“Not sure, don’t really know the city well enough, I guess,” Jond replied.
“Hmmm.” She shelved that worry for another day. She looked at Jond from the corner of her eye. “So when do I meet the new Sandstorm leader? I can chew into them about why you didn’t come for me sooner.”
“Sylah, it wasn’t my choice, at first I didn’t know you were alive, and then when I found out, they wouldn’t let me see you.”
“There is nothing and no one that would have stopped me finding you, Jond.” It was the simple truth.
“The new leader, he’s forceful, he has a plan.”
“Papa’s plan.”
“Similar.”
“What aren’t you telling me, Jond? Just spit it out.”
“I can’t, they won’t let me.”
She stopped, causing the flow of traffic behind her to curse and push past. “Jond Alnua, are you flaming joking right now?”
He rolled his eyes and dragged her forward. “Sorry,” he apologized to a particularly angry person who was pulling a cart of vegetables behind them. “Honestly, Sylah.”
“Well?” She scuffed her feet through the dust.
“It’s confidential, the new leader is very…covert.”
“Covert? How many people are there now?” She would have stopped again if Jond weren’t still holding her hand.
“A few.”
“A few?” She scowled at him.
He shrugged.
“I can’t know?” Anger flashed behind her eyes. She needed a joba se—verd tea. She needed verd tea.
“No. Not until you’ve proved your worth. If you want to join again, I mean.”
“Skies above, I assumed being one of the Stolen, I would have had membership for life…”
“It doesn’t work that way.” They’d come to the edge of the Duster Quarter. Sylah cast one last look at the Ruta River. The bubbling, whirling blue sand was a reflection of her thoughts.
“Move out!” The shout was harsh and loud, followed by the drumbeat of boots pounding the earth roads.
“Sylah, move!” Jond hissed, pulling her out of the way of a patrol on pursuit.
They held their runeguns out, leveled at a young Duster who was weaving through the crowd. Something glittered against his chest. A gold cuff of some kind.
“An inkwell…”
Sylah whistled through her teeth. The boy had guts to steal an inkwell from an Ember in broad daylight. Guts or an addled mind. Melted down, the gold from the inkwell would be worth enough to feed a Duster for a year. Perhaps it was desperation that fueled his madness.
The crowd held their breath as the captain of the platoon paused and held up his fist to signal gunfire. The officers drew the runes on their guns that activated the force of the bullet. Fourteen bullets flew through the air in quick succession.
One of them found its mark.
Blue blood sprayed across the joba tree in the courtyard of a Duster’s home. The blood marked the bark like ink, dripping down to the patch of carefully tended sand below.
“Fucking Embers.” Jond spat.