The Final Strife

Strikes later and she’d found nothing. Not a trace of the land across the sea. The closest she had gotten to understanding the fragment on the assassin’s map was an extract from a diary belonging to a master of knowledge from three hundred years ago. The entries had been copied and added to a collection of stories in Masters at Work.

The Ending Fire engulfed the world. It rained from the sky and devoured the land. The last surviving people carried all they could to the deck of their boat. Animals, plants, food, clothes. It is estimated that 2,000 people left the mainland, but only half of them survived. Those who did survive claimed that the sea monster, the Tannin, devoured the others, though it is likely a fallacy caused by the trauma they experienced. Others believed that Anyme called them to the sky as a sacrifice—a more probable account.

The only remainder of civilization after the fire destroyed the world was what they carried in the hull of their boats. The Marion Sea churned and fire hailed, but the founding wardens prevailed. Bringing the Wardens’ Empire to the coast of their new land.

It was the story that was told to every citizen from the day they were born. But if the land had been destroyed, how did the assassin have a map indicating otherwise? It didn’t make sense. Could it be from before the Ending Fire? But how did it survive, if everything else, every person, animal, and plant, died? Plus, the map was made with papyrus paper, a plant that grew in abundance in the empire.

Anoor rubbed the back of her neck. Maybe the flourish in the corner wasn’t land, it was something else, a mistake maybe.

She went back to the row of books and tried some others. Again, nothing. More than forty volumes she scoured through, and not a word on the land beyond the sea. The absence was telling.

How can there be nothing, not an ink dot, on the world before the Ending Fire? Those who founded the empire survived, so why didn’t they document the world that once was?

Anoor was stricken that she had never had these thoughts before. She prided herself on her curious nature, something she’d learned from her years reading Inquisitor Abena’s tales. But this ignorance was gargantuan, a gaping hole of nothingness in her knowledge.

Anoor pushed the books away; she was getting a headache. She’d found no answers, only questions.

But the trip hadn’t been a complete waste of time. She’d also used the time to put together a robust backstory for her new trainer. She had forged three letters from a lesser Ember house in the made-up village of Ood-Adab. One of the letters was a request for a place in the household for a young woman whose uncle simply did not have the time or means to support her. Anoor could picture him, twisted and gnarled, with lingering hands and persistent bad breath, as she wrote about his niece with no parents to speak for her, both having died in a tragic eru accident when she was fourteen. The poor girl had to turn to the joba seeds just to make it through the day.

She yawned, her jaw creaking. It was time to head back. Maybe the assassin had stopped crying and she could get some answers from her. Anoor started to leave and then turned back. She picked up Masters at Work along with one or two other volumes and placed them in her bag. She wasn’t going to give up the search just yet.

—

Hassa watched the warden’s daughter leave the library before slipping out of the shadows herself. The library wasn’t on her remit to clean that day, but when she saw where Anoor Elsari was headed, she’d offered to take over from the Ghosting who was there. They’d obliged, as Ghostings got few breaks.

Anoor had left a pile of books on the side. Hassa looked at them before putting them back on the shelf. Foolish. Anyone would be able to see that she was searching.

Searching for the truth.

Sylah had been missing for two days. Hassa had checked her mother’s house twice, and each time Lio was increasingly agitated by Hassa’s presence.

“I told you I haven’t seen her,” Lio had repeated just that morning. Though her words were nonchalant, her features were haggard from lack of sleep and worry.

The man Hassa had seen before lingered behind Lio, shifting from foot to foot; he too looked haggard.

It was Hassa’s fault that Sylah was probably dead, her corpse so battered by the tidewind that Hassa hadn’t been able to find any sign of her when she had searched the Ember Quarter the next night. Guilt had burrowed its way into her chest, like a desert fox hiding from the tidewind. And just when she thought she was burrowed hollow, an Ember servant approached her.

“Can you mix up a draft? Two parts milk honey, one part verd leaf, a dash of vinegar, with half a cup of water?” The servant was Gorn Rieya, Anoor Elsari’s chief of chambers.

Hassa nodded, her mind reeling as she mixed up the drink with a practiced hand. The withdrawal remedy was often needed at Maiden Turin’s when overexcited clients ate too many joba seeds.

But that was in the Dredge, away from prying eyes. It was unlikely an Ember would brazenly suffer from joba seed withdrawal, especially the warden’s daughter. That’s when Hassa started following her. She lingered outside her chambers all day until, finally, Anoor Elsari emerged.

Everyone thought the library was always empty; even the librarian had stopped seeing Ghostings anymore. Not from his lack of eyesight, though he often forgot to wear his spectacles, but because no one saw them. But they were there, in every room in the Keep. Listening, but not speaking. Hearing, but not telling.

Sylah, where is she keeping you?Hassa thought, but the next words sent a searing blade of panic through her. And why?