Zia Sunroot's Arc

Chapter 17 of 17

Zia ducks under the awning first. Inside, the tent is plain: a bedroll, a pack, a small flat stone holding a tarnished silver locket left open in the light. An old man rises slowly from the back. Before Zia can speak, Teo stops dead in the doorway. His eyes lock on the locket. His face goes white, then hard. "Out," Teo says. He backs into the sun. Zia follows, confused. Teo digs into his pack and pulls free a woven bracelet, bright threads in a pattern she does not know. He holds it up between them. "My father wore this. He died because of the man in that tent. My mother told me the story before she told me yours." Zia looks back at the open flap. The old man has not followed. He stands by the locket, hands at his sides, waiting. "He offered water," she says. "We drank." Teo shakes his head. "You drank. I will not sleep under his roof. I will not eat his food." His voice is quiet and final. She tries once. "We need him. Jarek trusted him." Teo's jaw tightens. "Then Jarek did not know everything." He walks ten paces from the tent, kneels, and lashes two poles into a leaning X, binding them with a strip of leather from his belt. He drives the base into the sand. A marker. A wall. He sets his bedroll beneath it and sits down facing the open desert. Zia stands between them, the tent at her back, Teo at the edge of the hollow. The alliance she pulled together at the jug has split clean down the middle. She makes her choice the only way she can. "Then I go in alone," she says. "You keep watch out here. We do not leave each other. We just sleep on different sand." Teo does not turn, but he nods once. She steps back through the flap. The old man closes the locket and slides it into his pocket. "The boy is right to be angry," he says. "Sit. I will tell you what I owed his father, and what I still owe Jarek." Zia sits. Outside, Teo's shadow stays sharp against the canvas, unmoving, a guard she did not ask for and now cannot lose.