The desert gave nothing away. At noon it looked endless. Sand. Rock. Heat. A drilling mast standing against a white sky. And beneath it, a well that had spent days doing exactly what wells are first taught to do. Go down. The Apprentice watched another length of pipe disappear through the rotary table. “How deep?” The Directional Driller checked the numbers. “Deep enough.” The Apprentice smiled. “Then we found it?”

The town looked like success from a distance. That was its first lie. Smoke rose from a hundred cookfires. Mules crowded the hitching rails. Tents multiplied up the hillside. Men with shovels, pans, sluice boxes and fevered eyes moved in every direction like ants around a broken hive. The Apprentice stood at the edge of the ridge and smiled. “This is it.”

The coastline was enormous. That was the problem. From the cliff above the Mediterranean, the Apprentice could see blue water in every direction. Ships moved against the horizon. Villages broke the shoreline. Coves disappeared behind headlands. Farther south, sails clustered around a city large enough to be seen through the morning haze. The Apprentice pointed. “There.” The Harbormaster did not look. “The great port?” “Yes.” “Why?” “Because everyone goes there.”

The steel arrived before sunrise. Basket after basket. Dark pieces of metal wrapped in straw and carried through the courtyard until the floor beside the forge nearly disappeared beneath them. The Apprentice stared at the pile. “So much.” The Swordsmith said nothing. A representative from the warrior house stood nearby watching the delivery. He seemed pleased. “We brought more than you requested.” The Swordsmith crouched beside the first basket. “That was wise.”

At first glance, the coastline looked like one thing. That was the danger. From the deck of the survey vessel, the Apprentice saw a single sweeping shore stretching beyond sight. Cliffs. Inlets. River mouths. Harbors. Sandbars. Fishing villages. Watchtowers. Trading docks. Marshland. But to the untrained eye it was simply: the coast

At first light, the land looked worthless. That was the consensus. Dust. Scrub. Stone. A dry wash cutting through the eastern side. Twenty-seven square miles of country that had produced nothing anyone could point to. No derrick. No pumpjack. No black stain in the dirt. No neighbor bragging about production.