Chapter 31 · Shana's Pardon

The wagon was burning.

Alto dragged Kael through the sand, one arm hooked under the older man's ribs, and watched the flames eat through canvas and wood twenty paces ahead. Black smoke poured into the dawn sky. The crowd from the collapsed pit had scattered into the dunes, but the fire drew a new kind of attention. He could already hear boots.

Lira Tavan stepped out from behind the wreck.

She had a medic's bag in one hand and her hair tied back, and she looked at Kael's face and then at Alto like she'd been waiting for them. That stopped him cold. Kael's weight sagged against his shoulder, breath coming shallow and wrong, and Alto tasted copper in his own mouth.

"Let me help," Lira said.

"No."

She took a step closer. He took one back. Kael made a sound that might've been a laugh or a cough, and his knees folded. Alto caught him before he hit the ground, but barely.

"He's dying," Lira said. Not loud. Not like she was trying to scare him. Just flat and true, the way medics talk when there's no time to be nice about it.

Alto looked down.