“Where is it?”
“In the business district, opposite the warden’s offices.”
“Are you joking?” The task was ludicrous. Impossible.
“They appreciate it’s a hard task. But it has to be to show your total dedication to the cause. Your last actions…left their mark.”
“That was six years ago, Jond.”
He nodded, not very deeply.
“They’d like the most recent journals from the current wardens.” Jond spread his hands wide, as if to say he did everything he could.
Sylah got up and started to pace.
“I’m not sure I understand.” She so desperately wanted to pull on her braids, to yank out her frustration at the root. “First, they find you, not me, and train you for the Aktibar. Secondly, they send you to get me to sign up for the Aktibar. Thricely—and yes, I just used the word ‘thricely,’ Anoor told me it’s a word—they won’t let me officially rejoin until I complete some sort of task?”
Jond shrugged. “We’re the Final Strife, Sylah, it’s not our place to question.”
The Final Strife. The words tugged on the invisible leash between herself and the Sandstorm. A Sandstorm she no longer knew. It was the reason she was here, teaching Jond to bloodwerk, it was the reason she had given up her quest for oblivion—which she’d been good at too.
Red beads of ecstasy flickered beneath her eyelids when she blinked and her mouth filled with saliva. Her tongue probed the gap between her teeth. The hole ached.
But now the Sandstorm want…more.
Sylah cricked her neck, the muscles rippling over the scar at the bottom of her hairline. She felt the tautness of the invisible leash go slack, just a little.
“Maiden’s tits, we’re just pieces on a shantra board, aren’t we? Is this really the Sandstorm you want to be a part of, Jond?”
He was silent for some time, watching her with unreadable eyes as she stood in front of him with her hands on her hips.
“No, the Sandstorm I wanted to be a part of is dead.” He said the words softly, but Sylah recognized the undertone of accusation. “But these people, they believe too, they believe in us.”
“Us? You mean you. I’m just a thief, it seems.”
Jond’s hand reached for her and clung on to her wrist, hard.
“Us,” he said firmly. “You can’t turn away from what you were trained for. The Stolen, you and me, we are the last hope at bringing down the Embers. Just because you won’t be warden doesn’t mean you don’t have a part to play in the plan.”
“The plan?” Sylah scoffed. “What do you know of Papa’s plan?”
“There is and was only ever one plan, Sylah: an end to all Embers.”
Sylah nodded, but her mind bubbled with unexpected thoughts.
She thought of what Kwame had said to her, about how he’d had no choice in his career. More choice than Dusters and Ghostings, but still, it wasn’t what Sylah had expected. Did he deserve to die too? The wardens, yes, but the servants?
“And how will the Sandstorm achieve it? When you’re in power?”
Jond thought for less than a blink. “There are steps we will take.”
“Tell me.” Maybe they would spare those like Kwame.
Jond didn’t respond.
“Jond?” Oh, to have a joba seed.
Still, his lips pressed shut into an impenetrable line.