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E SME S AHN CLIMBED the rope ladder, aiming for the next crumbling tier of the ruins. Sand and sweat slicked her palms, but the pounding of her heart urged her to greater speed. She paused for two breaths, while staring up.

The blue sky looked a league away, blindingly bright in the shadows that cloaked these depths. Overhead, the broken levels of Seekh formed a maze of shattered walls, tilted slabs, and brick rockslides, all squeezed together by the Tablelands’ sandstone bluffs. Across it all and strung throughout were a tangle of ladders, planked bridges, and twisted cables. The latter were hung with rusted ore barrows for hauling scavenged treasures from the deep diggings.

She watched a cart grind up, overloaded with stacked bricks and twisted metal recovered from the depths. She considered leaping the gap and riding that barrow skyward, but it moved too slowly.

Goading her onward, angry voices echoed up from below.

She took one extra breath before continuing. She leaned her forehead against a rung and whispered a prayer to the god Messik, who blessed the intrepid if they won his favor. She wished she had a sandraat to sacrifice to the blind god, to burn an offering to reach his nose, but she had little stomach and no time for such an act.

A scrabbling noise drew her gaze down.

It rose from her companion.

“Hurry up, Crikit,” she scolded the young molag.

Below her, Crikit’s jointed legs—eight in number—dug into cracks in the crumbling mortar, broken bricks, and creviced sandstone. A black chitinous plate armored its back, toothed like a saw at its edges and ridged the same along its back. A heavy leather pack hung there, carrying Esme’s shovels, picks, brushes, and axes.

Large foreclaws snapped and waved, as if urging her onward. Six stalked black eyes reinforced this, glinting in the wan light reaching these depths.

“I know, Crikit,” Esme whispered.

She set off up the ladder. She could not risk being caught, not with the treasure strapped across her back. She dared not even let Crikit carry it, though she fully trusted the young molag. She had raised him from when he was little bigger than a melon, newly hatched from an egg.

That had been four years ago.

He had since bulked up into the size of a foundling ox. His back now reached higher than her hips. Still, he was only a juvenile molag. Older sandcrabs crested to thrice her height. And in the deepest reaches of the Barrens, where her tribes roamed, ancient crabs were said to grow to the size of craggy hills.

Not that she had ever seen such a creature.

But, by all the Chanaryn gods, I will one day.

Holding this desire to her heart, she clambered more swiftly, moving nimbly, barely shaking the ladder. Crikit paced alongside her, occasionally chittering at her.

A sharp shout echoed up to her. “I see her!”

She grimaced and rolled off the ladder onto a sandstone tier. A planked bridge led off from here. She crossed and pounded across it, chased by Crikit. As she did, her recovered treasure clattered and clanked across her back. This lone artifact could buy her enough resources to head back into the Barrens.

I cannot lose it to those ravagers.

She cursed herself for being so careless, for failing to note another scavenger spying from the shadows. But the discovery had been too astounding. It had held her full attention. All else had faded around her as she freed the treasure from its sandy grave. Afterward, she had spent too long gently brushing its bronze surface free of grit and age.

I should’ve known better.

Over the past four years, she had lost other prizes to ravagers and reavers, those who scavenged upon scavengers. In the depths of Seekh, carelessness got you killed—or worse. Too often, she had stumbled across the mutilated corpses of those who fought back, or who tried to hold their tongues, to keep from revealing the location of a stakehold that had suddenly proved fruitful.

I can’t let that happen to me—not when I’m this close.

She reached the end of the bridge and clambered up the next ladder. A glance back showed a scurry of shadows on the dusty tier below. Her pursuers continued to close on her.

As she faced up, out of the corner of her eye she caught the dull sheen of bronze over her shoulder. It protruded from the roughspun blanket she had wrapped the treasure in. Her scrambling flight must have shaken it loose, as if the artifact refused to be hidden again.

From the blanket, metal fingers stuck out into view.

She did not have time to resecure it. She pictured what else the blanket covered. It was a disembodied arm, sculpted of bronze, so perfectly wrought that small fibers formed fine hairs across its length. A peek inside its severed shoulder revealed a shine of crystals, like amethysts lining the broken shell of a rock.

She had no idea what she had dug out of the sand, only that it was ancient, likely from the Great Tything, what those of the Crown called the Forsaken Ages. Such a treasure would surely fetch a princely sum from the Guilders who oversaw the necropolises.

Enough coin to find my brother.

That’s all that mattered.

She reached the last rung of the ladder and leaped to a slab of rock that formed a sandy ramp upward. She searched higher, her eyes stinging with sweat. Above, the gap of sky had widened, grown all the more blinding.

Still, she had far to go.

Swallowing back despair, she scrambled up the slab. She aimed for the next ladder. Shouts and curses rose behind her. She swore she could smell the stink of those hunters, carried on the breeze flowing upward. It reeked of shite and piss and fury.

Crikit scrabbled in her wake, but the slab’s sandy surface, worn smooth by the passage of centuries of leather sandals, betrayed those spikes. The young molag slid backward.

“No…” Esme moaned.

Over her eighteen years, she had lost too much and refused to forsake more. She skidded back down the stone and grabbed one of Crikit’s pincers.

She pulled him closer. “Grab hold.”

Crikit’s eyes waved in panic, then fixed into a steady determination. He thrust out a claw and snatched onto her belt.

Esme knew the molagi—whom many considered to be simple beasts of burden—were far sharper, hiding an astuteness behind their armor. She pitied those larger crabs, broken by time, often bridle-bound into servitude. Outfitters and wagoners typically severed those claws, both to protect themselves and to cripple the crabs from ever being able to return to the sands.

She could never abide such cruelty.

Esme set off up the slab. She did not have the strength to drag Crickit on her own, but she served as enough of an anchor that her friend could gain his balance and keep up with her.

Together, they reached the top, then separated again. Esme leaped to the next ladder, while Cricket mounted the neighboring wall and scrambled along it.

Behind them, the hunters shouted—now ringing with a note of triumph.

Esme stared up, refusing to succumb to defeat.

Not again—never again.

A MIDST THE ASHES of the Chanaryn wagons, Esme knelt in despair. A few carriages still showed their blackened ribs. Debris lay scattered across the sands. A pall of smoke clung close to all, as if trying to hide this anguish from the gods.

Those who had survived the slavers’ raid—only a dozen or so—had begun the slow repacking of their remaining molagi. Other crabs lay about, killed by spears and axes.

Esme refused to move.

Before her knees rose a cairn of stones, marking the graves of her father and mother. Esme tried to shut out the memory.

The attack had been sudden, the slavers bursting out of a ravine, riding atop horses. Her father had forced Esme and her brother under their family wagon. Then a slaver had trampled past, cast out a rope, and snared their mother by the neck. With a cry, her father sought to save her, chasing her across the sand, only to take a spear to his gut. But even that effort proved for naught. Their mother, struggling for freedom, broke her neck, strangling in that noose.

Then as quickly as the attack had begun, it ended.

Another band of Chanaryn rushed in and chased the marauders off, but not before twenty of her clan were stripped away, taken by the slavers.

A shadow passed over Esme as she blessed their graves with her blood. She barely felt the sting of the stone blade across her palms.

“We must go,” Arryn urged her.

She did not have the will or strength to resist as her brother pulled her to her feet. She hung in his arms, clinging to him, refusing to let him go.

“Come with us,” she moaned.

He hugged her closer. “My path lies elsewhere. To where the gods call me.”

She stared up at him, her eyes pleading.

Arryn was two years older—passing his sixteenth summer, marking his rise to manhood. He had survived his trials of sand, water, and rock. Marked with the scars of his success, he had chosen the path of a shaman, falling under the stern tutelage of an aeldryn who had gone sunblind but was still hale of limb.

She studied her brother’s face, fixing each contour, etching them behind her eyes. They were not unalike, standing tall among the Chanaryn, a head higher than most. Her black curls, oiled and braided, hung a handspan longer than his. They shared eyes of cobalt blue. Their matching skin shone like the black glass of the blasted sands.

The only striking difference was the pattern of pale facial scars that heralded Arryn’s passage to manhood—whereas her skin remained unblemished, as she was still too young for her trials.

Though in this moment of parting, she did not feel youthful.

Despair weighed upon her, aging her.

“Must you go?” she begged him. “Please stay with me.”

He looked down upon her mournfully.

Once packed, she and the others would set trail for the Necropolises of Seekh, to join other displaced Chanaryn. Their clan, too small now, could not survive the sands on their own, especially with the loss of most of their wagons. Other clans would shun them, deeming this attack to be providence of the gods. They would be branded as gyan-ra, or godforsaken. The only path open to them was to eke out a living in Seekh, to hopefully marry into another clan, allowing a few to return to the sands.

But that was not the road Arryn would take.

“Aeldryn Tann cannot make the journey into the deep desert on his own,” Arryn said. “To seek guidance from the gods, I must join him.”

“Then I should go with you. I can tend the fire. Prepare your meals.”

“No, Esme. You know that is not our way. Only those god-bound can make this trek.”

She recognized this and knew there was no convincing him otherwise.

“I will find my way back to you,” he said solemnly, swearing this with three fingers pressed to his heart.

She stared at that hand. Scars marked the flesh between his thumb and forefinger. He had not earned those from any trials. Long before, the markings had been burned into his skin by needles soaked in akcid oil. Those pale lines formed the jagged rays of the sun—or rather half of a sun.

She lifted her own hand, placing it next to his. The other half of that pale sun glowed between her thumb and forefinger.

Forever joining brother to sister.

“I must go,” he whispered.

She accepted this defeat, but not without her own demand. “If you don’t return, Arryn, I will seek you out. Even if it means my bones join yours in the sand.”

She gripped his hand in hers, squeezing hard, binding her words to him, intent never to break this promise.

A S E SME CLIMBED , that oath still burned inside her. Over the past four years, the promise had driven her deep into the ruins. It made her spurn anyone who showed an interest in sharing her bed, especially those who sought more from her. When she returned to the sands, it would not be pledge-bound to another.

For any hope of finding Arryn…

I must be free.

To that end, she fled faster. The oath to her brother spurred her upward. It fueled her heart, fired her limbs, and quickened her breath.

Crikit followed in her wake.

As she scaled ladder after ladder, the sun grew ever brighter. Its heat invigorated, rather than sapping her strength. The hunters continued their pursuit but gained no further ground. Their doggedness worried her. They were creatures of the shadowy depths. She had hoped the glare of the sun and risk of exposure would drive them back down.

Shouts belied this, as they continued to chase her.

While this kept her panicked, it also spoke to the value of what she carried. Such determination by these thieves only stoked her hopes.

Finally, she reached the last ladder and flew up its length. It ended at a plateau where a wide arcade of stone steps led out of the ruins.

“Stay close,” Esme warned Crikit.

Together, they rushed up the stairs into the trading post that served this corner of Seekh. The village lay amidst a spread of ruins that poked higher all around, as if the dead were trying to push out of their graves only to be scoured back down by sand and storms.

To Esme, the village was a sunken pox on a corpse. It smoked and stank and flowed with open troughs of sewage that streamed into the depths of the ruins. It screamed and shouted and cursed.

Esme pushed into the chaos. People crowded its narrow streets and alleys. Hawkers barked their wares. Braziers flamed with grease fires. Mongers leaned in doorways, baring a breast or a mottled thigh.

Esme rushed through it all, but only after folding her treasure back into its blanket. She kept her head down, drawing her hood up. Crikit followed, clacking loudly in warning. Still, shoulders jostled her. A hand tried to relieve her purse from her belt, but she batted it away. A leering man with no teeth eyed her as if she were something fallen from one of the grills.

She gritted her teeth and forged on. She aimed for the corner of the village that served as home to the Chanaryn, those like her who had washed out of the desert and ended up here. It lay near the outskirts of the village, farthest from the gateway into the ruins.

Esme kept close watch behind her. If the hunters continued their pursuit, she could no longer spot them.

I pray the same holds true for me.

She forded through the crush, the smoke, the noise, until finally the crowds thinned. Away from the ruins’ entrance, the shops eventually dwindled into rickety structures of rust and crumble.

Esme found her breath easing. Soon, her nose took in the spice and incense from countless Chanaryn devotions. Lamps and candles burned in the shadowy depths of windowless shacks. Most lacked doors, too. Her people could not abide confinement. For the clans of the Chanaryn, where the open spaces of the Barrens spread to all horizons, these homes felt like slavers’ cages. Out in the desert, even their beds were dug into the cooler sand, over which a lizard-hide tarp was rolled, whose outer scales reflected the endless sun and its heat.

As she headed through this corner of the village, she noted clusters of Chanaryn gathered in doorways or out in the alleyways.

Crikit suddenly bustled in front of her, his eye-stalks waving, clearly agitated.

“What’s wrong?” she whispered.

His pincers waved at the sky, drawing her attention upward. While crossing the village, she had barely lifted her face. Concerned, she craned her neck and pushed back her hood—then fell back a step.

Beyond the village outskirts, a small mooring field had been dug out of the surface ruins. Wyndships came and went, but even such sightings were rare. Most of the wealth dug out of Seekh ended up on the backs of molagi, or shipped out on long trains that crisscrossed the necropolises, drawn by teams of larger crabs.

Only what rose before her, moored in the neighboring field, towered over this corner of the village. A wyndship—easily twice the size of the largest that Esme had ever seen—formed a mountain of wood, iron, and balloon. But what strangled her breath was the sight of the iron beast that formed its prow. A huge, sculpted dragon loomed down at the village. Its wings were spread wide to either side, sheltering and protecting the bow of the ship. As if alive, the dragon rocked gently in place, stirred by the winds.

Under its steely gaze, Esme felt trapped, like a dustrab frozen before a swaying cobra. She finally shuddered herself free and took another step back. She swallowed hard as dread trickled through her. Stories of winged monsters filled many of the Chanaryn’s most ancient stories, tales of angry gods and fiery destruction.

From the fearful whispers and gestures of warding, others in the street were equally dismayed. For her people, such a sighting was a portent of doom.

Unfortunately, this proved true as a hand grabbed Esme’s arm and spun her around.

A hulking, shaven-headed man scowled down at her. His craggy brows shaded pinched eyes, as black as the deepest pit. She had no trouble recognizing him. All knew this rogue, the scourge of the village.

Esme cringed at the sight of Rahl hy Peck, the brutal leader of a cabal of cutthroats and oppressors. While the village had its headman and serjeants, no one dared cross Peck and his ilk.

Hard fingers dug into Esme’s arm.

Peck leaned closer, his breath ripe with sour ale. “You have something of mine, lass. Can’t have anyone stealing from me, especially not a sand grub.”

Esme tried to pull free, but Peck tightened his fist on her. No one came to her aid—at least, none of the Chanaryn.

Only Crikit, sensing the animus and threat, came to her defense, but Esme waved the young molag back.

Especially as Peck had not come alone. Five men, winded and grimed, stood past the rogue’s shoulder. Their faces streamed with sweat.

Esme knew these must be the ravagers who had been hunting her. Word must have been dispatched upward. Perhaps by skrycrow. Or through the foul strands that spread across the village, linking such scum, until it had eventually stirred the spider who had spun that web.

Still, Esme refused to back down. “I stole nothing. I dug this artifact out on my own. By right of the scavenge, it is mine.”

“Grubbing liar,” spat one of the men behind Peck. A ragged scar split his face from hairline to chin, gnarling his upper lip into a perpetual sneer. “She pilfered it while I weren’t looking.”

“Lachan is right,” another blurted. “I saw her take it.”

Esme’s cheeks heated up. Among the Chanaryn, theft was considered as wretched a deed as murder. “I am no thief.”

Peck’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t think you understand. It fekking doesn’t matter. Everything in this village is mine until I say it ain’t.” He pulled her closer. “Show me what you lifted from the ruins.”

She stiffened her back, refusing.

Peck motioned two of his men forward. The pair carried daggers in hand. The other three drew short swords, warding away any of the Chanaryn from interfering, not that anyone tried.

Unable to stop them, she was forced to submit while the thieves cut loose her harness and freed the wrapped treasure. They carried it around to Peck, who still kept hold of her.

“Show me,” Peck demanded, spittle flying from his lips, all but salivating.

The pair unrolled the blanket across the sandstone. The bronze arm clattered free. Though it was spottled and blackened with age, some metal remained untarnished and shone dully in the sunlight.

Gasps rose from those gathered. Even from Lachan, the snarl-lipped bastard—which gave proof to his lie of discovering it.

Peck pushed her away and examined it more closely. “Ock, as grand as this appears, I may not even kill you. You’ve handed me a great boon, lass.”

“What is it?” another of the thieves asked, his eyes bright with greed.

The answer came from behind Esme.

“It is a piece of a ta’wyn. ”

She turned around, but she refused to retreat from the treasure at her feet. Three men approached, accompanied by Aelder Hasant, who served as the overseer for their stranded clans.

The tallest of the three strangers—outfitted in the black robe of an alchymist—had spoken.

Esme squinted suspiciously at him. She had run into her share of scholars, those who sought to study the mysteries of these ruins.

A younger man with a fiery red beard whispered to the alchymist, as if consulting him. From his traveler’s cloak, Esme guessed he was an aide to the scholar.

Peck cleared his throat. “A tarwren, you say? How much you willing to pay for it? I suggest a steep price, enough to convince me not to take it to the Guilder’s office.”

Esme stepped between them all. “It is not his to barter. It is my find.”

The scar-lipped Lachan closed on her with his dagger, intending to silence her claim.

She ignored him and focused on the trio of strangers. The final member of the group had his head bowed with Hasant. Both men’s eyes settled on her, with the overseer giving a small nod as if in acknowledgment of something.

She studied this last stranger. He had skin the color of rain-darkened sand, with hair of oiled shadows. He wore a dark blue half-cloak, matching his breeches and tunic. His lips hinted at a smile, but she read the danger in the glint of those black eyes.

The alchymist turned to this man. “Darant, what do you think?”

“I think…” Darant said, stepping forward. “I’d rather negotiate my own terms.”

The man flared his cloak wide and swept out two swords, one gripped in each hand. The blades were so thin that they vanished as the swordsman swept a flourish through the air.

Esme had seen such weapons only once before, wielded with far less finesse.

Whipswords…

Peck reared back to his feet and waved to his men. “Kill them. And the grub.”

The five men spread wide.

From the shadows, another four thieves appeared, shedding into view. Peck had come prepared. To survive this long, he surely knew not to underestimate an enemy.

The alchymist backed away, drawing Hasant with him.

The red-bearded aide stepped forward. He shrugged aside his traveler’s cloak and swung a large blue-hued ax into view. He swept it in a vicious arc, scribing a pattern of threat.

“Get behind me,” the young man ordered Esme.

She refused. She wasn’t about to leave her treasure unguarded. By now, Lachan had reached her. He leered, holding his dagger low. With no snide word, only deadly intent, he lunged and stabbed at her chest—but Esme was no longer there.

Years ago, knowing she would eventually travel into the Barrens, likely alone, she had trained with a hesharyn, a Chanaryn sand-dancer, an expert in blades and balance.

Esme twisted sideways, escaping the thrust of the dagger. A bone blade already rested in her palm. She continued her spin. Caught off guard and a slave to momentum, Lachan fell past her.

He caught himself from a tumble by bracing a leg. He turned to her—only to meet the point of her dagger. She jammed it under his chin, yanked the blade out, and stabbed it in again.

Snakes have two fangs, her teacher had instructed her.

Lachan fell off her knife, tripping backward, spewing blood. He toppled to the stone, where he gurgled away his life.

Esme knew not to savor this victory, but to ready herself.

She crouched low, one leg swept to the side, her toe firm to rock.

From this position, she gaped at the slaughter of Peck’s other men. The caped man swirled through the skirmish, a sand devil come to life. Screams and blood followed in his wake. The bearded youth cleared the rest, cleaving a path with his ax, wielding it with determined intent.

Still, Peck had not survived this long by being cowed.

Instead, he acted while his men died.

He grabbed the bronze arm from the blanket and retreated with it. His narrowed eyes gleamed with the stolen wealth.

No…

Esme set off after him, but the fighting rolled in front of her, cutting her off. She could only watch as Peck escaped with her treasure, taking with him all hope of her ever finding her brother.

But her anguish reached another.

Crickit leaped from the side, where Esme had sent him. The molag struck Peck. Pincers cleaved through the bastard’s wrist in one snap. Peck bellowed in horror. A hand of flesh and an arm of bronze struck the stone.

Peck stumbled away, at first slowly, then in a rout of panic. His remaining hand clutched his wrist, trying to stem the pulsing arc of blood.

Esme called Crikit to her, while rushing to the abandoned treasure.

By now, the fighting had ended. One survivor fled after Peck, leaving his own trail of blood.

Esme collected the bronze arm and turned to the strangers. She held up her bone dagger. “This treasure is mine. I will not give it up.”

Darant shrugged. “Keep it. It’s not the artifact we want.”

She frowned at him.

Hasant hobbled forward, leaning on his staff, accompanied by the alchymist.

“Ree plya nishka,” the overseer said formally in the Chanaryn tongue. He pointed his staff toward the towering dragon looming over the village. “Trys shishen wyn.”

The red-bearded young man nodded, though he was surely ignorant of the Chanaryn language. “We need a guide. To join us aboard the Fyredragon. ”

Esme kept frowning. “A guide to where?”

The alchymist answered, but he sidestepped her question. “We’ve been rebuffed by your clansmen. All seem fearful of traveling with us.”

Esme understood this, which Hasant confirmed with his next words, spoken with conviction.

“Neey auguran.”

“What does that mean?” Darant asked.

“It means bad omen, ” Esme explained. “No Chanaryn would risk riding a ship with such a beast at its prow.”

The alchymist stared back at the huge ship. “Why does—”

“Where are you all going?” Esme continued, ignoring him. “Why do you need a Chanaryn guide?”

“We intend to travel deep into the Barrens,” the red-bearded man answered. “Likely farther than any of your people have ever gone.”

Esme pictured Arryn’s face as last she saw him.

Maybe not all of us…

“Will you come with us?” Darant said.

She stared across the trio, keeping her face stoic, trying to hide the hope bursting inside her heart. For the past four years, she had sought a path deep into the desert, far out into the Barrens.

Could this be my best chance?

Still, she could also not discount an icy thread of fear—not from any worry born of bad omens, but in concern about the fate of her brother. All these years, she had prayed that Arryn still lived, refused to accept otherwise. It had kept her going, driving her from day to day.

Now I have a chance to discover the truth.

But she also knew such knowledge—if the worst proved true—would destroy her.

Still, there was another concern.

She glanced to the trail of blood leading away, knowing Peck’s retribution would be brutal if she was discovered here. And no doubt his wrath would also fall upon the Chanaryn villagers here.

For that reason, too, I must be gone.

She faced the strangers. “When do we leave?”

Darant shaded his eyes and searched the skies. “We’re still waiting for stragglers to return to the ship.”

She nodded. “Then I will gather what I need. And for Crikit, too.”

“Crikit?” the alchymist asked.

Esme signaled her friend. The young molag scurried to her side, lowered to his belly, and clicked softly with worry.

She reached down and scratched behind his eye-stalks. “Don’t worry. I’m not leaving you behind.”

She stared defiantly at the others, daring them to refuse her.

Darant shrugged and glanced with consternation at the alchymist. “What is it about all these young women… and their affinity for strange beasts?”