Bruno thrashed, rolled out from under the raft. He swam alongside it and clutched at his son, shaking him awake. “Simeon, help,” he croaked, throat raw and parched.
His son’s bleary eyes fluttered and closed again. Gods, no. Not so close to land, only to lose him too.
A wave crested, splashing Simeon’s face. He stirred.
Bruno shook Simeon again. “We’re here. Help.”
Simeon grunted and slid into the water. They kicked until they were waist-deep. Leaning their backs against the raft holding Fleur, they pushed until they drove the nose of the rickety raft into the sand above the tide’s reach. The front of the raft splintered. Fleur’s arm flopped onto the sand.
Bruno collapsed, panting, on the damp grit. Simeon fell down beside him. Pale foam hissed around their ankles.
They were home.
§
Bruno woke in darkness, wracked with shivers, and clambered to his feet. He helped Simeon up the beach to a clump of towering grass with long fluffy stalks. Here, Simeon would be more sheltered from the wind.
He trudged back to the raft, its end bobbing on lapping wavelets, and hoisted Fleur into his arms. Her face was pale in the moonlight, her beautiful lips now leached, and her glassy eyes empty. Bruno’s throat grew tight. Fleur had survived rust vipers, deadly scorpions and the cursed endless orange sand of the Wastelands, only to die at sea a day from Dragons’ Realm. He and Simeon had watched her slip away right before their eyes. All he’d been able to do was keep kicking toward land.
That stinkin’ Roberto and the Queen’s Rider had sealed Fleur’s fate by banishing them. He’d bide his time, get strong again, and hunt them down.
He laid Fleur in the grass next to Simeon. His son was moaning, shivering. Unless Bruno was quick, he’d be burying both members of his family. Hopefully there was a village nearby where he could find food and water. Two days ago he’d given their last precious sips to Fleur. It hadn’t been enough to save her.
“Back soon, Son.”
So dizzy he could hardly stand, Bruno grabbed a stick of driftwood, and, leaning on it, limped along the coast toward a lone twinkling light. He had to stop regularly to catch his breath.
Soon he reached a road and some isolated houses. Fishing nets drying on lines glimmered like webs in the moonlight. Boats bobbed on the waves, moored to sturdy posts by thick ropes, their furled sails as pale as Fleur’s face. How he’d love to take one of those ropes, tie it around Roberto’s scrawny neck and choke the life out of him. No, that would be much too quick. He’d make the shrotty Master of Mental Faculties suffer. Or Zens would. Bruno grimaced. That’d be an unpleasant end, tortured at the hands of the Commander. But he’d never do that. Bruno relished the job too much to let anyone else make Roberto scream as they peeled his skin off his pretty face.
The light he’d seen was a torch burning in a sconce on a large outbuilding on the outskirts of a township. It was the dead of night, and no one was around. Bruno edged toward the building. Warmth radiated from its open double doors. A giant horseshoe hung over the lintel. What luck. A smithy, with the forge still glowing.
Bruno crept inside.
He shambled over to the orange embers on the forge, holding out his numb hands. Around the forge were stacks of tools, horseshoes, and weapons in racks. At the other end of the building were a huge metal tub and several washboards. A line hung over them, strung with drying clothes. The blacksmith’s wife obviously ran a laundry from here, using the heat to speed the drying.
Bruno limped over, discarded his sodden, tattered clothing and pulled on a fresh shirt and breeches, tying the waist with a short length of rope. After nothing but desert rations and water for weeks, he was skinnier than the handle on the smithy’s bellows. He huddled by the fire for a moment, but he knew he had to hurry. Every moment he lingered could cost Simeon his life. Besides, he wanted to bury Fleur before morning—before any nosy snoops started asking difficult questions. The last thing he needed was an overzealous dragon rider shipping him and Simeon back to the Wastelands.
Bruno found an empty sack in a corner with Naobian Salt stamped on it. Was he outside the Naobian township? That’d be a stroke of luck. Naobia was the main port and largest city in the south. They could’ve run ashore near any of the tiny villages that dotted the Naobian coast. Or hit a patch of wilderness and been stranded.
He shoved a spare set of clothes, spade, knife and dagger into the sack. Then he scooped some coals into a small metal bucket, darted out of the smithy and tucked his new possessions under a hedge. He added a horse blanket from a neighbor’s fence to his stash.
A few houses closer to town, he plucked some oranges from a branch hanging over a wall and stuffed them in his pockets. His nose led him to a smokehouse, so he sneaked inside and stole a few fish and snatched a waterskin from a hook on the door. He slurped the water greedily down his raw throat until his belly was distended.
The next moment, he was retching behind a bush over someone’s low garden wall.
Inside the house, a dog barked. A candle flickered behind curtains, and a woman called, “Who’s there?”
Bruno ducked behind the wall and crawled away, nearly losing one of the oranges from his pocket. When he
