Page 41 of Silk & Sand

Seth frowned. “What do you mean?”

Raider sat up abruptly, muscle tensing all through his body. “When I said I was a feather on the wind”—this time, he sneered the words—“I meant it. Because I don’t remember anything. There is nothing before this shit.” Raider gestured in a way that seemed to mean his whole body.

Seth gaped at him. “You can’t mean … your whole life? Nothing?”

“That’s what I said!”

“Okay. Okay.” Seth lifted a hand in a placating gesture then had to turn his attention to the alembic, which was gurgling out the last of the purified water. He withdrew the hoses from the two buckets and took the alembic to the edge of the tent to run it through its purging cycle.

Seth knew that memory loss happened. He had some holes himself. But to not remember anything? He couldn’t wrap his head around that.

Raider said to his back, “I don’t like talking about it. Please don’t bring it up again.”

Seth frowned, focusing on the alembic so Raider wouldn’t see his expression. He didn’t want to make that promise. It wasn’t in his nature to let things go. And this … it felt important.

But then Raider said, “Please, Seth. Don’t.” Like he’d begged when he’d been out his head from the quiva, delirious and afraid.

Please. Don’t.

Seth turned to look at him and found a hint of that same fear in Raider’s amber eyes. So Seth had no choice but to say, “All right.”

And when Raider lay back down, clearly relieved but clearly still upset, Seth added, “I’m sorry.”

But Raider didn’t reply and didn’t look at him. And even though Seth knew that he’d made a promise, he also knew that he’d been right. He’d opened that door—and he wasn’t going to be able to close it.

***

After six days of shifting sand dunes, Seth also knew that he couldn’t have done this without Raider.

Seth had no idea how the man was tracking their direction in this disorienting landscape, didn’t know how he navigated from sand ridge to sand ridge. Seth would have been lost.

Seth was also forced to acknowledge that Raider had known better what supplies to bring. Seth was used to rough traveling. He was even used to desert environments. None of it could have prepared him for the dizzying landscape, the crushing heat, and the absence of water.

Raider had admitted that Seth’s alembic was pretty handy, but the butter and dates that Raider had packed were about all they could eat. Seth knew the value of butter when traveling, but his life had never depended on it before.

Their dried meat would have to wait until they reached the oasis—this evening, Raider had promised—because it required too much moisture to digest. Most of the water that Seth’s alembic could filter from urine went to the horses.

Dehydrated, overheated, and nearly starving, Seth was starting to get a loose, floaty feeling, like he was drifting in his body.

When Raider had slapped him this morning, it had taken him a good, long minute to understand why, to realize that he’d been wandering off in the wrong direction. He’d been drawn to a mirage of water.

Now, resting in the tent’s shade during the worst of the day’s heat, Seth felt a little guilty. Raider had expended a lot of precious energy chasing him down, and Raider was the one forced to focus for hours every day. All Seth had to do was follow—and even that he’d messed up.

The horses were dozing under the awning and Raider was dead asleep. They hadn’t talked much for the last several days. It took too much energy. Even when Raider had caught up with him this morning, he’d only pointed in the correct direction and rasped, “Follow.”

Lately, Raider had vocalized more in his sleep than when he was awake. Usually, Seth fell asleep before Raider but often woke to hear him mumbling, to feel him twitching.

Today, Seth was still awake. He didn’t know why, but he just kept sitting on his bedroll, awake but not really alert, staring out at the golden dunes. But when Raider started mumbling in his sleep, Seth’s mind sharpened a little.

He looked down at Raider stretched out beside him.

As usual in sleep, Raider was stripped down to just his loose dark blue shalvar pants. He’d lost weight. Every muscle was highly defined, and his belly had a sunken look. His cheeks had hollowed more deeply above the dark beard, lending his face an even more exotic look than usual.

Raider’s lips, dry and cracked like Seth’s, were moving and Raider was making sounds too slurred to be intelligible, but the expression on his sleeping face was easy enough to interpret. He was having a nightmare. He had them a lot.

Seth did what he usually did when he was awake during one of these. He laid his hand on Raider’s chest, feeling the thud of his heart, trying to still him without waking him. That was usually enough to make the dream fade, but today Raider’s chest rose sharply under Seth’s hand.

Seth rubbed Raider’s chest in a soothing circle, as Marcus had sometimes done for him when nightmares of his mother’s death had haunted him.

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