Chapter 27

27

Sirsha

Sirsha still had a raging headache when Quil stood to fetch Loli Temba. She felt the hum of her Karkaun friend's magic, which lay like a protective net over the cave.

Try to get through that, R'zwana.

Sirsha didn't know why R'z had attacked—or how she'd managed to creep up without Sirsha realizing it.

But for whatever time Sirsha was here, in Loli's home, she was safe from the Jaduna. More importantly, if anyone could tell her about the killer she hunted, it was Loli.

Loli Temba strode into the room then, one of her odious drinks in hand.

"Did you miss me?" Sirsha grinned weakly, surprised when Loli remained silent.

The Karkaun sorceress knelt by the bed, pushing the drink into Sirsha's hand. The girl sniffed it and winced. It smelled like rancid fruit. But she knew the power of Loli's concoctions, so she drank it down. Almost immediately, Sirsha's pain eased. She marveled yet again at Loli's skill. The woman had plumbed magic most Jaduna hadn't even heard of. She was so deeply in tune with the earth around her that plants and even animals came to her aid as if they were an extension of her.

"I told you to stay away," Loli said when Sirsha handed her back the cup. "I warned you."

"You know I'm rubbish at following orders."

"Do you know what you've brought with you?"

"An empty stomach and dirty laundry?" Sirsha struggled up from the blankets tucked around her. Sufiyan and Arelia stood at Loli's side, equally grim. She looked for Quil, and found him leaning against the wall behind them, arms crossed, unreadable as ever. Confusion shot through her. When she'd awoken minutes ago, he'd seemed open. He looked at her like her secrets were the sea, and he was at home in dark water.

"I've brought you a passel of Martials." Sirsha shifted her attention to Loli Temba. "Don't tell me you share those old prejudices. Besides, that one's only half." She nodded at Sufiyan.

Loli never smiled or laughed much. Not with humans, anyway. Right now, she had a stern furrow in her brow.

"You brought evil with you, Sirsha. I felt my doom in the weave of the earth, and I warned you not to come. Why did you not listen?"

Sirsha felt the sting of rejection in her chest. She'd thought Loli cared for her more than this.

"I— Of course. We'll leave. My sister isn't your problem."

"I would fight your sister a thousand times for you, child!" Loli Temba said. "I do not fear Jaduna. But I do fear the killer you seek. For that is what chased you here, to me. That is what hunts you now."

Quil looked sharply at Loli Temba. "You said you didn't know what it was."

Loli Temba kept her gaze fixed on Sirsha. "They told me you were acting strange." Loli nodded to Sirsha's companions. "But that you didn't tell them why."

Sirsha felt her fingers tingle in anxiety now that she understood why they all looked upset. They knew she'd been deceiving them. After promising she had nothing to hide.

"I—" I did what I had to do , she nearly snapped. But something in Quil's stance shifted and he didn't look angry or forbidding. He looked…curious.

"I felt strange, but I didn't know why," Sirsha said. "Hunted. Sick. I felt…something in my head. I thought it was R'z. I've no idea what she's capable of—"

"You know your sister's magic," Loli Temba groaned at her. "How could you be so stupid?"

"We've been on the run for weeks," Quil said, steady but with that flash of steel that Sirsha found intriguing. "She was tired, and J'yan suppressed her magic in Jibaut. I'd thank you to leave off insulting her. She thinks too highly of you to say it herself."

Loli looked Quil up and down and nodded her head a fraction of an inch. Which, from her, was practically a declaration of fealty.

"Tell me everything you know about this creature you hunt." She turned to Sirsha. "Spare no detail."

"Her magic isn't familiar to me. She murders young people, mostly. Teenagers. Children. Burns out their hearts with a poker. She's left a trail of bones in the Tribal Lands, the Serran Mountains—even Jibaut. I felt her in Navium—that's when I realized she wasn't human."

"That was the first time her eyes turned white," Quil noted. "The second was right before you found us."

"Spirit magic," Loli Temba whispered, and Sirsha's heart sank. She'd spent enough time with Loli to know she couldn't abide ghost magic.

"But why did Sirsha faint?" Arelia asked. "Reactive force? Rajin's fifth law says that every action evokes an equal and opposite reaction. Would spirit magic interact with tracking magic in such a way?"

When she was young, Sirsha enjoyed arguing about magical theory. But Loli's anxiety was catching, and Sirsha didn't see how Rajin's fifth law would help.

"Maybe the killer is Karkaun," Sirsha said. That might explain why Sirsha hadn't tracked the magic easily. The Karkauns dabbled in things the Jaduna forbade. It had been years since Sirsha hunted one.

"If the killer is Karkaun, you must leave. I feel it—her circling. I cannot be discovered by my people. They will take me back, and they will make me pay for my defiance, all those years ago. You know this, Sirsha."

Sirsha nodded. If indeed it was a Karkaun warlock she tracked—and if the warlock had begun hunting Sirsha instead—then Sirsha would find the bitch and bind her.

"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."