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“Right.” Seth crossed his arms and focused on the matter at hand. “You sold an arcane scope in Demir. Where did you get it?”
Jamil stroked his thin mustache with a finger, just as Raider had described. Gods, could the man not stay out of Seth’s head for two minutes?
“It is hard to remember,” mused Jamil.
Seth extracted a denar from where he’d secured it in the folded edge of his towel. He flicked it Jamil’s way. Like a fish jumping from a pond, Jamil lunged and snatched it from the air.
“Ah, yes,” he said, admiring the silver coin. “A slim young man, almost boyish. Brown eyes. Brown hair, not much darker than yours.”
Being fair was unusual anywhere in the Sands, the arid region that stretched from the western edge of Masiri authority all the way to the Golden Empire east of the Kesh Desert, then farther still into the near-mythic lands of the djinn. But it wasn’t enough, not without a mention of Julian’s most distinguishing feature.
“Tell me more about him,” Seth pressed. “Everything you remember.”
“Why? Is he your lover? Or he owes you money?”
“I just need to find him.”
Jamil snorted. “That is not likely. The fool is surely dead by now.”
When Jamil subsided and adopted a distant, thoughtful look, Seth dug out another denar but didn’t toss it. “Everything you know.”
Eyeing the gleam of silver in Seth’s fingers, Jamil said, “He had a reddish birthmark.” Jamil indicated the approximate location on his own face, at his left temple. “He tried to keep it covered, but I saw it.”
Seth didn’t allow the relief to show on his face. Confirmation, finally. He’d come all this way, afraid it was for nothing, afraid he’d lost the trail.
“Is he still in Shalaa?”
Jamil continued eyeing the coin. “No. He traded the spyglass for supplies. Then he headed into the Kesh. So you see: surely dead.”
Maybe, maybe not. Julian had never struck Seth as particularly rugged, but he was actually quite a brilliant alchemist. In fact, he had worked with the artifice department to develop the compact alembic that Seth himself would be relying on to purify water … in the Kesh.
It was too much to have hoped, of course, that Julian would still be in Shalaa.
Seth asked, “Did he say anything about his destination or what he was after?”
“No. He was wary. Nervous even, like maybe someone was after him. It seems he was right. But he is dead anyway. Only the Sudai tribesmen cross the Kesh. And one other.”
Seth yielded the coin, flicking it to Jamil. The man was telling the truth. Seth had a good instinct for such things.
Besides, this was the most information he’d gotten from anyone in weeks. It was, finally, a clear indication of direction. And it was a confirmation of what he’d suspected all along: that he was going to be slogging his way across the vast, sandy waste of the Kesh.
Seth said, “I’ll need any information you have on the Kesh. Directions to oases, distances, that sort of thing.”
Jamil gazed fondly at the coins in his hand and replied sadly, “I wish I could help you, O Generous One, but there is only one who can, only one crazy enough to travel the Kesh.”
Seth closed his eyes as an awful premonition overtook him. “And who might that be?”
“Him.”
Seth opened his eyes to follow the direction of Jamil’s pointing finger. Then he closed his eyes again to compose himself.
Of course.
Of course.
Because who the hell else could it possibly be?
CHAPTER 4
