud obscured the number of people, but it had to be more than a dozen. It could have been a hundred. It could have been the entire clan. “Plus I do not have enough arrows.”
Liyana rubbed her forehead, trying to think. She kept feeling the stones that her clan had thrown at her. If Jidali hadn’t intervened, this could have been her fate, and her clan could have condemned themselves. This baby could have been her cousin.
Fennik checked on Korbyn. “He isn’t finished yet.”
The plume of sand drew closer. It spread out wide, blanketing a stretch of the desert. Liyana heard shouting roll across the desert toward them.
“They’re coming,” Raan said. “A lot of them.”
“Five minutes, and we interrupt him,” Liyana said.
Fennik tightened the saddles on the horses, who pawed the ground and snorted. Closer, Liyana recognized the magician and the chieftess at the head of the horde. At least a hundred men and women fanned out behind them.
“I don’t think we have five minutes,” Raan said.
Liyana knelt beside Pia and Korbyn, but she couldn’t speak. She kept picturing Jidali as a baby. It wasn’t this child’s fault that his god hadn’t come.
Singing the words in the same lullaby tune, Pia said, “Leave me here, and I will deliver the baby to her mother when she comes.”
“You can’t risk it,” Liyana said. “Your clan needs you.”
Pia broke off singing. “I cannot leave a baby alone and merely hope they find her!” Hearing Pia’s agitation, the baby scrunched her face into a knot and screamed. Her cheeks flushed red.
Korbyn’s eyes snapped open. And then he toppled over.
Using one of Raan’s choicest swears, Liyana shook him. “Korbyn, wake up! You need to ride!” She and Fennik hauled him to his feet and with Raan’s help, they hoisted him onto a horse.
Fennik secured him on and called to Pia, “You need to mount now!”
“I’ll take the baby back,” Raan said. She lifted the child out of Pia’s arms. Immediately, the baby began to wail, reaching for Pia. Raan bounced the baby on her hip with a practiced ease. The baby fussed but then settled against her.
The Falcon Clan was close. The chieftess shouted to them. Liyana could nearly distinguish words in the yell. Fennik scooped up Pia and tossed her onto a horse. “Raan has the baby?” Pia said. “I don’t hear crying. . . .”
“I’ll escape north after I deliver the child,” Raan said. “Be there so I don’t die of dehydration.”
Liyana began, “How can we trust—”
Raan flashed Liyana a smile. “You don’t have a choice. Or rather, you do: me or Pia. And which of us has more practice escaping?”
There was zero time left to discuss it. Liyana swung herself onto a horse, and they galloped away, leaving Raan to greet the doomed clan.
Just north of the Falcon Clan, Liyana climbed the branches of a tamar tree. She squinted at the sands beyond and saw no one. The camp was a smudge in the distance. Below her, Korbyn, Fennik, and Pia camped in the tree’s wide shadow, obscured from view by the spread of drooping limbs. The ancient tree covered nearly thirty feet of desert with limbs that reached the ground and then stretched vine-like a hundred feet in every direction. In the heat of the day, its broad leaves had curled into tight rolls, but the branches still sheltered Liyana and the others from the endless hot wind.
So far they’d waited half a day.
Liyana climbed down the tree, negotiating her way through the tangle of branches. She dropped to the ground next to their tent. “She isn’t going to come,” Liyana said. “We should have left the baby.”
At the base of the tree, Pia cried, “Are you heartless? It was a baby!”
“I didn’t say leave it to die,” Liyana said. “The clan was five minutes away. If we’d left it on bright cloth, they would have seen it, rescued it, and taken it happily home. Raan used that baby to flee.”
“She’ll rejoin us,” Pia said. “She has to. She won’t let her clan die.”
Another hour passed. And another.
Korbyn lit a fire, a small fire with little smoke, on the opposite side of the tamar tree. He set the various
