“But you’re not her.” Aiz struggled to draw breath. “You don’t know anything about my people. You don’t care about us.”

  She thought of Tiral’s last words. I wish I could live, just to watch it eat you alive.

  “Tiral knew,” Aiz said. “That’s why he didn’t hunt me. Did you— Did you talk to him, too—”

  “Tiral is weak. Tiral is dead.” The creature finished the braid and laid a light hand on Aiz’s shoulder. “You are strong and so I helped you. I found that which you desired most—Loha.”

  “You found a reason to torture children.”

  “Because you needed aid.” The creature squeezed Aiz’s shoulder a touch too hard. “And you are wrong. I do care about your people. Because I care about you. Let that be enough.”

  It wasn’t a request. It was a warning, and Aiz saw two paths before her. One in which she delved more deeply into exactly what she had awoken that cursed night in the Tribal Desert. And one in which she took what Div had to offer and gave her people a chance at life without pain and poverty and hunger clawing them to death from the inside.

  Aiz swung her legs out of the bed and pulled on her boots. Her body throbbed, but Div—for that was who Aiz needed her to be—fed power into her steadily until the pain had faded.

  A knock at the door. Cero.

  “I’m fine.” She stood. “Better than fine. We captured one of the generals, yes? Let us see if he knows—”

  “You received a letter.” Cero hardly spared her a glance, as if any wounds she had were no concern of his. He held up a scroll. “It came via one of our messengers in Ankana. From the High Seer himself.” He handed it over, watching Aiz as she read it.

  “A change of plans,” she said. “We’re going to Ankana.”

  Part IV

  The Empty

  46

  Quil

  Ankanese prisons were, on the whole, not quite as awful as Martial ones. After the pompous soldier placed Quil and the others in a row of cells, the prince had seen only one rat. Tas even had a small window that looked out onto Burku’s coast.

  The questioning took hours—probably because Quil confessed to everything and the others denied the theft. But packs and weapons were confiscated, orders whispered, paperwork inked, and by late evening, the five of them were locked up behind iron bars. Sufiyan with Quil. Arelia with Sirsha across from him, and Tas beside them, alone. The other six cells were empty.

  Just as Quil had requested.

  Still, his friends weren’t thrilled at the accommodations. After the guards left, Tas turned on Quil.

  “I realize this felt like a good plan,” Tas said through the cell bars, “but the Ankanese do not take theft lightly—”

  “Ugh, there’s an enormous spider in here,” Sufiyan muttered from behind him.

  “He must have a reason,” Arelia called. “Why don’t you explain, Quil?”

  “He can’t.” Sirsha spoke up, and Quil smiled when he saw she’d discovered what he’d placed in her pocket—a hairpin. Her manacles dropped to the ground with a clank. “If you think about it, you’ll figure out why. Though I’d suggest thinking about anything else. Div picked my mother’s image from my mind. Who knows what else she can do?” She massaged her wrists and moved to Arelia. “Tas, check your pockets.”

  As Tas dealt with his own manacles, Quil unlocked Sufiyan’s.

  “I have a question for you,” Sufiyan said, and at Quil’s head shake, he spoke quickly. “Not about your plan. It’s about after.” He glanced up to make sure no one else was listening. “If—if we kill the Tel Ilessi and root out the Kegari, will you go back with me to where Ruh died? Will you tell me the truth about what happened to him?”

  Quil went still. The cell roof was suddenly too low, the light too scarce. He’d spent the past year trying to forget that night, as the Bani al-Mauth had ordered him to. Now the images rose in his head. The blood. The violence. The eerie space in the center of the room that looked as if an otherworldly claw would emerge from it and snatch anyone who came near.

  Dash that thought from your head, boy. You know better. You know the cost.

  “Yes,” Quil said. “I’ll go there with you.”

  Somehow, Quil would convince the Bani al-Mauth to tell her only living grandson the truth: While Quil had been the first to arrive in the chamber, he hadn’t been alone. The Bani al-Mauth had appeared moments after him and taken Ruh’s broken body away.

  Tell his family he’s down there. The Bani al-Mauth pointed to a crevasse that had opened in the rock, too deep to be plumbed. Tell them you saw his body fall. Don’t say a word about me. Understood? The fate of our world depends on how well you tell that lie, boy.

  And so Quil had lied. First to Elias, who’d arrived minutes after the Bani al-Mauth left. Then to the rest of the Tribe. Later, when the Bani al-Mauth came to mourn Ruh’s loss, Laia begged to speak to her child’s ghost in the Waiting Place. He must be there, she’d screamed. He must! You must know who did this to him!

  The Bani al-Mauth refused Laia’s request with a chilling finality.

  The boy is dead. Best accept it.

  “Quil!” Sufiyan jostled him, nodding to Sirsha, whose face twisted in revulsion.

  “They’re approaching,” Sirsha said. “Div and the Tel Ilessi. I can feel them.”

  By boat, the journey from Serra would take weeks. By air, and with Div’s unnatural winds at her back, it had taken the Tel Ilessi only a day.

  Quil went to the cot and pulled out two heavy sacks placed there at the order of the High Seer. The Ikfa, their packs, and weaponry were within. He tossed Sirsha her pack, Tas his scim, and Arelia her things, as well as the Ikfa manacles and one chain. He kept the other for himself.

  His skin went clammy at its touch and his head spun. You’re fine. This was no worse than the time Aunt Hel tossed him in the River Rei in the middle of a snowstorm.

  “Reli, keep the manacles,” he said. “Give Sirsha one of the chains.”

  “Quil.” Sirsha paled. “I can’t—”

  “Just for a short while,” Quil said. “To throw them off so they don’t know you’re here. Hide. Wait for the last possible moment. Let her think she’s won. I’ll buy you time. Sufiyan.” Quil armed himself and handed Suf his bow and arrows. “You’ll know what to do,” he said. “When the time comes.”

  The air was thick with tension, but they did not have to wait long. Distantly, a gate clanged open, followed by one closer. Then the door at the end of their cellblock swung forward and High Seer Remi entered, trailed by the Tel Ilessi and Cero.

  The latter looked up and met Quil’s eyes. I do hate war…but there’s something else I hate more. Witnessing the manipulation of my oldest friend.

  Quil held his gaze. Cero tilted his head and twitched a nod, almost identical to the one Quil had given him in the encampment days earlier.

  “As promised,” Remi said—ostensibly to the Tel Ilessi, though Quil knew better.

  “My thanks, High Seer Remi,” she said. “I am grateful you see the way of things.”

  Remi bowed his head and backed through the cellblock door. It clanged behind him.

  Quil moved to the bars of his enclosure, glaring out at the Tel Ilessi, letting frustration suffuse him, and keeping a small, careful sphere of calm hidden at his very core. Let her think him defeated. Let her crow over her victory.

  The Tel Ilessi stalked closer, exultant.

  “You thought you were so clev—” She stopped short and looked beyond Quil, to Sufiyan, whose arrows flew one after the other, so fast that the Tel Ilessi should have been lying in a pool of her own blood.

  But she’d called up her wind almost immediately, warned, no doubt, by the monster she’d chained herself to. She knocked Sufiyan hard against the wall and he collapsed to the floor.

  Quil slammed his cell door open as, across the hall, Tas did the same. The prince flung the Ikfa chains at the Tel Ilessi, thankful to be rid of them. The strength that surged through his blood at the chains’ absence carried him toward the Tel Ilessi in three steps.

  She screamed when the Ikfa hit her, her magic dying instantaneously. Quil drew his scim. He thought of her wretched defense for mass murder, of the children whose deaths she’d used to further her need for power. He swung his blade at the back of her neck without an iota of hesitation.

  It stopped midair, clanging as if striking metal. The chains fell away from the Tel Ilessi, and Quil stared as a scim materialized. Then a hand. An arm. A body.

  A face.

  “Greetings, my son.”

  The man who stepped out of thin air was someone Quil had seen only once in his life, in a vision that still haunted him. Tall with broad shoulders, short hair, and yellow eyes. A face that was too harsh to be handsome, a voice that was too cruel to be a father’s voice. And yet, Quil knew this man, would have known him even if he hadn’t seen him in a vision.

  Marcus Farrar. Quil’s father.

  47

  Sirsha

  Sirsha didn’t recognize the form Div took. It was tall, broad, and hooded, and Quil staggered away from it like he’d seen a bleeding jinn, his back to the bars of one of the cells.

  “You fight well, my boy,” Div said in an oily voice, wielding a weapon as well as any Mask.

  The eyes, Sirsha wanted to scream. Look at the eyes! But she couldn’t draw Div’s attention until she was certain she could bind her. The chains sapped Sirsha’s strength—it was all she could do to remember she had magic.

  “You’re not him,” Quil said. He’d recovered himself, and now matched Div’s attack stroke for stroke. “He’s dead.”

  “Of course he is.” Div smiled, showing more teeth than possible for a human. “His spirit moved on. But his pain? His suffering and hate? I got all of it. Wouldn’t it be better to know some parts of your father, boy, instead of nothing at all?”

  Quil whipped his sword at Div, and she hissed when it cut into her. Then the creature chuckled as the wound healed. Tas attacked Div from the back, but the creature flicked him down the cellblock with a twitch of a finger.

  The Tel Ilessi, having cast off the Ikfa, called up the wind and pinned Tas to the wall. She was so focused on the spy that she didn’t notice Arelia until she’d barreled into her, knocking the Tel Ilessi on her back.

  “Do you know what your father wished for you before your aunt murdered him, boy? A brother at your back. But your brothers aren’t brothers, are they? You let one die. That one”—she nodded to Tas, dodging the Tel Ilessi’s attacks—“only listens to you because you’re his crown prince and he has no choice. The other is filled with seething hate—”

  “Lies!” Sufiyan had staggered to his feet and now shot arrow after arrow into Aiz, each one bouncing off her air shield. “I’d describe my internal state as seething irritation at the most, you ugly demon spawn. Quil’s not that bad most of the time—aaa—”

  Cero, with two arrows in his chest, managed to stagger up and tackle Sufiyan. Of course—he might want his old friend free from Div, but he didn’t want her to die in the process.

  Sirsha growled as she lurked in the darkness of her cell. She ached to bind Div, to squeeze all the vitriol out of the monster and send it back to the oblivion it came from. Her friends were suffering—Tas bleeding badly from a head wound and scrambling for his sword. Arelia on her back, mouth open in a silent scream as the Tel Ilessi stole her breath. Cero and Sufiyan grappling on the floor, the latter kicking, clawing, and biting to get an upper hand.

  Wait for the last possible moment.

  “You are a creature of pain—born upon a wave of death—” Div’s voice rose and her form changed as she took on the Tel Ilessi’s face and form. Even as Div clashed her scim against Quil’s, she leered at him, a twisted approximation of a lover. Sirsha cringed back, certain the creature would sense her. But she was wholly enthralled with Quil, who moved like quicksilver as he fended her off, his shoulders squared. “Mmm, I did not sense it before! You carry magic of your own, buried deep. Memory—but it’s more than that, so much more. What’s in that head of yours?”

  “Put the scim down and find out, why don’t you,” Quil taunted with an uncharacteristic and distressing disregard for his life.

  With Div so distracted, Sirsha called to the elements. What is she? she asked. Show me. The wind shrieked, the earth rumbled, and a vision of water filled her mind, a roiling ocean teeming with immense creatures, a flash of yellow sky.

  Owa Khel—the Empty. The place that held the suffering and misery of millennia. Sirsha’s suspicions were correct.

  The monstrosity of such a thing wandering through the human world made Sirsha’s skin shrink in terror. The Nightbringer had unleashed the Sea of Suffering in the Battle of Sher Jinaat, twenty years ago. Though it had been for only a moment, it had killed thousands and nearly consumed the world.

  Div must have emerged when the wall between worlds was thin. Made a home in the Tribal Desert and lured people to her. Murdered them, fed on suffering, growing stronger and stronger until she found someone evil or desperate enough to free her.

  How had she gotten into people’s heads? The book. Though, if that was the case, Div would have needed an original anchor. Some twisted soul with whom she’d made contact when she arrived in the world. Sirsha thought of the story the Tel Ilessi told Quil. Of the First Durani, the monstrous storyteller who locked Div away.

  Yes, the earth whispered to her. The First Durani told a story that was not meant to be told. She became Div’s anchor. Now, finally, you understand.

  Understanding wouldn’t help Sirsha’s friends. They were supposed to have killed the Tel Ilessi, but she was too strong. Arelia and Tas lay unmoving on the floor, and the Tel Ilessi whipped Sufiyan away from Cero, slamming Suf against the cellblock door. Only Quil stood unyielding, retorting to whatever horrors Div whispered at him, defiance carved into every muscle of his body. Fearless. Alone.

  No longer.

  Sirsha rushed forward, flinging the chains at the Tel Ilessi, pulling them tight. As they had before, they cut through the woman’s magic like a hot knife through butter. She stumbled back, weak, and Sirsha swept up the manacles—fallen from Arelia’s hands—and clapped them onto the Tel Ilessi’s wrists.

  The Tel Ilessi screamed. Sirsha had struggled to suppress a scream herself when she put those accursed chains on so Div wouldn’t sense her. The pain would be crushing for someone of Aiz’s power—and despite the repugnance of the Tel Ilessi’s actions, Sirsha felt a twinge of sympathy for her.

  Not enough to let her live. Sirsha tore a dagger from her belt, fully intending to stab the Tel Ilessi. But Sufiyan, free of the Tel Ilessi’s magic, knocked Cero unconscious. The snarls coming from Sufiyan’s throat as he surged toward the Tel Ilessi raised the hair on Sirsha’s neck. She only just managed to get out of his way before Sufiyan stabbed the Tel Ilessi in the chest. “For Ruh—for Ruh—for Ruh—”

  Aiz screamed for Div, but the monster ignored her, her attention fixed on Quil. He was hissing to Div now, luring the creature in, even as Div wrapped a tendril of magic around Quil, slowly pulling his life from him, savoring the way he fought her before she would inevitably tear out his heart.

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

  Sirsha gathered her binding magic into a lasso and cast it about Div, yanking it mercilessly.

  The creature hissed and threw it off, turning. Upon seeing who had interrupted her twisted rite, she smiled.

  “Ah, the little witch.” Div oozed into the form of Sirsha’s mother, freezing Quil with a motion of her hand. “Come to save your lover? You’ll have to do better than that.”

  Sirsha’s magic scattered as the creature turned the enormity of its evil upon her.

  “Kill me,” Sirsha called to Div. “Not him.”

  The creature considered Sirsha with a broadening smirk, as if she couldn’t believe her luck.

  Yes, Sirsha thought to herself. Closer. The Jaduna buried her binding deep, the way she’d realized Quil did. There in her darkest heart, she let it build, for the timing was crucial. She must release it as Div attacked and hope that by powering her binding with a sacrifice—an emotion far stronger than mere desire—she would tear Div apart.

  Div grabbed Sirsha and took a long, deep sniff at her throat.

  Not yet, the elements whispered at Sirsha. Hold the binding.

  Div laughed in delight and the sound fell like knives upon Sirsha’s mind, for it was the cackle of a creature glutted on innocent souls. It was laughter underlaid with screams.

  Sirsha sweated as she poured more of herself into the magic. As she thought: Me, not Quil. Me, not Quil.

  Sirsha, the wind, earth, and sea spoke to her as one. Is your sacrifice true? Do you offer yourself in place of the Martial prince?

  “Yes!” Sirsha screamed, even as she felt a terrible pain in her chest—Div reaching for her heart. “Obviously!”

  Why?

  Thinking the words was easier, of course. Love was pain. Love was hurt and betrayal. But it was also the reason she stood here, battling a creature of ancient and unrelenting hunger, instead of on a ship a few hundred miles away. Love was why for the first time since her family cast her out, Sirsha didn’t feel alone.

  “Because I love him, you cussed nags! Why else!”

  Sirsha’s magic swelled and flickered as if filled with lightning. For a moment, she saw Div’s truest self, a seething mass of suffering. Sirsha felt a soul-deep relief that she was destroying such an abomination. That Div would no longer be allowed to exist in the world.

  She poured her magic into the binding, triumphant as it built, and built, and built, until everything and everyone was swallowed by its light.