The slit canvas of Kaelen Voss’s command pavilion billowed outward like a black sail catching a sudden squall.
Through the ragged gash, the freezing night wind of the Western Escarpment poured in, carrying a blinding blast of red iron dust that instantly coated the silk cushions, the glazed date bowls. The spilled pool of sweet northern water. Behind them, Voss’s enraged roar was swallowed by the screech of bronze alarm sirens atop the black dark rock towers of the Sieve Gate.
“Move your boots, scribe!” Nomad Ren barked. His sun-browned hand gripped Ren’s lambskin apron like an iron vice. He dragged him bodily through the cut canvas out onto the frozen rock terrace behind the command pavilion.
Ren stumbled, his boots skidding across frost-rimed shale. His throat felt as though someone had dragged a rasp of barbed wire through his throat pipe. The chemical burns from the spilled mountain water still throbbed with a dull, sickening heat. But the heavy stone salt water the nomad had poured down his gullet had coated his wet inner skin in a protective, numbing crust of salt. His chest heaved, sucking in the rotten-egg desert gale.
“Mira,” Ren wheezed, his voice little more than a dry rasp. “The carts... The refugees...”
