Star of Cursrah by Clayton Emery

likes of the Twisted Rune, or the beholders, or illithids. Sorry, Reive.” The thief made the fig sign, thumb between middle fingers, to ward off evil names. Amber trailed her fingertips in the river, keeping watch for crocodiles. “I’m not sure my family’s got a future in slavery anyway. Since the Reclamation, my cousins can’t capture slaves from Tethyr, so now they hunt in Athkatla, which is risky. If I could, I’d let the slaves go free and find another occupation, preferably anything not obsessed with coin. I’d be happy.”
    “You scorn money because you’ve never lacked for it,” returned Reiver. “I pray to Waukeen and Lliira for any at all. A bag of gold would solve all my problems. Between the Night Arrow and the Syl-Pasha’s brother fighting to control the Undercity, and El Amlakkar busting heads, there’s no future for a thief except as gallows bait.”
    “So,” Hakiim challenged, “if you could do anything, what would you choose?”
    Amber chewed her cheek a while, considering. “To start, I’d read all the Founding Stories in the library.”
    “That’s a lot of stories,” said Reiver.
    “Reading’s a hobby,” Hakiim added. “You can’t make a living at it.”
    “I know,” Amber said, then slapped at a mosquito with wet fingers, “but I love the old stories the storytellers recite in the bazaar and the grove behind the library. Tales culled from dragons, can you imagine?”
    ” ‘Never trust the story, but always trust the storyteller,’ ” quipped Reiver. “I can make up dragon tales—ulk!”
    Reiver flipped backward against the mast, Amber jounced off her tiny perch in the stern to sprawl in the bilge, and Hakiim lost his kaffiyeh in the water. Struggling upright, Amber asked, “What happened?”
    “We ran aground on a sand bar,” Reiver said, peering over the gunwale and trying to rock the boat. “I’d say we’re stuck till the tide turns.”
    “When’s that?” Amber swiped water from the seat of her breeches.
    “Uh, twelve hours? Doesn’t the tide turn twice a day? Or does it take longer in the spring?”
    Hakiim wrung out his headscarf and said, “Might as well send an elephant to sea. You’d sail into a fog and beach in the Theater of Allfaiths.”
    “A good place to pick pockets,” the thief observed, “and nobody’ll spill their morningfeast on you from seasickness.”
    Amber studied the shoreline thirty feet away, then ran down the sail. “Looks like our holiday begins with wet feet,” she said, “unless you two can walk on water.”
    “Let the sailor go first,” joked Hakiim, “to test for crocodiles.”
    “The stink from his dirty feet will drive them away,” laughed Amber.
    “You insult the honest dust of your home city,” Reiver said.
    “Drag the anchor ashore, Hak.” Amber buckled her horsehide sandals around her neck, shrugged on her rucksack, grabbed her capture noose, and added, “I don’t mind walking now, but I’d rather ride back to Memnon.”
    Probing ahead with her long wooden handle, the daughter of pirates sloshed through ankle-deep water, following the curving sandbar to the shore. Reiver skimmed along quietly as a fish, but Hakiim hurried, tripped, and splashed down like a harpooned whale. Once ashore, the three wedged the anchor between two boulders and jammed a big rock on top to hold it fast.
    Amber dried her feet and donned her sandals, ready to go, and barefoot Reiver was already waiting. Hakiim was busy arranging an old rucksack made of carpet scraps on his back, lashing a jacket and blanket atop it, hanging a haversack of food and a canteen on his shoulder, and slinging a jingling scabbard for his curved scimitar through his belt. When all of that was finished, he was stuck holding his round shield in his left hand.
    “What do I do with this?” he asked.
    “Skim it across the river,” advised Reiver.
    “I can’t throw it away. I only know how to fight with shield and scimitar combined.”
    “If we need to