At dawn, the desert didn’t wake up. It was unveiled by an iron wind that stripped the crests from the red dunes like foam from a boiling sea.
The red dust hissed against the dried ash timbers of the handcarts with the steady, dry patter of lead shot. Ren Vale had been hauling the forward trace of the lead cart since the third watch of the night, his shoulders hunched against the freezing northern gale, his scuffed cobbler’s boots slipping on the brittle white chalk-stone shelves. His throat was a dry chimney pipe of salt and bitter-salt ash. Every breath carried the sharp, metal tang of iron oxide. But beneath the bitter burn of his blistered throat-pipe, the heavy stone salt water he had taken from the sinkhole kept his muscles from locking into cramp.
Behind him, the eighteen refugees from Low-Khorat moved like a string of grey ghosts. Master Varos, the elderly cobbler, had bound his cracking boots with strips of salvage linen, his breath whistling through his cracked lips. The textile weavers dragged their two-wheeled barrows with their heads lowered, their eyes fixed on the dragging hem of Ren’s lambskin apron.
Beside Ren walked Mira. Her charcoal-wool shawl was pulled tight around her chin, pinned with her small boxwood clasp. But she had drawn her right arm free of the fabric.
