Free Birthright by Jean Johnson Page B

does.”
    *   *   *
    Riding on a horse, Elrik decided, lifted one a couple of feet off the desert floor. Which lifted the traveler just high enough to dissipate some of the heat reflecting off that floor. Unfortunately, he wasn’t riding on a horse anymore. Mopping his face with a scrap of fabric drawn from his satchel, he grimaced against the glare coming from the sandy ground. For all this was midautumn, the sun was still high overhead, and the heat was becoming fierce.
    Replacing the kerchief with his waterskin, he drank a couple of swallows to replace the sweat he had just shed, and envied the twin princesses. Hallakan was sweating the same amount as he, but the two women didn’t seem affected by the heat—in fact, they had chosen to forgo turbans and ponchos as well as footwear, leaving them clad in sleeveless cotton shirts and sashed trousers gathered and tied at midcalf. Their gaze was focused almost entirely on the ground, watching where they placed their tanned feet. This might be a sandy stretch, which carried the potential for a sand-demon or two, but it also had crumbled bits of rock, swept about by the strong storm-winds that sometimes wracked the desert.
    Hallakan, striding to the right and a little bit behind his betrothed, was watching the rugged stone walls ahead of them. This was one of the open stretches where their path crossed the winding caravan route. There weren’t any burdened pack-animals, merchants, or guards in sight, but there were plenty of churned hoofprints in view. Sand-demons could be killed by crushing with a very heavy weight, like a horse’s hoof or a dromid’s tough-skinned foot. Unfortunately, most humans weren’t strong enough for the task, since sand-demons rarely left their soft soil home; sand-dunes just weren’t solid enough to effectively stomp against. But then, the nasty beasts wouldn’t stick around when a large caravan came by. The potential to be crushed was far greater than the chance to sting a victim.
    Lifting his gaze away from the pale sand, Erik studied the next crevasse they had to enter. It was narrow, just big enough for someone to ride an Imperial Mare, but no bigger. If he tipped his head just right, his conical hat shaded his eyes from the glaring blue-white of the slightly hazy sky while still allowing him a view of the tops of the cliffs. The granite at this section was redder than it was back at Ijesh, and the darker color was easier on his eyes than the glare of the yellow-cream sand.
    For a moment, he thought he saw something moving up there, and glanced at Hallakan to see if the other man had seen it, too. Hallakan shook his head, though. It was a slight movement, one that took a few moments to register. Not that it had happened, but that the man hadn’t been looking at Elrik at the time. Hadn’t known— couldn’t have known—that Elrik was curious whether he had seen that movement as well.
    Something wasn’t right. Elrik knew he was being influenced by his impression of the other man: arrogant, condescending, proud, disdainful…suave, very charming, there was no denying that, but there was something more. That first morning, when Hallakan had argued about the strength of the Empire, he had backed off when Taje-tan Kalasa asserted herself, and then…he had ingratiated himself back into her good graces. Charmed her, soothed her ruffled feathers. Placated her.
    Made sure she still considered him valuable enough to keep at her side.
    Elrik didn’t know where that thought came from, but he knew he didn’t quite trust the man. Hallakan seemed ambitious, and very interested in settling the succession, even if he didn’t believe in religious texts or ancient agreements between mortals and gods. Elrik had to concede that he himself wasn’t overly religious either, but his was more a matter of agnosticism; he was merely a mortal man, relatively unimportant in the grand scheme, and unlikely to be visited by the Gods of either his father’s or