Dunes over Danvar

^Relics Chapter Sixteen

This is what it feels like to die in the sand, he thought. Like a distant star blinking out to nothing while everyone sleeps so no one notices. Or like a lonely old lizard who never fell prey to a bigger predator but grew old and one day fell asleep and just got covered by the drift, so the surviving didn’t end up meaning much anyway.

The Poet was dying, buried beneath uncountable grains of crystalline nothingness, exiled from the breathing world of the up top. The world of the living. Dying like the lowest species of man—a diver—something he’d never thought would happen to him.

“Only fools and the low kinds end their lives down deep, son,” his daddy would say. “Not even the God of the before cares who dies under the sand.”

Strangely enough, despite his predicament, the Poet’s thoughts were now crystal clear. Maybe clearer than they’d been in a very long time. He could almost make them out—as if they were soldiers in a line, or cards laid out on a table. He picked up a single thought and examined it.

Move and breathe. That was a thought.

The Poet willed himself to move. But a will alone is impotent without ability. This thought he saw clearly too. A will is nothing without freedom and the power to do. He was being squeezed by the sand with such force that he couldn’t even draw a breath from his tank. He focused his mind, tried to loosen the hardpack around his chest—but the stonesand had him and there was no moving it.

That was that.

This is the problem with most of the religious folk.

That was another thought tumbling around in his mind. Those who worshipped the gods of the world of sand; those who prayed to the old gods who walked the earth from the time of Danvar and built towers to the sky; even those few who still worshipped the One True. Always telling people to believe in this or believe in that, as if man has the power to believe in whatever he likes. Believe in unicorns if you don’t, or don’t believe in ’em if you do. Just try that. Just choose to believe something. You can’t. Unless you lie to yourself. Tell a blind man to just will to see, and let me know how far that gets you.

He heard a moan escape his body, a primal craving for air made audible in his ears or in his mind—he couldn’t tell which. And another thought: he imagined that primal breath from long ago, that first breath, when he’d wiggled free of the womb—and his father, or maybe some whore (who knows who it was?) cleared his mouth and nose, and by instinct or by a smack he’d sucked in air for the first time. He didn’t remember that, but he knew it must have happened—and now he could see it like he was there watching it. But then his mind cleared again and what he was seeing wasn’t his own birth. It was something else.

He could see the orange form of another diver, shimmering through the yellows of the stonesand, and the diver was beating against the Poet’s silica prison with his hands, but the walls didn’t move. The old man’s brain screamed for oxygen, but even that screaming began to fade as the seconds ticked by like hours—like in a timeglass he’d seen once in Springston back when his daddy had gone up to talk coin with the people who decided things one way or another.

The orange form pushed away from the stonesand and floated in the middle distance, staring at him, and then he heard a voice in his head. It was Peary, he was sure of it, and the vibrations that made up the voice trembled into his ear in a mixture of anger and fear.

“I won’t let you die!”

The Poet wanted to answer. Sincerely wanted to tell Peary to save himself and to get to the surface, but he couldn’t even manage to move his jaw. The only thing that escaped him was a ghostly moan that carried no force. Another embryonic yelp. A barely audible wince, it was, and more impotent than his will to move anything.

“I don’t know if this will work, Poet,” Peary said, “and if it doesn’t, I might just kill you doing it.”

Better off quick-dead, the Poet thought, than slow-dead. He wanted to close his eyes, but he couldn’t, because he knew that what he was seeing now would likely be the last image to ever process in his mind. He nodded his head. Not that his head moved, because it didn’t. But he hoped that his acquiescence to his fate might be transmitted some other way. Then he saw the impotence of his will again, and wanted to entertain that thought further, but the notion faded into grays and disappeared into smoke.

“Hold tight, old man,” Peary said.

I don’t have any other choice, do I? the Poet thought.

The orange figure moved slightly. “Not like you have any other choice.”

Then the old man saw Peary move. Mostly with his hands thrusting forward like he was shoving a wagon or a sarfer down a dune. That motion was followed by a split-second of nothing, and then there was an impact, like a bomb going off nearby, and the sand gave way and—like the womb had done so long ago—it lost its hold. The Poet was shoved backward and his consciousness struggled to hold on, but it gave way too, and there was only blackness and no pain—like sleep, but deeper, and dreamless.

When he opened his eyes again, it seemed like hours—or maybe days—had passed, but immediately he realized that the truth was even stranger. He was lying on the sand, and he looked over and saw that Peary was talking with Marisa in the shallow valley between the dunes. The young diver was comforting his woman, and took the pistol from her hand and rubbed her back to calm her as she sobbed. With the thumb of his free hand, he flicked the safety on the gun to make sure it didn’t accidentally fire. The Poet saw that the sandal hop named Reggie was lying prone on top of the sand, and there were other men there too, obviously dead, obviously pirates, trapped in stonesand with only their heads sticking up above the surface. Necks broken. Life gone out of their eyes. Temporary monuments to lives lived in violence.

Reggie groaned and rolled over onto his side, and when Peary heard the sound of the sandal hop moving, he walked over to him and pointed the pistol at the moaning man’s head. His finger tightened on the trigger and his thumb released the safety.

“No!” Marisa shouted, climbing to her feet. “Don’t do it, Peary!”

The Poet watched the drama unfold, trying to piece together from the evidence what had happened after the wall of sand knocked him unconscious. Peary had saved his life. Again. Not much to think or say about that. It was the way the boy lived, and Peary was a young man who didn’t think of himself first in every situation. The old man still couldn’t put a finger on the why of what made the diver tick. Self-sacrifice was as foreign to the Poet as an ocean of water, or the tears of the gods falling from the sky. The old man knew only that for the first time in a very long time, he was really glad to be alive. All of these things made his own ways harder to figure. Like his life was a sand globe, shaken hard and slammed down, with particles of stories and lies floating in the viscous liquid, obscuring some seminal truth he was meant to understand.

“He tried to kill you,” Peary shouted at Marisa. He pushed the pistol firmly against Reggie’s head, and the sandal hop grimaced, unable to determine if he should speak on his own behalf or not.

“He hit me and knocked me to the ground,” Marisa said. “That much is true. But I think he was trying to save me.”

Peary turned to Marisa and threw his free hand into the air, as if to clear awy some imaginary smoke. “Save you? By knocking you down and trying to take away your gun?”

“She’s right,” Reggie said through a wince. “The lady is right. Although I can see where it looks bad from your point of view.”

“Shut up!” Peary snarled.

“Trigger discipline, sir,” Reggie sputtered. “If you haven’t made up your mind, don’t let your finger make it for you.”

“Shut up, I said!” Peary shouted. “I’ll deal with you in a minute, but shut up or I’ll shoot you right now just to be safe.”

“Right!” Reggie said. He waved his hands in surrender. “Don’t need to be shot again, I tell you.”

“Shut up!” Peary snapped.

“Shutting up now,” Reggie said.

The Poet rolled to his side, pushed himself against the sand until he was seated. “What’s all this about?” he said, just loud enough to be heard. The air was sweet to his lungs, but it was playing hard to get, and the strain made him weak all over.

“Sit there and recover, old man,” Peary said. “We’re just getting some things sorted.”

The Poet smiled. Maybe it was the first time he’d ever smiled. He couldn’t recall. He wasn’t a man given to levity. “From where I sit, it looks like the sandal hop saved her, Peary.”

Peary glared at him and then pointed. “I don’t need to hear from you, Poet. You were out cold, and would be dead and coffined if I hadn’t pulled you up.”

“…And thanks for that,” the Poet said. “But that is immaterial, really. I am here now. I have a brain that still mostly works, and I can see, too. I’m not blind yet, you know? I can see what happened here, and it looks like maybe the rascal saved Marisa from those pirates.”

The Poet could see that Peary strained against the revelation. The diver’s finger was still tight against the trigger, and the Poet could see that pulling that trigger would release something in Peary. Whether that something was good or bad, the Poet didn’t know, but it seemed like Peary needed to take his frustrations out on someone. He’d just killed a handful of men, and here he was almost anxious to kill another. Peary’s finger loosened, but only a bit. “Just be quiet, please, and let us figure this out,” Peary said.

The old man pushed himself up until he was standing. The gear weighed heavy on him, so he released the tank from his back and lowered it to the sand. He’d forgotten he was wearing it. “Diver… think about it. If he was working with these men, he’d have just let them kill her. No need to risk himself.”

“She had a gun,” Peary said. He waved the gun in the air as if he were emphasizing the obvious.

“And for that—if they’d seen it—they would have killed her first,” the Poet said. “Take it from me. I’ve run with pirates.” The Poet crouched down again, resting on his heels. “They are not the kind of people that will let a woman with a gun slow them down.”

Peary didn’t move. It was obvious to the Poet that the younger man was considering what he’d been told.

“Work it out, diver,” the Poet said. “Looks to me like he did the same kind of thing I tried to do when I stole your sarfer and your salvage. Tried to keep someone from making a mistake that would cost them their life.”

Peary didn’t blink. His finger was still on the trigger. Not exactly tensed, but still ready. He was unconvinced.

The Poet continued. “Put yourself in his place, Peary. If you’re him, and you’re with them, why do anything at all? You wouldn’t. You’d wait until they killed her—which they would have done right quickly—and after they did, you’d claim your reward, whatever that would have been. Hard to know something like that.” The Poet picked up a handful of sand and let it slide out of his hand, like water pouring from a canteen. “Instead, he’s shot and she’s alive. Just work through it, diver—like maybe it’s your job to think things out. Can you come up with any other scenario that ends up with her alive? You don’t have time to save me down deep and then get up top to save her if she’s waving a gun around when they show up.”

Peary took his finger off the trigger and moved his head until he was looking at Reggie face to face.

“Looks to me like he saved her,” the Poet went on, “and just as I have you to thank for my life, you have Reggie to thank for hers.”

Peary lowered the weapon, took his finger off the trigger, and stared down at Reggie.

“Glad you thought it out,” the Poet said. The old man stood and walked over to where Reggie lay on the ground, wounded. He waved a hand at the sandal hop—a wave of derision, as if to say this man isn’t bright enough to be dangerous. The Poet knelt down until he was able to look Reggie in the eye. “He’s a low-life sandal hop, living on the fringes of life. Getting by on scraps and playing all sides against the middle. Why risk his miserable life for strangers?” The Poet stood again. “He wouldn’t.” Even as he said it, the Poet had to wonder if maybe he wasn’t talking more about himself than about Reggie. Hard to know a thing like that, too.

Reggie pressed the palm of his hand against the wound in his side, winced again, and looked over at the old man. “Thanks for that, by the way,” he said. “Glad to know I’ve made such an impression.”

“Shut up!” Peary and the Poet shouted in unison.

“Shutting up,” Reggie said.

Marisa moved to check Reggie’s wound, and Peary let her.

The diver’s thumb once again found the safety and re-engaged it. He waved the gun at Reggie. “Get him patched and ready, and we’ll load up and get out of here before someone starts looking for these pirates.”

Marisa looked up and smiled. “So you’re convinced?”

“Not convinced of anything, yet,” Peary said. “But if he saved your life, I’ll be thankful later. For now, we need to move.”

^{Trade Town} Chapter Seventeen

Peary directed the work as the mess was cleaned up and the sarfers reloaded. He kept the pistol at the ready, just in case the old man had been wrong about Reggie. “Use the visor and your suit to unbury the pirates and take them down deeper,” Peary said to the Poet. “Just sink ’em down. Can’t leave a trace here in case we ever need to come back and get your treasure.”

“Come back?” the Poet said. “We’re leaving it here?”

Peary nodded. “We can’t get it now, and we don’t need it.” He pointed the pistol at the sand, indicating the down deep. “The salvage from Danvar—along with information about its location—is going to make us all richer than we’ve ever imagined.”

The Poet cut his eyes from the sand up to Peary. “You obviously don’t know my imagination, diver.”

“Don’t care,” Peary said. “It’ll be here if we need it, but I don’t think we will. Let’s sell what we have to Marisa’s uncle and just head west. We’ll have enough coin to take care of us for the rest of our lives.”

“That’s if her uncle—or his men… or some other brigands… or pretty much anyone else in this world of sand—doesn’t kill us first.”

Peary laughed. “You’re already dead, Poet. Dead and coffined down there in the deep. Every minute up here is just bonus for you.”

“Here’s to old men and bonus minutes,” the old man said as he activated his suit and began to loosen the sand around one of the dead pirates. “I suppose you have a point,” he added, before biting down on his mouthpiece and pushing the dead man down. Both poet and pirate disappeared, and Peary walked over to where Marisa was finishing up her work on Reggie’s wound.

“He gonna make it?” he asked.

Reggie looked up and smiled, “Oh, I’m right as rain, diver. Nothing but a scratch, really.”

“Shut up, sandal man,” Peary said. “I was talking to the lady.”

“Will there ever be a time, no matter whose life I save, that someone won’t be telling me to shut up?” Reggie asked.

“Shut up!” Marisa and Peary said in unison.

“Gotcha,” Reggie said and rolled his eyes.

Marisa pulled down the man’s shirt and then rubbed her hands with sand. “He should be fine if infection doesn’t set in. Enough other things out here to kill a man. The infection—if he gets it—might kill him last.”

“We go to your uncle’s place and do the deal,” Peary said. He looked off into the middle distance, trying to calculate unknowns that were piling up like the sand. “Can you get us there from here?”

Marisa nodded. “Three days south. No problem.”

Peary looked at her and smiled. “I’m so glad you’re alive, Marisa.”

“Thank him,” she said, pointing at Reggie, who smiled and bounced his eyebrows for effect.

Peary narrowed his eyes. “Not yet. We’ll see about him.” Then he walked over to where the Poet had resurfaced.

“A rousing show of support,” Reggie said, with a laugh.

“Shut up, Reggie,” Marisa said.

“You sail the pirate sarfer off to the east,” Peary said to the Poet. “At least a couple of miles. I’ll follow you and pick you up, and then we’ll come back and do it again with the second sarfer.”

“You do everything the long slow way, diver,” the Poet said. “We have four people who can sail—at least enough to get us a few miles. We could drop the Legion sarfers and head straight south from there.”

“The sandal hop isn’t strong enough to sail, which means I’d have to leave him here unwatched, which isn’t going to happen. So Marisa has to stay here too and keep an eye on him.”

The Poet shook his head. “Your way will take hours.”

“You’re right, it will,” Peary answered. “But not long after that, we’ll be rich.”

“Have you thought about what’ll happen if someone sees us in a Legion sarfer?” the Poet asked. He jerked his head at the red sails: the signs of the Low-Pub Legion.

“Listen, Poet,” Peary said, “That’s a problem in either case if we’re seen, but we can leave the sarfers here for all I care. But if we do, you can surely kiss your riches goodbye. Someone will dive here just to find out what happened.”

The Poet shrugged. “It looks like I’m destined to lose my life savings.” He held up a closed fist. “Over three hundred coin.”

Peary sighed deeply and tried his best to understand things from the Poet’s point of view.

“I realize it will take a monumental amount of faith and trust for you to believe I’m going to cut you in on the coin from the Danvar salvage,” Peary said. “But you can trust me. If I didn’t want you around, I could have left you in that sand box.”

The Poet nodded, and Peary continued.

“But if you can do it, if you can trust me, you’ll soon realize that what you have down there, however much it is, is only a drop in the bucket. We don’t need it.”

“A bird in the hand,” the Poet said. “All these nonsense sayings we have. I don’t even know where we get them.”

Peary shrugged. “From the before, most likely. From the time of the old world, when Danvar was a populous city-state, gods walked the earth, and water fell from the sky.”

The old man looked at Peary and narrowed his eyes. Now who’s being poetic? “We leave the Legion sarfers, then,” the Poet said. “Be easier and faster that way.”

“Yep,” Peary said.

“There’s another problem buried down there, diver.”

“What’s that?”

“Men have been killed by sand used as a weapon,” the Poet said. “Leaving the sarfers here is a sign. It’s plain what happened once you look at it, and using the sand for that kind of thing is a killing offense.”

“I’ve seen men die in all sorts of ways,” Peary said, “just in the last few days.” He looked off to the west, toward the mountaintops in the distance. “Something tells me the rules have changed, old man. Be a lot of dyin’ before this all gets sifted.”

Six days later, the four of them looked down from a high dune onto the trader village, a mobile tent town that had sprung up like a sand fern from the depths. It had taken twice as long as Marisa had thought it would to find her uncle’s trading camp out here, south and west of Low-Pub. Hauling a wounded man really did slow things down.

Peary noticed that there were fewer sarfers flowing in and out than there ought to be—most of the divers and salvage teams must still be out and on the hunt for Danvar, he guessed. Still, commerce continued, and here and there sarfers and smaller sand-skidders moved through the valley or were staked out with ties while the owners visited the coin-changers, the merchants, the pub tent, or the camp whores.

Peary liked the feel of Marisa’s hand in his, even through his sailing gloves, and he wanted more than anything else in the world for the two of them to be free of this world of sand. Perhaps out there—out west—they’d find a place where they could live without the constant danger and darkness that pervaded their lives. Like the sand fern, they just wanted to poke their heads up somewhere—someplace where poverty and oppression weren’t in the very air they had to breathe. Maybe there really are oceans out there, he thought, or wide-open spaces where the sand hasn’t covered everything like a blanket. Maybe there’s a heaven.

He looked down at the sand and kicked it with his boot. Only a devil would tell me that this is all there is.

“I’m a little sore,” Peary heard Reggie say.

“You’ve been shot,” said the Poet. “That doesn’t just go away after a handful of days. I was wounded in the head only a little more than a week ago, and you don’t hear me whimpering. Do you have a fever?”

“It’s hard to say,” Reggie said. “Does a fever include hunger for roasted lizard and the desire for enormous quantities of beer?”

The Poet waved a hand at the sandal hop. “You’re doing fine. Shut up.”

Reggie gave the Poet a dismissive look. “When I’m rich, no lizard for you, old man.”

Peary pointed down at the camp. “Marisa and I will go in to see her uncle with the Danvar goods.” He lowered his hand and then stretched his back and neck, trying to relieve the stress. “Hopefully we won’t attract much attention. We’ll make a good deal, get paid, and then meet you all back up here as soon as we’re able.”

“What about the beer and the lizard?” Reggie asked.

“We’ll pick you up some meds and bandages, and some caravan staples for the trip,” Peary said without looking at the wounded man.

“Caravan staples?”

“Jerky, cured fat. Berries. Some protein crumbles for a soup.”

“Damn,” Reggie said. “Being rich sucks.”

The old man put up his hand to speak, and Peary looked over at him and nodded. “What say you, Poet?”

“I think you should leave the salvage here. Make your deal, and when you’ve agreed with Marisa’s uncle, come get the cases.”

Peary glared at the old man. “So you can steal them again?”

“I think I’ve earned your trust by now, diver.”

“Your standard for earning trust is too low.”

The old man looked at Peary and blinked his eyes slowly. “Then you do whatever you think you need to do. I’m just saying that there are brigands down there, too. That kind of wealth would be tempting for any man to steal.”

“We can trust my uncle,” Marisa said.

“I don’t doubt that,” the Poet answered, even though he did. “But there are men who work for him, and other pirates and scofflaws who dig into every tent like sand fleas. Ears opened. Waiting to hear news of Danvar.”

Peary exhaled deeply. “We’ll work it out, Poet. Your concern is noted.”

“Don’t get killed, is all I say,” the Poet said.

Peary nodded. He was weary of the constant warnings. “That’s definitely a priority.”

Marisa and Peary approached her uncle’s tent, trying to act like regular traders coming to buy goods or sell salvage. Just outside the door, a man reclined on a makeshift chair, spinning a dive knife in one hand. He didn’t move as Peary and Marisa approached, but he looked at them through narrowed eyes—an implied threat—and spun the knife again.

“What’s your business, divers?” the man said in a low, threatening rattle when the two had gotten close enough to hear him. The spinning knife dropped perfectly into the man’s hand, speaking its own language of blade and blood.

“Our business is none of yours,” Peary said.

When the man moved to stand, Peary met him halfway and got directly in his face. “This is family business,” Peary said coolly, “not for the ears of two-coin haulers or hired hands, got it?” He looked the man in the eyes, seemingly unaffected by the fact that the man was holding a dive knife.

The man halted for a moment, halfway between standing and sitting, but met Peary’s stare. When he finally stood, he looked over at Marisa. “I recognize you,” he said. “You’re Joel’s niece, right?”

Marisa smiled. “I am. We’re just returning some gear he lent us, and letting him know we also borrowed his sarfer from the Sand-Hawk Marina.” She shrugged. “We’re out looking for Danvar, like everyone else.”

The guard looked back at Peary and smiled. “All right, then. Tell Joel I went to get a beer.” He put the knife back in its sheath and fastened the snap. “Wouldn’t want to overhear family business, right?”

“Right,” Peary said.

Just then, the tent flap opened and a man beckoned for them to enter. Marisa smiled at the man, and Peary realized that this was her uncle. Nodding a greeting to the man she and Peary walked into the cool and shade of the trader’s business.

“Threatening my helper?” Joel said to Peary.

Peary shrugged. “You’ll want to keep what we have to tell you just between us, I think.” He held up the cases and watched as Joel’s eyes focused on them.

“All right, then,” Joel said. “No more words unless they’re needed, and then only whispers.”

Peary walked over to a counter and placed the cases on it. He popped open the latches and stood back as Joel opened the cases and examined the contents. The trader’s eyes widened, then darted from the goods in the cases to Marisa and Peary and back again. He reached under the counter and pulled up a bag full of coin. He dropped the bag on the counter to emphasize its heft—maybe a thousand coin—and then opened it for Peary to see the contents.

Peary shook his head, his eyes drooping lazily. No.

Joel smiled, then dumped the two cases of salvage into an empty box and began to fill both cases with coin. Almost four times as much coin as he’d offered in the bag. When he was done and both cases were completely full, he looked at Peary and opened his hands as if to say, “That’s all I have.”

Peary leaned forward and whispered. “Twice that and you get the location.”

Joel leaned forward now, too. He didn’t say anything at first, but after a moment of looking at the salvaged goods from Danvar, he whispered back. “You can’t carry that much. And I’ll need a map.”

Peary nodded.

“A very specific map,” Joel added.

Peary nodded again, still whispering. “We’ll pull up in two sarfers. One of them used to be yours, but now it’s mine. We’ll load up and be gone.”

Joel scowled, but there was a smile on his face. “My sarfer, too?”

Peary smiled back and whispered, “It’ll be a really specific map.”

^{North, and then West} Chapter Eighteen

As Peary, Marisa, and the old man loaded the two sarfers, Joel’s hired man reappeared, hanging around like a shadow near the tents, watching the others work. Peary gave him a “mind your own business” stare—a wordless threat—but otherwise went about securing the gear and readying for the trip. Only Reggie wasn’t busy: he remained strapped into the carry rack on Peary’s sarfer, except when the Poet helped him to relieve himself in the toilet tent.

Once the sarfers were loaded, Peary gave Marisa some coin from his dive pocket and asked her to go to a supply trader to get food and several skins of water for the journey. While she was gone, he made a show of cleaning his gun as Joel’s man watched and smiled.

“You have a wounded man there, diver,” the man said when the silence became heavy enough that everyone could feel it solid and weighty on their backs. “Been wounded a while, too. I’d say a week at least.”

Peary glared at the man.

“If the man was wounded a week ago, and you were up near Low-Pub… you’d have taken him there and left him.”

“I can see why Joel hired you,” Peary replied sarcastically. “Quite observant… really.”

“Oh, I see all sorts of things,” the man said. “But most of ’em I keep to myself.”

Peary glared at the man again. “What’s your name, brigand, or should I just make one up that fits you?”

The man smiled and spun the knife in his hand. “Most of ’em call me Cord, but I don’t much care what I’m called. Maybe what you come up with will be better.”

“Well, Cord, I suppose if you stay out of the wrong people’s business, then it won’t much matter to me what you’re called either.”

“Your injured man could get treatment over at the pub tent,” Cord said, pointing over his shoulder with the knife. He then began cleaning his fingernails with the tip of the blade. “Strange you wouldn’t try to get him some help if all you’re doing is a little thing like looking for Danvar. I mean… not in Low-Pub and not here, neither.”

“Looking for Danvar isn’t a little thing, but it’s all we’re doing,” Peary said. “Most of the world is out searching for salvage from the lost city right now, so we don’t have time to sit around here waiting for a gear hauler to heal.” He motioned to Reggie with the pistol. “Marisa can handle what he’s got, so don’t you worry your ugly little head about it.”

“You show up this far south this late, with a wounded man? Strange is all I’m sayin’. Some people say Danvar has already been found,” Cord said. His eyes darted up to meet Peary’s.

“Is that what they say?” Peary asked. “Well, whoever found it—if it’s been found—is probably living the high life by now. Probably over in Low-Pub buying drinks for low-lifes like you. Maybe you should go check it out?”

There was a burdensome silence for a while, and then the Poet started up with some lines of poetry that just made Cord laugh. At the end of one sonnet, a sand hawk screeched and landed on Joel’s tent, then took off again to the north on some errand or another.

“Even the sand hawk is heading north looking for Danvar,” Cord said. “Which way are you people heading?”

“Sand hawk can’t be wrong,” Peary said. “Danvar must be up that way somewhere. I reckon we’re all going north.”

“Most of the big Legions headed that way a week ago, diver,” Cord said. “Most of them.”

Peary nodded. “I’m sure we’ll find a place to dive somewhere. We’re late, but Danvar was a big city, and it’s a big world out there north of the Thousand Dunes. You should try it sometime, instead of skulking around a tent city like a stray dog looking for a scrap.”

“You hear about Springston?” Cord asked, ignoring the insult. He still had a menacing smile on his face, so his attempts at small talk only continued to rub Peary the wrong way.

“We’ve heard rumors,” Peary said. “Don’t know anything that you don’t know. But I’m done with the small talk. Why don’t you go find somewhere else to hover before you stretch my patience too thin?”

“Me?” Cord shrugged. “I’m just passing the time.”

Peary thumbed off the safety again and brought the pistol to rest on his thigh. “Find somewhere else to pass it, Cord. I’ve been polite, but I’m done with that now.”

Cord grinned, put the knife into its sheath, and snapped it closed. “We’ll see, diver. We’ll see.” He slowly walked away toward the pub tent, but looked over his shoulder one more time and laughed.

They headed north out of the Thousand Dunes, stopping every few hours to check Reggie’s wound. At each stop, Marisa would take the time to look at the Poet’s head too, but that injury seemed to be on its way to healing up just fine. As she worked, Peary would pass around some dried fat that he cut into chunks with his dive knife, or a hunk of jerky and a handful of berries, and they’d each take a long drink from the canteens. The water was rank and smelled faintly of rotted wood, but they knew it had been boiled, so it should be safe enough. On the fifth day northward, Marisa asked Peary when they were going to turn west.

“We’ll keep up through the northward swells until we find a good path westward,” Peary said. “That’ll make our trail look right in case anyone is following us.”

“They’re following us,” the Poet said. “Sure enough they are.”

After so many days on the sand, they were getting used to the Poet’s dark comments. Marisa swallowed some berries and caught the Poet’s eyes. “You’re a pessimist.”

“I’m a realist. Been on this sand long enough to know what’s what, too.”

Peary didn’t speak, but he walked back up the southern dune and looked out as far as he could, something he’d done at every stop over the past few days. He didn’t make out any sails moving their way, but that didn’t mean they weren’t out there. Walking back down the dune, he indicated with his hand that they needed to load up. “We need to keep moving,” he said. “Maybe the Poet is right. Maybe he’s wrong. But sitting in one place too long isn’t a great idea.”

“When do we split the loot?” Reggie said with a laugh.

“We’ll wait to see if you live, sandal hop,” Peary said. Marisa had told him that Reggie’s temperature had started to climb over the last few days, and she was worried that infection might be setting in. “Splitting it now would be like dumping it in the sand. You have nowhere and no way to go, so we’re stuck with you.”

“Yeah, but if we split it now, I can die rich.”

“Or I can leave you here and you can die sand-poor.”

“That’s the thanks I get for saving your lady?” Reggie was still laughing. His voice was weak, but he was always in good spirits.

Against his will, Peary was beginning to like Reggie. In a way the sandal hop was like a benevolent version of Cord, just passing the time. Reggie seemed to Peary to be mostly harmless. Still hard to tell, but mostly.

“I thanked you already when I didn’t shoot you before,” Peary said.

“If not dying is the same as being rich, then I’ve been rich all my life,” Reggie said in a mock-serious tone.

“We’re moving now,” Peary said. “Do you want to stay here or go on with us?”

“What? Stay? And let you all split the coin? Nah. I’ll go with.” He looked at each of them in turn. “You three are the only family I have.”

Peary looked at Marisa and nodded at Reggie. “How’s he doing?”

“Still too early to tell,” Marisa said. “I’m not happy that he seems to be running a fever. But if he can beat the infection, he’ll do all right.”

“You know,” Peary said with a slight grin, “by saving his life, you’ve cut our wealth down substantially.” He meant it as a joke, but Marisa didn’t seem to be in the mood for jests.

“He saved my life,” she said. “And I’ve never cared about the money. I care about you.”

Another three hours northward and the first graying hints of darkness were starting to touch the eastern horizon. Around them, the dunes began to be mottled with lengthening shadows streaked by bands of fading light. They’d passed by two fairly large tent towns on their route northward, and in both they’d stopped to take on water and ask around about Danvar. The latter was in order to assuage any suspicion from the migrant tent folk. Peary knew that if his group came across as just another band of Danvar searchers, they’d fit right in and not attract too much attention.

All anyone in the trading towns wanted to talk about was Springston though, and no one had any new information about Danvar—although it was very unlikely that anyone who knew something about the search for the lost city would reveal anything of substance about it. Still, from the people’s demeanor, Peary got the impression that no one knew anything at all. After refilling their canteens and loading up their water skins, they’d pressed on northward, trying their best to look like sad latecomers to the frenzied search for buried riches.

Peary raised his hand as they pulled up near a sandcross—the natural intersection of valleys between swells of dunes. The conflicting winds here had made a clean route through the highest dunes to the west.

“Here’s where we turn left,” Peary said. This valley is our pathway toward the mountains… and whatever lies beyond them.”

As Marisa put together a light meal, cooking it in a pyrinte ring to keep the smoke to a minimum. Peary hiked back to the south to spy out any tails they might have picked up.

Peary was still a young man, full of life and vigor, but the stress and pressure of the last few weeks had taken a toll on him. Climbing up the huge dune to the south of the sandcross was a chore after a long day of sailing. He struggled against the shifting footing as he climbed the dune, pushing with his hands against his knees with every step, feeling the sand give way under his boots as he strained upward. Unsteady earth, he thought, unfit for any foundation at all.

Maybe it was the weariness of a life lived in the endless wastes, or maybe it was the hope that in a few days—or maybe a week at most—they’d break free from the gravitational pull of the dunes and reach the foothills of the mountains to the west. Altogether, he’d had enough of this old life, and if there was a way to just blink and carry himself and Marisa to a newer and better world, he’d do it. He’d do it and never look back.

The dune got particularly steep near the crest, and he had to lean forward and steady himself with his hands. The sand fought his desire to gain purchase. His fingers dug into the grit, pulling against this land that gave way with every grasp. Like life itself, the world was a wisp that was never solid enough to hold tightly.

He rested for a moment, realizing he needed to make a dash for the top. Sometimes forward momentum was all a man had to push himself that last dozen meters. He took a deep breath, lowered himself, and lurched forward and upward, pushing hard against the sand despite its insistence on fading away beneath his feet. When he had a meter left to go, he dove forward and crawled the last bit.

Winded, he rolled over on his back and looked up into the darkening blue of the evening sky, sucking air through his ker like he’d just surfaced from a dive. Again, he saw a sand hawk circling lazily overhead. He had to turn on his side to watch the bird float down and alight on the very tip of his sarfer’s mast.

When he’d caught his breath, Peary rolled over onto his chest and pushed himself to his feet. He stood tall and stretched himself, still weak from the climb.

And that’s when he saw them. They were in the far distance, almost over the horizon, but he saw them: just the tips of sails moving northward through the valley. Dozens of them, it seemed, racing one another through the wastes. Miles away still, but closing quickly, sheets billowed out against a rear-wind, some of them red, but not all.

The realization of what he was seeing flowed over Peary like the sand. A mixed salvage crew. Some from the Low-Pub Legion, others from another crew, or maybe they were freelance pirates, chasing riches and heading his way.

“Cord,” he said under his breath. “And Joel, too.” No crew would be this far west and south looking for Danvar right now. No. These were brigands, outlaws, looking for Peary, his coin, and probably a guide to take them to Danvar.

So much for blood being thicker than water.

^{The Chase} Chapter Nineteen

Breaking west at the sandcross had been the only option available to them, but the Poet knew that the move wouldn’t fool an experienced pirate. Normally, Peary would have had them make camp at the sandcross for the night, but the diver had thought it best that they try to get a few more hours’ distance between themselves and the pirates who followed them. Not that that’ll do much but delay the inevitable, the old man thought. Maybe they’ll catch us tomorrow, or maybe it’ll be a few days from now, but they will catch us.

“Maybe they’re not even chasing us,” Marisa had said.

“You don’t know the sand,” the Poet had replied. It was all he had to say.

Once the darkness was so complete that they could continue no farther, Peary had finally given the word for them to stop. They tied off the sarfers and prepared a small camp.

They slept for only four or five hours before Peary had them up and loading the sarfers again. Surely he knew that the pirates were gaining ground, and would continue to. But perhaps he was foolish enough, or wishful enough, to maintain that stubborn mirage of human hope: perhaps he thought that they might still be able to get away.

The Poet was under no such illusion.

Two more days heading due west, but their progress was slowing. The mountains to the west kept growing larger, but the sand, like the ubiquity of despair and hopelessness in the world, never did give way.

“How much longer until we clear the sand?” Marisa asked as they loaded up the sarfers yet again. This was the fifteenth day, give or take, since they’d first fled from Low-Pub. She’d never been gone from home anywhere near this long, and she wasn’t sure she could stand another day out on the sand.

“I don’t know,” Peary said. “Hard to say. Hopefully it won’t be much longer.”

The Poet knew that if the pirates didn’t catch them today, this would probably be their last night before the brigands overtook them. But he didn’t say so. He knew Peary knew, but there was no need to frighten Marisa or make things worse for Reggie.

The sandal hop was sick, no doubt. Mortally ill, probably. Sicker every day. He wasn’t responding to any of the meds Marisa had bought in the trader village, and the scarcity of water and moisture-rich foods wasn’t helping the man’s fight.

Their stops became more frequent, and however close the mountains looked, they never seemed to get any closer at all. It was like the sand haulers, an infinite number of them, just kept depositing endless dunes in front of them, and the mountains were never quite close enough to touch.

When they finally did stop for the night, the inevitable—the unspoken—hung in the air like sift.

“No fire tonight,” Peary had said as they prepared camp.

The Poet noted that there were moans at this proclamation, even one from himself, but what could they do? The wind was blowing from the west, which meant that even a pyrinte fire, which gave off no light (nor sufficient heat, the Poet thought), could still be detected from the scent alone. It would be a long, tough night without a fire. Reggie was getting worse, and over the last few nights the temperatures had dropped down into the chilly range. Cold. Not unmanageable, but not comfortable either.

Marisa had done whatever she could to make Reggie more comfortable in the haul rack of the sarfer, which was parked in the lee of a dune and out of the breeze, and joined Peary and the Poet a good distance away. The three of them spoke together in hushed tones.

“Can we outrun them?” Marisa asked. She’d asked before, and she knew the answer, but she asked again anyway.

“No,” the Poet said. Peary just shook his head, agreeing.

Marisa didn’t fully understand. “Why are they so much faster than us?”

The Poet smiled. She’d not spent much time on the sand before these past few weeks, and he knew that the ways of the sand people were strange to someone who’d spent most of her life in the towns. “We’re loaded down with gear weight and coin,” he said. “Add to that the fact that we have two people per sarfer. Of the four of us, only Peary does this for a living.” The Poet shrugged. “We’re just slow.”

Peary agreed. “And I’m not very fast at the best of times. I never have been. These people who are chasing us have lighter craft—some of their gear is being carried by tri-hulls and skidders, who usually trail the frontrunners by a few days. They can travel twice as far in a day as just about anyone else.”

“So they’ll catch us,” Marisa said. “Then what?”

There was silence for a half minute and then the Poet spoke up. “If all they wanted was the coin in our bags, I don’t think they’d bother.”

“Are you saying they don’t want to steal the coin from us?” Marisa asked.

The Poet shook his head. “No, I’m not saying that. The amount of coin Peary managed to wrangle out of Joel is significant, and any pirate worth his salt would kill for it. I’m just saying that the coin isn’t all they want.”

“What else could they be after?” she asked.

“They’ll take the coin,” Peary said, “and then they’ll want someone—either me or the old man—to take them to Danvar.”

“But they have the map!”

“Maybe they do, but the map means nothing if they don’t trust it!” the Poet said, a little too loudly. “As far as they know, it could have been faked. It could be wrong. In fact, we should have been suspicious when Joel gave you double the coin just for the map. He was just biding time until he and his man could get a crew up to go after you.”

“I can’t believe my uncle would do this,” Marisa said.

The Poet laughed mockingly. “Any man would do this.”

“That’s not true,” Peary said. “You didn’t do it when you had the chance. You didn’t run straight to the money-changers or to the Legion heads and tell them about Danvar. You didn’t sell off the salvage or my gear.”

“A momentary lapse in judgment,” the old man said, closing his eyes.

Marisa waved her hand and then stood up. She was frustrated, and it was obvious that she didn’t want to listen to the Poet and Peary bickering. “So what?” she said. “They’re going to kidnap us and force us to take them to Danvar? So they’re going to take our coin? Is that it? So we let them! Give them all of it! I don’t care about any of it. They can have it. We’ll take them to Danvar. We’ll give them all of our coin. If that’s all they want, then we’ll live and head west without any of the stupid riches!”

The Poet shook his head. “No, Marisa, that is not all. These people are not going to take what they want and then let us walk away.”

“What else, then?”

“They’ll kill us all,” the Poet said.

The old man didn’t notice until Reggie was standing amongst them that the sick sandal hop had climbed out of the sarfer and limped to where they were talking.

“There’s another way,” Reggie said. His breathing was labored and the short walk had taken a toll on his strength.

“Another way to do what?” Peary asked. “Why are you here? You should be resting where we left you.”

Reggie tried to lower himself to the ground to sit, but the strain was too much, and he ended up flopping on the sand and rolling over onto his side. After a few moments’ rest, he pushed himself into a seated position and took some deep breaths.

“Another way that maybe you two can escape,” he said, nodding at Peary and Marisa.

“Wait a minute,” the Poet said. “What are you talking about?”

Reggie closed his eyes and spoke only with much effort. “I’m dying. We all know it.” He opened his eyes and looked at the old man. “I’m dying and you’re old.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” the old man said.

“We all know that the only thing slowing us down is that we have two too many people on these sarfers, and too much weight. So I say that you and I,” he said, pointing at the Poet, “stay behind.”

“Stay behind?”

“We’ll take our coin and stay behind. That’ll lighten the load and give Peary and Marisa the best shot at getting away.”

“No,” Peary and Marisa said in unison.

“Hear me out,” Reggie said. His voice grew stronger. Not from any improvement in his health, but from the strength of his desire to do the right thing before it was too late. “We can bury our coin. That way if either of us lives, we can come back and get it. After we take the crew to Danvar.” He pointed his finger at the old man. “You know where to find it, and maybe they’ll accept that. Maybe they won’t keep chasing Peary and Marisa.”

“No,” Peary said. He was shaking his head and pounding the sand with his fist. “No way will I let you do this.”

“I’m not going to do it anyway,” the old man said, “so it is a moot point. If we both don’t do it, then the plan will fail.”

“Don’t be so selfish,” Reggie said.

“Easy for you to say, sandal hop,” the Poet said. “You’re going to die either way. But I’m not dying!”

“Maybe they let you go,” Reggie said. “Maybe they see you as just an old man who can’t hurt them, so they let you go after you take them to Danvar.”

The Poet shook his head. “That’ll never happen and you know it.” He looked up at Peary. “And I’ll never, ever, take those people to Danvar.”

Reggie looked at the Poet, imploring him. “It’s the right thing to do.”

“Don’t look at him,” Peary said. His anger was boiling over and his voice trembled as he spoke. “We’re not leaving anyone behind, do you hear me?”

“It’ll work,” Reggie said quietly. The strain turned out to be too much for him, and he closed his eyes and lay back on the sand. Peary and the old man carried him back to the sarfer and placed him back on the netting in the haul rack. They covered him to keep him warm, then the old man pushed Peary back toward Marisa. “I’ll take care of him,” the Poet said. “You go comfort your lady.”

Peary walked back to where Marisa was now standing and put his arms around her. She shivered a little, more from the situation than the chill, but he held her closer just the same.

“We can’t let them do this,” she said to Peary.

Peary nodded. “We won’t.”

Reggie was dead by morning. Peary had known the sandal hop was going to die, but he’d figured the man had a few days of excruciating pain and discomfort to suffer before he’d finally enter the grace of death. None of them, it seemed, had anticipated the reality of having to unstrap the sandal hop from the sarfer and decide what to do with his body.

The valleys were still in shadow, but the pink-orange rays of morning were visible up on the very tops of the dunes, and the cool night was already giving way to the warmth of the day. In the distance, out to the west, the mountaintops beckoned like sirens sent to torture the souls of men, and up above—high up above—a sand hawk circled, his shriek echoing through the morning air.

“Let’s just bury him deep,” the Poet said. “That’s probably what he would have wanted anyway.”

Peary looked down at Reggie’s body and didn’t look up. His words came out in a whisper, but the other two could hear. “You don’t have any idea what he would have wanted. None of us do.”

“We could load up and be gone in minutes,” the Poet said. “With the lighter weight, maybe one of us could actually get away.”

“And I suppose that ‘one of us’ would be you, Poet?”

The Poet looked down and shrugged, “No… I… I wasn’t…”

There was a long period of silence, then Marisa spoke.

“Something tells me these last few days together might have been some of the best times of his life,” she said.

Again, for a moment, there were no words. A bitter silence permeated the air, only to be broken once again by the screech of the sand hawk.

“So what do we do now?” Marisa asked.

“I don’t know,” Peary said.

The old Poet looked out and pointed to the west. “We can still run. Maybe something happens. Maybe they miss the turn, or lose a sarfer. Maybe they don’t catch us.”

Peary glanced at the Poet, then his eyes scanned over until he was looking at Marisa. “Yes, we’ll run. We’ll load everything onto my sarfer and I’ll carry the old man.” He took Marisa’s hand in his own. “You go first. Get out of here now. Just as soon as we’ve unloaded all the weight from your sarfer. We’ll be right behind you, Marisa, but don’t stop for anything. Ride on ’til you outrace the sand itself.”

“No,” Marisa said coldly.

“Marisa!”

“No.” She looked up at him and shrugged. “I won’t do it.”

The silence fell again like a curtain, moments passing like the drift. Until, without words, the Poet stood and began suiting up. When he was ready, he pushed Reggie’s body down deep into the sand and disappeared entirely with the sandal hop. Peary didn’t know how deep the old man took Reggie, because the Poet was down awhile, but when the old man surfaced again he pulled himself onto the sand and sat with his arms hugging his knees. There were tears in his eyes and a deep sadness on his face. Deeper than usual.

“So it’s suicide, then?” the Poet asked. “Or if not suicide per se, then a suicidal plan to outwit them and escape, which amounts to the same thing."

Neither Peary nor Marisa answered him. The eyes of all three met and darted back and forth for a moment.

“Well, if it’s to be suicide, then I say we make a plan,” the Poet said.

“They’ll set up camp as soon as they’ve caught up with us,” the Poet said. “I’ve been in enough pirate camps to know how they’ll orient the tents.”

“How does that help us?” Marisa asked.

Peary pointed down into the very bottom of the valley. “We can bury some dive gear. Not deep. Just deep enough so that we can find it in the dark and dig it out with our hands.”

“I know where they’ll put their command center,” the Poet added, pointing. “The bosses will be using that tent after dark, but it also becomes a gathering place—like a party center at night. There’ll be a supply tent, right over there, with boxes of ammunition and explosives, tools, food supplies.”

“I thought you said their supplies were way behind them… being brought up by tri-hulls?” Marisa asked.

“Could be,” the Poet said. “But the stuff will be here soon enough one way or another. And they’ll want to rest after chasing us for so long, so they’ll camp here a few days at least. Could be two. Probably three.”

Marisa nodded. “So we get a bomb and blow them all up?”

The Poet nodded. “They’ll keep us alive, since they don’t yet know who knows what about the location of Danvar. They’ll threaten us of course, but they won’t kill anyone until they know everything they need to know about the location of the lost city.”

“They’ll torture us and probably rape Marisa,” Peary said. He didn’t look at her when he said it, but he could feel her eyes on him anyway. “And I’m not going to let that happen.”

The Poet nodded. “They will, but not at first. They’ll threaten, but they’ll play nice for a day or two. First and foremost, they want the information, and they won’t put that objective at risk. But their patience will not last forever. I’ve been in these camps before. I know how they think.”

“Why would they wait at all?” Peary asked. “Why not just torture us as soon as they can?”

The Poet smiled gently. “Because information gathered by consent, even if it is through passive coercion, barter, or some other method is generally more accurate and trustworthy than information gained strictly by torture. People being tortured will say anything to make it stop.”

“Right then,” Peary said. “We should know when the critical time has arrived, and we’ll just have to hope they save the worst of it for the morning so we can move on them at night.”

The Poet nodded.

Peary inhaled deeply and then exhaled. “So during the night—the night before we think things are going to go bad—sometime after the supplies have arrived, we get to the dive suits, and dive. We come up inside the supply tent. We find or fashion a bomb, and then we walk into the command tent and make our demands.”

“Agreed,” the Poet said. “So… what demands will we make? Let’s make them good!” He smiled, but it seemed the others were not in a joking mood.

“I don’t understand,” Marisa said. “If we can get out and get our dive suits, why don’t we just escape?”

“Because we’d be right back where we are now,” Peary said. “They’ll just catch us again.”

“But if we can get bombs, we can blow up their sarfers so they can’t follow us,” she said.

“We’d never get all of them,” the old man said. “No way. And whoever we left alive would catch us again and things would be worse for us.”

“So we’re all going to just blow ourselves up?”

“If we have to. But it doesn’t have to be all of us, Marisa,” Peary said. “You can go now.”

“I won’t.”

“What if I promised to take them to Danvar?” Peary said. “And try to escape along the way to get back to you?”

Marisa smirked. “You just said yourself that wouldn’t work.”

The Poet interrupted the conversation. “We’ll demand to be released, and we’ll take the bomb with us. We’ll tell them if they follow us and get too close, we’ll blow them—and ourselves—to pieces.”

The three plotters stared at one another, eyes darting back and forth. One way or another, the tension of the journey was soon to be relieved.

“All right then,” the Poet said finally. “It seems we have a plan.”

“Yep,” Peary said. “If we can’t have the spoils of Danvar—we, who earned them righteously—then we’ll at least make sure these pirates never touch them.”

^Cornered Chapter Twenty

The three friends were seated at the base of the dunes on the edge of the valley, the bags of coin at their feet, when the pirates arrived. Cord was at the head of the brigands and seemed to be in charge, and when he saw Peary and the bags of coin he just smiled.

“Appreciate you watching our coin for us, diver,” Cord said with a grin. “Where’s your wounded friend?”

“Died a few days ago,” Peary answered.

“Too bad,” Cord said. “Really surprised to catch you three together. We expected the old man might have sacrificed himself so you and the missus could gain speed.” He nodded at the Poet. “Guess he didn’t have it in him.”

“You’d have caught them and killed them anyway,” the Poet said flatly.

Cord nodded. “We can’t all be heroic, old man, and, well… you’re right about that.”

“Just take the coin and go!” Peary shouted. Anger flushed his cheeks as his eyes darted across the faces of the pirates. He noted the sly grins his words put on their faces. The old man was right. They had no intention of ever letting their captives go.

“Oh yes,” Cord said, and then lied, “we’ll be letting you go. But there are things we need to talk about first. Business. Give us a few days, will you? Then we’ll let you go.”

The period at the end of his sentence was emphasized by the cry of the sand hawk in the distance.

The captives were kept in a low tent with no carpet or tarp for a floor. The screened windows had their flaps tied up to let the breeze through. Sand flies buzzed here and there, never quite giving up or going away.

Every few hours one of the three would be retrieved by a pirate and taken to the leader’s tent to be questioned. For the most part, at least in the beginning, the interrogations were carried out without violence. Threats… plenty of those. But no violence.

Each of the captives stuck to their story.

Yes, the map that Peary had given to Joel accurately showed the location of the part of Danvar that the divers had discovered. No, they didn’t think anyone else had yet located the find. Yes, they were certain they hadn’t told anyone else. No, they were not interested in guiding the pirates to the treasure.

After the first long night, Peary was sure that the torture—and worse—would begin soon enough. Maybe tomorrow, he thought. Maybe tomorrow they stop beating around the bush and start beating the captives.

According to the Poet, the brigands would plan on resting for two or three full days, so if they were planning on getting answers from their captives, the brutality had to begin soon.

But the pirates weren’t in a hurry. On the second day, the tri-hulls and sand-skidders arrived with supplies, which were unloaded and deposited into the supply tent. Around noon, the questioning proceeded as before, though the threats became more specific, and both Peary and the old man were slapped a few times when their answers didn’t satisfy Cord’s curiosity.

When Marisa was returned to the tent after her interrogation, Peary noted the red splotch on her left cheek, and her downcast eyes told him that things had gotten much more serious this time. When she saw him looking, she smiled and shrugged, as if to say it wasn’t that bad. That smile made him feel better, and the rage that was boiling up in him abated just a bit. But not completely. Just enough to keep him from doing anything stupid.

As the blue-gray and then black shadow of night fell on the end of the second day, the three friends knew it was time to activate their plan. They wouldn’t make it through another day of interrogation, especially if the pirates planned on heading north the next day.

Something has to give, Peary thought. So tonight has to be the night.

A look from the Poet told him that he was right.

The place where they’d buried the dive suits was partially under their tent. The Poet had been dead accurate in his estimation of how the brigands would arrange their camp.

Peary and the Poet suited up in silence as Marisa watched. The party in the command tent had sputtered out, and the camp was now mostly quiet, save for the occasional stirring of men going out to piss on a dune, or the grunt of a drunk being shoved aside to make room for someone to lie down.

The plan was to make their way under the sand to the supply tent, where they’d try to steal some explosives and make a bomb big enough to kill everyone in the camp. Their own selves included, if that became necessary. That was the plan. Get away, or die trying.

The Poet activated his suit first, and without a wink or a nod he disappeared beneath the sand. Peary looked at Marisa and smiled, and when she returned his smile, he slapped the button on his chest and started to move the sand. Before he could dive down though, Marisa moved stealthily to his side and embraced him. He squeezed her in reply and then gently pushed her away. The sand softened beneath him, and he nodded at her as he sank down. Their hands remained touching until Peary was completely immersed beneath the sand.

The cool pressed in on him, and Peary felt the momentary lie of freedom beckoning him from down deep. Granular hope—untrue, but sweet for a moment in his thoughts. He only sank a few meters before he hardened the sand near his feet and pushed off in the direction of the supply tent.

They’d measured the distance as closely as they could, and he ticked off the meters in his mind as he kicked forward through the sand. He was glad they’d brought excess dive gear. The pirates had never suspected that their captives might have prepared the camp location for an escape attempt.

When he’d gone the requisite distance, Peary turned upward a little and looked through his visor at the colors up above him. The purple showed that there were no people up top, save for one wavering orange figure with dashes of yellow. That would be the Poet. There were also some dark splotches where boxes and cases of supplies must be stowed. All was as it should be.

Peary ascended slowly, breaking the surface just enough to look around. In the darkness, he could see almost nothing, so he freed his hand and raised his visor. Off to his left, he could make out the Poet seated cross-legged on the sand, waiting.

“Let’s get this done,” the old man whispered. Both men removed their headgear and Peary raised himself until he was fully above the sand.

“I’ve already found what we need,” the Poet said. “It’s here, in this box.”

Peary followed the old man’s finger to a box with strange markings on the side. “What is it?”

“Bombs. Very big bombs. Bigger than what we’ll need, but they’ll work.”

“Wow.”

“There are four of them in one box,” the Poet said.

“Do you know how to work them?” Peary asked.

“I do.”

The old man reached into the crate and pulled out a large rectangular case. Attached to the top of the case was a smaller box that had a timer and several switches. Wires from the smaller control module disappeared into the larger case.

“These are for blowing through rock. They’ll make a mess of everyone in this camp if we set one off.”

“So what do we do now?” Peary asked.

“Grab that crate and follow me,” the Poet said. “We’re going to wake up our captors and let them know that if they don’t let us go, they’re never going to see Danvar.”

Cord, his hired brigands, and the Legionnaires who’d joined the posse weren’t all sleeping. At least, some of them weren’t. They weren’t partying either. The bulk of them were in that middle state: the quiet overtaking them like a damp blanket, the booze dulling them enough that sleep was imminent, but not yet arrived.

When the Poet pushed through the flap and into the command tent, he had to shove his way through the bodies lying here and there near the tent entrance, but before long, eyes caught his and heads were turned, and a slow murmur began to make its way through the structure.

Peary and Marisa followed close behind the Poet, each holding tightly to the cloak of the one in front of them. There were lanterns still burning, and the three of them stepped carefully to the center of the command tent, where a half-dozen folding chairs had been placed upon an area rug in a loose circle. Cord, their nemesis and the suspected leader of the outfit, was seated in one of the chairs, his eyes half-closed and his head lolling to one side in near sleep.

The Poet approached a different chair, then kicked the man who lounged in it such that he slid off and landed on the ground. The Poet sat down heavily in the vacated seat and let out a whistle that sounded almost like the screech of a sand hawk. The piercing sound quickly brought the men in the tent to some form of attention.

Cord was slow in realizing what was going on, but at last he jumped a little and then went for the knife in his scabbard.

He froze when the Poet reacted by lifting up the bomb he held in his arms and placing his thumb against the detonation switch.

The rest of the crew—at least, those who were still sober enough to realize what was happening—now moved, slowly at first, but then almost in unison. Weapons were drawn, and the men formed a wall of thick, rank bodies in order to keep anyone from escaping the tent.

“Those bombs aren’t armed,” Cord said. He said it, but it was evident in his eyes that he didn’t believe it.

“Yes they are, Cord,” Peary said. The Poet kept his thumb on the button, but didn’t speak. He only smiled. Peary walked into the center of the ring of chairs and looked into Cord’s eyes. “Our old poet friend here armed them. And he knows what he’s doing. He’s been on a lot of these expeditions—haven’t you, Poet?”

The Poet nodded.

“Sure he has,” Peary continued. “And he knows how to arm explosives like these, don’t you think, Cord?”

There was silence for a half minute, then Cord nodded.

Peary reached over and unsnapped the sheath that held Cord’s knife, withdrawing the weapon with a smooth motion.

“You can borrow it,” Cord said, “but don’t start thinking that your little plan here has worked. As if we’re just going to let you walk on out of here.”

“That’s exactly what you’re going to do,” Peary said. “We’re leaving the gold, and the maps, and we’re heading west. Over the mountains. And you aren’t going to follow us or we’ll blow you all to hell.”

“That’s not the way this is going to happen,” Cord said. A smile just barely began to touch his lips. He was now past his initial shock, and his mind was starting to function.

“Oh really?” Peary said.

“Really.”

“And how is it going to happen?”

The old man interrupted. “Well, let me tell you —”

“Shut up, old man,” Peary snapped. “I’m talking to Cord.”

“Listen, Peary,” the old Poet snapped back. “It’s high time you listened instead of acting like you have all the answers all the time. Here’s how things work in the real world. Cord here will let us go, sure enough, and we’ll pack up the sarfers and get gone. And then he and his crew will follow behind, close enough to keep tabs on us, but not close enough to get blown up. Then he’ll send one of his hirelings in a fast skidder to harass us. Maybe we’ll throw a bomb at him. If we’re going fast enough so that it doesn’t kill us, at worst it’ll kill the brigand in the skidder.”

“Exactly,” Peary said.

“And then Cord will send another one,” the Poet said, “and then another one. He’ll keep sending them to their deaths until we run out of bombs.”

Marisa sucked air into her lungs and shook her head. “Why would they do that, though? Why would they die for him?”

The Poet looked around the room at Cord’s men, taking a moment to stare each man in the eye. “Because every salvage expedition is the same. They all know that if they don’t do what he says, he’ll kill them anyway. They know that. And then, when he gets back to wherever it is he recruited them from, he’ll kill their families. It’s the way of the pirate.”

There was silence for a few moments, and then Cord slowly stood to his feet. The Poet kept his thumb on the trigger of the bomb and stepped closer to Cord, who raised his hands to show he wasn’t going to try anything stupid.

“The old man is right,” Cord said. “That’s exactly what we’ll do. So you see, you can’t get away.”

Peary turned to the Poet, and his voice shook with anger. “What the hell, Poet? This was the plan! And you tell me now that the plan won’t work?”

“The plan was never going to work,” the Poet replied. “And it never was the real plan anyway. I only told you that to get you to go along.”

“What the—?” Peary sputtered with frustration.

“What is the real plan, old man?” Cord asked. “Because I know you have one.”

^{The Real Plan} Chapter Twenty-One

“Glad you asked,” the Poet said. He leaned toward Peary with an apologetic look on his face. “You’ll have to forgive me, son. I couldn’t let you get yourselves killed doing something stupid. You’ve tried so hard to die over these past few weeks since I met you, but something—or someone—keeps having to step in and help you.”

“Get on with it,” Cord said. Even from a position of weakness, the brigand showed no humility. It wasn’t in his nature.

The Poet ignored Cord and spoke directly to his friends. “Peary, you and Marisa are getting out of here. Right now. Head west until you’re in those mountains yonder and far from here. You’ll find a place, you will. A beautiful place to survive and settle down. Maybe you’ll have a family.”

“How quaint,” Cord spat.

“That’s not going to happen,” Peary said. “Because we’re not leaving. What about you? What would happen to you?”

“It’s not so dramatic as you think, friend. I’m no hero. Never have been. I’ll just keep these fine gentlemen busy for a few days. We’ll laugh and sing and drink and maybe I’ll teach them some poems. And then… well, then, when I know you and Marisa are safely away, I’ll take them down south, peaceful like. Show them the big dive. I’ll show them where we were when we found the Danvar salvage.”

No one spoke for some time. The men surrounding them, as if with one mind, appeared to decide that the threat was over, and most of them lowered their weapons. At last, Cord spoke.

“That’s it then,” Cord said. “I agree to your terms, Poet. So long as you can take me to Danvar and I keep the gold, these two can go.”

“I can take you straight to Danvar,” the Poet said, “and I will.”

“This wasn’t the plan,” Marisa said. She was crying and wiping tears from her cheeks.

“It’s the new plan.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Peary said.

The old Poet smiled. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

“Then get going,” Cord said to Peary. “Get on out of here, you two. I don’t want any bombs going off on accident.”

“Not yet,” the Poet said. “I’m not letting them leave until everyone is here. Every single one of your people, Cord.” He nodded at the pirate and emphasized his point by looking down at his own thumb on the button.

“Everyone is here, old man.”

“Not everyone,” the Poet said. “I’ve counted, and all of your subordinates are here. But there’s one more. Another fellow who doesn’t work for you. I saw him in the distance when you first arrived. He’s stayed in his tent, too cowardly and ashamed to make himself known.”

Cord looked around and then sighed. A smug smirk tightened his lips.

“In fact,” the Poet said, “I think that man is the real boss of this outfit, not you. Why, now that I think of it, you’re just a hireling too, just like all of these other folk.”

Cord looked up and stared at the Poet for a moment, rage now blazing in his eyes. It was obvious to everyone in the tent that he wanted to lash out, to smack down this old man who sneered at him and laughed with his eyes. But he didn’t lash out. He was too afraid of dying. It’s an age-old affliction in cowards. So instead, he turned to one of the brigands and nodded his head, and the man pushed his way out of the tent.

“Good,” the Poet said, “now we’re getting somewhere.” He turned to Peary. “Young man, will you do me the service of scouring the rest of the camp. It won’t take long. Just make sure every breathing soul is in this tent. I don’t want anyone following you and Marisa when you leave.”

Peary didn’t move. He looked deeply into the old man’s eyes; what he saw there steadied him. The old man had changed. Something was in those eyes now that hadn’t been there when Peary had first met him. Purpose? Happiness?

Peace. Maybe that was it.

The brigand returned to the tent a few minutes later with another man following behind. When the pirate had cleared out of the way and returned to his spot along the tent wall, Marisa could at last see the face of the new visitor: her uncle Joel. Joel, the real leader of this band of pirates. She glared at him and didn’t look away. She didn’t speak because she didn’t have to, and she noticed that her uncle could not meet her stare.

“I take it that you’ve been briefed on the agreement, Uncle?” the Poet said.

Joel took his time looking up, still studiously avoiding Marisa’s glare. He looked over at the Poet and nodded. “Yes.”

“Anything you want to say to your blood kin?”

Joel shook his head. “No.”

Peary returned at that moment and made his way back into the center of the circle. “That’s it,” he said. “There’s no one else out there.”

The Poet smiled. “Are you sure? No one wandered out for a pee or blacked out from too much beer on the back side of a dune?”

“I searched. There was no one else.”

“All right,” the Poet said, nodding. “You two get going. I’ll take these men to Danvar.”

“Are you sure?” Peary asked.

“Yeah,” the Poet said. “I’ve even made up a poem to teach them along the way. It’s about how Danvar is a place far below the sand, in the depths of the earth, where men go to atone for their sins.”

“That’s nonsense,” Peary said.

“Yeah, it probably is. Now get on with you both. Get out.”

“But—”

The Poet sighed deeply. “No words.”

Marisa stepped toward him, as if to hug the old man, but he stepped backward and held up the bomb.

“No words, young lady. Just go.”

Peary’s eyes met the Poet’s again for a brief moment, but this time the old man looked down, and the young diver could see a tear going down a weatherworn cheek. He reached down and took Marisa’s hand, and led her out of the tent.

Peary and Marisa were too far gone to hear him, but the old Poet spoke as the tent flap swung shut behind them. He spoke to them both, but his words disappeared unheard into the night.

“Don’t die in the sand, friends. Just don’t die in the sand.”

The moon was full, and high enough now that Peary could pilot the sarfer through the dunes without much trouble. The valley headed straight west, and just as the fires of the pirate camp disappeared behind him and Marisa, a wonderful breeze filled their sail and pushed them even faster.

“How far will we go tonight?” Marisa shouted over the sound of the speeding sarfer.

“We’re going to need to stop in a few minutes and tie down those provisions I grabbed from the other sarfer,” Peary said. “I didn’t want to take the time to stow them properly while those men were watching us.”

“Will he really take them to Danvar?”

Peary shook his head. “I don’t know if he can. I don’t even know if he knows where Danvar is.”

Silence again, and the two lovers could hear the sound of the sand passing underneath. The moon cast a blue hue on the sarfer and the sand.

“Why did he do this?” Marisa asked when the silence became deafening.

Peary looked over at her as his gloved hands deftly controlled the lines. “I can’t say for positive, but I saw something in his eyes. Maybe. I don’t know. I can’t say for sure, but I think I saw the reason.”

“What did you see, Peary? What was the reason?”

“Restitution,” Peary said. “It was as if he was telling me he’d finally become a man, after all these years.”

“That’s what you saw?”

“Yeah.”

“Men are strange.”

Ten minutes later, Peary brought the sarfer to a halt near a strange outcropping of stone that jutted up from the sand.

“This is interesting,” Peary said. “The sand must not be very deep here. I don’t know when’s the last time I saw something like this. Maybe when I was a boy. Or maybe only in a diver dream.”

Peary staked down the sarfer while Marisa rearranged the provisions and water skins so they could be tied down properly. Keeping the supplies from shifting around becomes a difficult proposition when a sarfer bounces and jumps over the low dunes.

They were just finishing their tasks when the sound of a distant explosion rolled through the blue-black night and caused them to turn back to the east, the direction from which they’d come. The sound had been slow in traveling, and when they turned, the towering fireball in the far distance had already reached an immense height against the black sky. Dark smoke blotted out the stars, giving the fireball a surreal cast.

Marisa gasped and her hand came up to her mouth.

“I’ll be…” Peary sputtered.

“He…” Marisa said.

“I should have known,” Peary replied. “I should have known.”

“He waited until we were far enough away,” she said.

“He took ’em to Danvar,” Peary said.

The next morning, Peary and Marisa set off to the west again, but managed only a couple of hours before they found themselves unable to proceed any further with the sarfer. Unthinkably, the sarfer had run aground on a sloping, unending patch of solid rock and soil, and here and there boulders as big as a tent jutted up around them. It seemed that the sand—that immutable, ubiquitous truth that had ruled their whole lives—was now behind them.

The sun was barely beginning to show itself, just a glint of pink to the east, and the air was heavy, like a wet blanket or a towel soaked in warm water. As Peary gazed back the way they came, the pink glow began to disappear, and a roiling, black-blue sky occluded most of the light of dawn.

“Something’s happening,” Marisa said. “What is it?”

“Something… I don’t know.” He sniffed the air, unable to identify the damp humidity saturating it. “Something new.”

He darted over to the sarfer and began jamming provisions into backpacks for them to carry.

“We’ll have to each haul a water skin,” Peary told her as he tossed her one of the packs. She caught it smoothly and swung it onto her back.

“Whatever it is, it’s coming closer,” Marisa said, looking back toward the east. The air was becoming even heavier on their skin.

An updraft of cool, wet air, cooler than most mornings, pushed over them then, and the wind stirred up dust, and other biological material that Peary and Marisa knew nothing of, into the air.

“I’m scared,” Marisa said.

“Don’t be,” Peary said. “We’ve made it this far.”

“I know.”

“We’ve cleared the sand.”

“I know.”

“Then don’t be afraid.”

“How do I do that?” she asked.

“The Poet said that the worst thing in the world would be to die in the sand.”

He had to raise his voice for that last statement, because the thundering wind and approaching strangeness pushed over them like a primitive force, driving them to look for shelter.

Securing their packs in place, Marisa and Peary quickly left the sarfer behind and continued west on foot. The firm, unyielding soil felt foreign to their sand-accustomed legs. They moved at a hurried pace, although it was clear that they couldn’t outrun whatever phenomenon was headed their way.

Marisa felt it first, and when she did she stopped—she had to look down at the bare skin of her arms.

Peary felt it then, too. Water, in tiny droplets, whipped by the wind.

“There must be ground water near here,” Peary shouted as he reached back to take Marisa’s hand. He pulled her forward, and the wind and moisture doubled with each step.

“No,” Marisa shouted back. “It’s coming…”

“What?” Peary shouted, looking back at her.

“It’s coming from the sky!”

At that moment, the sky above them opened up, and water fell like peace and grace and mercy altogether, falling from on high, drenching them entire like a poem. A sand hawk screeched, and they could hear it above the wind, but they could not see where he came from or whither he went.

The two dropped to their knees as one, clasping hands, looking at one another, tears forming in their eyes. And the water from heaven joined with their tears, and soaked deeply into the hungry earth.