A man’s scream echoed off the dripping stone of the waterway. Sabit had leaped over the Magistrate’s corpse and was charging toward the sound before last echo faded. She had not fought so hard and so long to see Allamu die here. He would not meet his end in a grimy tunnel beneath the house of the Magistrate of Vert. Sabit would not allow it.
Sabit’s legs were driven by her need to save Allamu, but her strides were slowed by the deepening stream. Where the water had been ankle-deep, it now rose to her knees—just like the fountain at the palace of Ghabar. Sabit had not been to the palace in years, but she remembered how the sky was always so intensely blue over the courtyard. Sabit could see the azure sky as pure as her memory of it. She waded in the water to cool herself from the bright sun overhead. Across her shoulders rested the mantel of the captain of the guard of Ghabar, a title Sabit had earned a dozen times over.
On this day in her memory,* the weight of the mantel was almost more than she could bear. Ishum, the son of the Prioress of Ghabar, walked beside her. The sixteen-year-old was tall and thin, his cheeks still bearing the fullness of youth. On his brow sat a princely circlet in ivory and jade. Ishum stood with his spine straight and his shoulders back, trying to look like the grown man he wished he were—the grown man that could earn Sabit’s love.
Sabit knew which day she was remembering—and dreaded it to her core. The Prioress had decided that her son’s affection for the captain of the guard was unacceptable. She had commanded Sabit to break all ties with Ishum—to break the prince’s heart to save his future.
As Sabit felt her throat speak the words that would send him away, she tried to claw them back. As she saw the shattered expression on Ishum’s face, she longed to offer a word or a hand of comfort.
As Ishum turned to run, he fell to the dusty ground. It was not part of Sabit’s memory to see Ishum lying motionless on the sun-baked ground of the badlands. She reached out to touch his shoulder, and his body crumbled. All that remained was a lifeless skull, a circlet of ivory and jade tilted upon its brow—tiny pink roots grew from its surface, leading up to the dark green stalk of the wicked plant that had devoured Ishum’s life.
Sabit screamed.
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*-Sabit’s past with Ishum is detailed in Wayfarings of Sabit: Blossom of Ruin.
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Wayfarings of Sabit: Tumult is copyright (c) 2017 by Michael S. Miller. All rights reserved. New chapters post every weekday. You can support this and other stories on Patreon: https://patreon.com/michaelsmiller or http://ipressgames.com/fiction/