“Ikfa,” she said. “You shouldn’t have that!”

  Tas, meanwhile, tried and failed to snatch them from Arelia. “Those were supposed to go to the Empire.”

  “They will, eventually,” Arelia said. “But for now, we have them, and we can study them. Sirsha, I’d wondered if you’d be familiar with the metal, as a Jaduna—”

  “We don’t keep Ikfa,” Sirsha said, pulling an ill-looking Quil away from the metal. Almost immediately, the color returned to his face. “We use magic to suppress magic. We only trust the jinn to be custodians of Ikfa. When we find it, we give it to them. Don’t tell me that’s what you sent to the Empire—”

  “We spoke of reactive forces before,” Arelia said. “Is this Rajin’s fifth law again? Does the metal—”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Sirsha thanked the skies R’zwana wasn’t here. Her sister’s head would have exploded at the sight of so much of the hated metal. “Ikfa is dangerous to anyone with magic—”

  Quil immediately perked up. “Then it will work on the Tel Ilessi,” he said. “Do you think it’ll work on Div?”

  “I—I don’t know.” Sirsha hadn’t considered such a thing because she’d never seen so much Ikfa at once. If it was found, it was usually no more than a thimble’s worth. “I—”

  Div. Hunt her. The elements possessed her. Took full control of her body. Get up. Move. Hunt. Hunt. HUNT—

  Sirsha only realized she’d left the room when Quil grabbed her hand, pulling her from her trance.

  “Sirsha.” Quil had stopped her in the middle of the Pennybrush’s narrow upper hall. What must he think of her, walking out in the middle of a conversation. “Are you all right?”

  Sirsha didn’t even consider hiding the truth. There didn’t seem to be a point to doing so anymore.

  “The vow I made to Elias,” Sirsha said. “It’s affecting my mind, Quil. I should have told you before—but I was too confident in myself. Too sure I’d catch the killer. An oath like this must be fulfilled. If it isn’t, it will be the only thing I can think about—I’ll be a danger to you—to everyone around me.”

  “I know,” he said after a pause. “J’yan told me the night before he died. He thought the oath was to me—wanted me to break it.” Quil looked off, face briefly murderous. “I’ll have choice words for Elias the next time I see him.”

  “Get in line.” Sirsha sighed and put a hand to her temple. “I need some air.”

  “Do you want company?”

  Sirsha smiled, glancing over his shoulder. “Not as much as Arelia wants to know the precise internal mechanism you use to trigger your magic. Go on—I have a feeling you four have a lot to talk about. Tell her to keep that Ikfa away from you. I’ll be back in a bit.”

  As Sirsha walked the streets of Ankana, her pack slung over her shoulder, she considered something Arelia had said of magic weeks ago. Rajin’s fifth law says that every action evokes an equal and opposite reaction.

  Sirsha learned the same concept as a child. After much pestering by Sirsha, her mother, the Raani, told her the story of the Nightbringer—the most skilled and wily of the jinn. A thousand years before, an enemy king imprisoned the jinn and stole their powers. The Nightbringer, the only one to escape the genocide, spent a millennium trying to free his people.

  It was the indifference of Mauth, the Nightbringer’s creator and the source of all magic, that set the jinn on his path, Sirsha’s mother said. And it was the love of Rehmat, his beloved wife, that released him from it. Sometimes, the only way to blunt the violence of twisted magic is to confront it with its opposite.

  Stars still scattered the dark sky, bright even with the streetlamps. In the north, it was late winter, but here in Ankana, it was a cool summer night, flowers and trees in bloom, the capital almost offensively beautiful.

  It reminded Sirsha of the Cloud Forest. In a few months, it would be full spring there. The vines would be heavy with honeyflowers and the bees that loved them. The Raanis would bemoan the pollen staining every window of their homes in the Gandafur trees.

  For Jaduna, spring and summer were the seasons of giving. Friends made daisy chains, lovers proposed, Adah oaths were celebrated. Sirsha was twenty now—an adult by Jaduna standards. This would have been the year she and J’yan had their full Adah ceremony, honoring the vow they’d made as children.

  It would be weeks before R’zwana reached the Cloud Forest. Weeks before J’yan’s Kin knew what happened to him. Sirsha hoped R’z told Ma about her fading magic. She hoped her sister made peace with what she’d lost.

  Which might include Sirsha, if this vow—or Div—killed her.

  I need more information, Sirsha told the elements. Where can I find it?

  Hunt, the earth rumbled.

  Hunt, the sea roared.

  Read, the wind whispered.

  The streets were empty, the stores shuttered. What the hells did the wind want her to read? A signpost?

  Then she remembered she did have a book. Recollections by Rajin of Serra. She’d stolen it from Quil a few weeks ago.

  Yes, the wind hissed, and Sirsha found a bench next to a lamppost and dug the battered little book out of her pack.

  The old philosopher lived five centuries ago and did so love to drone on. But his insights were worth his verbosity, as long as you accepted that reading his work was like digging through horse dung for gold.

  Even Jaduna instructors had a few of his books in their libraries. Most of them especially enjoyed his chapters on how the youth of his time were wastrels contributing to the destruction of society.

  Sirsha had never read Recollections; as she flipped to a short section about Jaduna magical theory, she wished she had.

  The Jaduna lasso their magic with emotion, using it to control an element. The emotion is most often desire—an exertion of willpower. They understand the third law—that magic cannot be destroyed, only contained or transformed.

  He waxed ecstatic for a bit about how the Jaduna eschewed the hoarding of power. Clearly, the old windbag never met R’zwana. Sirsha read on.

  The Jaduna value the community over the individual. Humility above bluster. Service and giving above greed. Sacrifice above selfishness and magical gluttony.

  Sirsha shut the book, her mind snagging on Rajin’s third law: Magic cannot be destroyed, only contained or transformed.

  Sirsha hadn’t been able to bind Div, let alone kill her. If Div couldn’t be destroyed or contained, perhaps she could be transformed. Into a toadstool, perhaps. Or a particularly ugly tarantula.

  Sometimes, the only way to blunt the violence of twisted magic is to confront it with its opposite.

  She didn’t know the source of Div’s malignancy. But she’d learned enough about the types of magic extant in the world to take a guess.

  All magic came from the same source. A force who was a legend whispered but unproven.

  Mauth—Death in Old Rei. Mauth’s presence was most strongly felt in the Waiting Place, where the humans and jinn unfortunate enough to be his servants passed traumatized ghosts from this world to a peaceful after, so they didn’t wail everyone’s ears off. Sufiyan’s grandmother, the Bani al-Mauth, was one of these servants. Like the other ghost talkers, she cast the suffering and torment of the spirits into a seething dimension that abutted their own.

  The Tribes called that miserable place the Sea of Suffering. Sirsha liked the Jaduna name better: Owa Khel—the Empty. A place of sallow yellow skies and haunted seas. She and J’yan told scary stories about it when they were kids, as D’rudo made them memorize entire texts on the subject.

  A line from those texts came back to Sirsha: And though the Sea of Suffering churns, ever restless, verily does Mauth preside, a bulwark against its hunger.

  Div wasn’t hungry. She was hunger. A desire to consume that defied any sense of the ethical or moral. Pure selfishness.

  Yes, the elements whispered.

  “Indifference was counteracted with love,” Sirsha muttered. “So, Div, with her greed, her hunger—”

  Sacrifice above selfishness and magical gluttony.

  Understanding was a knife twisting slowly inside her. Sirsha wanted to shout. Or perhaps slowly applaud the justice of the universe. Her actions had, after all, led to the deaths of more than a thousand innocent villagers. Intentional or not, she’d as good as killed them herself, and that sort of imbalance wouldn’t be left unanswered.

  Well, here it was. The answer. If Sirsha wanted to bind Div, she was going to have to sacrifice her own life to do so.

  Now, the elements said as one, you begin to understand.

  Bleeding hells. Would that she had been born a cat. Or a partridge. Something cute and fluffy that didn’t have to think about things like magical laws and heartbreak.

  When she returned to the inn, the dining room was empty—it was too early for the innkeeper, even. But Quil, hair still wet from the bath, leaned against the closed bar, lost in thought. He must be exhausted, but that resolve that formed his core, quiet and unshakable—she could feel it from here.

  No more secrets. She needed to tell him that if they wanted Div to die, Sirsha would have to pay with her blood. He’d be a pest about it, of course, try every trick he knew to talk her out of it. But he deserved to know, not least because when she died, the oath coin would amplify his grief terribly.

  Ah, the joys of Jaduna magic.

  “Sirsha.”

  He turned to her, and the sound of her name on his lips echoed through her veins as if spoken by thunder instead of a man. Since she was a little girl, she’d always been S’rsha. That pause from deep in the throat, it was the highest honor of this world, for it meant she was a Jaduna, one of the first users of magic. Her line was long, her ancestors titans of their time. When she lost that pause—when she became Seer-shah, instead of S’rsha—it felt as if she’d been shoved out of her own body and into another one she cared nothing for.

  But from Quil’s mouth, her name felt beautiful again.

  “Quil,” she said. Tell him. Tell him that you must die. That you need to say goodbye.

  But Sirsha knew he’d mull and dissect her words until he’d convinced himself there was a way out. For once, she didn’t feel like a fight.

  Sirsha grabbed his hand, wishing she could articulate the desire suffusing her, something more than I need you and I wish I didn’t. They stumbled up the stairs, and any words still in Sirsha’s head felt unnecessary when Quil closed the door and swept her up in his arms, lifting her effortlessly. She sighed as he backed her into the wall, kissing her as if some part of him knew they didn’t have much time, as if he had to make up for everything he’d never get again.

  She threaded her fingers through his hair and pulled away from his mouth to trace her lips along his jaw, his throat, smiling at the curse he uttered. He carried her to the bed, but she flipped him onto his back and caught a flash of dimple. Her heart leaped.

  The lamps bathed them both in blue light, so she stripped him slowly, and almost didn’t look at him, almost didn’t appreciate his lean, muscled elegance, but then she made herself because, well, this was it for them, wasn’t it?

  “You’re beautiful,” she murmured. She straddled him, and pulled free her hairpins, letting her hair fall in a curtain around them. Her body craved him, craved the fullness she knew he would give her, but she fought against it and kissed him slow, the way she knew he liked.

  He eased off her clothing, and slowly, so slowly, they joined, breaths shortening, his fingers almost painfully tight on her waist, golden eyes fixed on her, taking what she gave, giving all that he had in return.

  “More,” Sirsha gasped. “Closer.”

  He complied, and were these sounds coming from her, or someone else? He bit his full lip so he wouldn’t give them away. These walls were thin, and it was quiet, and this was a family inn, for skies’ sake, but he deserved to be able to shout when he was angry and gasp when he took his pleasure.

  She leaned down and took his lips between hers so he could cry out into her, so they could cry out into each other, leaving their wanting and everything they couldn’t say in each other’s chests, in the chambers of their hearts.

  After, when they lay next to each other, she turned to him to find him looking at her.

  Their coin burned hot as she traced his face with one hand. Sirsha knew the pattern was blooming, and grief lanced through her, because if he was her Adah, her other half, then what would he do when she was gone? It would hurt—more than he could know. Not just the pain of love lost, but the sundering of a blood oath. She still felt the hole where J’yan’s oath had been, years later.

  But he wouldn’t be alone. He had Sufiyan and Tas and Arelia. They would help him. He’d get through it.

  “Sirsha.” He caught her gaze and held her tight. “Your eyes look like you’re saying goodbye. Come back. Be here with me.”

  She nodded, looking away so he wouldn’t realize that she was saying goodbye. She just didn’t have the strength to speak it aloud.

  44

  Quil

  It was still dark when Quil left Sirsha sleeping. He kissed her forehead and slipped away, only to spot Tas sneaking out of the groom’s quarters in the inn’s courtyard.

  Tas grinned. “I’ll keep your secrets if you keep mine.”

  Quil chuckled. “Nice to see that some things don’t change.”

  “All part of the job, little brother. That groom knows every guardsman in this district. If someone comes looking for us, we’ll know. Where are you off to?”

  “The High Seer,” Quil said. “I’d like to have a few words with him about Ambassador Ifalu.”

  Tas nodded. “Tread carefully. The harbor’s shut down and gate watches were doubled. They know someone stole the Ikfa.”

  A half hour later, Quil was face-to-face with the Eye of Ankana, one of the holiest men alive. But for all that High Seer Remi E’twa of Ankana painted himself as all-knowing, the look of surprise on his face when Quil entered his monkish quarters indicated an omnipotence that was more limited.

  Maybe because Quil entered via one of the man’s few windows, instead of through more diplomatic channels.

  “Crown Prince Zacharias.” Remi rose from a simple oak desk, where a pot of chamomile tea steeped. “It’s a pleasure to see you again. I did not realize you were visiting Burku.”

  “Maybe you need better informants, High Seer Remi.”

  “Perhaps, crown prince.” The High Seer smiled with genuine warmth, but Quil watched him warily as he pulled another mug from his cabinet. The prince took a risk being here. If the High Seer was part of the plot against the Martials, Quil could find himself imprisoned or killed. Ambassador Ifalu certainly had no qualms about murder.

  The High Seer poured a mug of tea for Quil and offered it to him.

  “May I express my sympathy at the suffering of your people,” the High Seer said. “We were most saddened to learn—”

  “Ambassador Ifalu has been feeding my people misinformation, High Seer.” Quil didn’t touch the tea, nor did he much feel like acknowledging the High Seer’s sentiment. Better to get to the point. “She did this while pretending to be an ally and a representative of your people. Her treachery directly led to the deaths of thousands of Martials, Scholars, and Tribespeople, as well as the occupation of our homes by the Kegari.”

  “Ambassador Ifalu?” Remi’s shock was sincere enough that Quil believed it. “Impossible. She is one of our most respected seers, crown prince. Forgive me, but you must be mistaken.”

  “I’m not,” Quil said. The High Seer of Ankana didn’t need to know about Quil’s magic. “I know the ambassador as Ena Ifalu. Has she ever gone by another name? Dolbra, perhaps?”

  Remi paled. “Dolbra was her daughter’s name—she died at birth. Very few people knew that Ena named her. How did you come by this information?”

  “Reliably.” Quil considered the suspicion on the High Seer’s face. He didn’t believe Quil. But he hadn’t thrown him out, either.

  “High Seer, I have the utmost respect for you and your judgment. Last year, the Empress told me that you sought your replacement. Everyone expected you to name Ambassador Ifalu. Your councilors and advisers. Your people. The ambassador’s family. Even Ena herself. But you haven’t named her yet. Why?”

  Remi took a sip of tea, but he held his cup so tight Quil thought the handle might shatter. “I’m not ready to step down yet.”

  “Your ability to read people is legendary,” Quil said. “The reason you pushed for the Ankanese to open trade with the Empire was because you met the Empress. You saw who she was and who she could be. What do you see when you look at Ambassador Ifalu?”

  The High Seer’s teacup clattered as he placed it on its saucer.

  “The ambassador has nothing to gain from allying herself with the Kegari,” he said. “She would certainly not risk Ankana’s relationship with the Empire. If we break our treaty with you, we also break it with the Mariners. The Tribespeople. You tell me, prince. Why would she risk such a thing?”

  “Perhaps she doesn’t care about the Empire or the Kegari.” Quil had been mulling this over all night. “Perhaps she has another master. I have met the Kegari leader, High Seer. I have met the Tel Ilessi. Her power is immense, and dreadful. I wonder if she has allied herself with something unnatural, and if Ifalu has done the same. So again, I ask—when you look at Ifalu, what do you see?”

  “Nothing,” the High Seer murmured. “I see nothing. Her future is veiled. It has been for years, and though I have tried to see anything to do with her, I have failed.”

  “And you’ve told no one,” Quil surmised. “Because doing so would indicate that your power was weakening, and you feared you’d be forced to step down.”