I blinked in surprise. “The Rememberers sent you with me just to make sure I retrieve Maederyss’s loom?
“No.” Meeka rubbed both paws over his nose. “Also here to remind human Fateless of what was promised.”
“Promised?” I glanced at Raithe, who also looked slightly perplexed. “We didn’t promise anything.”
“Not you. Promise that creator king gave to jair’oa.” Meeka raised a hind leg and scratched his ear rapidly before looking up at me again. “Meeka will not remember. Meeka will forget. But human Fateless will remember. Human Fateless can make Meeka remember why he is here—to bring creator king back by helping destroy other king.”
Halek rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Okay, just so I’m following along. You’re saying that the Rememberers sent you with us to do two things. One...” He held up a single finger. “Help us get the loom. That’s pretty easy to understand. Two...” The second finger joined the first. “You’re here to remind Sparrow to remindyouof your creator king’s promise to the jair’oa, because if we stop the Deathless King, the Rememberers believe that the creator king will be able to rise again.”
Meeka cocked his head the other way and blinked. “Why does human creature repeat what Meeka already knows?”
“But what about your family?” I asked. “Didn’t they have anything to say about you leaving? Do they know you’ve gone?”
“Meeka not know,” the jair’oa said simply. “Rememberers not say. But Meeka has many siblings.” He sniffed and made a motion that was almost a shrug. “They not miss Meeka.”
He didn’t appear concerned about the abomination that had been threatening the entire jair’oa population moments ago.Perhaps, now that we were far away from the underground city, he had already forgotten.
“All right.” Raithe sounded weary. “Then we need to get moving. Namaia is sinking, and the desert is going to get cold. Meeka...” He paused, as if hesitant to ask the jair’oa a question. “The Rememberers said they would transport us as close to the World Scar as they could. Do you know how far away we still are?”
“Meeka not Rememberer,” the jair’oa said, making Raithe nod with a barely audible sigh. “Meeka not seen World Scar, so how would Meeka know?”
“Then we need to move,” Kysa said, and turned her gaze toward the horizon. “We were heading east toward the World Scar before all this—I assume that is the direction we need to resume.”
We mounted the rock beetles, Raithe sliding in behind me once more. Meeka peered up at us, then gave a magnificent leap from the ground, his tiny body sailing effortlessly through the air, and landed on Ratuk’s head. Ratuk gave a snort, and Rhyne let out an indignant bellow and even stamped a foot, but the jair’oa settled onto his haunches, ears and tail held high as he faced forward. He didn’t seem saddened about leaving his nest and family behind, or worried about the abomination threatening his city, or hesitant about joining a group of complete strangers on an impossible quest to defeat a god. He had already moved on, his attention on the horizon instead of the past.
For a moment, I envied him.
Despite what the Rememberers said about “blinking” us close to the edge of their territory, we still hadn’t finished crossing thedesert by the end of the day. Only when Namaia had sunk fully behind the horizon, tinting the skies red, did I see the outline of something different ahead of us.
“There’s the edge of the World Scar,” Raithe murmured as I gazed at the distant line of jagged peaks fading into the sunset. “We’re closer than I thought.”
“It will still take us a couple of days to get there,” Kysa said, observing the peaks from atop Rhyne’s back. “If those mountains are as large as I think they are.” She glanced at Raithe and narrowed her eyes. “Your queen said that the Deathless scoured the land clean of all life and made the terrain as inhospitable as they could to prevent anyone from venturing within. What does that mean, kahjai? What will we find beyond those mountains?”
“Nothing good.” Raithe sighed. “The legends of the World Scar say that the ground is made of liquid fire, the air is poisonous to breathe, and that nightmare creatures beyond the imagination roam freely through the land. How much of this is real, I don’t know. But I don’t think we’ll be in for a pleasant experience.”
“Aw,” Halek said. “And I was having such a good time with the endless barren desert and horrific abomination chasing us down.”
We set up camp with the outline of the World Scar mountains silhouetted against the eastern sky. As Kysa and I took care of the rock beetles, Halek and Raithe set up our only tent. Kysa, in her pragmatic way, had thought to bring a spare, and that was fortunate, as our last tent had been chewed to pieces by beetles and buried beneath the sand. This new tent was a little smaller, but it would provide adequate shelter from the elements, and itwas certainly better than nothing when we had to face Demon Hour.
The desert sand wasn’t the easiest place to build a firepit, but we scraped out a shallow hole and lit a small fire, which flickered cheerfully and kept away a bit of the chill.
“Brr,” Halek said, wrapping a blanket around himself as he sat down. “I forgot how cold the desert can get at night. Wish I had a bottle of Tahveena brandy to warm me up, but I guess I’ll have to be happy with...” He peered into the small clay pot bubbling in the firepit, wrinkling his nose. “Dried stonebeak soup and gritbread. Again.”
“If you would like to go hunting for something different,” Kysa said with just a touch of annoyance in her voice, “feel free to do so. But I doubt you’ll find any herds of Tahveena brandy roaming the desert.”
“Hey, I’m not complaining.” Halek held up both hands. “I certainly couldn’t hunt down a pair of stonebeaks by myself. I’m just pointing out that we’ve had the same meal for three days now, and we haven’t even touched the supplies the iylvahn sent with us from Irrikah. Variety is the spice of life, they say.”
“?‘They’ aren’t trying to survive on limited provisions,” Kysa retorted. “The stonebeak jerky will eventually go bad, which would be a waste of food and resources. I am trying to make our supplies last as long as they can.” She rose, long black hair falling behind her in the cold wind. “Now, if you will excuse me, it is my turn to give the rock beetles their dinner.Theynever complain about their food.”
She strode off, and Halek sighed. “Sadly, I can’t argue withthat,” he muttered. “But I think I’ve had all the gritbread I can stomach tonight.” He glanced at the chunk of hard bread in his hand, then looked at Meeka, sitting a few feet away and watching us all curiously. “Here, mouse. Can’t let food go to waste, or Kysa might feed me to the rock beetles. See if you think this is better than those glowing worms or whatever it is you eat.”
He tossed the bread to the jair’oa, who watched it land in the sand with a thump. Stretching his body forward like a tentative cat, the jair’oa sniffed the crust, whiskers twitching, then sneezed and drew back. “Human creature eat this?” he asked, looking up at Halek. “This human-creature food?”
“I suppose, technically, you can call it that,” Halek said, though he had lowered his voice and was looking to where Kysa was fiddling with Rhyne’s saddle. “You won’t starve to death, at least. Though I thought mice liked bread.”
“Meeka is not mouse.” Meeka scrubbed his paws over his nose like he was wiping away a foul smell. “Meeka is jair’oa. Jair’oa eat star grub.”
“Yes, but surely that’s not all you eat,” Halek said.
