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 had to shout to be heard as he read Calix’s condemnation. Quincy could picture his face, lean and hard as a vulture’s, mouth puckered as if he spat each word onto 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 bloodless faces and limbs as breakable as twigs out of their quarters, into the deadly world that raged just outside the anchorage walls. Now they stood before the desert in perfect rows, silent and straight and still.

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 very being, with scarred palms and bruised 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 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 still.

There were other lessons 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. Quincy strained her ears, but hearing him was impossible. Her stomach somersaulted. If she couldn’t hear, she couldn’t obey. If she failed to obey…

Somehow, she’d have to find a way to see instead.

Body still, her eyes scanned 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 not a keeper dared to lift her head. Even the older girls kept their gazes 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—

Slowly, so no matron would notice and punish her, Quincy raised herself, trembling, onto her toes. Scorched 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. Long ago, the priest liked to warn, 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 devour them.

It must be as hungry as she was.

You’re not allowed to think about that!

Quincy edged 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. A skull of ivory bone hid the leathery skin of his face but failed to mask the rage that sharpened every step and gesture. High above him, on a narrow ledge that had never seemed important until today, a balance keeper perched at the very top of the wall. One false move, one strong gust, and Calix would disappear, swallowed by the desert below. Guards with dark wolves sewn onto their jackets and faces harder than stone dug their fingers into her arms, bruising hard.

There was no need.

Calix had hardly blinked when the priest had taken his dagger and slashed her black dress, exposing bruised skin to the sun’s wrath. The ragged remains of her curls—shorn to mark 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 a girl 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 high over the famished earth. She was no more than a pinprick, following each draft and eddy, free—

Get your head out of the sky, idiot girl!

From across the churning yard, Calix’s dark eyes caught hers. She 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, dragging down her prayers and whispering their challenges into her ears.

Because there were some keepers you had to watch out for—they stole bread and started rumors and ran to the matrons at the slightest hint of an infraction.

Calix wasn’t one of them.

When a keeper was still smarting from shame or punishment, she was there, a kind smile, an open hand, some quiet words of comfort. It was—

Perfect obedience does not!

A lie.

Watch it!

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

In the books, rebellion was the deadliest of crimes. It was the earth-shaker. The world-destroyer. An act of violence against the gods and every living creature under heaven.

In reality, it was so much smaller than that. It was asking more questions than you should. Showing gentleness when piety demanded punishment. Speaking your mind when you ought to have kept silent.

Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it—

Nothing ever was how they said it should be.

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 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 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 more into Quincy’s 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 or the blood that dribbled down Nox’s nose and splattered the thirsty ground at Quincy’s feet. When Nox’s dress brushed against Quincy, she could pretend she didn’t feel 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.

It always found those who questioned.

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

If Quincy couldn’t learn to silence the protests in her head, would death hunt her down too?

If your eyes cannot see the truth, you must close them.

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

You’ll die.

Live or die?

They’ll know!

Stop!

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

The priest waved the dagger, now clotted with crimson, wildly overhead. In his left hand, he clutched the book of all the keepers, each name assigned and recorded the instant they set foot into the anchorage’s gloomy 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, 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.

No one can survive with nothing.

The timid sniffling from the balance keeper on Quincy’s left erupted into open weeping, drawing a few nervous glances their way. Rith refused to stay still, trembling as if she was sick, feet fidgeting like she might run.

Quincy shuffled away. Attracting attention was never a good idea.

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.

If you listen to the voice that sows discord, you are guilty.

The brilliant crimson of a matron’s mantle flashed in the corner of Quincy’s vision. She rocked onto her heels, her breath hitching in her chest. Which matron was it? Had she noticed Quincy watching too closely? Had she been observing her long enough to catch the thoughts that always scuttled to the surface of Quincy’s skin no matter how she tried to bury them? Her 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 that hawk-sharp gaze.

If you harbor the spirit of doubt, you are guilty.

A sour taste filled Quincy’s mouth. The matrons’ 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 onto her toes and strained to see, though the world spun sideways when she did.

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

“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 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 slow and slothful? Would their wrath spill onto the girls assembled below?

Yet 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 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 bother to look at Calix.

In an instant, two of the guards pitched her over the wall. Quincy squirmed, but the only sound was the frenzied 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.