What are you doing? she demands.
“He’s in trouble!” I shout at her. “We can’t lose him!”
If we lose Cavas in the storm, the Sky Warriors will find him. And when they do … I shake off the awful thought, keeping my daggers out and my eyes narrowed for any signs of a horse. Then, through a part in the clouds of dust, I see him—struggling against the grip of a dustwolf that’s trying to drag him along the sand. There’s no sign of Gharib. I hesitate. Attacking the dustwolf could easily hurt Cavas as well. But doing nothing would be worse.
Attack, I think, and take careful aim. The dustwolf’s howl of pain is my only answer.
“Cavas!” I cry out. “Cavas, are you hurt? Can you climb on?”
A long scratch mars Cavas’s face. His calf is bleeding profusely. By a miracle, or maybe the grit that has kept him going for so long, he grabs my hand and manages to climb onto Agni’s back. More howls behind us. We don’t have a choice. We’ll have to make a run for it.
“Hold on to me,” I shout, hoping he can hear. “And don’t let go!”
It is a dangerous move. I have never ridden double before on a gallop, and I doubt that Cavas has, either. If Cavas falls off Agni, so will I. But, after a brief hesitation, I feel Cavas’s arms wrap around my waist, holding tight, and we dive into the rising dust.
In the storm, I imagine I am alone, sleeping on a cot in the courtyard of our old house in Dukal. My mother sits on the ground next to me, holding my hand, twisting my fingers, breaking them one by one.
The cot rocks gently from side to side, and now I am floating on a raft on the lotus pond in Javeribad. The water looks like mermaid hair and has the texture of husk when I touch it. Flies buzz overhead, and the flowers turn into parts of bodies I once knew.
A spasm of pain goes through me, and the dream shifts again. I am on a horse now, tossed upon the dunes like a boat on the high seas. Rain falls from the sky, cuts into my skin like glass. Overhead, shadows loom: the roofs of havelis, the spires of temples, a giant bird with hollow eyes. Gold bars surround me, and for a moment, I think I’m back in the cage facing the mammoth, a flimsy dagger in hand.
A young girl in pigtails and a ragged tunic grips my wrist. Her eyes are gray, and so is her face. “Show them your mark!” Her voice is oddly familiar. “Show it or they won’t believe us!”
I pull up the sleeve of my blouse and raise my right arm high in the air. Light pours out of me, banishing the shadows. The cage disappears. Sand shifts, revealing a path encrusted with rock so old it looks skeletal, bleached remains rising from the dust. I hold on to my horse’s slippery mane, fall off when I realize the rain isn’t rain, but sand, and that the sweat coating the horse’s neck is blood.
A CITY OF SHADOWS
39CAVAS
Wake up. The woman in my dream is chasing away monsters, beasts with the sort of fangs that can cut through stone. Wake up, son.
I see my mother’s face: hollow-cheeked and gray-eyed in specter form, her hair whipping across it in long, silvery strands. As a boy, I’d seen her a few times in my dreams, veiled by shadow and moonlight. I did not expect to see her again. To appear when Gul and I plunged into the dust storm and draw me out of my dust-addled nightmares.
“Ma?” I whisper now, reaching out to take her hand.
“He’s waking up, thank the goddess,” a distant voice. “It’s all right, boy. You’re safe now.”
Like smoke, my mother’s hand fades, and my eyes flutter open to light. The soft yellow of morning pours in through a window overhead, casting shadows and starry patterns across the white sheet covering my legs. The air around me smells of flour and herbs, a shaft of pain going through my calf when I try to move.
“Easy, there.” It’s the voice again. “That was no ordinary animal bite.”
I sag into the mattress underneath—a real mattress cushioning my body instead of the bare net of my cot, and a real pillow under my head instead of an old turban. The feel—the very luxury of it—seems wrong. Like I’m still in some kind of vague dream. Yet the voice speaking to me doesn’t sound dreamlike.
I force my eyes open again. The woman looking at me must be in her midthirties, with deep-brown eyes that curve ever so slightly at the corners. A mole the shape of a falling star marks her left cheek. There are other stars: silver-and-black tattoos that curve over her eyebrows like constellations, and a small gold one etched carefully above the very center of her chin.
“Is he up yet, Esther?” another voice asks. One that I might have heard before.
“He is,” the tattooed woman says. “His fever broke sometime this morning—no, boy, not now!” She holds me down when I try to get up, and a moment later, searing pain shoots through my calf. “I told you your leg isn’t up to it yet!”
Memories unravel: Papa falling, his body lit red. The tunnel. Indu. The storm. I remember falling off my horse and then—
“Gul.” My throat feels raw, like I haven’t spoken in ages. “Where’s Gul?”
“She’s still asleep. The dust seems to have hit her worse than you two,” the woman named Esther says.
You two. “Kali. Is she all right?”
“No worse than usual,” Kali says. I slowly turn around, seeing Gul’s friend for the first time without ash marring her features. Bald head, pretty face, bright-gray eyes. I raise a hand to shield my eyes from
