The Final Strife

“The Sandstorm are still fighting, Sylah,” he said the words quietly, but they screamed in her ears.

“What?” Her head snapped toward him, braids clacking with the symbols of their childhood. “The Sandstorm are gone. Dead and gone.” Her hand reached into her satchel pocket and rolled the two joba seeds left there.

“They came to the farm. They found me.”

“Who found you?” Sylah didn’t understand. They were dead. All dead.

“The Sandstorm.”

She shook her head, harder and harder, shaking the confusion from her mind. The Sandstorm were dead. The Sandstorm were dead. She hadn’t realized the words had come out of her mouth until Jond replied.

“Our faction died, yes, but the ideology lives on, Sylah.” Jond took a deep breath. “As babes we were taken from our families and set on a path to tear down the foundations of the empire. The Sandstorm crafted us into leaders with one purpose: to destroy the empire from within. We are the Stolen, born to Ember parents but made by Dusters. And we cannot be unmade. Just because you turned your back on who you are doesn’t mean the fight has stopped.” That’s the thing with unspoken words: sometimes they reach for you.

Shame stung Sylah’s eyes, but he saw it. The guilt she had nursed over the last six years was hard to miss; it shone as bright as the red stains on her teeth.

“There was nothing to turn my back on,” she shot back. “Where are they, this so-called Sandstorm?” The scorn screwed up her features.

“They’re here in the city. We’re going to infiltrate the court, win the Aktibar, just like Papa Azim planned. There might not be twelve Stolen anymore, but there’s us, and that’s enough to change the world.”

Sylah smiled bitterly. “I thought about it, once or twice.” Her thoughts turned to the griot who had been ripped earlier that day, “But then I opened my eyes to reality. Nothing gets past the wardens. They crush every rebellion. No, they rip them apart without a thought. Change the world? No, Jond. This will end in death like it did for the Sandstorm, like it does for every Duster and Ghosting held in the jaws of the rack. Papa’s plan will never work, just as it didn’t before.” Sylah’s eyes drifted to the courtyard of murderers below.

Jond cleared his throat. “It wasn’t just his plan, Sylah. There were many players. He was just a small part.”

Sylah looked at him. It was the same Jond, yet this fire was new. But there was no way he could pull this off without Papa Azim, without their family.

“Once you’re warden, what then? There’s still the Ember courts that we’d have to influence.” Then she said the words she had come to terms with a long time ago. “The Sandstorm is nothing without Papa to lead. The Sandstorm is dead.”

Jond flinched. “We’re fulfilling what I was born and trained to do. What we were trained to do, Sylah.” He splayed his hands toward the Descent below. All four former wardens were now at the foot of the five hundred steps. They were no longer wardens, just regular folk. Regular red-blooded Embers. The crowd parted to let them through as they walked up to the largest joba tree in all of Nar-Ruta.

It had been eighteen years since Sylah had been stolen from her crib by the Sandstorm. From the moment she was taken at two years old she was fated to battle for the title of Disciple of Strength. Trained, crafted, and honed into the perfect competitor for the Aktibar. It had been the Sandstorm’s plan all along, to raise twelve Embers to do what Dusters couldn’t, weren’t permitted to: lead. To stand where those in the courtyard below now stood. But that was before the Sandstorm died. Before they were cut down, the rebellion slaughtered.

Twelve children, three chances to win each Aktibar.

Now just two left.

An Abosom priest, dressed all in white, chanted out a prayer. Sylah couldn’t hear the words, but she recited them from memory anyway.

Jond whispered them beneath his breath. Like Sylah, he had been taught the prayer, hoping that one day it would be them up there—ending their reign with a better world.

“And to the earth the blood shall flow, and to the sky I returneth. Anyme, we thank thee for what you give us, we praise thee for where you lead us. Anyme, we serve thee for how you punish us. The blood, the power, the life.” The citizens chanted alongside the Abosom, the collective worship making its way through the crowd. It haunted Sylah into a memory.

The view was worth it. They could see more of the Wardens’ Keep than they had ever seen before.

“One day that’ll be our home,” Sylah said in the silence.

Jond’s grin was toothy. “It’ll be your home, you mean.”

“Any one of us could win,” Sylah protested.

“But you’re the best.” Jond rested his hand on her leg.

She had nothing to say to that. It was the truth, and Papa told them not to lie.

“Will you come and live with me?”

“Of course, you can have the whole right side, and Fareen can have the left side,” said Jond.

“And where are you going to live?”