Kera couldn’t wake Virgil the next morning.

  She found his heartbeat after a frantic scramble, and felt his breath on the back of her hand. But his breathing was shallow, and his heart rapid and weak, and even after minutes more she simply couldn’t wake him.

  So her own heart stayed in her throat the whole morning, even after she’d remounted Horus along with the rest of the patrol. However reassuring Virgil had been the night before, Kera realized then perhaps he’d spoken more to help her sleep than to convey the truth.

  And the truth was that the morning had come, and their patrol was still lost, as Virgil slipped evermore away. And even if they were to rediscover the trail, it would take many days’ ride to reach assistance.

  Holding her place in her formation, and sweating under the rising winter sun, she tried to scan the horizon again. But she’d done the same a dozen times already that morning, and her result then was the same as before. They had no better landmarks than the distant northern mountains still looming to their right, larger than they’d been in Dromos, but still too far to provide much more sense of their bearing than her sextant or vis totem.

  She stole a glance at Reglus, where he rode in the lead. His attention was fixed on the way ahead, as if he had some reason for confidence in his navigational decisions. But she knew for a fact they should’ve crossed paths with the trail already, if he’d been right about their position over the last few days. He could only be taking them further off-course.

  Still eyeing him, she slowed Horus’ pace to fall back further a few more yards, and willed manifest her vis.

  A rod of periwinkle, the blade of a great compass needle, flickered to life in her hands. At first it spun, twirling on an invisible axis above the tip of her index finger, and she hoped against hope it would come to rest on some new and different vector.

  But once more, it swung back around, then settled firm at last again pointing toward her own body. She grimaced in disappointment.

  But before she could will her vis away again, she caught Reglus already glaring back at her. He pulled his reins, falling in by her side.

  “Sergeant Iumatar,” he growled, leaning close. “Do you have something to say, about the course on which we should be headed? Your totem still isn’t working, is it?”

  Reglus kept his rage to a simmer, but Kera could still feel him drawing the attention of many of the others riding in formation nearby. Staring at the ground, she managed a weak shake of her head.

  “Well then that’s twice the reason to stop checking it, as I ordered you before. Yes, we might not be on the straightest course. But some of your peers are this close to breaking,” he hissed, jerking his chin toward Sekhem, who rode glassy-eyed behind them both. “Morale is hanging by a thread. They’re scared out of their wits. Do you understand the situation we’re in? None of us have a chance, separated from the supply birds. We cannot risk disintegration, or we’ll all die of fucking thirst out here.”

  Kera imagined a retort, and its acid bored a hole held on her tongue. But her cheeks burned too, and she couldn’t raise her eyes from the cracked-dry earth.

  “If I catch you or anyone else questioning our heading again,” said Reglus, “I’ll be taking your bird and leaving you behind, so that the rest of us might still make it. We simply cannot have you sowing doubt, right now. Do you understand?”

  Kera tasted blood, biting her lip so hard.

  “I’ll take your silence to mean you do. Keep up now.”

  Kera struggled to steady her breathing even as Reglus rode ahead, the other onlooking patrol officers’ attention drifted elsewhere. For minutes, she dared not lift her gaze, terrified she’d see a comrade was still staring at her, in judgement, pity, or both.

  But just as she’d built the courage at last to rise, her attention caught. She slowed Horus’ gait, as for a moment she studied the ground, rather than simply burying her gaze in it.

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  The ground below was so devoid of grass. And cracked dry as if beyond merely just the sun’s bleaching…

  * * *

  Kera huddled against her knees atop her bedroll, as she pretended to face away from the campfire. While the rest of the patrol set up for the night themselves, she tried to watch them from just the corner of her eye.

  She couldn’t help herself, tortured by their dilemma.

  She re-checked the two pouches of dirt nestled inside her pack. Confirming again to herself that the handful of soil she’d gathered earlier, just after her chastising by Reglus, was measurably darker and moister than the sample she’d taken eight hours later, right before sunset.

  But Reglus had made it very clear how he’d respond if she was to suggest any alternative method of navigation.

  She drew her knees in closer to her chest, wobbling closer to Virgil’s faint warmth where he lay unconscious on the bedroll beside her.

  There was but one alternative, if she wanted any chance to save his life.

  Sekhem lay on her own bedroll, staring at the night sky, not quite opposite the campfire, silent as she’d been since Virgil’s injury.

  She tried to convince herself her old comrade would survive Reglus’ navigation, once she was gone. The patrol had enough water, together. And Kera intended to leave behind the last of her own rations, so that would be some help. Virgil wasn’t eating, and barely drinking, anyway.

  She clenched shut her eyes.

  She had to try. It was the only way he might still survive.

  Minutes stretched on into hours, as each other patrol officer fell asleep, and the embers of the fire died. All the while, Kera continued shifting her bedroll silent inches at a time farther from the rest of the gathering to ease her stealth.

  Once she was sure none other than the distant nightwatch remained awake, she rose to a silent squat, reversing to drag Virgil again inches at a time toward the hitched riding birds. With painstaking patience, she made their passing no louder than the bedroll-tossing of those fitfully asleep, or the savanna’s blowing winter wind.

  Once she’d reached the birds, she re-tied each of the other mounts to their hitching posts with a quadruple-strength knot, to dissuade any immediate pursuit. Then she untethered Horus, careful to do so without disturbing his sleep, where he lay nestled in a curled ball on the ground, tucked into his own feathers.

  But she froze, just as she readied to heave Virgil’s body onto the back of Horus’ saddle.

  The pupil of one great round eye stared back at her, reflecting starlight in the night. Horus’ recurved neck had unfurled upward, though he did not yet stand.

  She dared not to move a muscle. The great animal looked her over, then Virgil, then turned back to her in unreadable silence.

  She braced, waiting for the vicious-taloned bird to leap up, stamp, and ruffle his feathers, in one of those tantrums he sometimes threw when she slipped up adjusting his tack.

  But Hours instead bent his massive neck back down, after another moment. As if inviting her to do as she intended.

  In her surprise she almost hesitated, before the precarious urgency of her circumstances thrust her back into motion. She wasted no more time positioning Virgil on the saddle, swinging one of his legs over her bird's great neck. And all the while, Horus remained only prostrate, and still. Then at last, she mounted the saddle herself, and squeezed her mount’s abdomen with her knees.

  Horus leapt to his feet, feathers rushing loud through the chill air. She wasted no time, whipping the reins, kicking back hard with her spurs.

  They tore past the camp at a full sprint. A handful of her comrades bolted upright on their bedrolls as she thundered by, and likewise did the nightwatch officers shout as she crossed their perimeter in turn. But she paid them no heed, as she steered Horus onto a heading north by northwest. She’d be long gone by the time any of them cut their birds loose. If Reglus even demanded a pursuit, at all.

  “Ugh… w–where…?” Virgil stirred, as the awakened camp’s shouts diminished in their wake.

  “I’m taking you to Tanhkmet myself.”

  “Mm…”

  “Reglus was only taking us further off course,” she explained. “The stronghold’s somewhere just outside Atum-Ra, right?”

  “Mm…mhmm…”

  “Well, whatever destroyed the city scorched the earth around for miles… If we track how dry the soil’s burnt, follow the deadness of the grass, that’ll lead us to the epicenter. To where the city used to be, at least.”

  “You’re… sure…?”

  “I’m sure it has to be better than whatever Reglus is doing.”

  “But… if you’re… so sure… why not…” said Virgil, as he shifted with painful effort to look back toward the camp.

  “Reglus won’t listen,” she said.

  “You… tried? And the others…? If Reglus couldn’t… see reason… they would mutiny, with you…”

  Tears welled in her eyes.

  Why? Why did she have to be such a coward?

  “You did try… to tell them… didn’t you? What… did they say?”

  Kera couldn’t answer.

  Such cowardice even then, she thought. Even just with him.

  “You’re… you’re just leaving them…” said Virgil, as he read her silence. “Why… didn’t you try…? If they’re lost… without you…”

  Kera only pushed Horus harder into the night, as Virgil drifted back out of consciousness. Urging her bird faster, even as no other riders came from the camp.

  As if it were her guilt and shame themselves, instead, she wished she could outpace.

  “There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.”

  Oscar Wilde