“We’ll leave.” Sirsha shoved the covers away and lurched to her feet. Quil offered his arm and she took it gratefully, head spinning. “We can’t put her at risk, Quil. If I’d known, I’d never have come here.”

  Quil nodded tiredly, and Sirsha wondered if he’d slept at all while she’d been dead to the world. From the shadows under his eyes, she didn’t think so.

  “We learned what we needed to,” he said. “Most importantly that the Kegari are led by the Tel Ilessi.”

  “Rue la ba Tel Ilessi.” The hateful phrase came immediately to Sirsha’s mind. “They kept saying it.”

  “He’s a holy figure,” Quil said. “We met him. In Jibaut.”

  The man Sirsha had held off with her blades, the one who crackled with magic. “Pity I didn’t have better aim.”

  “No,” Quil said flatly. “I’d rather dispatch him myself.”

  Sirsha had seen Quil fight in Navium. Hells, she had a body count of her own. Still, she was unsettled by the calm implacability of his words. But then, this was war and he was a prince of the conquered. Of course he’d want to kill the man who’d engineered so much suffering.

  Her oath coin with Elias prickled unpleasantly, reminding her that she had her own mission.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Quil said, as if he felt the same impulse Sirsha did. “We’ll discuss what’s next on the road. Join us when you’re ready.” Quil walked out, Sufiyan and Arelia following him into Loli Temba’s main room. They spoke too low to hear, and Sirsha reached to the earth almost instinctively to listen to what they were saying.

  Then she stopped. If Quil wished to tell her what he confided in his friends, so be it. If not, she’d focus on the job. She was done being duplicitous.

  Skies, if she’d known she’d get so soft spending time with the Martials, she’d have swum out of Navium’s harbor.

  Sirsha dragged herself to the privy and splashed water on her face. One glance in Loli Temba’s mirror told her she needed a bath, clean clothes, and a week of sleep.

  She made do with a comb and the sweet-smelling balm Loli used on her scars. When she emerged feeling marginally human, Loli Temba waited, Sirsha’s pack in hand.

  “Subtle,” Sirsha muttered.

  Loli Temba ignored the dig. “Be on watch for the creature’s magic,” she said. “It comes quickly and without warning.”

  Sirsha reached to the earth, the rock. It remained silent. But as they made their way to Loli Temba’s stone door, Sirsha’s neck prickled. A whisper. A warning.

  “Maybe you should stay here while I scout.” She turned to Quil and the others. “It will be safer. If the killer wants me—”

  “You have a better chance of survival with us at your back.” Quil drew his scim, Sufiyan unhooked his bow, and Arelia held up a contraption that looked like a cross between a slingshot and a dagger.

  Sirsha’s eyes felt funny and hot. Stop being ridiculous, she told herself sternly. Eventually, you’ll part ways with them, so don’t get attached.

  Loli whispered to the stone, and the roar of the waterfall filled their ears. Beyond it, a chorus of frogs sang an ode from the pool below, and evening bugs chirped and chittered. A brightly patterned lizard darted across the rock behind the falls.

  Loli Temba slipped ahead, moonlight reflecting off her pale skin. Sirsha followed first, then Sufiyan and Arelia, with Quil bringing up the rear, jaw tight as he surveyed the jungle.

  They made their way to a set of steps at the edge of the falls that led to a barely noticeable seam in the thick jungle underbrush. A trail. Loli listened, a breeze pulling at the feathers in her hair. She nodded once.

  “Go,” she whispered. “Quickly. The jungle remembers you, Sirsha. Let it aid you if you need.”

  “Thank you, Loli Temba,” Sirsha said. “Forgive me for bringing trouble upon you.”

  Loli Temba rolled her eyes, and though her smile was but a twitch of her mouth, it changed her whole face. “Thank me by not returning, little one,” she said. “At least not until—”

  There was a moment of warning. An instant when the air seemed to moan in pain and the earth, so quiet, suddenly bellowed at Sirsha.

  Run!

  Sirsha’s voice caught, and she shoved Arelia into Sufiyan, who staggered back into Quil. She turned to warn Loli.

  But she was too late.

  One moment, Loli Temba was lifting her hand to grasp Sirsha’s in farewell. The next, she was screaming as a gray apparition appeared before her. It was roughly Sirsha’s shape but in no other way human. The creature flicked one claw toward Sirsha’s friends, knocking them onto their backs. Then it turned to Loli. A gash appeared in the Karkaun woman’s chest as the killer slowly cracked her open to reveal her heart.

  The creature hissed and Loli’s heart glowed red, then orange, then white hot before collapsing into gray ash.

  She fell to the ground, dead, the feathers still ruffling in her hair.

  Sirsha tried to scream. To move. But every nerve was gripped by terror.

  The apparition hunched over Loli, and Sirsha heard a vile sound. An obscene, greedy moan, as if the creature was ecstatically enjoying the most delicious meal. Then silence—and a sudden feeling of a monstrous attention rising, shifting, fixing on Sirsha.

  The killer’s stare felt as heavy as a harrow plowing furrows into the earth. Its consciousness seemed to scrape against Sirsha’s mind. Its form solidified into a human wearing a familiar robe, patterned with the purple and gold embroidery of a Jaduna Raani.

  The figure lowered her hood and Sirsha found herself looking at her mother.

  No—Sirsha caught the creature’s brown eyes and flinched—not her mother. Something wearing her mother’s face. Sirsha hadn’t seen the Raani of Kin Inashi in eight years—but she knew her mother’s magic, her cool scrutiny. This thing was no Jaduna.

  Beneath the murderer’s skin, a monstrosity seethed, its vastness something Sirsha could scarcely fathom. It wasn’t human, though it wore the guise of one. Perhaps that’s why the wind had called the killer she all those weeks ago.

  Sirsha chanced a glance behind her. Quil, Arelia, and Sufiyan were unconscious.

  “They are weak of mind, weak of body,” the killer said in a voice eerily identical to that of Sirsha’s mother. “Not you, though. As I suspected.”

  “Don’t you look at them.” Sirsha stepped in front of her friends, daggers ready, though her hands shook so badly they’d be useless. “Why did you kill her?”

  “A far better question,” the killer said, “is why didn’t you stop me?”

  Sirsha’s mind whirred as her gaze darted over the creature. She watched Sirsha with her head tilted. She didn’t know Sirsha’s name or who she was. And yet, the killer took on the form and voice of Sirsha’s mother. The earth around her—the air—felt wrong. As if a gaping wound stood in front of Sirsha, manifesting in the form of a person.

  The creature stank of the spirit world. But she didn’t feel Karkaun at all. Sirsha thought she might be a projection from a source nearby. But how could a projection do so much damage?

  “Oh, it is fascinating to watch your mind work,” the killer breathed. “I’d like to get inside it.” She dropped her voice, and there was something vulgar about how she spoke. About how she used Sirsha’s mother’s face and form to look at Sirsha like she was something to be devoured.

  “Not sure why,” Sirsha retorted. “Nothing in here but spite and lies.”

  “Your magic is…special?” The killer tried out the word, as if it were unfamiliar. “Yes. Special. I’ve never seen its like.”

  Sirsha didn’t bleeding care. But while the creature talked, Sirsha felt, through the earth, a thread of magic the creature was working hard to hide. A cord tied back to her source.

  Somewhere, the killer had someone pulling her strings. She had a master.

  “What are you?” Sirsha asked, hoping to lure the creature into talking about herself.

  “An interesting question.” The creature smiled, an expression that looked somehow corrupted. “No one ever asks, you know. I have tried to talk to some of them before I eat them, but they are screaming, usually, and do not care what I am…”

  While nodding along to the killer’s prattling, Sirsha whispered to the earth. Follow the tether to the source. Who is the source?

  Sirsha’s mind filled with images. She moved south through a verdant, forested mountain range that yellowed to grassland. Then the earth took her east, skipping across an azure river and toward a vast coastal encampment. Soldiers patrolled in the shadows, beyond the light cast by hundreds of small cooking fires. Flags flapped in a stiff breeze, a blazing gold half-sun against a blue sky.

  In the camp, a tent. And in the tent, a tall figure with broad shoulders and dark hair leaning over a table, speaking to a young woman. Behind them stood a group of men and women in familiar blue-scale armor.

  “Holy Tel Ilessi,” one of them said. “We cannot split the forces this way. If only you—”

  The tent darkened. A human voice spoke. Return to me. Now.

  Sirsha’s consciousness was wrenched back to the jungle clearing. The killer shrieked at her, enraged at what Sirsha had done, and the apparition burst from her human skin and disappeared—yanked away by her master.

  “Sirsha.” She felt a hand on her shoulder, and turned to find Quil, stricken as he looked down at Loli Temba’s body. Behind him, Arelia struggled to her feet, stunned. Sufiyan stared at Loli in a daze.

  “Skies,” Arelia gasped at the sight of Loli Temba’s ravaged chest. “What happened?”

  “Sufiyan,” Quil said. “Don’t look.”

  But Sufiyan had already seen, and he crawled toward Loli. When he found Quil’s gaze, Sirsha felt her heart clench.

  “This is how Ruh died, isn’t it?” he whispered. “You never said. He must have—he must have been so scared—”

  Arelia knelt beside Sufiyan, speaking quietly to him as Quil turned to Sirsha.

  “We need to leave. If she comes back—”

  Sirsha nodded. She didn’t know why the killer had disappeared, but there was something terrifying in the way she looked at Sirsha—at her friends.

  Yes, friends, she realized. She’d stood in front of them, ready to defend them with her life against that thing. They weren’t fellow travelers or chance acquaintances anymore.

  “Take her shoulders.” Sirsha deadened any sentiment she might feel about Loli’s body. “We’ll drop her into the falls. The Karkauns burn their dead, and she hated them more than anything. She loved the river, though. The jungle. She’d—she’d want to be returned to it.”

  Quil lifted Loli’s shoulders, Sirsha her feet, and they cast her into the falls, watching as her body disappeared into the darkness of the pool below.

  “I’m sorry, Sirsha.” Quil took her hand in his and squeezed. “I know you loved her.”

  “It’s my fault,” Sirsha said. “She told me years ago never to come back, but I didn’t take it seriously because—”

  She heard R’zwana’s voice in her head, chiding her when they were children. Everything is a joke to you, but one day, you’ll stop laughing long enough to find you’re a failure to your Kin!

  “Is the killer some Karkaun monstrosity?” Sufiyan stood now, hands fisted tight around his bow. His voice was flat. “Is that why she killed Loli?”

  “No.” Sirsha understood now why the killer had been in Navium, raining down destruction, and again, in Jibaut. “She’s not Karkaun,” she said. “She’s not working on her own. That thing that killed Ruh and Ilar and Loli Temba—she’s being controlled by the Kegari, by the man you want to kill. She answers to the Tel Ilessi.”

  28

  Aiz

  After the assassination attempt, Quil grew easier around Aiz, telling her of his aunt and the cities of the Empire. The massive, multi-masted ships in the port of Navium and the fortified walls of Antium. He told her of the webs of Gens politics, the beauty of Serric architecture, the drums that thundered out messages across the Empire.

  Each story was an opportunity to know him—and his weaknesses—better. To embed herself deeper into his consciousness as the girl who understood his heart.

  As the Tribe ventured west, toward a distant jag of mountains, Quil and Aiz often scouted ahead, the desert unrolling blue ahead of them.

  “I talk too much, Ilo.” Quil used a nickname Aiz had grown fond of. “You must be sick of me.”

  “Never,” Aiz said, and to her surprise, it wasn’t a lie. He did talk—but only with her. The rest of Tribe Saif took up their fair share of space and sound, whether it was Tas telling bawdy tales or Karinna cursing as she trained.

  Quil, Aiz observed, didn’t feel as if he had a right to that space. Tribe Saif was not his family, no matter how much they might love him. He kept his opinions to himself and, much like Aiz, always strived to be helpful.

  With Aiz, Quil was more relaxed. Honest. It was useful, of course—he answered everything she asked about himself, the Empire, the Tribes. But deep in the night, when she hoped Mother Div couldn’t see into her mind, Aiz also admitted to herself that his trust felt like a gift.

  As did his attraction to her. Their glances became touches. Their touches lingered—his hand on her waist as he lifted her into her saddle. Hers on his shoulders when she passed behind him.

  The Kegari girl often thought of what Laia had said. Your heart knows, even if your mind doesn’t. Aiz wasn’t sure about her heart. But her body was aware of the heat of his gaze, the thrum of his voice, the flow of his movements. It was easy to make him want her, she realized, because she wanted him in return.

  Take, Aiz, Mother Div whispered in these moments of weakness. Do not give. Not to him. Not to anyone.

  Ruh, meanwhile, pilfered a few of his ama’s scrolls almost daily, secreting away with Aiz whenever he could escape from lessons and chores to translate them for her.

  “I found one that’s promising!” he said when they were only five weeks out from Nur. They were on horse duty—which was mostly Ruh giving the beasts treats while Aiz curried them. It was a good time to talk, as everyone was preoccupied with getting Tribe Saif’s tonics and poultices and teas ready for trading.

  Ruh glanced around them surreptitiously before speaking.

  “The scroll had notes on a story about two people who fall in love,” Ruh said. “They get married, but something goes wrong—a Durani emerges from her haunted castle, shrouded in dust—one of the strongest of her order.”

  “A chaos storyteller.” Aiz finished up with an ornery gelding and moved on to Tregan. “Teller of lies, spreader of untruths. They have an order? And how is that related to Mother Div?”

  “Mother Div was imprisoned, right? But who did the imprisoning? You say she’s a cleric. Powerful in magic. Not just anyone could imprison her.”

  Perhaps the child had a point. Aiz had grown to respect his cleverness. He sees what others do not.

  “Tell me more about them, then.” Aiz snuck Tregan a lump of sugar before reaching for the curry comb. “These Duranis. You said they have an order—where do they live?”

  “The stories don’t say, but there’s an entire area north of Nur where Zaldar Shan refuses to go because rumor says that’s where the Duranis dwell. Even Aba stays close to the wagons when we’re there. And Ama hates that part of the desert.”

  He launched into a tale then, one that culminated in the Durani enticing an unsuspecting child to a castle in the desert with the intent of feasting upon his flesh.

  “Why is it always a woman doing the feasting?” Aiz scratched Tregan between the ears when the mare nudged her. “I’ve never heard of a male witch who gnaws on legbones.”

  “Kehannis are usually women, so Duranis must be, too. And it’s not just a story. One of my friends met a Durani once.” Ruh dropped his voice and Aiz strained to hear him over the wind. “From Tribe Nur. Do you know what he said?”

  Aiz lowered her voice too, getting into the spirit of the story. “What did he say?”

  “He said he was lured to the desert by this Durani. The archer constellation led them to the pinnacles in the desert. There, they found a hole in the desert that led to the sky.”

  “How can a hole in the ground lead to the sky?”

  “I don’t know, that’s what he said. The Durani took him there, but she was so tired after the journey that she fell asleep. He was small in the hole she’d put him in, still as—”

  The boy paused, his pale gaze shooting directly toward the desert.

  “Ruh?”

  A moment later, he raced into the sands.

  Aiz dropped the curry comb, heart clutching in fear. There were coyotes out here, bandits—even wraiths. Quil pointed one out a week ago, drifting near their camp until Elias took its head off. Its otherworldly shriek echoed in Aiz’s ears for hours after. There were even jinn, whose ability to manipulate thoughts, fire, stone, and blood made Aiz uneasy. Ruh wasn’t safe alone, and when Aiz called his name again, her voice cracked in panic.

  A thump out in the darkness, one body crashing into another. A raspy voice spoke.

  “Have some decorum, boy. Remember my station, for skies’ sake.”

  Beware, child, Mother Div whispered to Aiz. This is a creature of great power. Bury your magic. Speak little.

  Moments later, a woman stepped out of the dark, her hand in Ruh’s. Her white hair fell in thick waves to her shoulders, and she wore an embroidered tunic and loose pants in forest colors—traditional Scholar garb. The scars that clawed across her face made it difficult to make out any of her features beyond her dark, deep-set eyes.

  As the woman approached the fire, every member of the Tribe stopped what they were doing, inclined their heads as one, hands clasped together. All but Karinna, Zuriya, and Sufiyan, who enveloped the old woman in a tumultuous hug.