Like Fire Through Bone by E. E. Ottoman

too, and not as a slave, not as Panagiotis had offered him.
    He told himself sternly to calm down and not get excited. He was still owned, still part of Panagiotis’s property, with no way of obtaining his own freedom.
    To think about what they could have if things were different, to dwell on what Markos had said to him, would be torture. Better to put it out of his mind now, and move on.
    Markos pushed back open the door. Dressed in a heavy wool tunic, heavy Northern-style trousers, with a cloak and heavy boots, he carried a travel bag over one shoulder.
    “Let’s go.”
    Vasilios stood, and Markos turned and led the way back through the house. “How well do you ride?”
    “Not very well,” Vasilios admitted. “I generally don’t have much reason to.”
    “All right. You can ride behind Patros, then,” Markos said and headed over to his own horse where he tied the packs to the back of the saddle, like Patros had with Vasilios’s. Patros walked over to them, also dressed in dark nondescript trousers, short tunic, and cloak like Markos. He mounted and helped Vasilios back up into the saddle. They rode southeast through the city, heading for one of the many gates that led out into the countryside.
    Vasilios watched the streets as they passed through them. There were large, sprawling villa complexes and clean, tiny stone-paved roads, changing into hard-packed dirt streets with small houses built so close together they were almost touching. They passed merchants’ stores and traveled through marketplaces with their open-air stalls shaded by brightly colored awnings.
    As they drew closer to the wall that surrounded the city, the buildings they passed began to get taller, closer together, and more run-down. They were now three to four stories high with flat roofs. Each building was packed with more families than Vasilios wanted to think about, usually each to a single-room apartment. Sewage ran through deep gutters dug on either side of the road.
    Markos rode ahead of them, and Vasilios tried not to watch his back and how he moved fluidly with the motion of the horse. The stone wall loomed in front of them, huge and high, with a walkway along the top on which soldiers patrolled. Behind the southeast gate were sandstone foothills that quickly turned into desert. Vasilios remembered reading that at one time, the great River Lethe had kept the whole valley lush and fertile when she ran her banks every year. When the great Emperor Alexarthos had built the Golden City, its massive walls had blocked the river from fertilizing the land to the south and east of the city, causing the desert to quickly claim them.
    The soldiers posted at the huge iron gate signaled them to halt.
    “State your purpose,” one soldier ordered.
    “Traveling out to the desert on business,” Markos told them, and after conferring with each other, the soldiers waved them through.
    “You are free to pass.”
    “Thank you.” Markos inclined his head to them and waited as the huge gate slowly rose with a deep, creaking sound of metal against metal. It boomed to a stop, and Markos clicked to his horse so they could pass under. Patros followed.
    The land the road cut through outside the wall was not as immediately barren as Vasilios had thought it would be. Small, wooden, shack-like houses had been built leaning against the outside of the wall, and people, mostly vagrants and beggars from the look of them, wandered around outside them. The land was not as green and lush as it was to the northwest of the city, but it was not devoid of plants either. There was some sort of stiff grass growing along the edge of the road, and Vasilios could make out spindly, spiky trees with light-gray bark growing together in groves. A small boy, who wore only a rather ragged piece of cloth tied around his waist, pulled a goat on a rope along the side of the road. He stopped and stared at them, openmouthed, as they rode by.
    Markos slowed his horse, then drew up beside