Chapter 17

17

Quil

The Kegari were everywhere in Jibaut. In the skies, but also creeping along the docks in their blue-scaled armor, muttering to each other in their own language while barking orders in Ankanese to everyone else. The dock agents and stevedores and corsairs watched the newcomers with churlishness instead of challenge. The savagery of the Kegari attack had quelled even the bravest of Jibaut's residents.

Most of the pirates had left to raid the Empire's southern cities. The only ships in the port were from Marinn.

"No Martials, either." Arelia eyed the city with Quil, chewing on one of her curls. "The Kegari will be rounding up our people, to question or kill. Keep that hood low, cousin."

"You'll be all right, alone?" Quil asked. Worry ate at him as he pondered his aunt's message. The Butcher lives. The Orphan roars. Old codes referring to Aunt Hel and Laia. Musa sent the wight, so he'd be alive too, but Navium's fall haunted Quil. When he considered that something might also happen to Arelia or Sufiyan, he felt almost frantic. But his cousin waved him off.

"The dock agent will make sure no one steals the ship," Arelia said. "I need to understand this engine. If it's to take us to Ankana, it must last. Fear not, if I get bored, I can reread Rajin's Recollections ."

Quil smiled. The little book was the only thing he'd carried with him from Navium, other than his clothes and scim.

"Don't forget my coveralls." Arelia looked distastefully at her dress. "Or the willadonna."

Not likely. The herb naturally dilated the pupils, which would allow Arelia and Quil, with their distinctively pale Martial irises, to avoid drawing attention. Quil hated the idea of using it. Of sneaking and skulking to survive, while back in the Empire, his people fought.

Arelia nodded to Sufiyan, who was paying off the dock agent. "Keep an eye on him. He appears to have a death wish."

Quil raised his eyebrows. "Is my scim-happy friend growing on you?"

"Days spent with a small group of not-awful people breeds tolerance. I put up with you, don't I?" Arelia disappeared below and Quil met Sufiyan at the dock.

"You seem upset," Sufiyan observed, and Quil glanced at him in surprise—he'd buried the feeling deep enough that he'd almost forgotten it was there.

"The Kegari," Quil said. "Seeing them…" His fingers itched for his scim, and he took a deep breath to quell his temper, as he always did with strong emotions. Then he heard Sirsha in his head:

You're so afraid if you feel something, you'll actually have to do something. And that if you do something, it will be the wrong thing.

Perhaps her words shouldn't have hit so hard, but they reminded him of the night Ilar died. She'd fought with Quil because he hadn't spoken to Aunt Helene about her. The Empress wouldn't approve of the crown prince falling for a no-name Ankanese girl. They had no future.

You say you want to be with me, Quil, but if you did, you'd tell your aunt about me. You'd take me with you to the capital. You'd let me meet the Empress.

He'd responded to her accusation with silence, worried that the wrong words would drive her away forever. Didn't matter. Later that night, she was dead anyway. Torn into pieces by the same murderer who burned out Ruh's heart.

"You going to say anything, or just stand around looking murderous?" Sufiyan eyed him askance, and Quil realized that he was stock-still, white-knuckling the hilt of his scim.

"I've already run from Navium." Quil was almost choked by a sudden wave of self-loathing, and here, in a sopping pirate's port with his best friend, it poured out of him. "I abandoned my family and my duty and the Empire—and do not "—he held up his hand at Sufiyan's protests—"say I didn't, because I'd hate to hear you lie. I did it because my aunt ordered it, and I'm good at following rules. But that's not going to help us now."

He looked out at Jibaut, at the lamps gleaming dully through the downpour as night drew closer.

"Musa will send another wight soon," Quil said. "This time, we send information back."

"About what?" Sufiyan squinted at the beaten faces of Jibaut's residents. "How even the pirates are afraid of the sky-pigs?"

"The Kegari reserve forces are here. The more intelligence the Empire has about them, the better. But Aunt Hel knows almost nothing." He met Sufiyan's eyes. "Let's change that."

Sufiyan led them through Jibaut's slick cobbled streets; with his features, he wasn't as conspicuous as Quil. The rain fell heavily enough that it was difficult to catch conversations in full. But the attack on Navium and the destruction of the Empire's navy was on everyone's lips.

After hearing it a dozen times, Sufiyan's fists were clenched as tight as Quil's. "How long do you think Serra will withstand the onslaught?"

"A few months," Quil said. "Spring, Musa's note said. But Elias knows the way out of there—in case."

"He knows the way out of every place," Sufiyan said with a note of pride. "I miss him and Ama. Nan was always telling me to appreciate what we had." Sufiyan spoke of the Bani al-Mauth, for he was one of four people who dared to call her anything but her title. "Wish I'd bleeding listened."

"Old people know things we don't because long ago, they didn't listen to their elders either," Quil said as they ducked into a darkened lean-to filled with moldering hay. "It's tradition."

Sufiyan snickered—not quite a laugh, but close enough. Better than nothing, anyway. Suf hadn't laughed in ages.

"Wait here," Suf said. Light flared from a tavern across the street as the door opened, and a pair of patrons tumbled out. "Someone in there will know where the Kegari are camped."

Quil waited in the rain, hating Jibaut more every time another pirate passed. He used to want to visit this place. Especially after Laia and Elias had come to the city with their youngest son, Ruhyan, in tow.

When Ruh returned from the trip, he'd been brimming with stories of emerald boats with ruby sails, markets bursting with smugglers, jugglers, and sorcerers. He'd brought Quil a gift—the bracelet Quil still wore.

Ruh loved Quil as a big brother, demanding lessons in archery and rides on his shoulders. He didn't care that Quil was the crown prince. Sufiyan groused when Ruh tagged after them, but Quil laughed at Ruh's stories, answered his questions. In return, Ruh never minded when Quil was quiet.

It was Quil who'd found Ruh and Ilar. Or what was left of them, anyway, in the recesses of a place he hoped to never see again. He'd never told anyone that he'd fought with Ilar before she died. He knew they'd say it wasn't his fault, and he wanted the guilt. He deserved it. If he'd done what Ilar had asked, she wouldn't have ridden off, brokenhearted. She wouldn't have been torn to shreds by a killer. And Ruh—

Dash that thought from your head, boy. The Bani al-Mauth had given him an order, and he'd tried his best to follow it, but it felt wrong to forget Ruh. Now, in the shadows of Jibaut, the prince reached for his wrist, for the bracelet he'd worn since then in honor of his young friend.

Only to find that it was gone.

He checked his cloak and pack before remembering this morning. Sirsha, stumbling. Touching his arm. Skies above. He was a fool. His aunt had taught him the finer points of thievery to prevent this exact thing from happening. He'd caught Sirsha once and thought himself clever, but this morning, she'd looked at him with her big brown eyes, batted those sooty lashes, and he'd been so busy mooning over the ring of smoky gray around her irises that he'd dropped his guard.

Wherever she was now, she must be laughing at how naive he was.

Someone staggered out of the darkness, pulling Quil's thoughts from the treacherous Jaduna. He'd drawn his sword halfway when he realized it was Sufiyan, bottle in hand. He was putting on a rather impressive act. Like many Tribespeople, Sufiyan didn't drink.

He reached Quil quickly. "Found our mark," he said. "Speaks Ankanese and has rank. He should be emerging in four…three…two…"

The door to the tavern opened, and a pasty-faced Kegari soldier tripped out and vomited into the street before staggering away.

Quil shook his head in disgust. "He's too drunk to be of any use."

"A little more faith in me, brother." Sufiyan clapped Quil on the shoulder. "I gave him Iltim. Excellent for headaches. Causes nausea with cheap ale. His friends will assume he's drunk. He needs to empty his stomach a few times, and then he'll be ripe for a little interrogation."

The two followed the stumbling Kegari soldier, and when he finally turned into an alley, Quil and Sufiyan quickened their pace. The prince spotted a large wooden rubbish bin and nodded to it. It stank, but it would hide their activities from anyone passing. Sufiyan, who'd been singing tunelessly, raised his voice, speaking Ankanese.

"Oi—you there. Sky-pig!"

The Kegari soldier spun around, groping for his weapon—which Sufiyan had already relieved him of. Suf shoved the soldier against the wall, a knife at his throat.

"We have some questions." Quil spoke in Ankanese and pulled his hood low as the rain poured down. His accent was Marinese because that's where his tutor had been from. All the better to throw the Kegari off. "You're going to answer them."

"Rue la ba Tel Ilessi! Kwye asti falli!"

"Speak Ankanese," Quil snarled, and Sufiyan dug the knife into the man's neck.

"I don't speak to Martial-loving snakes," the Kegari spat. "I will tell you nothing."

"Oh, but you will, cat bucket." Sufiyan's Ankanese was rougher than Quil's, but when he drew a long line of blood from the man's throat, his meaning was clear enough.

"How many reserve troops are there?" Quil asked.

The Kegari snarled. "Rue la ba Tel Ilessi!"

Voices echoed from the street beyond the alley. If they turned this way—

" How many reserve troops? " Quil growled.

"Rue la ba Tel Ilessi," the man whispered, though with fear instead of defiance.

He lunged for Quil, and Sufiyan lifted the dagger in defense, sinking it deep into the man's throat. Sufiyan jumped back, cursing as the man dropped to his knees, blood waterfalling from his neck. In mere moments, he fell face-first into the mud. Dead.

"Come on." Quil grabbed Sufiyan as he stared in horror at the dead man. "Move, Sufiyan."

His friend had never killed anyone. Quil had, of course. Killing didn't get easier. But nothing was worse than that first time, and Quil wished he'd had the bleeding sense to consider that before he'd dragged Sufiyan into the streets of Jibaut.

"Suf, walk." Ahead of them, near the next cross street, the group of people they'd heard talking hurried past, unaware of the body steps away. Sufiyan's gaze was wild, his hands shaking as he lurched back from the pool of blood spreading beneath the body.

"Walk!"

They made it to the end of the alley and through the nearly empty square on the other side. A Kegari patrol approached, blue armor flashing in the rain, but Quil and Sufiyan were out of sight before the soldiers could call out.

Quil wanted to punch a wall. They'd failed to get information and killed a man—for nothing at all. Best to cut their losses, get the supplies, and get the hells out of Jibaut.

Most cities had order to them—neighborhoods, business districts, markets, and squares. But Jibaut was laid out willy-nilly, as if a child playing with blocks had spilled them all at once and called it a city. Quil took a dozen wrong turns past dilapidated neighborhoods half-overtaken by the forest, shuttered shops, and a crowded shipbuilding yard before lights blazed ahead and voices echoed. A night market.

The market took up both sides of a wide boulevard and was packed so full of hooded buyers that Quil worried less about being recognized as Martial, and more that he and Sufiyan wouldn't be able to shove their way through. The thick flow of humanity hardly noticed the rain. Merchants beneath canvas tarps sold their goods with shrill vigor; tavern rats spilled into the crowded streets, ales in hand.

"An apothecary." Sufiyan nodded to a building a hundred feet away, its mortar and pestle sign illuminated by a sputtering lamp. "Let's get the willadonna."

Sufiyan's voice was flat, like it had been after Quil had found Ruh. Like after Karinna—Sufiyan's fifteen-year-old sister—had screamed at her big brother, You were supposed to watch him!

"Suf—"

His friend whirled on him. "I don't want to talk about it!" Sufiyan snarled. "He was going to kill us. I beat him to it. Your aunt did it a thousand times in the war. So did my parents. And you—in the border skirmishes. How old were you? Thirteen? I'm eighteen, for skies' sake."

"That's why I'm bringing it up. Aunt Helene talked to me about it, and it helped."

Sufiyan pushed ahead and Quil wanted to leave him be. He didn't want to fight with Sufiyan, least of all while hurrying through crowds of Jibaut's denizens, many of whom would happily sell them to the Kegari for the price of an evening meal.

But he took Sufiyan's arm anyway.

"You don't have to talk about it now," he said before Suf could bite his head off again. "But you will, eventually. If not to me, to Arelia. You can't stick a knife in someone for the first time and pretend it didn't—"

"I hated it, all right?" Sufiyan said. "I feel like the only thing I've thought about for the past year is death and loss, and now killing, and all I want is to bleeding get away from it. But I've just killed a man myself and I can't reckon with it yet. Maybe one day, but—"

His voice broke, and Quil sighed. "I'm sorry, Sufiyan, I shouldn't have—"

"Quil—look." Sufiyan nodded at something beyond Quil, and the prince groaned at the paltry excuse for a distraction.

"I'm apologizing, all right?" Quil said. "It—it seems like you've been gone for months now, and I wish we'd talk."

"Quil—turn around . Slowly."

"Maybe you're angry at me, because I didn't protect Ruh, but—"

Sufiyan finally met Quil's gaze. "We clearly both have feelings to discuss," he said. "But for now, will you shut it and look?"

The prince turned and immediately spotted what had caught Sufiyan's notice. In front of a tavern with a raised wraparound porch, at a table brightly illuminated by a row of dangling lamps, a woman argued with a young blond man. The woman had dark hair swept into a pile atop her head. A sharp jaw. Full, heart-shaped lips and cheekbones as keen as a Teluman scim. High red boots.

Sirsha.

Without speaking, Quil and Sufiyan shoved their way across the street toward the tavern. Sufiyan nodded at a cobbler's stall ahead of them with a wide awning, a few steps from Sirsha's table. The cobbler was locked in an argument with a customer waving a broken boot heel at him.

Quil made for the left side of the awning, Sufiyan for the right. The shadows were deep enough that anyone looking over from the veranda wouldn't be able to make out much.

Once ensconced in the dark, the prince eyed the Jaduna at leisure. It was the first time he'd looked at her—really looked—without telling himself to look away. There was something different about her. No—Quil realized. It was the way people looked at her. With wariness.

Jibaut was a dangerous place at night. Sirsha, Quil realized, was one of the reasons why. She wore a belt of knives across her chest, daggers at both hips and in each boot—none of which she'd had on the ship. Her shirt was low-cut, her leather armor close-fitting and made to accentuate her curves. She had a silhouette that would draw the eye of most people with a pulse. Quil noticed a few people looking—all surreptitiously—for there was a boldness to her, a bite.

She didn't have that amused smirk that had frustrated and fascinated him so much while on the shabka. She was all business.

The prince tried to interpret the cant of her head, the flash of white as she bit her full bottom lip in what could be anything from anxiety to flirtation.

At the thought of the latter, annoyance swept through him.

Sufiyan, who'd sidled up beside him, glanced over. "Jealous?" he whispered.

Quil wasn't about to lie to Sufiyan, so he shrugged. "Let's get closer."

Together, they inched to almost the end of the cobbler's awning. Rain soaked Quil's shoulder. He could barely hear the conversation over the downpour.

"—too deep. Let this go, tracker."

"Not an option," Sirsha said. "What's wrong with you, Kade? You're acting strange. You look awful. Are you ill?"

"You cannot hunt this killer," the man called Kade said. Indeed, he had heavy pink shadows under his eyes, and the waxy skin of someone who'd been unwell. Still, he was handsome, and the way he looked at Sirsha told Quil that if they weren't lovers now, they had been in the past. "It's too dangerous, even for you, Inashi."

"A murderer is a murderer." Sirsha sat back, arms crossed. "With weaknesses like anyone else. There must be something in those books of yours about the killer's magic."

"I can't help you. Find someone else."

"The only person who knows the old lore better than you is a month's ride south in a bleeding swamp, and you know how I feel about swamps. Besides which, the last time I saw her, she told me not to come back—"

"Sirsha—"

"Give me something, Kade. For old times' sake."

"Don't be angry at me. I—I—"

Kade glanced down at his hands, as if considering. But Quil saw his gaze flick over Sirsha's shoulder to the building beside the tavern. It was so swift that if Quil hadn't been staring right at the man, he'd have missed it.

"He's stalling," Quil realized aloud. "Distracting her."

"Bleeding hells." Sufiyan looked to their left, where a shadow detached from a darkened building and moved swiftly toward the tavern. Another figure cut through the crowded veranda with the patience of a shark on the hunt. A third silently crossed the lane not three yards from Quil and Sufiyan.

Sirsha was so busy trying to persuade Kade to help her that she didn't see the shadows closing in on her. Sufiyan reached back for his bow, but Quil grabbed his arm.

"Those are Jaduna surrounding her," he said. "Her own people. They won't hurt her."

"Don't you remember what she said about her family?"

When my family finds me and subjects me to a brutal death…

Quil caught a flash of gold—a Jaduna headdress. The hooded woman wearing it looked forbidding. Not like a family member welcoming home a lost daughter.

Moments later, the shadows—who'd moved slowly until now—descended on the tavern with sudden, near inhuman swiftness. The patrons on the veranda sensed a fight and began to jeer, but someone called out "Jaduna!" and in seconds, the crowd was tripping over itself to get away.

"Come on." Quil tried to pull Sufiyan away. "It's not safe, Suf."

"She's hunting my brother's killer." Suf shook Quil off. "We can't leave her to them."

"She's smart. She'll figure it out—" But even Quil froze as he watched Sirsha stand. Watched her realize that she was surrounded. The look she cast Kade could have melted stone.

"I'm sorry, Sirsha." Kade sounded genuinely aggrieved. "I didn't want to—for whatever that's worth."

Sirsha snarled at him. "Less than a moldering rat carcass, you traitorous—"

" Traitorous ," the Jaduna in the headdress said, pushing back her hood as she sauntered forward. She was older than Sirsha, with the same straight blue-black hair and brown skin. But her countenance was cold, her lips thin. Her voice was low and melodious, like Sirsha's, but something unpleasant seethed beneath.

The woman's headdress had a central, dandelion-sized coin dangling from the part in her hair. The coin was linked to a half dozen chains on either side, each adorned with thin gold triangles that looked like teeth.

Quil's stomach sank at the sight. She was a Raan-Ruku. Strong in magic. Never to be crossed.

She stopped in front of Sirsha, and Quil held his breath as the woman looked Sirsha up and down, her lip curled.

"Traitorous," the Jaduna said again, drawing the word out, almost savoring it. She smiled, all teeth. "You'd know about that, wouldn't you, little sister?"