Anoor hunched her shoulders and went to pull out the stack of shantra boards. One of the other servants was instructing a new player, and Anoor listened in.
“A shantra board is made up of three different colors, patterned with diamonds. Each team has thirty-one counters, ten of each color and one black piece. The black piece is known as the egg.” He held out a small black counter, which glittered. “The aim of the game is to steal the egg from the opposing team, but each counter can only move onto their corresponding color. And only red counters can collect the egg.”
Fundamentally it was a game of strategy, and Anoor guessed that was why Sylah had asked about it. Anoor set up the board on the table next to Kwame.
“We need more players,” Sylah said to the room, whose attention had gone back to their own games. Kwame looked up.
“I’ll play, if you can wait until I finish here.”
“Me too,” said his partner, the young girl…Was her name Yero? Anoor really couldn’t remember.
“Fine, we’ll wait,” Sylah said slumping into a chair.
Sylah surveyed the stacks around her. “This library is about as useful as a Ghosting singer,” she grunted. “Embers really know how to run a library…”
“Why do you hate Embers so much?” Anoor asked quietly, slipping into a chair beside her.
“What?” The question took Sylah unawares. “I don’t hate Embers.” But Anoor wasn’t sure that was true. “I am an Ember.”
“But I’ve seen the way your face screws up when you see the court ride in on their erus. Is it because you’re a servant and not part of the court?”
Sylah laughed. “No, I would rather be a servant than one of them.”
“Then why?”
“I just think there’s a lot of wealth this side of the river,” was the sentence Sylah finally settled on.
“Not everyone is wealthy here.”
“I’m not just talking about money,” Sylah countered.
“But you can’t hate people because of their blood color. It doesn’t make sense.”
A cockroach scuttled across the floor, and Sylah’s foot flattened it with a crunch.
“That was disgusting.”
“What, this?” Sylah presented the insect’s entrails on the bottom of her foot, lifting it toward Anoor, who recoiled.
“Get it away from me.”
“You’ve gone green.”
“Because that’s really repulsive.”
“Repulsive?” Sylah cocked her head to the side. “White bone bursting from the thigh leaving the rest of the flesh looking like mincemeat…a runebullet bursting through a chest cavity…the film that covers the eyes of the dead when the life leaves them…”
Anoor lifted her hand to her mouth.
Sylah paused, thinking. “Maybe those things are repulsive.”
“Have you seen those things?” Anoor’s hand still hovered by her face, as if at any second it might be needed to contain her bile.
Sylah smiled, a wide smile that showed all her teeth, free from red blemishes. “Of course not.” Sylah scraped the entrails on the leg of the chair. “But it isn’t a very good library, is it?” Sylah put her feet up on the table, knocking some of the books off the edge.
—
“We’re ready,” Kwame said, his voice a little tentative.