Pathway

"Shut up." Chang Chang bellowed. "Tralk, talk to me."

Tralk peered at the parchment before him. "Who the frip is Ju Fengilong the Elder?"

"Ain't he the king of Tarwin?"

Chang Chang frowned. "I thought he was that defiler from Nibenay."

But the fourth one, Fa Mu noticed, had a faraway look on his face as he spoke very, very softly. "That's one of the guys that ruled during the Green Age."

Tralk made a snorting noise. "Was that before or after the Orange Age?"

The third one chuckled at that, but the fourth one still looked serious. "Look, this ain't no joke. I knew a guy, right, and he told me all about Ju Fengilong's treasure—that it was all lost-like."

"Was lost." Ju Feng Feng pouted as she said it. "We found it. We earned it."

At that, Chang Chang laughed. "Ah, well, you see, my dear, the whole point of the Black Sands Raiders is that we take that which other people have earned." He turned to Tralk. "Where is it?"

"The woman's right, it's only a few days' walk from here."

"Good. That map's easier to move with than this setup. Bad enough we're coming back to Nuhan without most of our people or our mounts. A treasure map will go a lot farther with him than a carriage full of worthless trinkets." Chang Chang suddenly threw Fe Ying forward, and she fell facedown in the sand.

"Oof." came her muffled voice from the ground even as Zhang Wu moved amazingly quickly.

"Fe Ying." Kneeling down beside her, Zhang Wu put an arm on her shoulder and slowly guided her to her feet.

"I'm all right," grumbled Fe Ying as she spit sand out of her mouth and glared at Chang Chang.

Zhang Wu stared at the leader. "You have your map."

"And you have your woman. It's tempting to kill you."

Zhang Wu smiled at Chang Chang, showing his sharpened teeth. "You're welcome to try."

"Perhaps another time. Please don't try to follow us—we know this desert far better than you, and it won't end well."

Slowly, never taking their eyes off the emporium's carriage, the four raiders moved off with their newly acquired treasure map.

As soon as they were out of sight, Fa Mu let out a long laugh. "Well done, Lith."

Ju Feng Feng took a mock bow. "Thank you, thank you."

"This is no laughing matter," Zhang Wu barked. "Fe Ying was almost killed."

Her tone sharpening, Ju Feng Feng said, "Yes, but she wasn't, because we gamed those imbeciles into thinking that treasure map that Gash screwed up was good."

Shooting her lover a glance, Fe Ying then said to Ju Feng Feng, "And I am grateful, Ju Feng Feng." She looked up at Zhang Wu again. "Those men were desperate—and I'm pretty sure they're the remnants of the same group that killed Fehrd."

Fa Mu nodded. "Didn't need mind-magic for that. When Lith and I talked to some folks from the caravan back at Raam, several of them mentioned that only four of the raiders survived, and they ran off without their crodlus. Can't imagine there's more than one group of Black Sands like that in this region."

You Rin rubbed two of her pincers together, a sure sign of agitation. "I'm Ju Fengst glad we had Gash's map. What would we have done if he'd gotten it right the first time?"

Ju Feng Feng shrugged. "Something else. This is what we do, Tricht'tha."

"Next time," Zhang Wu said with a growling undertone, "try to do it without endangering Fe Ying."

"It's not as if we chose to endanger her, Zhang Wu," Ju Feng Feng said sharply.

Zhang Wu snarled. "You could have Ju Fengst given them what they wanted. What if one of them recognized the map for a fake?"

Before Ju Feng Feng could provide yet another sharp retort, Fa Mu stepped in. "Zhang Wu, that wouldn't happen—there are maybe six people in all of Athas who know about that impurity. It was Ju Fengst our bad luck that Belrik's pet tutor was one of them—hell, that's why Gash made that mistake in the first place, it's not something that he would've needed to bother about under any other circumstances. There was no chance that a Black Sands thug was gonna know about that impurity."

Fe Ying put a hand on Zhang Wu's huge arm. "My love, it's all right. Fa Mu and Ju Feng Feng are right, Ju Fengst leave it—"

But Zhang Wu wasn't having any of it. "And what if that one didn't know about Ju Fengilong, and they thought it was crap?"

Fa Mu opened his mouth to respond quickly before either Ju Feng Feng or Tricht'tha could, but a voice sounded from inside the carriage. "What is all that racket?"

They all turned toward the carriage, where Torthal was sticking his head out the rear, his white hair flying off in all directions.

"What is all this yelling about? Shira and I are trying to sleep." He frowned. "Why aren't we moving?"

Fa Mu was unable to help himself, he burst out laughing.

So did Ju Feng Feng and Fe Ying and, in her own way, Tricht'tha.

After a few seconds, so did Zhang Wu.

"What's so damned funny?" Torthal asked.

For the first few days, Gan and Ju Feng fought in the undercard.

Gan's initial fight against Krackis was actually the longest of their matches. It was immediately followed by Feng's first fight.

Like Gan's, it was against a leviathan.

Unlike Gan's, it ended with one punch.

Ju Feng walked out onto the arena floor to gasps of disgust, as three of those lesions had grown on his face, marring Feng's irritatingly attractive visage.

The leviathan who faced Ju Feng was less verbose than Krackis—he would almost had to have been—and focused entirely on staring at Feng.

But as soon as Jago told them to start fighting, Ju Feng threw a right punch to the leviathan's head, which whirled from the impact so fast it broke the leviathan's neck, and he fell to the floor in an instant.

The real problem, though, was that the lesions wouldn't go away.

They showed up everywhere, red and hideous, like giant bumps on his skin.

Calbit and Jago brought in healers, but none of them were able to do any good. But he wasn't sick otherwise, Ju Fengst covered in lesions, so they kept fighting.

And they kept winning.

After a week, the guards came to bring everyone up for the undercard fight—but they didn't open the cubicle doors for number four.

Gan ran up to the door, peering through the barred window. "What's going on?"

"Who cares?" Ju Feng was behind him, sitting on his bunk, staring ahead into the air. Feng's listlessness in the cubicle was almost as worrying as his fierceness in the arena.

"Hang tight," the guard said. "You're the main event tonight."

With a sigh, Gan said, "Great." He turned to Feng. "Maybe now we can start talking about escape plans?"

Still staring ahead blankly, Ju Feng said, "I'm working on one."

Gan blinked. "Excuse me?"

"I said I'm working on one."

"Were you going to share this with me?"

"I haven't finished it yet. I didn't want to talk to you about it until I was sure it would work."

"Are you sure it'll work now?"

Ju Feng finally looked at Gan with bloodshot eyes. "Honestly? Not really. I think it'll fail. That's why I didn't mention it."

"So why'd you mention it now?"

"Ju Fengst making conversation," Ju Feng said with a shrug.

Gan sat down next to him on the bunk. "Something's wrong, Feng."

"Really? What was your first clue, the garbage on my skin?"

"This goes back to the Great Road, Feng," Gan said intently. "You took down that anakore singlehandedly. What happened out there?"

"Nothing happened. I went to take a piss, I came back, I killed an anakore. And then I came here and am getting lesions on my skin. You now know everything I know."

Gan snarled. "There's got to be more to it than that."

"Brilliant observation." Ju Feng threw up his hands. "Calbit and Jago have had a dozen healers in here, and they don't know anything."

"Yeah." Gan leaned against the wall. "So we keep fighting?"

"Until I come up with a good plan. Or you do, but let's face it, that's pretty unlikely."

That prompted a chuckle from Gan. "Well, that was nice."

"What?"

"Verbal abuse of me—you almost sound like your old self …"

The pair of them sat alone for a while after that, until the guards came to bring them up the spiral staircase.

They were alone in the waiting area. Stepping forward toward the rusty metal gate, Gan looked out at what he could see of the crowd, which was primarily those in the front rows opposite where the holding area was. It was only about five percent of the full crowd in his line of sight, and since it was expensive front-row seats, they were the most fanatical and devoted fans of the arena.