"Yes, lets." Amal replied. 

It took them an hour or so to make it to the northern gate of the city, arriving just in time for the noonday Caravan to embark. It wasn't the most common thing for two travelers on foot to accompany one of the spice caravans, but it wasn't rare by any stretch either. Amal remembered when he was younger, when the mad Sultan Ibn Alfar had poisoned the water supply to a portion of the city to punish them for their transgressions. He had watched from the walls as hundreds of people had left the city in a great migration, the vultures encircling them before they had even left the horizon line. 

They approached as a man with charred skin and a contrasting white beard tossed woven bags onto a cart, working contentedly before it was time to go. He had merely four left to stack on as the trumpet blared from the gate, signalling it was time to embark. Amal knelt down beside the trader, picking up the heavy sacks with more ease than the older man, helping him pack as the first merchants stepped onto the road.  

"Thank you, my friend." The trader said, his smile warm from the help. "Is a fine day for travel, yes?" 

"Yes yes," Amal agreed. "We were looking to travel with your troupe today. You could bear two more bodies?" 

The trader lifted himself up and squinted at Emmaline, her hood covering all but her chin. She was just a cloaked woman with a bag that jingled and clacked as she stood, waiting for him to speak. "Yes, I do not mind..." he said finally. "You and your...?" 

"My wife." Amal explained, sliding between them. "She has had a rough night. The sun hurts her eyes." 

The man laughed. "She must be a foreign woman," he joked. "The sun never sleeps in Araby."
[hr]  

Amal juggled the balls one of the travelers had given him on a dare. So far, even with the cart bumping along the desert road, Amal had kept track with the five. He seemed entirely in a joking mood now that they were out of Lashiek, the city now gone from their sight, disappearing behind the heat haze of the winding path. Amal's smile and bright eyes made him seem far less dangerous than Emmaline would know him to be, and as he finished his trick, each ball fell into his awaiting hand, the hand simultaneously tossing them back to one of the women watching. 

Amal and Emmaline shared the wagon with an older man, who looked to be the trader's brother, so alike were they in appearance, and two women, likely his daughter and wife. It was lucky there was room, as there were only a handful of wagons on the road. The rest of the goods were being transported atop Camels, the lumbering beasts bobbing up and down in their strange, two step fashion. 

The next day was much the same, though Amal and Emmaline kept to themselves moreso than the previous, as they had begun to ask questions on who they were and why they sought to travel to Copher. 

On this day they walked. Thirty miles away from Lashiek, with another seventy to go before they reached Copher. 
[@Penny]