“The next scheduled target… it’s Matron Yasma.” Kaddis’s voice was a ragged whisper, the dawn light leaching the last color from his face. Yasma stood as their sole bulwark against the High House of Vash. If the matron fell, the executioner's warrant for Kaddis would be signed by sundown. “Then we move,” Zirra commanded, her own voice sharp, cutting through the lingering fatigue. “Now.” They raced through the narrow, twisting passages of the lower tiers, the stolen ledger clutched tight in Kaddis’s grip. The tiered alleys stood hollowed out by fear. A few figures huddled against limestone doorframes, coughing dark, gummy spittle into their rags. The Weaver’s Guild hall was silent. Oil lanterns burned low behind carved cedar doors. Zirra shoved past the two novice weavers minding the threshold before they could raise their bronze rods. “Matron Yasma!” Zirra shouted, ignoring their alarmed protests. They found her in her private chambers, the air thick with the scent of dried herbs and aging parchment. The matron sat unmoving on her rush mat. Leaning over her shoulder stood an orderly clad in the bleached linen of the Upper Tier dispensaries, angling a brass syringe toward her jugular. “Stop!” Kaddis roared, lunging forward. But Zirra was faster. She launched herself across the room, a blur of motion. She drove her shoulder into the intruder's ribs, tackling him across the limestone flags. The brass cylinder slipped from his fingers, clattering into the hearth. Kaddis threw his broad frame before Yasma while the attendants rushed the entryway. The intruder kicked and clawed, driving an elbow toward Zirra's jaw. In the scramble over the stone, the dropped injector caught against her sleeve, the bevel dragging a red trench across her wrist. Zirra caught the man's throat, driving his skull downward against the flagstones until he went limp. She rolled off him, clutching her arm as a sharp heat blossomed beneath the skin. “Zirra!” Kaddis dropped beside her. Along the scratch, a purplish stain crawled outward, branching along the veins like fungal thread—the fast-burning contagion Ashmar seeded in his terrace trials. His hands trembled, fumbling for the small vial he kept tucked into his belt—the concentrate of the blue sprout resin. The concentrate they had refined from the rogue terrace crop had never touched human blood, but the pathogen was already turning her capillaries black. “Kaddis, don’t… don’t hesitate,” Zirra choked out, the pain spreading, a numbness creeping into her arm. Her throat tightened. “It’s the only… way.” He uncorked the vial with shaking hands, spilling some of the viscous, glowing liquid. Kaddis ignored the shouting novices, seized her arm, and poured the thick sapphire extract directly into the open cut. The sap sank into the torn flesh. The dark discoloration paused, shifted to a brilliant indigo, and contracted back toward the laceration, binding the ruptured skin until the stain vanished into clean flesh. The heat dissolved into a cool, minty sting. Zirra flexed her fingers, inspecting the clean crust forming over the wound. Matron Yasma, who had been sitting utterly still, now stirred. Her blind eyes, though unseeing, seemed to pierce the very air. “Bring that… *healer* to me,” her voice was a low, dangerous rumble. The novices hauled the limp attacker across the rug. “Ashmar’s handiwork,” Yasma murmured, her blind features rigid. “He sends cutthroats to finish what his terrace blight could not. Give me the book.” Kaddis, still breathing heavily, handed it to her. Her nimble fingers, accustomed to the intricate threads of their loom, traced the elegant script. Her expression grew colder with each turning page. “A roster of the doomed. And a plan to extinguish Qarnat’s last embers of defiance.” Her gaze, though sightless, turned to Zirra and Kaddis. “You have a cure, then. A true one. Not a fabrication.” “It’s effective,” Zirra confirmed, rubbing her still-tingling wrist. “But it’s slow to cultivate. We need more time. More resources.” Yasma nodded slowly, a dangerous glint entering her expression. “Time is a luxury we no longer possess. But resources… the Guild has a network. We have influence where the Upper Tiers believe they hold absolute sway. Bring me every usable shred of that blue resin, Kaddis. Every drop. We will distribute it openly under the very noses of my sister's house. This synthetic blight is no natural pestilence; it is an act of war.” She paused, her sightless gaze sweeping over them again. “To make a true impact, to produce enough to staunch this tide of death… we must act decisively. Overnight. There is only one way to achieve the necessary yield. But know this, Zirra,” Yasma’s voice dropped, a heavy weight settling in the room. “To flood the lower terraces with enough counter-agent to turn the tide, we must tap the primary sluice gates. The backflow will foul the upper conduits and drown my kin's prize botanical gardens in caustic sediment.” Kaddis drew back. Those cliffside terraces had underwritten the Vash dynasty's monopoly for three generations; salting them meant bankrupting the lineage overnight. Yasma’s voice was a low, chilling whisper. “Are you prepared to burn everything to save something?”

Blind Ambition