“I do not bat my eyelashes.”
Sylah exhaled through her nose in response.
“We could take a shortcut.”
“A shortcut? What type of shortcut?”
“It means going outside.”
“Oh, I see.” Sylah nodded, considering. “I’ll try to muster some tears for your passing over ceremony.”
Anoor put her hand on her hip. “If we exit at this door here, swing round to the left and head through the cloisters, we’ll only be outside for ten paces.”
“Have you ever been outside in the tidewind?”
“No. Have you?”
“Yes, we were…camping…” A training exercise. “All I had with me was water, string, a blanket, some dried meat and kindling.” All Papa had given her. “Home was at least twenty-four strikes away by foot.”
Anoor’s hand had drifted to her mouth, but Sylah didn’t notice; she was caught by the memory.
“I used my sandals to make a tube, binding them with the string. Then I buried myself like an eru in the tidewind. The tube sometimes got filled with sand and I’d choke on it…” Anoor gasped beside her, pulling Sylah back to the present.
Sylah coughed into her hand and smiled wryly. “I was fine, I survived.”
Not all of the Stolen had. Fatyma had died. Her twin, Hussain, was never the same again. Papa had called Fatyma weak. She hadn’t yet reached her seventh nameday.
“That sounds awful.”
Sylah could tell Anoor was holding back her questions. She bit on her lower lip.
“But you survived, and you could again.”
Sylah growled in the back of her throat. “We’ll have to be quick, very quick.”
“I understand that.”
Sylah looked at her, her face determined. Beautiful in its fierceness, so much so that the runelight seemed to shimmer about her.
“Let’s go.”
They crept through the hallway and took a side staircase down to ground level. Like the rest of the doors and windows in the Keep, the metal shutters were down.
“You know which way we’re going, right? Turn left and run until you reach the next door.” Anoor’s afro was quivering with her nerves, or maybe excitement.
“Yes, yes. I’ll close this shutter behind us, but you’ve got to open the next one as you’ll be ahead. There’s a pulley like this on the outside. Got it?”
Anoor nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She’d never been out in the tidewind before. She’d never even been out of the Keep at night before.
The wind hammered against the shutter, making Anoor jump. Sylah rolled her eyes at her. They waited for a lull, and when Sylah heard a brief respite from the hailing sand she pulled open the shutter with a grunt.
“Go!”
Anoor stumbled out into the cold night air and Sylah followed. The glistening blue sand swirled around them, but Sylah knew that it was just a foreshadowing of what was to come. She ran toward the door until she realized Anoor hadn’t moved. She just stood there like a lump of lard. Her mouth open, she looked up at the sky as if she hadn’t been outside before.
“What are you doing? Run!” Sylah booted her in the shin. Anoor jumped, and the movement broke the spell that had come over her. In seconds the wind had whipped into such a frenzy that Sylah’s cheeks felt scraped raw.
“Hurry!” Sylah got to the door first and held it open for Anoor as she ran. At the back of her mind she noted how much quicker she had gotten. With one final lunge Anoor breached the doorway. Sylah shut the door behind her.