“Poor never minds if you have friends boy.”

Ibrahm started and turned around, to see a dirty beggar rising from the side of the road and brushing off his dusty rags. The man hobbled over toward Ibrahm.

“Do not be afraid boy. We may be friends. I am Uzbin. I was just blinded by a dust devil; was walking along this road and began being stung by sand to the eyes and took cover. And lo, when I raise my head I hear you talking of your poverty. I think, ‘There’s a boy could use some work.’ How would you like some work boy?”

“What kind of work?”

“There was a fight over there before dawn among those abandoned farmers’ shacks. No one has emerged and the vultures have just begun to circle. I figure that both sets of ruffians are dead now and we can salvage their things. I am a professional salvage follower. I follow armies normally, and pick the field at night. No armies about just now, so I look for ruffians having it out—more dangerous than my usual pursuit, for they have an eye for my like. The people-eaters have made my work doubly perilous of late. What do you say boy? It is no easy road, but does stave off nakedness.”

“I must return to my Master, thank you.”

“You think the Guard will let your naked one-eyed ass in with no coin boy, no food? They are trying to force the countrysiders out as it is.”

‘Oh God, I do not peek through a tent slit!’

Ibrahm stood for a long moment touching his eye or where it had been, and began to weep from the other one. The rough dirty hand of Uzbin touched his shoulder, his voice making an attempt at soothing. “Now I’m sorry boy. And you look a scribe boy at that with that quill. Sometimes we forget when we lose parts, as I often forget about my missing toes from that soldier. I did not mean to bring up an old hurt.”

The man then turned Ibrahm by both his shoulders, squatted in the road before him, patted the knife in his belt, and spoke his mind. “With one eye you won’t be wanted as a scribe boy anymore. You and me could have a partnership. I could use a boy who could rat-crawl his way into small spaces. I’ll treat you good, and will give you one third of all proceeds—us splitting everything we come up on, me getting the first and third shares—by item. Deal?”

‘Is it true that Abd al-Latf would cast me aside with one eye?’

‘I don’t want to believe it. He did let me go out on the road. He did not know the danger. He is only a doctor. It was Ibis that fool baboon.’

Uzbin then shook him gently but with urgency, and spoke with spittle flying from his broken and rotted teeth, his breath smelling something like the marsh where he had dreamed of meeting the Baby Caliph.

‘How could a dream have an odor?’

“Come on boy. The vultures are circling over yonder huts. The flesh-eaters will be there within the hour. We must decide.”

“We, We, yes, We.”

“It’s a deal then boy, despite you being weird. Recall we split everything three ways, me getting first and last pick, so that there quill is mine. A lady or a doctor will want that quill. You will get the next find.”

Ibrahm did not want the quill to be damaged, as it was a gift from the Baby Caliph of his dreams to his kind Master Abd al-Latif, so let it slip from his small hand into the large calloused hand of Uzbin.

“A good picker you will be boy—treat you like my own son I will. Let us hurry to the huts.”

Ibrahm and Uzbin walked toward the distant huts, which seemed to sit under a wave of heat, with vultures circling overhead. Within the hour they were standing under the full blazing sun of Ramadan at high noon, savoring the butcher’s stench coming from the circle of huts, ringed by what once might have been gardens but was now a litter of poles, buckets, dust and dried feces once used as fertilizer, now it’s own peculiar type of gravel. The irrigation ditch that ended at the edge of this small deserted community had been bone dry for over a year.

Uzbin hissed in his ear, “Look boy, this is nasty thirsty work by day. But to pick battle sites these days, with the flesh-eaters running wild by night, is too perilous. So it has to be this way. Recall, that you get the first pick of booty.”

They snuck up behind an outbuilding to take a peek around. Then it occurred to Ibrahm that what he really wanted was a drink. He tapped Uzbin on the shoulder. The man turned angrily.

“What boy?” he hissed.

Ibrahm said, “I get the next find?”

The look on Uzbin’s dirty hawk-nosed face, matted with filthy whiskers and crusted with petrified snot above the lip, was of vast impatience with children and would surely lead to a backhand across the mouth.

“Yes, you get the next find.”

He could hear the wings of the Retriever beat lazily above, and thought also that he heard the crying of another kind of sacred bird. The swan quill was safely tucked in the greasy fold of Uzbin’s turban.

He then nodded to Uzbin’s belted knife. “We are thirsty, and would like something to drink; something sweet that We happened upon on the road back there; something We desire… something you were…”