With that, Loli walked swiftly to a counter beside the hearth, above which hung copper pots and pans of varying sizes, as well as bunches of dried lavender and coriander, and strings of garlic and chilies. She grabbed a wooden bowl and brought it back to Sufiyan, handing it to him as he turned away from them and retched into it.

  Quil was at his side immediately, patting his friend’s back. He’d felt sick this way himself after the first time he killed a Karkaun. After he found Ilar and Ruh. “Get it out, brother,” he said. “You’ll feel better in a minute.”

  “Maybe it was the porridge,” Sufiyan moaned.

  “It wasn’t.” Loli took the bowl, waving away Sufiyan’s apologies. A pump churned in a room beyond, and Loli returned a few minutes later with a tray of water glasses.

  “I suspect that the more your soul hurts,” she said, her tone kinder than it had been with any of the rest of them, “the worse you will feel when you’re around it.”

  “We need help, not riddles.” Quil didn’t care that he was verging on rudeness. “Speak plainly. You must suspect what that thing could be.”

  For the first time, Loli Temba appeared surprised. “This is the first time you have seen it. But Sirsha must have felt it. She did not warn you?”

  “She’s been acting strange,” Arelia offered, though her mistrust of Loli was still clear. “For days.”

  “She hasn’t been well,” Sufiyan said. “Yesterday I gave her Iltim powder for a headache. Do you think she knew and was hiding it from us?”

  “If so,” Quil said, “maybe she had a reason. Though—” He turned to Loli. “Is the creature following us? Or her?”

  Loli dug through her pantry until she found a stack of plates. “Her, I think. When she left, I told her not to return. I told her she would bring something with her.”

  “Can you help her?” Quil said. “She said she came to you before. Long ago. That you healed her.”

  “I did not heal her,” Loli Temba said. “I gave her time and love. Her own people offered neither. But that is her story to tell.”

  “We don’t have time.” Quil stood, pacing in impatience, peering at Sirsha’s prone body through the open door. She was so still that for a moment, he thought she wasn’t breathing and his own heart almost stopped. But then he caught the slightest flutter of her eyelashes.

  “She will wake,” Loli Temba said. “When she does, we will learn more of what she knew. You have more questions. Different questions. Ask.”

  He’d been so worried about Sirsha that he’d forgotten the reason he’d come here. He needed to get hold of himself. He was the crown prince of a shattered Empire. His people were depending on him.

  “Sirsha said you might know about the Kegari,” he said. “About their magic.”

  “Long ago”—Loli set four plates on her dining table—“the Martials attacked the Scholars. Took their lands. Enslaved their people. Why did they do this?”

  “They were manipulated by the Nightbringer,” Arelia said. Loli Temba’s expression soured.

  “They were greedy,” Quil amended. “They wanted what the Scholars had.”

  “Greedy later, yes.” Loli Temba pulled a long, dark fruit from the pantry, peeling back its thick outer skin and slicing up the soft pink innards. “But in the beginning, the Martials were simply poor and hungry. So it is with the Kegari. Their population is starving. Their leaders raid their neighbors to keep them fed. They cannot grow grain or raise livestock. So, they suffer.”

  “They didn’t fly thousands of miles north to the Empire because they’re hungry,” Arelia snapped, sharper than Quil had ever heard her.

  “Bah!” Loli Temba curled her lip. “Why should I tell you more about them when you do not listen? Perhaps, like the Scholars before you, you deserve to be conquered.”

  “For someone who hates the Karkauns,” Sufiyan said, “you sound a lot like one of their warlocks.”

  “Shut it,” Quil ordered his companions. “Both of you.” He turned to Loli. “Please, tell us. We need the knowledge. My people—”

  Loli Temba huffed in disgust as she washed a bouquet of thick green leaves. “Yes, your people,” she said. “Your people barely knew Kegar existed. When they learned, the first thing your Empress did was demand the secrets of flight. When the Kegari failed to offer them, your people refused to speak with their envoys. Your people aren’t as deserving as you think.”

  Quil’s magic, quiet these past few days, warmed in his chest. A memory lived at the core of this woman. He could feel it. A pain that made her who she was.

  He considered her. She was a loner. But she’d helped Sirsha. She understood abandonment. For the first time, Quil noticed the scars all over her pale skin. Tiny lines, as if she’d been cut repeatedly. He thought of how her lip curled when she’d said, You hate my people. Good. I hate them too.

  “When I first understood that the Kegari were attacking us,” Quil said, “I hated them. I still hate them. But hate doesn’t fix anything.” He leaned forward. “I must understand what they want from the Empire. If they have magic, why are they attacking us? If all they need is food, there are a dozen countries they can raid thousands of miles closer than the Empire.”

  Loli looked at him steadily. “You’re an Aquillus, yes?” she said. “Nephew of the Empress?”

  Quil was surprised—and unnerved—that she recognized him. Loli smiled, but there was no joy in it as she explained. “When my people attacked yours,” she said, “twenty years ago, I was there as a sacrifice. I saw the Blood Shrike walking the walls. And another who walked in shadow with his other half behind him. The first ghost in the city.”

  “My father,” Quil said, voice flattening like his aunt’s did when she spoke of Marcus Farrar. “The ghost was that of the twin brother he killed.” Or so the rumors said. Emperor Marcus was known to pace the city’s walls, muttering to someone only he could see.

  Quil shook thoughts of his father away, and sadness filled him at what Loli had suffered. “You were a sacrifice, you say. But the Karkauns killed their sacrifices, used spirit magic to chain their ghosts and unleash them upon the city.”

  “Indeed,” Loli Temba said. “The warlocks wanted my ghost badly, for the ghost of a human imbued with magic, as I was, is far more powerful than one without. But I escaped them.”

  She gestured them to the table. The meal was fragrant and fresh—a salad topped with seeds, salted legumes, and a nutty oil; a thick, bouncy bread slathered in butter; and a mountain of the sweet pink fruit tossed with red chili.

  Quil didn’t realize how hungry he was until he’d demolished the plate, and Loli was heaping on a second helping and sitting down herself.

  “You ask why the Kegari attacked you,” she said. “You’re a child of Gens Aquilla. Whatever your woes, they have not involved watching your people die from empty bellies. Hunger is part of it.” She glanced at Arelia. “But perhaps this is only the beginning of the reason they chose you.”

  “Their magic,” Quil said. “Is it spirit magic, like the Karkauns’?”

  “Don’t be foolish, boy,” Loli Temba chided. “They keep their Sails aloft by manipulating the wind.”

  Arelia frowned. “That doesn’t make sense.” She’d softened her tone, though Quil could tell it was taking a great deal of effort. “Even if they could manipulate the wind, that would only provide lift. They’d need thrust, too, to maneuver the Sails forward. I didn’t get a close look at them. But I didn’t see an engine.”

  “And what about their weaponry?” Sufiyan asked. “Do they use magic for that, too? I’ve never seen weapons that appear to move on their own like that. As if they’re alive.”

  “I do not know much of their weapons,” Loli Temba said. “Listen to my words. Even with magic, the Kegari were nothing. Less than nothing. They raided and stole and barely subsisted. Then, many months ago, that changed. They changed. They began to rally around one man. A highborn leader, the rumors say. They call him the Tel Ilessi.”

  The words felt like thunder in Quil’s ears.

  “Rue la ba Tel Ilessi,” he whispered. He’d heard those words over and again. He’d had no idea what it meant. Loli Temba nodded.

  “An honorific or prayer,” she said. “I do not know what the words mean. But I have heard they call upon him, invoke his name every time they kill. Or die.”

  “What does he want?” Sufiyan said.

  “Maybe he wants what they’ve always wanted,” Arelia said. “Food. Security. But unlike the leaders who’ve come before, he knows how to get it.”

  “So, the Tel Ilessi is everything to them,” Quil said. “Not just a leader. A—a savior.”

  “Yes,” Loli said. “His people would follow him into the sea if he asked. Without him, they would be nothing.”

  “We met him,” Quil said, turning to Sufiyan. “In Jibaut. The man who stopped us—who captured us with wind.”

  Sufiyan shook his head. “That could have been anyone.”

  “It was him.” Certainty pounded through Quil’s blood. “He knew me. He knew I was the crown prince and that I went not by Zacharias, but Quil.” Long have I wished to look upon you.

  “He’s the one we have to talk to,” Arelia said. “The one we need to treat with.”

  Treat. As if Quil could make peace with the man who’d destroyed Navium and Silas. Murdered thousands. As if anyone who had done such a thing, for whatever reason, would say anything that Quil was willing to hear. The prince shook his head. His hatred was stronger than his desire to understand.

  “He’s not the one we’re making deals with,” Quil said. “He’s the one I’m going to kill.”

  * * *

  Loli Temba disappeared into a back room, and Arelia and Sufiyan slept not long after. Suf tossed and turned, troubled by dreams. Quil put a blanket over him, and put his hand on his friend’s shoulder, as Tas used to do for Quil. When Sufiyan finally went still, Quil slipped into Sirsha’s room, unable to sleep knowing that she was alone.

  Loli Temba had placed a low stool beside the rope pallet, and Quil perched on it, feeling slightly ridiculous. He thought about taking Sirsha’s hand, but he wasn’t sure if she’d want that.

  “You should wake up,” he whispered. “I have a plan. You might even like it.”

  He didn’t mean to touch the pallet. In fact, he hadn’t even realized what happened until he looked up, and noticed the light in the room had shifted drastically. The change happened so seamlessly that, like before, Quil didn’t understand he was in the past until it was too late to leave.

  The girl in the bed wasn’t Sirsha.

  Or rather, it wasn’t the Sirsha he knew. This person was a child. Twelve or thirteen at most. Scrawny and short, with bruises on her arms and neck. She stared straight up, unblinking.

  Loli Temba appeared behind Quil, leaning through him as if he wasn’t there. She laid her hand on Sirsha’s brow.

  “You have to sleep, little one,” Loli said with a quiet tenderness. “You cannot heal unless you sleep.”

  “When I sleep,” Sirsha the child whispered, “I see the village. I see everyone I—I—”

  Tears trailed down into her hair. Loli Temba’s eyes were red-rimmed and her scars were darker. She looked much younger, barely older than Quil now.

  “Tell me what you see,” Loli Temba said. “Expel it from your mind.”

  “I see them,” Sirsha whispered. “The mothers and daughters. The lovers and the s-s-s-sisters. I see everyone I killed.”

  “You are a child,” Loli Temba said. “It is not your fault.”

  “Should have listened to the Raani,” Sirsha mumbled, and Quil wondered if she meant her mother. “I deserve it, what’s happened. Let me suffer. Let me feel the pain, Loli Temba. I deserve it.”

  “You don’t, child—”

  “You don’t understand,” Sirsha whispered. “I’m alone now. I’ll be alone forever.”

  That shift again, like a breeze drifting past. Quil didn’t know he was back in the present until he found himself staring into Sirsha’s open eyes.

  She reached out a hand, resting it against his cheek. His face was wet, he realized, but there was no question in her face about why.

  “I’m here,” he whispered. “You’re not alone, Sirsha.”

  For once, she didn’t have a quip or a comment.

  At his throat, their oath coin burned.

  27

  Sirsha

  Sirsha still had a raging headache when Quil stood to fetch Loli Temba. She felt the hum of her Karkaun friend’s magic, which lay like a protective net over the cave.

  Try to get through that, R’zwana.

  Sirsha didn’t know why R’z had attacked—or how she’d managed to creep up without Sirsha realizing it.

  But for whatever time Sirsha was here, in Loli’s home, she was safe from the Jaduna. More importantly, if anyone could tell her about the killer she hunted, it was Loli.

  Loli Temba strode into the room then, one of her odious drinks in hand.

  “Did you miss me?” Sirsha grinned weakly, surprised when Loli remained silent.

  The Karkaun sorceress knelt by the bed, pushing the drink into Sirsha’s hand. The girl sniffed it and winced. It smelled like rancid fruit. But she knew the power of Loli’s concoctions, so she drank it down. Almost immediately, Sirsha’s pain eased. She marveled yet again at Loli’s skill. The woman had plumbed magic most Jaduna hadn’t even heard of. She was so deeply in tune with the earth around her that plants and even animals came to her aid as if they were an extension of her.

  “I told you to stay away,” Loli said when Sirsha handed her back the cup. “I warned you.”

  “You know I’m rubbish at following orders.”

  “Do you know what you’ve brought with you?”

  “An empty stomach and dirty laundry?” Sirsha struggled up from the blankets tucked around her. Sufiyan and Arelia stood at Loli’s side, equally grim. She looked for Quil, and found him leaning against the wall behind them, arms crossed, unreadable as ever. Confusion shot through her. When she’d awoken minutes ago, he’d seemed open. He looked at her like her secrets were the sea, and he was at home in dark water.

  “I’ve brought you a passel of Martials.” Sirsha shifted her attention to Loli Temba. “Don’t tell me you share those old prejudices. Besides, that one’s only half.” She nodded at Sufiyan.

  Loli never smiled or laughed much. Not with humans, anyway. Right now, she had a stern furrow in her brow.

  “You brought evil with you, Sirsha. I felt my doom in the weave of the earth, and I warned you not to come. Why did you not listen?”

  Sirsha felt the sting of rejection in her chest. She’d thought Loli cared for her more than this.

  “I— Of course. We’ll leave. My sister isn’t your problem.”

  “I would fight your sister a thousand times for you, child!” Loli Temba said. “I do not fear Jaduna. But I do fear the killer you seek. For that is what chased you here, to me. That is what hunts you now.”

  Quil looked sharply at Loli Temba. “You said you didn’t know what it was.”

  Loli Temba kept her gaze fixed on Sirsha. “They told me you were acting strange.” Loli nodded to Sirsha’s companions. “But that you didn’t tell them why.”

  Sirsha felt her fingers tingle in anxiety now that she understood why they all looked upset. They knew she’d been deceiving them. After promising she had nothing to hide.

  “I—” I did what I had to do, she nearly snapped. But something in Quil’s stance shifted and he didn’t look angry or forbidding. He looked…curious.

  “I felt strange, but I didn’t know why,” Sirsha said. “Hunted. Sick. I felt…something in my head. I thought it was R’z. I’ve no idea what she’s capable of—”

  “You know your sister’s magic,” Loli Temba groaned at her. “How could you be so stupid?”

  “We’ve been on the run for weeks,” Quil said, steady but with that flash of steel that Sirsha found intriguing. “She was tired, and J’yan suppressed her magic in Jibaut. I’d thank you to leave off insulting her. She thinks too highly of you to say it herself.”

  Loli looked Quil up and down and nodded her head a fraction of an inch. Which, from her, was practically a declaration of fealty.

  “Tell me everything you know about this creature you hunt.” She turned to Sirsha. “Spare no detail.”

  “Her magic isn’t familiar to me. She murders young people, mostly. Teenagers. Children. Burns out their hearts with a poker. She’s left a trail of bones in the Tribal Lands, the Serran Mountains—even Jibaut. I felt her in Navium—that’s when I realized she wasn’t human.”

  “That was the first time her eyes turned white,” Quil noted. “The second was right before you found us.”

  “Spirit magic,” Loli Temba whispered, and Sirsha’s heart sank. She’d spent enough time with Loli to know she couldn’t abide ghost magic.

  “But why did Sirsha faint?” Arelia asked. “Reactive force? Rajin’s fifth law says that every action evokes an equal and opposite reaction. Would spirit magic interact with tracking magic in such a way?”

  When she was young, Sirsha enjoyed arguing about magical theory. But Loli’s anxiety was catching, and Sirsha didn’t see how Rajin’s fifth law would help.

  “Maybe the killer is Karkaun,” Sirsha said. That might explain why Sirsha hadn’t tracked the magic easily. The Karkauns dabbled in things the Jaduna forbade. It had been years since Sirsha hunted one.

  “If the killer is Karkaun, you must leave. I feel it—her circling. I cannot be discovered by my people. They will take me back, and they will make me pay for my defiance, all those years ago. You know this, Sirsha.”

  Sirsha nodded. If indeed it was a Karkaun warlock she tracked—and if the warlock had begun hunting Sirsha instead—then Sirsha would find the bitch and bind her.