Passenger (Passenger, #1)(124)

Wander off into the desert?

Leave the other girl for dead?

Etta shook her head slowly. She was a lot of things, and was capable of handling a great deal more than she’d ever known, but that was cold-blooded. That was an absolute last resort if nothing else worked.

“I can almost picture it, you know,” Sophia began, laughing. “Grandfather’s face. His surprise when I complete the impossible task.”

“Surprise?” Etta felt the same feeling trickling through her. “You mean…”

Ironwood didn’t know she’d followed them. She’d come by herself, on her own volition.

“Now you’ve got the shape of things,” Sophia said. “I owe it to you, of course. Remember what you said about taking control of my life? If he won’t give me the honor of being the heir, then I’ll damn well prove to him I’m the right choice.”

And it was then that Etta knew she’d need to sort out a different plan, to prepare herself for the absolute worst. Because all the strategies in the world couldn’t guard you from the lengths a hungry young girl would go to, to get what she thought she deserved.


HOURS LATER, AFTER THE SUN HAD PASSED OVER THEIR HEADS and was setting at their backs, after the green oasis of Damascus had become a distant memory, Etta realized she had imagined this desert all wrong.

She’d expected piles of sand—dunes they’d sink down into. It was pure ignorance about this part of the world. The land that spread out before them was one of two things: flat, or mountainous. The mountains seemed always to be in the distance, shrouded by a gray haze. The wind whipped around enough to play with the pale, packed dirt underfoot, teasing whatever the horses had kicked up. Its shrieking had a kind of cadence to it. It whispered, coaxed, like it was trying to lead them astray.

The horses devoured the few spots of shriveled shrubbery into the earth when they stopped to rest. Their lungs were heaving, and Etta’s horse’s body radiated heat until her legs were damp with both its sweet, pungent sweat and her own. She wasn’t cut free until it came time to walk the animals.

One of the guardians located a rough well that had been dug into the hard ground. Sophia translated what he said: that it had likely been left by the Romans who’d used this road to travel to Palmyra, and was still in use by the few Bedouin tribes inhabiting the desert. The water was stale and sickly-looking, collected from weeks-old rain, but the horses drank until there was nothing left, and then it was time to continue on.

There was no shade, no water, absolutely nothing save the occasional ancient crumbling structure in the distance. When the dirt settled, Etta could see a hundred miles in every direction; the heat toyed with the air, making it dance like the entrance to a passage. After a while, the thought of looking for a passage became too depressing, and Etta was too sore and tired to try. Even with the protection of the robe and veil, the sun baked her inside out.

Just as Etta thought Sophia would force them to ride through the night, a cluster of pale, low buildings appeared in the distance.

“Kurietain,” Sophia said, clearly relieved, as she wiped the sweat from her face with her sleeve.

“How far do we have till Palmyra?” Etta asked, sliding down off the bedraggled horse. The poor thing could barely keep its head up, and shuddered as she and the guardian removed their weight for the duration of the short walk to the village.

“About another day’s journey north,” Sophia said. “I want to keep pushing after we get water, but our illustrious guardians seem to think we should try to trade the horses for camels.”

Switching to camels—animals capable of surviving days without water in the desert—sounded pretty reasonable to Etta.

“What are their names?”

“The camels? How the hell should I know?”

Seriously?

“The guardians!” Etta gestured to the two men, conversing quietly ahead of them.

“Why? Do you want to write them thank-you notes?”

“You know what?” Etta gritted her teeth. “Never mind.”

She had more important things to think about: Her mom. The astrolabe. Getting back to Nicholas. Even the debut. That familiar fire lit in her heart when she thought of it now, burning through the dread and apprehension she’d felt about living a life on the run with her mother. She wanted to play—for Alice, yes; so Nicholas could hear her, yes; but even more than that, to take control of her future again, on her own terms.

In Kurietain, men were out talking amongst themselves, smoking water pipes, watching the sunset. They drew a few interested eyes as one of the guardians led them through the maze of sun-bleached streets, heading to what Sophia called a caravanserai, but the others referred to as khan—some sort of lodgings for weary travelers and their beasts.

And water. Clean, cool water. Etta licked her cracked lips. Her goatskin had gone dry an hour before.

“I overheard men talking about hot springs. I can smell the sulfur, can’t you?” Sophia said, taking a deep breath of the evening air.

“Oh,” Etta said sweetly, “I just assumed that was you.”

Sophia’s own smile would have melted the face off a lesser person. “It’s a shame you won’t be able to clean up. It looks like we rode you here.”

Her arms felt like she’d tied hundred-pound weights to each wrist, but Etta did summon the energy to flip off the other girl when she turned back to the road.