Bastards, Hassa agreed, using her left wrist against her shoulder in a slashing motion.
Sylah scowled up at the podium where the officers stood. How she hated them and everything they represented: fear, oppression, pain. She rubbed her neck as the captain continued.
“The accused deliberately and maliciously plotted and engineered acts of rebellion against the Wardens’ Empire through the written word. A crime punishable by death. May Anyme be our guide. May Anyme absolve you of your sins.”
The griot’s head hung low, his gray locs trailing the dirt in front of him.
“We pronounce you guilty of treason.”
Sylah muttered, “They’re always guilty.”
Hassa nodded sadly. The trials always ended the same way.
A hush fell over the crowd as a ripper was spotted.
Rippers were Dusters, forced to turn on their own kind. It was their job to turn the lever that separated the two jaws of the rack. Their uniform was deep blue. Less washing that way.
Sylah shivered and ran her tongue over her teeth, probing for any residual joba seed juice, but the husk was dry. She spat the remains onto the ground.
“Ach.” Hassa bared her teeth at the globule on the ground.
It’s turning your teeth Ember.
“Ember?”
Hassa signed the word again. Sylah had been learning to understand the Ghosting language since she’d met Hassa six years ago, but she still stumbled now and then. “Ah, red.” The two words were differentiated by an additional turn of the elbow. “Well, I don’t care.”
You should. The drug is very bad for you, it could kill you.The sign for “kill” was a wrist across the throat. For some reason the gesture made Sylah smile.
It’s not funny.
Sylah met Hassa’s stare and reached into the satchel at her waist. She pulled out her final seed and, with precision, squished it into the gap between her front teeth. The bitter juice took effect immediately, and she closed her eyes for a blissful moment.
The euphoria vibrated through her veins faster than the tidewind. The feeling was so loud, so all-encompassing, that she was carried away from the scene before her.
But she’d seen enough rippings to know what happened next.
The prisoner would be chained to the rack’s wooden bed with four manacles separating their limbs wide. Then the ripper would turn the lever and with each turn spread the wooden bed—and with it, the prisoner’s limbs—even wider. First you would hear the prisoner’s joints popping, then the cartilage tearing. Eventually, the skin would rupture, blue blood dripping. Sometimes a larger chain was wrapped around their midriff, so that their limbs were left intact, but their vital organs cleaved apart with each click, click, click of the lever.
Embers were never subjected to the horror of a ripping; their trials involved courtrooms and juries, although occasionally Embers would cross the Ruta River to watch those who had been condemned for doing something particularly nasty. The rack was tilted toward the audience for this very purpose. Nothing better than a family outing to watch a rapist get ripped to shreds.
If Sylah were in charge, the rippings would be the first thing to go, the racks broken, the splinters scattered like confetti.
Sylah opened her eyes, her blissful contentment at odds with the horror: fourteen turns of the rack and the griot was still alive.
Sylah whistled softly. “This griot’s got some real stomach.” A laugh burst out of her. “Well, no, I guess he hasn’t.” She gestured to the entrails on the ground.
People around her murmured sounds of dissent.
“Oh, fuck off, it’s not like you haven’t seen it before. They do it once a mooncycle.”
Sylah.Hassa tugged on Sylah’s arm. Be quiet, you’re going to draw the officers’ attention.
But the joba seed saturated Sylah with confidence.
“Why should I be quiet? What’s the point when it could be any of us next?”
Hassa turned to Sylah and pushed her backward through the crowd. Though Sylah stood two handspans taller than Hassa, the joba seed robbed her of her stability, and Sylah drifted backward like a feather.