Then I become nothing.
Part Four
House of Death
With fear for their freedom, House of Cycles votes nay.
—Hearing on [REDACTED]
before the Council of Keepers,
eve of the Dark Rebellion
Ifall.
Wind rushes my clothes, my hair, tearing air from my lungs. It is short-lived.
My body slams into something soft. My hip cracks, pops, and then I am rolling. I scrabble for purchase, slicing my hands along sharp edges and soft spots. I am tumbling down a hill, but not sand. I slam into a long, thin object, and it catches me. The sky above me spins and spins until finally it stops.
The desert smells.
I did not expect it to smell like this.
Like trash.
Shaking my head, untwisting my body from the object behind me, I grasp a familiar feeling, the surface of a wooden table, turned on its side. I raise myself up and scan my surroundings.
Trash.
I am halfway down a mountain of garbage—from furniture to food to clothing. What is all this stuff? Where did it come from? Gingerly, carefully, I assess my injuries, the cuts and bruises, but my leg hurts less. I still wear only the king’s tunic and a pair of drawers.
Grasping a table leg, I haul myself up. Something glints in the sand at my feet, blinding me.
I dig it up.
The diamond dagger.
My grip tightens around my only connection to my home. I will not let go.
The trash pile leads down far below, several items tumbling over a cliff. Beyond the cliff is mile after mile of tan sand. The Amyria Desert that I must cross. There is no other choice. I pick my way down.
After an hour, I reach the bottom, sweat and dirt and oil streaking across already burning skin. I could lie down right here, bake in the sun, shiver in the night until my body and brain have wasted away. Yet glancing down at the king’s clothing I still wear, my cut and bleeding bare feet, my remaining debt, I think not.
I should like to don clothes meant just for me, not die in the tattered shirt of my torturer. I should like to watch my final four ringed tattoos disappear, and see once again those freckles and that birthmark. Hope feels hard to reach, so I clutch the dagger and summon my spite.
Picking through the trash, I salvage one boot too small, a sandal too big. I put them on. After some more digging, I manage a rucksack, a loaf of bread with only a little bit of mold on one end, so I tear that off. I search and search, but there’s no water.
With the mud and oil and rotting food, climbing the mountain to the top to see what’s on the other side proves impossible. Even if I could, I would still have my debt and wouldn’t be welcomed in the borderlands. I need to go east, across the desert.
I yank on the bent handle of a parasol, its gray lace ripped in some places. It looks like Kassandra’s.
“You’re kidding me.”
A half-ripped length of cloth also goes into the bag.
Still, no water. But there’s a canteen, warmed by the sun, that swishes. From the vinegar scent after I untwist the top, I guess it to be fae wine. Reluctantly, I take it.
Returning to the cliff’s edge, I watch the sunset in the far distance, the sand lighting up red, then orange and even purple, like the deepest flame. I move closer to the horizon.
