The Final Strife

Sylah was talking too much, letting too much truth show. But Sylah wanted Anoor to see the reality of the empire so badly, so she would understand what it was that Sylah had spent her life fighting for and running from once she thought it was lost.

“We had a deal, no joba seeds.” Anoor’s resolve was weakening. She turned her pity toward Sylah. “Look at what the seeds have done to you, Sylah. Your legs are shaking.”

It was true, Sylah could feel a seizure coming on. She wanted to lunge for Anoor, but she instead went for something that would cut much deeper. “I will tell you once again, I will tell you these four words and I beg you to listen.”

Anoor looked like she was holding her breath.

“We are not friends.”

Tears pooled in Anoor’s eyes. Truth is a hard thing to bear. It is raw and powerful and painful. Especially when the truth is twisted by anger into a lie.

She fled, leaving Sylah alone with her shame. Because the truth was, Anoor had come to mean more to Sylah than she’d realized. It was the first time that Sylah had come to understand how much she wanted Anoor to truly, deeply understand her.

So that one day, she would forgive her when the Sandstorm burned it all.

—

Sylah needed to get out of the Keep. First, she raided Anoor’s purse.

The tidewind was nearing, so Sylah picked up her pace as she crossed the Tongue. The argument with Anoor had left her shaken. It was frustrating how little Anoor knew of the world. How could she expect to be a good warden if she didn’t see the empire for what it was?

Sylah faltered and tripped over her slipper.

She isn’t going to win, Jond is. Like we planned. The Sandstorm will know how to rule, how to change things.She thrust the thought against the image of Anoor at the top of the five hundred steps.

But who are the Sandstorm?The question came unbidden from the depths of her doubt.

“The Final Strife.” She murmured the words and they grounded her. “I am the Final Strife, and I will see the empire turn to ash.”

Sylah entered the Dredge. To her right three villas were painted with black crosses. The occupants were dead from the sleeping sickness. The tidewind hadn’t sanded the paint away, which meant the deaths were recent.

A platoon of officers turned down the street ahead, and Sylah ducked into the Maroon.

The Maroon was beginning to fill up as the plantation workers made their way back from the fields. A wizened old man hunkered in the corner like an ornament. Sylah wasn’t convinced that he wasn’t. His scythe stood tall beside him; it had as many notches in the wood as wrinkles in his brow. The blade, however, had been cared for and polished. It shone like an emblem of his survival. And it was. Very few plantation workers made it to retirement.

“Have there been any Ghostings around today? I need to trade.”

The barmaids looked up from their game of shantra.

“No, not seen them for a while. Sleeping sickness taking a lot of them recently.”

Sylah swore and left the tavern, her feet dragging all the way to Maiden Turin’s.

“Sylah…” Turin’s amber eyes penetrated Sylah’s. She wore a dark red paint across her lips, a little smudged.

“Can I buy some joba seeds?”

“You know I don’t do business on the doorstep, Sylah.”

Sylah trailed in the maiden’s radish leaf smoke.

“Forty slabs.” Turin withdrew the packet from her brassiere. It was warm to the touch.

Sylah didn’t dispute the increase in cost. It was a pittance compared to what she had stolen from Anoor. She handed over the slabs.

The seeds were heavy in her pocket, heavier than they had any right to be. But just having them there was a balm to her fraught nerves. No matter what happened, with the Sandstorm or Anoor, she always had oblivion to fall back on.

Sylah left the maiden house and walked into the street, just like she had done many moons ago. She withdrew a joba seed and rolled it between her finger and thumb. Her eyes focused beyond the seed at the decrepit state of the Dredge. It had been a place where she found solace for so long. Now it seemed so much dirtier. Soiled. Not like the pristine halls of the Keep, cleaned by Ember servants just like her. Servants the Sandstorm would one day destroy.