Sahir smelled the apples before he saw them. He had walked three days across loose sand to reach the market town, guided by that one thread of scent on the wind. His rider Rashid was inside the walls somewhere, buying spear oil and dried meat, and had told Sahir to wait at the trough by the gate. Sahir had asked, in the way a horse asks, for one apple. Rashid had said no. The vendor, earlier that morning, had also said no, and swatted his nose with a rag. So Sahir left the trough. The cracked saddle still rode his back, straps slapping his ribs as he moved through the crowd. People stepped aside for a loose horse with no rider. He kept his head low and followed the smell to the fruit stand under its striped awning. Red apples sat in the front row, stacked in a wooden crate beside pears and grapes. A chalkboard read three and forty. The vendor stood behind the counter. He was a small man in a brown apron, gray hair pushed up in tufts, smiling at a woman in a white dress who held a bunch of purple grapes. Sahir knew him. Chen Bao. The same man who had swatted his nose. Sahir stopped ten paces off, behind a cart of empty barrels, and watched. Every time he took a step forward, Chen Bao's eyes flicked past the customer and found him. The vendor would chase him off long before his teeth reached the crate. He needed the woman to stay. He needed her to ask for more. Sahir walked a slow half-circle around the barrels and came at the stand from the side the vendor could not see past his customer. Kallista Theron was counting coins into her palm. Sahir pushed his nose against her elbow, gently, the way he used to nudge Rashid awake. She laughed and turned. She stroked his neck. She asked Chen Bao for a pear as well, and then a handful of grapes, and would he weigh them out fresh. Chen Bao bent behind the counter to find his scale. Sahir took the apple. He took two. He was already three strides gone when Chen Bao stood up and shouted. The woman was still laughing. Sahir cut between two stalls, hooves loud on the stones, and did not stop until the market gate was behind him and the sand opened up again. He spat one apple into his hoof-print and ate the other in three bites. It was sour and full of juice. He had never stolen anything in his life. Then he heard, from the gate, a short clipped voice he knew. "That is my horse." Rashid had come out to find him. Rashid had seen.

Rashid stood at the market gate with a sack of dried meat under one arm and the spear across his back. He walked toward Sahir slow, the way a man walks toward a colt with a snake near its hoof. Sahir had one apple still in his mouth and one on the sand between his front hooves. Rashid's hand came up. "Drop it." Sahir did not drop it. He crunched down and juice ran along his tongue. Rashid stepped in and got two fingers on the bit strap, then tried to work Sahir's jaw open with the flat of his palm. Sahir turned his head away and kept chewing. He bent, snatched the second apple off the sand, and worked that one too. Rashid pulled harder. Pulp fell from Sahir's lips onto Rashid's wrist. By the time Rashid pried the mouth open, there was nothing left but seeds and skin and a wet tongue. Rashid stepped back and wiped his hand on his belt. "You will work this off," he said. "Every apple. Every mile." Sahir flicked an ear. Then a shout came from inside the gate and Chen Bao pushed through the crowd in his brown apron, red in the face, one finger already out. He wanted the horse. He wanted the horse's owner. He wanted the coin for two apples and a fright given to a paying customer. Rashid let him talk. When Chen Bao ran out of breath Rashid said, "Two apples." Chen Bao started again, louder. Rashid held up a hand. "Two apples," he said. "Name the price." Chen Bao named a price three times fair. Rashid counted the coins into his palm without looking at them and pressed them into Chen Bao's hand. Chen Bao stood there counting a second time, lips moving. Sahir stepped forward and stamped once, hard, and kicked a spray of sand across the vendor's boots and up his apron. Chen Bao yelped and jumped back. Rashid caught the bridle and yanked Sahir's head down level with his own. "Enough," he said. "You are done today." His voice was flat. He did not raise it. He turned Sahir toward the open desert and started walking. Sahir followed at his shoulder. His belly was full for the first time in three days. The sour taste sat under his tongue. Rashid was angry and Rashid had paid, and both of those were true at once. Sahir kept his ears forward and did not look back at the man in the brown apron. The apples were his. He had eaten them. Today he had won.

They walked until the market was a smear behind them and the sun sat low. Rashid kept the reins loose and pointed them at the road that curved back toward town, toward the inn where lamplight already showed in the windows. Sahir felt the turn in the reins and did not follow it. He knew that road. A stable at the inn meant a stall the size of a coffin, straw that smelled of other horses, and a bucket of water without a single apple floating in it. Sahir slowed. Rashid clicked his tongue. Sahir slowed more. Then Sahir turned his head against the pull and walked off the road, into the open sand, toward the ridge of a wind-carved dune that rose ahead of them like a shoulder. Rashid pulled hard. "Back," he said. Sahir did not go back. He pushed his hooves into the loose sand and climbed. The dune took his weight the way it always did. It would not take Rashid's boots the same way, and both of them knew it. Rashid could dismount and drag on the bridle, but the sun was already gone behind the ridge and the cold was coming in fast. Rashid tried once, boots sinking to the ankle, and swore under his breath. He climbed back into the saddle. "Fine," he said. "Walk. See what walking gets you." Sahir kept climbing. At the top he stopped and stood. Below them, the town lights blinked on one by one. Sahir turned his rump to them and faced the dark flats. Rashid sat above the worn stirrups and said nothing for a long time. Then he dismounted, unrolled the blanket from behind the saddle, and sat down on the sand with the spear across his knees. The cold came the way desert cold always came, all at once. Rashid pulled the blanket to his chin. He did not speak. He did not build a fire because there was nothing out here to burn. Sahir stood over him and felt the wind cut along his flank, and felt too the small warm knot in his belly where the apples had been that morning. He had won the road. He had lost the stable. That was the trade. In the morning Rashid would be stiff and sore and hungry and he would want the town again, and he would remember who had carried him out here and who could carry him back. Sahir lowered his head near Rashid's shoulder. Rashid did not look up. "Tomorrow," Rashid said, flat, "we ride. Not to the market." Sahir flicked an ear. Tomorrow was tomorrow. Tonight he had made the man sleep on sand, and the man would think twice, next time, about an apple.

Morning came gray and sharp. Rashid rolled the blanket without a word and cinched the saddle tighter than usual. He mounted, took the reins short, and pointed Sahir's head at the road. Sahir felt the difference at once. The reins did not give. The knees pressed. When Sahir drifted a step off the line, Rashid pulled him back before the drift became a turn. Rashid had learned from the night on the sand. Sahir had won that trade and lost this one. They rode past the desert market at a distance. Sahir could see the striped awning of the fruit stand across the flats, the baskets hanging from their hooks, the small round shapes of apples stacked in the front row. His nostrils opened. He slowed a half step. The reins snapped tight before his hoof finished the motion. "No," Rashid said. "Not today." Sahir tried the old trick. He turned his head against the pull and leaned his weight toward the stalls. On loose sand the trick worked. On the packed road it did not. Rashid stayed in the saddle and used the reins and his heels, and Sahir went where Rashid pointed him, which was past the market and out along the flat spread of sand toward the dunes beyond. Sahir saw the vendor at the edge of his stall, the gray-haired man in the apron, watching them go. Chen Bao lifted a hand. Rashid did not lift one back. Sahir tried once more, half a mile on. He planted his hooves and refused to walk. Rashid did not shout. He dismounted, took the bridle at the cheek, and stood in front of Sahir's face. "Walk," he said. "Or stand here until dark. Your choice." The sun was already climbing. There was no shade. There was no water in the saddlebag Sahir could reach. Sahir stood a long minute. Then he walked. By midday they were far from the stalls. Rashid took them up a low wind-carved ridge and stopped at the top, where the sand rolled off in long ripples on every side. He let Sahir drink from the skin and eat a handful of dry grain from his palm. The grain was not an apple. Sahir ate it anyway. Rashid rubbed his neck once, brief and firm, and swung back into the saddle. Sahir understood the shape of it now. The man had changed. The reins would not slack again for a while. The market was closed to him, not by distance but by the hand on the leather. The apple he wanted still sat in its basket under the striped awning, and he had walked past it without a bite. He would not walk past it forever. He flicked an ear against a fly and filed the thought away. Tonight he would watch how Rashid tied the reins, and where the man set the spear, and when the man slept.