They stood by the fire until it flickered out.
“We need to bury the bones.” Jond touched her arm.
The sun had begun to set. They’d spent strikes longer than she’d intended at the Sanctuary. She still needed to get to the Ghosting settlement in time for their scouting mission to the mainland. They’d need to ride up until the tidewind struck.
“Hurry.”
The bones were coated with rubber wood ash from the fire, and Sylah laid them on the cooling sand while Jond scrabbled to make a hole. Embers who could afford an Abosom would have had one to perform the ceremony, to light the pyre and bless the earth with their sacred blood. But they made do with what they had. Sylah knew it was what Papa would have wanted for them: choosing their path right up to the end.
Sylah fingered a small bone between her forefinger and thumb. She wiped the ash from the chalky bone and wondered whose remains she was holding. Whose body had this bone held up and connected tissue with tissue?
Sylah went to the carriage and pulled out the sword from behind a stack of dried meat. She’d had to keep all weapons hidden from Jond. Using the tip of the blade, she pierced the bone in the center.
Sylah walked back down the valley toward Jond.
“Would you?” Sylah held out the small piece of bone.
Jond understood and knelt in the ground beside her. She released his hands then, giving him the smallest bit of trust for the task.
Slowly, carefully, he began to braid the bone into the short tufts of her curls, connecting hair with hair, rebuilding the Sylah she now was.
The bone hung just below her ear. White against black.