Keethior flew back to Isika in the brilliant pre-sunset light, and they sat on the porch of her house together, looking over the houses and gardens that tumbled down one hill and up the next. It had been cloudy, and the clouds were lit up by strong light, tinged like copper. The Othra had been sending Isika flashes of what he saw, though he couldn’t maintain a connection strong enough over the distance to show her everything.
She had seen pictures, enough to hurt—Aria, hunched, angry, thin, stumbling through sand, looking like a waif in the large bowl of the desert. Her heart ached as she saw flashes of Aria’s anger and heard her venomous words. On the porch, Keethior told her the things she hadn’t already heard. Aria was going to the Desert King in Dhahara, the far away city of the Garia
