One day, after Aiz finished the Eighth Sacred Tale, Hani interrupted her.

  “Aiz, why are there only eight tales when they’re called the Nine Sacred Tales? What’s the Ninth?”

  “It has yet to be revealed,” Aiz said. “Mother Div whispered the Ninth Sacred Tale to the wind in a faraway land. When the wind circles the earth and returns to Kegar, we will finally hear the tale. Its telling will herald the Return to our homeland.”

  “Until then,” Olnas said from the cot where she brushed Jak’s hair, “we start back from the beginning to see what we missed the first time.”

  Aiz smiled. “Long ago and far away…”

  She was midway through the tale when a figure stepped from the darkness. Kithka. Aiz didn’t know how long the woman had been lurking in the shadows, but it didn’t matter. Aiz refused to stop.

  “And Mother Div ordered the early builders to lay the foundations of our capital, first and foremost the cloister in Dafra.”

  As Aiz spoke, Kithka gripped her whip, gaze darting from cell to cell, clearly uncertain what to make of the sheer number of prisoners listening to Aiz.

  “What the bleeding Spires is going on?” Gil barreled through the door at the far end of the block, behind Kithka. “What’s the racket?”

  As if his voice had shaken her out of her indecision, Kithka wrenched open the door to Aiz’s cell. “Enough yammering from you.” The jailer grabbed Aiz by the scruff of her neck and shoved a rag in her mouth. “You’re going to the Hollows.”

  8

  Quil

  Married.

  The word rang in Quil’s ears like a screech of a dying wraith. It was only a lifetime of court training that kept him from grabbing Mater Andricar by her silk-clad shoulder and demanding to know what in the skies she was talking about.

  “Mater, Pater,” he managed through numb lips. “Whatever the Empress has arranged for me will be for the best. Her only concern—and mine—is the prosperity of the Empire. If you’ll excuse me.” He offered an anodyne smile as he moved away, fingers tingling from the sheer effort of appearing unruffled.

  A few others approached him, but he begged off, scanning the room for his aunt. He needed to find her, talk to her, get answers out of her.

  Usually, he’d rue the height that made him stand out in a crowd. Now he was grateful. He spotted a flash of silver-blond hair. She was surrounded, but she must have sensed his anger because she looked up, directly at him.

  For a moment, they were the only two people in the room, bonded as blood often is. She nodded toward a back door that led to a private balcony, and lifted her hand.

  Five minutes.

  Quil nodded and turned away. The room spun.

  Though he tried to stop it, his magic, leashed like a rabid beast at the back of his mind, rose up. He took a shuddering breath and shoved the magic down. Not now! Not here! The effort of it was immense, and for a moment he thought that he’d pass out and drop straight onto his face, humiliating himself, his aunt, his entire Gens.

  Then Sufiyan was at his side, shaking Quil’s shoulder, and the magic receded.

  “You look like someone’s yanked your knickers around your neck.” Sufiyan pulled him to the edge of the party, shoving people out of his way.

  “Talk,” Sufiyan said when they’d gotten clear of the crowds. “What’s happened? Is it Tas?”

  Quil shook his head. He’d forgotten about Tas entirely. “The Empress arranged a marriage. Mine.”

  “What?” Sufiyan nearly shouted, and the partygoers nearest them turned to stare, scandalized.

  “Shut it,” Quil hissed. “Mater Andricar told me. Maybe she’s mistaken.”

  “She’s a meddlesome old bat, but she’s not usually wrong,” Sufiyan said.

  “Maybe Aunt Hel was going to tell me,” Quil said. “Maybe she didn’t get the chance.”

  “Get the chance? What about when she was shouting at you last week for saying the word abdicate in public?” Sufiyan said. “I hope you’ll tell her to stuff it.”

  Quil sighed. “I’m not going to tell her to stuff it.”

  “Why the hells not?” Sufiyan stared at his friend like he’d agreed to marry a cabbage. “You might have to marry someone you’ve never met. She could be exceedingly violent. Or stupid. She might have an unnatural obsession with goats. Don’t you care?”

  Ilar’s smile flashed in Quil’s head, the song of her laughter. “Of course I care.” Quil pushed her memory away. “But an arranged match was always a possibility. For the stability of the Empire.”

  Sufiyan put his hand to his temple, as if to call on untapped reserves of patience. “I’m not saying the Empire isn’t important. But you do realize that I’m heir to one of the most powerful Gens? Yet my parents aren’t demanding that I marry some horse-faced Illustrian to keep the line going.”

  “Not all of us have three siblings to carry on the line if—”

  “Two.” Sufiyan’s voice was soft as he glanced away from his friend.

  Quil flinched, realizing his mistake. Of course. Ruh was Sufiyan’s baby brother. And he was dead. “Oh skies. I’m an idiot.”

  “Look, there’s Arelia.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Stop.” Sufiyan shoved his hands in his pockets and looked down, dark hair obscuring his eyes. “Makes it worse. It’s fine. Really.”

  Quil cursed himself for not thinking before he spoke, thankful when his cousin appeared. She wore a narrow-waisted gown that was a riot of green, her curls loose down her back. Quil glared at the knot of besotted fellows trailing her, scaring them off. He didn’t need anyone eavesdropping.

  For her part, Arelia ignored her admirers. Her gaze had snagged on Sufiyan, half in shadow, his dark gold eyes glittering appreciatively. He nodded a greeting.

  “Nice dress,” he murmured.

  Arelia’s skin flushed ever so slightly. “I hate it. It doesn’t have pockets. But the dye is quite rare. Stone-ground from Ogfaso shells and left to dry for three months before it can be mixed with squid ink to form a dye this pigmented. Smells like rotting eggs.”

  Sufiyan nodded with bemusement or perhaps mockery. It was hard to tell. Arelia huffed in annoyance, likely assuming it was mockery.

  “Mater Andricar says she upset you.” Arelia turned to Quil. “She wouldn’t tell me more than that.”

  “Ah…well…” Quil considered what to say. As a court engineer, Arelia went all over the city, and heard things others didn’t. But if she knew about his betrothal and hadn’t told him—

  Sufiyan let out a sound of impatience. “Mater Andricar told Quil he’s going to be betrothed and I’m trying to persuade him to tell the Empress to stuff it.”

  “Betrothed?” Arelia’s gasp was so genuine that Quil knew she’d been as ignorant as he. “There must be some explanation. She wouldn’t ask you to do anything that wasn’t within the scope of your duties.”

  “You Martials,” Sufiyan muttered, “and your bleeding duty.”

  “May I remind you that you are half Martial yourself.” Arelia’s pale eyes flashed, a rare show of temper.

  Quil caught a glimpse of his aunt’s armor. She was heading for the balcony.

  The prince left his friends to their argument and edged through the crowd, keeping his face stony to discourage further conversation.

  Once outside, he wished for his cloak. Winter’s chill had penetrated even this far south, and Quil shivered. The palace gardens stretched beyond the carved stone of the balcony, lit by hundreds of tiny lamps.

  Quil knew three ways into the gardens, four ways out, two of which only he and the Empress used.

  Back when they were close, she’d shown him. That was when she told him everything. He’d enjoyed his visits to Navium, Serra, Antium—all the cities where she had residences. The Empress moved constantly. Quil used to think it was because she got bored.

  It’s because every city has ghosts, she’d told him once, when they walked along the shores of the River Rei. If I stay too long, they grow angry, and bother me.

  He’d not understood how his fearless aunt might be bothered by a few ghosts. After all, she’d taught him how to escape a room with one door and a dozen guards blocking it. How to traverse a city’s rooftops and disappear in a crowd, height be damned. How to navigate by starlight and raise a sail and shoot a bow and ride seventy-five miles in a day without killing himself or any horses.

  Your best and most reliable protection is this. She’d tap his head when he was a boy. And these. She’d take his hands, so much smaller than hers. Never depend on anyone else to keep you safe, nephew. You keep them safe instead.

  Together with Elias, she’d made him into a Mask without him having to spend a day in Blackcliff Military Academy.

  Yet she still had guards trailing him. She made decisions for him. She didn’t talk to him. Not anymore.

  “Nephew.” Aunt Helene appeared out of the darkness. “What troubles you?”

  She was so calm. It made him want to scream. When Sufiyan and his sister Karinna were bickering incessantly a month ago, Laia lost her temper and told them that if they didn’t shut it, she’d put a nest of Ankanese jumping spiders in their boots. Would that Quil could shout at his aunt without caring who heard, and she could threaten him with poisonous beasties, the way normal people did.

  “Were you going to tell me that you’re marrying me off?” he said.

  His aunt stared at him with her mouth half-open, and Quil was briefly hopeful she would laugh and ask him where he’d heard such a ridiculous rumor. Then she did the oddest thing. She glanced first to the doors of the balcony, and out into the lamplit shadows of the garden. Her mouth hardened.

  “Indeed, I received a dispatch from the Kegari Triarchy. One of the Triarchs has a daughter who—”

  “Were you going to tell me?” Quil cut her off. “Or drag me to meet my bride the day I was to marry?”

  “You’re being dramatic. How long have you known?”

  “I— That’s what you ask me? After planning this behind my back?”

  “I am asking,” the Empress said, each word edged in exasperation, “because the Kegari stopped responding to us in the fall, and we can’t get any information about what’s going on. Tas was trying, but—” She shook her head. “How long?”

  “I found out today,” Quil said. “Mater Andricar mentioned it. Of all the people you could choose from, Empress, why the Kegari? All we know about them is that they enjoy internecine massacres and stealing their neighbors’ grain.”

  “Zacharias.” Aunt Hel’s voice was low, urgent, and she stepped closer. “This isn’t what you think. The Kegari—”

  “How did we get in touch with them? No one knows their language, Aunt Hel, because there are hardly any texts to reference. How will I communicate with my future wife?”

  The Empress ran a hand over her crown braid. “I do not wish to discuss this with you. It is not the time or place.”

  More secrets. “Then when is?” Quil asked. “Tas said that the Kegari—”

  “Tas cares more about you than he does his duty as an agent of the Empire.”

  Quil took in his aunt’s words. “Tas defended me.” He felt a surge of gratefulness for his friend. At least someone cared about what Quil wanted. “Because not everyone is like you, Aunt. Willing to throw their family members to the wolves for the sake of duty.”

  The Empress stepped back from him, the scars on her cheeks livid white against her already pale skin. Quil opened his mouth, words at the ready, waiting to explode out of him. Years of things he’d wanted to say. Years of fear and anger and frustration. Years of hiding what was inside him because that was what his aunt taught him to do.

  The air shifted. The songs of the night creatures tripped, the breeze slowed.

  Aunt Hel stiffened as a drumbeat echoed across the city, sudden and frantic.

  Attack—

  The sound cut off and Quil met his aunt’s eyes. All was silent.

  And then the sky burst into flame.

  9

  Sirsha

  The murderer felt slick and clever as a greased eel. Unlike anyone Sirsha had hunted before.

  Perhaps she should have been vexed. Instead, she was intrigued, the way she hadn’t been since she was a child first discovering her skills. After Sirsha’s people had cast her out, her jobs were simple. Too simple. She often took a second job while doing the first, because she was so damned bored.

  Now, six days after she and her client had parted ways, Sirsha knelt in the winter-yellow foothills a day outside Navium, the Empire’s southernmost port city. She’d successfully avoided the small settlements along the River Rei, where people might ask her questions. From afar, she would look strange: a girl with golden-brown skin and black hair piled high, staring off into space as if thinking of a lover or a dream.

  In fact, she was puzzling out the trails winding through the air and earth around her. For the past few hundred miles, she’d followed the path of a single woman meandering south. It grew thin at times, but it eventually led her here.

  Now the trail appeared to split. The killer could have met someone here. But if that was the case, Sirsha would have been able to see their spoor and wherever they came from. Unless they appeared out of thin air.

  Even still, her magic would have revealed a trail.

  Sirsha surveyed the land ahead. A harsh mountain wind flattened the scrub, powerful enough to have long ago swept away normal tracks.

  “Talk to me,” she said. “Tell me what I’m looking at.” But the air merely yanked at her hair, taunting her before racing off. All her senses felt utterly befuddled.

  Her magic lived in her blood. Had since birth. It was as steady as breathing or having skin. Or it had been, until now.

  Sirsha walked farther down the hillside, leaving the horse her client had given her to graze on the sparse winter grasses. She put her hand to the earth. Nothing. A thousand threads, a thousand trails—none of which mattered. The wind spun dead leaves around her, swirled dust into her eyes.

  “If you’re not going to help”—Sirsha coughed and batted the dust away—“then piss off.”

  A low, sullen hiss. Follow the bones.

  She scanned the scrubby land, which was filled with ravines and gulches. The wind’s hints were never idle. If the bones weren’t near, it wouldn’t have said anything. She walked across the dead, snow-dusted grass to a spot that dropped away into a gully. There, at the bottom, she saw a flash of dull white.

  “Got you,” she muttered, and shimmied down for a closer look.

  The bones were picked clean. Smaller than an adult’s, though not by much. A young person, but not a child. Sirsha knelt beside them, closed her eyes, and touched the earth.

  Her vision narrowed and went white, then coalesced into a figure running—racing, desperate to escape the killer following him. A roar. A scream.

  Soul crumbled. Rotted. Monstrous. Killer of tender saplings, death in the blood, death in the bones, an ocean of death—

  Sirsha gasped at the earth’s rage. She’d heard the earth growl before, and whisper. Occasionally, it laughed and teased Sirsha. Once, long ago, she heard it weep. But she’d never heard it roar.

  A series of impressions crossed her mind. A gray cloak. A canteen and a cap fallen into the dirt, dropped by a shaking hand. A shadow. Human? Fey? The earth shriveled away from the memory of whoever had passed here. It gave her nothing more.

  But Sirsha had the trail now. Strong and clear and heading directly south—to the city of Navium.

  * * *

  It was dawn before Sirsha joined scores of other travelers on the main road leading into Navium. She’d buried the bones because she hadn’t lost all semblance of decency. As a result, she was exhausted and grumpy, in sore need of a meal, a bath, and a nap. And perhaps new clothes.

  But as Navium came into view over a rise, her hopes were dashed. The front gate was a tangled throng of adults, children, horses, carts, even a herd of cattle.

  A young man carrying a baby across his chest rode nearby, and Sirsha called out to him. “What’s happening in the city?”

  “Rathana.” The man pointed at a single dark blue flag flying high on the gates. “That’s the standard of Gens Aquilla. Our Empress is in residence. The guards only have one gate open, so they can properly check everyone.”

  He gave her a dark look then, as if she might personally stick a knife in his precious ruler. “She’s a good woman, Empress Helene. I for one am pleased as pie that she’s spending Rathana with us.”

  “Good for you,” Sirsha muttered when he’d turned back to the road.

  The Empress being in town was a complication she hadn’t anticipated. This had happened before, more than a year ago when Sirsha was in Sadh. Tracking had been a nightmare, the city so busy that she couldn’t get a clear sense of the trail she’d been following. The dock agents were stricter, the city patrols more vigilant. There were Masks, horses, and healers at all the gates, in case the Empress was wounded or needed to escape an assassination attempt. The docks—even the tiny one with a fishy that sold the best fried cod in the Tribal Lands—were all shut down.

  It was a mess. Navium was no different, it appeared.

  By the time Sirsha persuaded a gate guard that she wasn’t planning to assassinate the Empress or her nephew, the crown prince, it was past noon. She smelled of cow dung and thought she’d faint from hunger.

  A novice Inashi would collapse at this point. But Sirsha had trained at her mother’s knee, and few could match her stamina. She used her magic to skim through the city, searching for signs of her Kin. She found traces that were a few days old—but nothing current. When she’d assured herself that she was safe, she went looking for an inn.