If you didn’t learn the lesson, you died.

So Quincy stood in the thick press of balance keepers, back ramrod straight, arms tight against her sides, eyes fixed firmly ahead. It didn’t matter if the wind howled between the towering dunes and stalked through the anchorage yard like a hungry jackal. It didn’t matter that it whipped stinging grains of sand into her face and tore the dark hood from her head. It didn’t matter that it would knock her off her feet if she dared to let it.

She knew better than to dare.

Perfect obedience paves the path to perfection.

The yard was a keeper of dead things. Anything foolhardy enough to grow within was stunted and withered, bowed low under the wrath of the swollen sun. Only the anchorage grew tall, a rambling tangle of sharp edges and knife-like spires and blackened stone, presiding in judgment over the silent keepers. And it never stopped watching.

They’ll catch you fidgeting!

“This most ungracious of your daughters, this serpent’s tooth —”

The red-robed priest, face lean and hard as a vulture’s, had to shout to be heard as he read Calix’s condemnation to the assembled keepers. They thronged the barren yard like darkling beetles, driven out of their dim hiding holes into the blazing light of day. Even the initiates had not been exempt. The matrons had roused them all far before daybreak, plucking little seven-year-old girls with heavy eyes and limbs as breakable as twigs out of their quarters, into the deadly world that raged just outside the anchorage walls.

This was a lesson to be learned by all.

Scarcely six turnings from those probationary years and hardly any taller, Quincy couldn’t see over the other keepers but the importance of listening had been carved into her being, with bruised palms and scarred limbs. If she learned the lesson quickly enough, she would never feel the sting of its punishment.

The anchorage was full of lessons.

There was the lesson of Quincy’s knees, raw and bloody from the morning’s penance. Each gust of wind plastered her shapeless dress to the torn skin and tugged. Her fingers itched to pull the heavy fabric free but —

Don’t even think about it!

There was the lesson of the hunger constantly growling in her belly, making the world sway around her even when she held so still.

There were other lessons that no one dared to talk about. How every day the desert crept closer. Into their halls. Into their cells. Into their food. And no penance seemed to slow it.

Perfect obedience does not question!

The wind screeched in insatiable fury, sharper and louder than an angry matron, choking off the priest’s words from where he stood so far away. Quincy strained her ears but it was impossible. Her stomach somersaulted. If she couldn’t hear — Somehow, she’d have to find a way to see instead.

Body still, her eyes darted, scanning the area around her, searching out each face for the bent of their attention. Narrowed eyes or clenched fists. Disapproving frowns or curious stares. But all around Quincy, not a keeper dared to lift her head. Even the older girls kept their eyes fixed on their worn boots, as though Calix’s fate would befall them too with one illicit glance.

Don’t move, don’t risk it —

Hush!

Slowly, so no matron would notice and punish her, Quincy raised herself, trembling, onto her toes. Burning shale crackled underneath her boots. A veil of dark, flapping cloaks rose into her vision, but she could still catch a glimpse of the southern wall, twisting and straining to hold back the desert. The sun, red as freshly spilled blood, glinted off the corrugated metal, burning Quincy’s eyes until she had to squint. The wall was too tall for her to see over but she knew what lay beyond it.

Nothing.

Nothing but the crooked crests of crimson-edged dunes, stretching as far as the eye could see from the sheer cliff where they stood. Once, the priest assured them, there had been cities full of people not so different from them. Now there was only sand. Hungry sand that had devoured the rest of the world and was coming to swallow them.

It must be as hungry as she was.

You’re not allowed to think about that!

Quincy wobbled even taller onto her toes, edging away from the keeper clinging to her right and towards a gap in the mass of cloaked bodies. It was enough, just barely.

The priest paced restlessly before the wall, arms raised, the leathery skin of his face now hidden by a skull of ivory bone. Above him, for all to see and learn, Calix perched dangerously  at the very top of the narrow ledge. One false move, one strong gust and she’d disappear, swallowed by the desert below. Guards with wolves sewn onto their jackets and faces harder than stone held her arms, but there was no need. Calix hardly blinked when the priest took his dagger and slashed her dark dress, exposing ghostly skin to the sun’s wrath. The ragged remains of her hair — a mark of her disgrace — were the only bit of her that still seemed alive, lashing around her head in a desperate attempt to break free. She was frozen, heedless of the wind tearing at her and the priest chanting below her and the vultures wheeling above her, black specks against the burning sky.

If Quincy tried hard enough, she could be like those vultures, soaring so high above the famished earth. She was no more than a pinprick, following each draft and eddy of the wind, free —

Get your head out of the sky, idiot girl!

Calix didn’t look afraid or angry or any of the things Quincy would have been. Her eyes held all the blank confusion of someone trying very hard to wake up.

The wind flung the priest’s words towards Quincy once again, brittle as matchsticks.

“— despising the commands of the gods, who in their just wisdom demand we must render evil for her evil, harm for the harm she would inflict upon her sisters, wrath for —”

The words grated on Quincy’s ears, scraping their way into the secret place where they roiled and ground and burned, a tumbling desert inside her. Each one was a rock in that hollow, formless space, weighing down her prayers and whispering words she wasn’t allowed to say.

Because there were some keepers you had to watch out for — they stole bread and whispered and ran off to the matrons at the slightest hint of an infraction. But not Calix. When a keeper was still smarting from shame or punishment, she was there, a kind smile, an open hand, some whispered words of comfort. It was a lie —

Perfect obedience does not —

Stop it!

If not that, then —

Why?

“She has broken our most holy covenant and rebelled hideously against our divine calling —” the priest wailed.

Timely enough to be an answer. And yet, not an answer at all.

Watch it!

He wasn’t going to answer her question. No one here did, even if you dared enough to ask. So Quincy pulled at the threads of her memories, sifting and hunting until the answer shone clear and cutting as glass.

Calix had spoken her mind. She had asked questions. She had challenged the matrons. And this was the result.

When Quincy had been taken from her ward to be trained as a balance keeper, they made it sound wonderful to be chosen to serve the gods. No one had told her that it really meant carrying the whole world on your shoulders. It meant endless sacrifice, because there were always more sins to bear. It meant hunger and pain and always feeling alone and a little bit afraid. It meant lessons that no one explained, but were more important than water or air for survival.

And if you didn’t learn the lesson, you died so others would.

The wind shrieked in agony, hurling a hot wave of sand and debris over the wall. Nox burrowed once again into Quincy’s right side, knocking her flat-foot. Calix and the priest disappeared from view. Quincy bit her cheek in frustration.

Usually she didn’t mind having Nox close, in spite of the sun that beat mercilessly overhead and the blood that dribbled down her nose and splattered the thirsty ground at Quincy’s feet. When the wind brushed Nox’s dress against Quincy, she could pretend she didn’t feel quite so alone.

But not today. Not now. Because Nox still hadn’t realized that wailing winds, masks and bones, even the priest himself, were not the scariest things in their world.

Scary was the desert that never stopped taking, no matter how many prayers were uttered and penances made. Scary was each unspoken rule that had to be discovered on your own, before it cost you your life. Scary was death that came with the first fingers of dawn bleeding across the sky.

And it came for those who questioned.

If Quincy couldn’t silence the questions in her head, would it come for her too?

There is no secret hid from the gods, whose eyes wander the whole earth.

The girls who closed their eyes had as many scars and bruises as the one who kept hers open. What would happen if she pushed back hard enough at the voice always shrieking its warnings into her skull?

The one who kept hers open now would die.

Live or die?

They’ll know!

Stop!

Quincy shoved Nox off and pushed herself once more onto her toes.

The priest waved a dagger, now sticky with blood, wildly overhead. In his left hand, he clutched the book of all the keepers, each name assigned and recorded the moment they set foot into the anchorage’s dark, twisted labyrinth. Blood dripped from the edge of the blade onto a crumbling page, blotting out a name. Quincy didn’t need to see to know it was Calix’s.

There was a lesson even older than any of the anchorage’s, drilled into the skull of every child from the moment she could speak. Everyone and everything had its place. If yours rejected you, you had nothing.

And no one can survive with nothing.

The timid sniffling from the balance keeper on Quincy’s left grew louder, attracting a few nervous glances their way. Rith refused to stay still, trembling like she was sick, feet fidgeting like she might run.

Quincy shuffled as far from view as she could. Attracting attention was never a good thing.

That was what Calix had done, after all.

Quincy had watched her from afar, trailing, listening — silently wondering — but never getting too close. That would be deadlier than the sun.

The brilliant crimson of a matron’s mantle flashed in the corner of Quincy’s vision. She rocked back onto her heels, her breath hitching in her chest. Which matron was it? Has she seen Quincy struggling to take a peek? Had she been watching long, long enough to catch the thoughts that always scuttled to the surface of Quincy’s skin before she could bury them? Quincy’s shoulders tightened, cringing away from the anticipated blow.

A sharp crack punctured the priest’s endless tirade.

Rith hunched over her hand, clasped tightly to her chest. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her whole face twisted with the effort of keeping silent. Serrah hovered over her, her glare as blistering as the sun. Quincy’s back straightened automatically under those hawk-sharp eyes.

A sour taste filled her mouth. The matron’s knees weren’t bloody from crawling across the rough floor over and over and over again. They didn’t have hungry bellies or skin mottled with bruises and sores. Maybe they even had someone to talk to.

Guilty, guilty, guilty —

SHUT UP!

The priest’s shouting changed in pitch, louder, more frenzied. The keepers around Quincy shuffled nervously. Once more she rocked back onto her toes and strained to see, even though the world spun sideways when she did.

The priest held a gilt lantern aloft, a thin pane of glass sheltering the feeble flame from the wind.

“And now,” he thundered, “we abandon her soul to the night, and may the darkest depths take her. May the gods on high, who punish the wicked and reward the faithful, make her like the wandering wind, finding neither home nor rest. May they make her like an ember ever burning, whose thirst is never slaked. May demons be her only companions, and the record of her sins the only word of comfort in her ears forevermore.”

The curse shivered down Quincy’s spine, even as hundreds of trembling voices murmured, “So be it.”

The little door snapped open, letting the wind devour the flame.

Incense whipped through the dusty air, the bitter and choking scent they burned for the dead.

Calix only looked alive. The anchorage had already killed her.

This at last was the lesson. You either spilled your blood willingly or the anchorage spilled it for you. Those were the choices reserved for a balance keeper: servitude or death.

“We disown this forsaken wretch, and offer this sacrifice to appease your just wrath.”

Rith let out a tiny whimper.

For the first time since they’d all been summoned outside — maybe the first time ever — the priest fell silent, turning with trepidation towards a man that Quincy hadn’t noticed before. A man wearing a drab suit and a bored expression.

Worry pinched Quincy’s stomach. What would the matrons, the priest, do, if this stranger continued to be so slow and slothful? Would their wrath spill onto the girls assembled below?

But Quincy’s heart continued to pound in her chest and the man remained silent and no one dared to do a thing.

Her eyes once again traced the spare, unassuming figure. What did this man possess that set him free from their dominion?

A shadow passed overhead like a shudder, momentarily blocking the sun’s deadly heat. It drew Quincy’s gaze upward, in spite of herself. The vultures were flying lower now, their leathery heads and sharp beaks visible. They were waiting too. A hush descended, broken only by the sound of the man's greatcoat flapping in the wind.

He stirred at last, the sentence no more than a careless flick of his wrist. He didn’t even bother to look at Calix.

In an instant, two of the guards pitched her over the wall. Quincy squirmed, but the silence was only broken by the wrathful shrieks of the wind. So quickly it was over.

Calix hadn’t even screamed. Had she ever woken up on the way down?

As the priest sent the keepers back into the anchorage for prayer and penance, Quincy buried her own lesson in her heart, deep and quiet where no one would find it. It was a lesson that had been taught under the cruel sun and crueler watch of the anchorage, a lesson that wept blood on the rocks below.

Sometimes it was better to lie.