Free Dream Storm Sea by A.E. Marling

refuse, unless you have room for my entire company, our horse, and camels.”
    “I’ll throw urns of oil overboard as needed, and may the goddess witness it.”
    Arbiter Cosima demurred. They trudged onward. The heat and the entourage of flies were the least of Hiresha’s misery. She had failed to find an opportunity to escape. Sagai watched her every night. He seemed to doze only a few hours in the morning and afternoon, when any of the elite guards could alert him in time to catch her.
    Monstrous. Hiresha found his willful avoidance of sleep harder to believe than the tale of a murderous fish dragging a trained spellsword from the shore.
    Hiresha had almost convinced herself that Sagai drew some kind of power from his interest in Naroh, that their bond granted him more vigor and alertness than was decent for a mortal. The enchantress realized that some more frivolous cultures in the empire might have said Sagai and Norah were in love. Hiresha had not been brought up to believe in such nonsense, but if she did allow for it, she would have named love as a perfect inconvenience.
    Worse still, Hiresha had seen nothing of Spellsword Fos. A fraction of her held out hope that he had escaped the company of Inannis and Emesea and was a stowaway on a land ship that had passed her on the way to Jaraah. The majority of Hiresha maintained a respectable pessimism.
    She smelled the city long before reaching its gates. A whiff of spice, a stench of sweat, an aura of sesame oil, a sweet dryness of burning dung, and a gust of the sea.
    Hiresha had traveled through the city before but never noticed the fishermen’s village. A slum, to be precise. The mud huts cowered against the outside of the city wall. Several of the homes that had sprawled too close to the water were crushed. No docks dared venture into the surf. The beach was a wreckage of boats. If any were seaworthy, Hiresha could not say. They looked puny, their sails patchwork rags compared to the proud merchant ships that cruised the dunes.
    Even from a distance, the fishing slums stank of despair. Naroh refused to look, and when Sagai said something to her, she shook her head and faced the other way on her camel.
    Seagulls teemed above the coastline. They scared the fennec fox. He crouched on Hiresha’s lap, ears turned down. His white paws dug at the fabric of her dress. He wore a harness that looped beneath his forelegs. Hiresha detested it. She wrapped the leather lead around her hand, which bore a whitish-pink scar in the shape of a moon crescent. Shielding the fox’s eyes from the sun comforted him.
    As they entered the city, Hiresha’s stomach tensed, shrinking to the size of a shriveled fig. She would soon attempt her escape. Her plan had risks, but she could no longer wait for such an impossibility as Sagai sleeping.
    Arches of mosaic tiles covered the streets and turned them into tunnels. The shade felt like bathing in cool water, bringing gasps of relief from the elite guards. The only light squeezed in through slits in the roof, and motes swirled in the bright beams. The streets of Jaraah had the feel of traveling through caverns, passages full of the treasures of merchant stalls. Shadows shimmered with half-seen glassware.
    Hiresha uncovered the fennec’s eyes, and he started hopping and yipping. His ears and tail stuck up with glee. The camel turned her head around and blew her lips at the tiny creature on her back.
    “Fennec, you must feel at home in this palatial desert burrow.”
    Hiresha’s voice caught because she knew she would have to leave the fennec behind. She whispered to the earsome troublemaker.
    “Would—would you forgive me if we parted ways?”
    As if in answer, the fennec wriggled from her grasp and leaped from the camel. The fox had not even taken a backward glance. The leash caught him, and Hiresha pulled him back up by his harness. I can’t give him up just yet. Seeing his furry legs paddling in the air tore at her.
    “I could accuse you