So I left. Tara came with me. Not because I asked. I did not ask. I woke before dawn, packed dried meat, cactus water, three knives, and a pouch of sand from the fox den I could still find blindfolded.
When I climbed down from the window, Tara was already outside beside the sand sled, arms crossed, expression deadly. She said I was not wandering into the bigger world with no money, no shoes, and the social grace of a thrown brick. I looked at my feet. They still seemed sufficient. She tossed me a pair anyway.
For three days we crossed open desert. Tara rode the sled while I pulled it when the wind died and surfed it when the dunes were kind. At night I told her which stars warned of cold, where to dig for beetles, and how to sleep so scorpions checked your neighbors first. She told me how cities worked, how money worked, and how not to insult a cook by sniffing every bowl like poison.
I said poison was important. She said manners were poison protection for idiots.
On the fourth day we reached a place where the sand turned white. The salt flats. Everything there was bright enough to hurt. The ground cracked under our feet in thin plates. Dead fish bones stuck out of the salt like teeth. Far ahead, a caravan crawled across the white plain, and above it circled winged shadows.
Not birds. Salt mantas. They were flat monsters with pale wings wide as sails and mouths underneath full of grinding plates. They glided through heat currents, then dropped onto prey and sucked the moisture from bodies until only dry shapes remained. Caravan guards fired arrows that curved away in the hot wind. People ran in circles because the salt glare made distance lie.
One manta dropped and swallowed a camel whole. Tara looked at me. I was already running.
The problem with fighting flying monsters while carrying the slowest sword in existence is that the sky has no patience. I summoned the blade and its weight carved a groove in the salt. The manta rose higher, smart enough to stay out of reach.
So I made reach. I slammed the blade flat onto the salt and began dragging it in a circle, slowly, painfully, like moving a piece of night through the bones of the earth. The manta circled above, waiting for me to tire. The caravan people screamed for me to move before the next drop. I did not move. I kept dragging.
The blade scraped the salt into a rising wall of white dust. Round and round, the wall grew thicker. The manta lost sight of the caravan. Then Tara understood and started smashing salt plates with a hammer, feeding the dust cloud until the whole area became a shining storm. The first manta dropped blind. I had already started the upward swing.
It took forever. The manta came through the dust like a pale blanket of teeth. I could smell its wet mouth. I could feel the wind of its body pushing me down. My arms shook. My knees bent. Then the blade rose. The manta split the cloud in two, and my spirit blade split the manta in one. The impact launched a wave of salt so bright everyone covered their eyes.
The other mantas scattered. One was unlucky enough to turn late, and I used the flat side of the blade like a giant paddle, swatting it into the ground so hard the salt flats rang like a drum. The caravan survived. The guards looked at me like I was some kind of holy disaster. The merchant in charge offered me coin, food, and a place in their escort line to Copper Gate, the first real city on the trade road.
He also asked what school taught my sword style. I said starvation. Tara told him I was joking. I was not.
Copper Gate was too big. That was my first thought. Its walls were made of orange stone and metal plates that flashed in the sun. Towers rose above the gate. Bells rang. Carts rolled. People shouted from balconies. Smoke curled from chimneys. Water ran through channels cut into the streets like tiny rivers that had allowed themselves to be captured.
The smell hit me so hard I almost fought it. Spice, sweat, hot metal, animals, perfume, sewage, fried dough, wet stone, fear, greed, excitement. In the desert every scent had space. In the city they stacked on top of each other until my nose felt ambushed.
I lasted twelve minutes before stealing food. Not because I was starving. Because the food was sitting there shining with honey and nobody was guarding it properly. My hand moved on instinct. The vendor shouted. A crowd turned. Tara groaned the way people groan when they realize a disaster has become personal. I ran.
City running was not desert running. There were carts, ropes, stairs, laundry lines, people carrying soup, people carrying babies, people carrying opinions. I leaped over a donkey, rolled under a cart, climbed a wall, slipped on fish scales, and landed inside a bathhouse through the roof. That was how I learned about public screaming. By sunset I was wet, chased, hungry again, and banned from two markets I had not even meant to enter.
Tara found me on a rooftop eating the stolen honey bread with the expression of a person considering whether friendship was worth prison. She told me power would not matter if I kept acting like every town was a carcass. I told her humans hoarded food behind rules. She said rules were how humans avoided killing each other over bread every morning.
I said that sounded inefficient. She stared at me until I looked away.
That night I did something I hated. I returned to the vendor. I paid double with coin from the caravan reward. I did not apologize well. The words came out like stones, but I said them. The vendor looked ready to throw hot oil on me until he saw Tara behind me holding her wrench. Then he accepted.
I thought that was the end. It was not. The next day the vendor sent me three stale rolls and a note that said wild dogs could be trained. I ate the rolls. I kept the note because it made me angry in a useful way.