The Final Strife

Nuba is by far the most disciplined martial art in the empire. It requires intensive focused attention with a subtlety of movements only the very best fighters can master. But when used in hand-to-hand combat, Nuba skills become deadly.

—The army’s master of weapons

Anoor could see Sylah in the tower below. She held a sword by her side like an extension of her limb. She was one of the Stolen. Anoor had known there was more to Sylah than she had ever shared, but this, this wasn’t just a grain of truth she’d been hiding. This was a colossal sand dune of lies.

Anoor couldn’t cry about it. Sylah had shed enough tears for the two of them. Right now, she just felt anger, and that was exactly what she needed to fuel her fury for the final trial. Heartbreak could come later.

Anoor brought her hand to her bare wrist and rubbed the empty space where her inkwell should be. She needed to get out of the tower. There was more at stake than she had ever known, and now it was imperative for her to win. The Sandstorm’s rule would spill more blood.

She watched Hassa approach Sylah with Gorn and Kwame as well as a host of other Ghostings. Anoor softened to see the servants of the Keep coming to protect her. At the same time her mind ran through all the ways in which she could escape, counting her protectors, watching where they stood, roamed, looked.

When Sylah left with Hassa, Anoor sprang into action. She knew what she needed to do. It would be painstaking work, pain being the operative word.

She plucked a dagger from the wall of weapons. Taking in a deep breath, she sliced along a thin vein on her wrist in a quick, fluid motion. She needed blood, a lot of it and fast. This was going to be harder than the bloodwerk trial; at least then she’d had her stylus to navigate her blood. When Sylah’s blood in her catchment had failed, she had no choice but to use her own, right under the eyes of everyone in the arena. She’d simply hunched over the shoe she was drawing on and slipped into the water with no one noticing.

Her blue blood was gushing now, and Anoor knew she didn’t have long before she had to put pressure on the wound or she would faint. She dipped the tip of the knife into the cut and began to draw on the floor. This was going to be difficult.

But she’d done it before, she could do it again.

She was fourteen. Her mother had locked her in the weapons cupboard in the living room because Anoor failed her aerobatics test. Flexibility wasn’t her strong suit, yet her mother still forced her to take the class.

Anoor shifted her knees. They’d gone numb long ago, tucked as they were against her chest, the shelves behind her, door in front. Anoor let the tears flow, she let the fear take her. She hated the darkness more than anything in the world. It was the manifestation of her loneliness.

A long time passed. One day, maybe two. Her mother had forgotten about her. It was the longest time she had ever left her. She was covered in her own filth. She was hungry, thirsty, dying.

She wasn’t wearing her inkwell; her mother was always careful to remove it before locking her away. Eventually Anoor got so weak, the hunger and thirst so debilitating, she decided to take fate into her own hands. Her final revenge on her mother, bestowing on her the title of murderer.

Anoor’s fingers reached through the darkness toward the weapons above. She jumped as they collided with the cool metal of a knife.

She brought the knife to her wrist.

Would Inquisitor Abena give up this way?

The knife vibrated against her skin, channeling the beating of her heart.

No, Abena would not. But she would expose her mother, fight back. Anoor pressed the blade against her skin, slicing it cleanly. The darkness was filled with the sound of her dripping blood. Anoor stilled her breathing and began to smear her blood across the inside of the cupboard, in every crack, every knot of wood and weapon handle she could touch. It would be a beacon of blue blood for whoever saw it.

As the giddiness of the blood loss settled in, she started to use her blood to draw bloodwerk runes. She drew Gi slowly and carefully, not knowing where the knife edge was, but letting her muscle memory lead her.

There was a metallic clunk, and Anoor jumped. Her breath came out in short bursts as her fingers moved toward the sound. Pressed against the door was a sword, pulled from the shelf above her. It hovered as if pulled by a magnet. Or a rune. Her fingers brushed the door’s surface, marring the rune Gi.

Thunk.

The sword dropped to the ground; although she couldn’t see it, the air shifted as it fell, and she knew it had narrowly missed her toes.

She had no time to marvel, no time to question. Her mind was becoming sluggish, her thoughts becoming faint. She needed to get out.

She drew Ru around the lock. The door creaked and buckled. She repeated the sequence around the doorframe, each rune adding pressure to the door as it bowed against the metal lock. Light seeped into the cracks until…

The door blasted off the hinges, spraying splinters covered in Anoor’s blood across the living room. A servant ran in. Anoor couldn’t remember their name, but it was the last time she saw them alive.

Anoor knew they had gone to fetch her mother, because she could feel the march of Uka’s footsteps on the wooden floor under her cheek.

“What did you do?” Uka hissed at her as Anoor blinked up at her.

Anoor lifted her head and looked at the weapons cupboard. She had thought that all her wishing had come true, that her blood finally ran red, and that’s what had saved her. But when she saw the blue blood coating the inside of the cupboard, it was with a strange mix of disappointment and satisfaction.

“Get me a bandage and some soap and water. Speak to no one,” Uka barked behind her at the servant who had found Anoor.