Falling for the Sultan Who Ordered My Death novel · Chapter 26 of 32

Chapter 26: Salt Mother

"Down," I said. "Find me white ground. Now."

We ran.

The wind hit us before we'd gone a hundred steps.

It came across the face, full of grit, and the stars were gone.

Then I felt it under my feet.

The crust cracking. Salt.

There was a shallow pan there, where a pool had dried long ago, the kind my mother called the dead floor.

Sand blows across salt. It doesn't pile on it.

I dragged him down into the lowest part of it.

"Coat," I shouted. "Over both of us. Lie on the skins."

He threw the coat over our heads and lay on top of me with his whole body.

"Not on me. Beside me."

"No," he said into my ear.

The storm came over us like a river.

It roared. It hissed. It found every gap in the coat and filled my mouth with dust.

I tore a strip off my hem and pressed it over his nose and mouth with my hand.

He did the same for me with his sleeve.

We lay, breathing through cloth, for the rest of the night.

He didn't move once.

I felt the sand hitting his back through the coat, hour after hour.

At some point I put my hand flat on his chest to feel his heart.

He put his over mine.

When the roar dropped to a whine and the light came gray through the cloth, we dug ourselves out.

The pan was half full of red sand, and we were in the bottom of it.

He sat up and spat.

His face was red with grit. His eyebrows were orange.

"Is it always like that?" he croaked.

"No. Usually it's worse."

He looked at me to see if I was joking.

I wasn't.

One waterskin had split along its seam in the night.

The knot had held. The leather hadn't.

The other had three days of water in it if we were careful, and four days of walking ahead.

I didn't tell him the arithmetic.

He worked it out anyway. I watched him do it.

Then, from the east, I heard bells.

Camel bells, and a man singing badly, and the sweet thick smell of tea boiled too long with too much sugar.

The salt-mother's eldest son found us an hour later, sitting on the rim of the pan.

He looked at me for a long time from the top of his camel.

"Salt girl," he said. "You're supposed to be at the palace."

"I was."

He looked at Tamir.

Tamir looked back at him with his orange eyebrows.

"Who's that?"

"The Sultan of Qaresh."

The eldest son laughed so hard he nearly fell off his camel.

Then he stopped laughing, and got down, and gave us his own water.

Two days later we sat at the salt-mother's fire in Tel Zahra.

She took one look at Tamir and handed him a cup of tea without a word.

Then she held out her hand.

"Give me your knife."

He gave it to her.

She cut a length of cord off her own headcloth and put it in his hand.

"Tie it."

He tied three turns, a loop, and a tail tucked under like a bird's wing.

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