The Final Strife

Epilogue

Sand. It was everywhere, in her clothes, her sandals, even in the crack of her ass.

Sylah shook her pantaloons loose, attempting to dislodge the particles wedged between her cheeks. Boey shrilled and shook her head.

“I know, I know, you’re hungry.”

Boey huffed in response.

“Let’s stop here.”

Sylah jumped down from the driver’s seat, letting the reins go slack. Sylah’s riding skills hadn’t improved, not that it mattered much. Boey went where she wanted; most of the time it was in the direction Sylah intended. They’d come to an easy understanding.

Boey’s amber eyes tracked Sylah as she got down from the carriage, her diamond-shaped head tilting. Sylah knew what the lizard wanted because Boey had gone as far as opening her third eyelid to do it. More effort.

“Fine, but you’ll have to explain to Anoor why we maxed out the ambassador’s credit on yams.”

Sylah fished in the carriage, careful not to disturb the load. She withdrew a purple yam the size of her thigh and threw it toward Boey, who elongated her neck to catch it. She snapped it between her jaws and swallowed it in one bite. Sylah patted Boey’s mottled blue scales and sat on the ground.

She was careful as she unraveled the map, the glue holding the two pieces together already cracking. She sipped the sweetened tea and grimaced, but she was glad for the joba seed powder. It had allowed her to reclaim her body for the first time in mooncycles. She looked at the map.

Her journey had taken her to the northern tip of the empire over the course of three weeks. Ood-Zaynib hadn’t exactly been on route, but they had called to her: the dead. The ones she killed.

The sand was warm underfoot as she walked down the dune to the valley of her childhood home.

The Sanctuary was much the same. Built of sturdy whitestone, it hadn’t yet succumbed to tidewind damage. The fields of rubber trees grew wild and tall. Much like her. Their bark had healed in the six years since she had last been there. The sour smell of latex was a wisp of a memory among the trees.

Sylah walked slowly, searching the blue ground for any hint of them. Then she saw it, a skull in the distance. She placed a hand on the bark of a tree to steady herself.

“Fuck.” She jumped back, holding her hand to her chest. One, two, three tentative steps forward. There it was. A hole in the wood from the runebullet meant for her. Once she would have wished it made its mark. Not today. Not again.

She walked toward the skull, away from the hole made for her heart. The Farsai Desert made sand dunes in its eye sockets, and a sand snail now occupied the nasal cavity. She couldn’t guess whose smile once opened up to the gleaming white teeth beneath.

On she walked, through her family’s phantoms, the echoes of their battle cries and final goodbyes. Six different bones she found, all too large to be the Stolen. The Embers must have taken the Stolen’s bodies away and scrubbed the Sanctuary clean. They only left the remains of the blue-blooded Dusters to seep into the sand like the dirt they were.

Her heart began to pound as she neared the area where the rain of bullets had struck Fareen down. Sylah’s hand went to the scar at the base of her neck. Her curls had just started to hide the keloid skin there.

“Hmmgargh gargh.”

Sylah spun just in time to see Jond crest the sand dune at the top of the valley and fall over. His hands and feet were bound, his mouth gagged with silk. He rolled toward the rubber trees, coming to a rest at the base of them ten handspans away.

“Nice trip?”

His eyes shrunk into slits as he blinked the sand out of them.

“Are you flirting with me, Jond?”

“Fugh hu.”

“Is it time for your pee pee?”

“Gughn fughin ghil oo.”

“Oh, you sweet talker.”

Sylah went over to him and dragged him up by his hair. She rolled him over to reveal the knot of bloodwerk runes holding his gag in place and released it. After all, the Sanctuary was in the middle of nowhere. It had to be.

“Are there any bodies left?” His contempt seeped out of all the cracks in his unused voice.