Four walls, all slick with grime Jond was glad he couldn’t see. He couldn’t lie flat even diagonally across two corners. The cell was too small to be called a cell. He wondered who the last occupant had been and if they survived the cave-in from the tidewind.
Jond didn’t mind the darkness but there was still something strange that happened to a brain when it was starved of all stimulation.
He had been in confinement for eighteen strikes when he started hearing the voices.
How did he know it had been eighteen strikes? He counted the seconds.
At first, he thought he heard Fareen speak. But he knew she couldn’t, because she was dead. Then he found himself listening, yearning for her words. She had such a sweet voice. He saw the image of her in his mind, the scar by her eye always crinkling with a smile when she spoke.
Tell Sylah the truth, Jond. The guilt will only consume you.
The guilt was the darkness, and it was in his mouth, starving him of breath.
“I can’t,” he gasped.
If he told her the truth, she would hate him. And he needed her to love him.
“I need her, she’s all I have left.” Jond let the tears come.
He thought of Sylah, not that he was ever not thinking of Sylah, but she came to him then, fully formed in the darkness in his mind. He saw her as she was before, the girl he had grown up with, her braids falling to her waist, her lithe body running through the desert.
“Run with me, Jond,” she once said as they crested the valley beyond the Sanctuary all those years ago.
“Where?”
“Everywhere.”
He wished he had gone everywhere with her. Azim saw them running across the dunes and shouted for them to get back to work. He slipped off his sandal and held the threat high.
Azim had it right. Azim knew pain was a crafting tool. And the pain of this guilt was just like any other. The Sandstorm had always shown him that. Jond held fast when Master Inansi told him their plan for Sylah. When he found out she was alive, all he wanted to do was run to her, run everywhere with her.
But the master showed him how carving a person was like carving a weapon. Sylah should be in the cell next to his. But Anoor proved her worth in the end. Jond still wore his inkwell, a gift he would never part with.
Tell her the truth. This time the voice was Anoor’s, though it didn’t pierce his heart like Fareen’s did. Maybe because every day he knew she stepped closer to her death.
He couldn’t hold his bladder anymore, so he let it out. He tried to aim for the wall, but it just pooled beside him, and when he sat, it soaked through his pantaloons, but he was grateful. The warmth was a distraction from his guilt.
—
As Anoor drifted up and away from the confines of her cell in her mind, she began to plan. She kept her eyes closed, her body tense, though there was not enough space above her head to hold Nuba formations, she embodied what she could of the meditative state of battle wrath.
Anoor had been horrified by the size of the cell. It was beyond cruel to confine anyone between these four walls. The prison she would build would be bigger, better equipped to survive the tidewind.
If she won the position of disciple, she’d have ten years to prepare her strategy before her mother descended. In the moments between training, teaching, sleeping, and eating, Anoor had already started to scheme. She had roles for Kwame, Gorn, and Hassa already, though she’d have to convince the wardens to change the rules of the court. Anoor hoped her blue blood would be enough to convince them anyone could have a place in ruling the empire.
She’d need to form alliances. Maybe Yanis would be a good start; he seemed decent enough. He’d helped her to build the shelter in the tactics trial. Kind and thoughtful, those were the people she wanted to surround herself with.
She had planned out an advisory role for Sylah, which Anoor was sure she wouldn’t take, but Anoor needed her to; she couldn’t do it without her. Sylah was the reason she’d gotten this far—
A small scratch behind her brought her out of her trance. She leaped up and collided with the wall. Pain lanced her elbow.
Panic crawled its way up from her toes. Handspan by handspan it froze her muscles and pinned her to the ground. She felt her heartbeat in her ears and smelled lilies in the air. Her jaw locked, and a low moan escaped her.
As the seconds passed, she managed to move her fist, though the movement was erratic, and she reached out to knock on the door.
Knock.
She hit it once.