The Final Strife

Submit to my leadership or perish. In numbers we thrive.

To resist and sow chaos.

Yours,

Loot, your new Warden of Crime

—Letter sent to every crime lord in the empire, year 403

The Ring wouldn’t open until the moon rose, so Sylah had some time to waste. She couldn’t wait it out at home. Her mother would be the only one in their neighborhood guaranteed not to have gone to watch the Descent. She’d have to report her unemployment to the duty office, but Sylah was more fearful of reporting it to her mother.

Sylah consumed another joba seed and let her limbs drift her along with the last few Dusters and Ghostings still heading toward the Keep.

The army’s presence increased the farther away she got from Loot’s headquarters. They speckled the landscape purple, like a disease that could kill you at any moment. There were generally fewer patrols in the Dredge than in the Duster Quarter. Some assumed it was because of the smell, but Sylah had her own speculations. In the six years she’d lived in the city, not once had she seen a Gummer on the rack. Loot must have made a deal with the wardens, she was sure of it.

An officer caught Sylah’s eye as she made her way into the Duster Quarter, and Sylah stuck her tongue out at her.

“You!” She had a runegun, a weapon powered by bloodwerk runes on the shaft, and unwound her hand from it to point at Sylah.

“Fuck,” Sylah swore under her breath.

The other people on the street hunkered down into their shoulders and quickened their pace.

“I said, you! You stinking Nowerk. Get over here.” Her gloved finger jabbed at the air like a miniature knife.

“Officer?” Sylah felt herself tilting to the side, and she leaned forward on the officer’s shoulder.

“Don’t touch me, you filthy Duster.” She brushed off Sylah’s touch like she was the disease. “Empty your bag.”

Sylah jammed her hands into her satchel, expecting the bag to be empty, but then she felt the parchment. The map. Her heart stopped. If they found her with written words, they might assume she wrote them. Why had she kept that blood-forsaken map?

She fished around in the dusty crumbs at the bottom of the bag, buying herself some time.

Sylah looked around, but there were too many of them. And they had runeguns. So Sylah withdrew the only other thing in her satchel. The one thing that might stop them looking further.

“Knew it, could see your red stains from a league away.” The officer grinned, revealing too big teeth for her mouth, and then unbuttoned her breast pocket, where she put the packet among the other seeds she had confiscated.

Sylah’s anger burned, kindled by the drug. How fucking dare they?

The next words slipped out of Sylah’s mouth before she could contain them.

“What do you do with them? The drugs you take from us? Do you trade them? So eventually they make their way back to my hand, but you’re all the richer?”

The cold butt of the runegun struck Sylah’s midriff, sending her reeling.

“Next time you talk back to an Ember, you’ll be on the rack. Now scatter, you Nowerk scum. The wardens have begun their Descent, and you owe them your respect.”

Sylah was bent double, her breath coming out in uneven puffs. She didn’t feel the pain; she rarely did when chewing joba seeds.

Sylah righted herself and let herself be herded toward the river.

The Ruta River was a swirling mass of cobalt quicksand that bisected the city, with the Keep and Ember district on one side and the Duster Quarter and the Dredge on the other. And suspended five hundred handspans above the Ruta was the black iron bridge called the Tongue.

The trotro, the bloodwerk-powered trolley used to freight goods, clattered through the dust and debris left from the tidewind on one side of the Tongue. Its crates, normally full of goods going to the Ember market, were empty as every merchant made their way to the Keep.

Sylah fingered the three joba seeds left in her satchel. She’d coaxed them from the packet before handing over the rest to the officer. Her eyes darted to the next squadron of officers up ahead. They lined the Ember side of the Tongue as she neared. Their stance was different here, still alert, still ready to trigger their runeguns, but somehow more at ease on their own ground.

“Keep up the pace, Nowerks, stick to the main street,” an officer barked.