The music played on. Well-known songs had most joining in—many badly out of tune and time, but all full of enthusiasm and cheer. The songs were so familiar to Izzi they flew over her, high above, almost unheard. Whether happy or sad, they carried the people away from thoughts of the war and its costs. She remained in the background, a ghost, unfeeling, defending herself from memories.

Eventually it was time for the tellings. Simurgh emerged from behind the musicians and hurdled up onto a wine cask with the effortless grace of a man who could leap between speeding horses. Those who noticed him stopped their conversations, touched the shoulders of their colleagues. Izzi saw him scan the crowd, waiting for his moment. He nodded to the musicians, who brought the current tune to a tidy end. 

“Caravan!” he called. His voice didn’t seem loud, but its timbre carried and silenced the final mutterings, inviting all the caravan folk to gather. He dropped to sit with his dusty boots dangling, and motioned his people closer. His turban was slightly unravelling, and he pushed it back out of the way impatiently, readying himself to speak. At least a hundred crowded in—cameleers and cooks, traders and tinkers, scouts and singers who called the rolling desert home. The caravan guards flanked him, those same swift and deadly horsemen who had just danced the swords. None saw Izzi, even when she mingled forward, but she took care not to be close enough to bump into shoulders or hips. 

“A trip of great profit, my friends,” Simurgh said, his thick black beard parting in a grin, “as father will attest.” He pointed over their heads, indicating Penza, owner of the khan, caravan, and much else besides, who stood outside his darkened tally room on the colonnade, watching on, wearing his usual indigo kaftan and fine but austere turban. He dipped his head in acknowledgment. 

There were muted cheers in response. 

“And profit for the caravan is profit for us all,” Simurgh continued, deftly saving the moment.

The cheers were more enthusiastic.

“I know we passed on the last leg things you might like to un-see, or forget, or maybe cannot forget—perhaps you have vowed never to forget. Know that we do not just make a profit here, we carry vital goods and supplies for the people at both ends of our journey. We are a lifeline, a heartbeat for the people, mothers and daughters, sons and fathers, regardless of who they support or what they believe, from the richest noble to the most luckless refugee.”

The response was silence. All eyes were on the kohl-lined eyes of Simurgh, and he seemed to return a piercing regard directly to each in turn. He raised his hands, adjusting his turban once again, then lifting them to include all in an expansive gesture, fingers splayed. 

“Remember who you are. Perhaps you are a son of a son of a son of a cameleer who rode the dunes before the rock of these kingdoms was raised from the sand, and feel what I say deeply. Or perhaps you are a daughter who joined us only weeks ago, leaving behind what you knew, running from it, or running to us. No matter. 

“Who you are is a caravaner. Your loyalty is clear. We are Caravan!”

“Caravan!” one of the sword dancers shouted, raising a fist.

“Caravan!” The crowd cried in unison. “Caravan!”

Izzi so wanted to belong to the caravan. She could leave with them the next day, run away to feel the sense of belonging her brother invoked. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. She did not belong to the caravan. Penza would never allow it, in any case. Zakra was all she had ever known, and she was as rooted here as the khan.

Simurgh continued. “If you have no duties among the stacks and coffers, no duties to the camels and horses, no fruitful trading to pursue, have a well-earned day of rest tomorrow, for the next day the desert welcomes us back.”

“Who gets to rest, exactly?” cried a heckler.

“Those who are not carrying their weight, Malik,” Simurgh retorted, and threw his head back in a laugh which dislodged his turban entirely, spilling out the dark waves of his hair. The laughter caught on and rippled through the caravaners, and Izzi saw that even Malik, the young camel-hand, joined in. She smiled with pride for her brother.

Then the brightness of the fire and lanterns seemed to dim. A shift in the magesty of the khan tickled the invisible swirling wards, raising and rippling the fine hairs on Izzi’s arms. She spun around to scan for the source. There. 

Back between the columns, Father tugged at the long ripples of his beard, wearing an expression that might have been anger on another man, but Izzi knew was concern. Behind him, a second figure loomed in the darkness—darker than the shadows, a shape half-swallowed.

Whatever had hidden him seemed to shatter. It was Mogh Kalu.

Kalu was her teacher at the Magekadeh, but more than that—he led the Magians of Zakra, and was the king’s Royal Magian. It was his veiled presence that must have disturbed the wards earlier.

She hadn’t seen Kalu at the Khan of Penza since the day he’d recruited her for mage training, plucking her from childhood to set her on the path to defend Zakra. Why was he with Penza now? 

Kalu moved from the tally room’s threshold, his dark cape rippling like a pool disturbed by a stone. Those ripples seemed to drink the light from the space around him, dragging an eerie stillness in his wake. Izzi saw his lips move—murmuring something just beneath hearing. A spell.

The courtyard dulled. The murmur of the caravaners faded into nothing—cut off mid-breath. A glamour…

Then, finally, Kalu stepped fully into the light.

The lines of his face were carved in all the wrong directions, as if his skin had set in expressions no ordinary man could make—angles of thought too sharp, furrows of concern shaped by calculations rather than care. His fluffy white hair bobbed with his stride, and though she often found it comical, it wasn’t. Not now. Not in the silence he had drawn over them all.