Chapter 37

37

Quil

Quil promised himself he wouldn't brood about Sirsha. She could take care of herself. She had for years.

The moment you kill the Tel Ilessi, get out. Quil's worry was that he wouldn't be able to kill the man. That the Tel Ilessi would use his magic to best Quil in battle.

He'd have to strike quickly, mercilessly. Before the bastard could call up his sorcery. First, though, Quil needed to find some sign of him—a glut of guards, a cluster of flags, a pile of skulls…

The war camp was sprawled across the base of a hidden coastal valley, and Quil circled it twice. He noted the smaller Sails landing and taking off from the airfield, as well as transport Sails massive enough to move large numbers of troops and weapons.

It was only on the airfields that the Kegari appeared organized. As Quil entered the camp, slinking from shadow to shadow, his low opinion of the enemy sank further. The place appeared to be divided into smaller camps based on class and internal division, as opposed to the needs of a large army.

The northern quadrant had waterproofed tents, cleared lanes, and soldiers in fine armor. The sprawling southern quadrants had threadbare tents with goats and dogs running between them. The soldiers wore clothes Martials wouldn't use for rags.

Quil's skin crawled from the sheer disorganization. He'd spent ages learning about army encampment protocol. Where to corral horses and livestock, where to dig latrines, where to put the infantry versus the cavalry. At one point Quil had rolled his eyes at Elias.

Won't I have generals to handle this?

Elias had chuckled and then made Quil and the other students spend two weeks putting up a "test" encampment—complete with latrine trenches they had to dig and use themselves. Quil cursed his teacher at the time—even as the rest of Elias's students cursed Quil.

But now Quil understood why Elias insisted on those lessons. The Martial army could destroy this entire camp with a dozen Masks and a few hundred legionnaires.

Quil moved deeper into the camp, filching a tattered Kegari cloak and blue armband. Up close, he'd fool no one. But from afar, he was just another tired soldier.

He scoured his surroundings for some sign of the Tel Ilessi and had nearly completed a third circuit of the camp when he spotted a flash of color in the finer sector nearest the airfield. A square pavilion with a flag flying outside it: a sun with four beams and a woman in the center. Well hidden. Well guarded. It backed to a low cliff face with heavy wagons on either side, as if to block anyone trying to sneak in.

The tent was well lit and within, a familiar, broad-shouldered shadow moved. A haughty voice drifted out.

The Tel Ilessi.

Quil's body went taut with anticipation. Finally. Now to get in. His best shot was the side backing to the cliff. Big tents always had a bit of give when up against uneven surfaces. The moon had disappeared behind a bank of clouds, and the torches at the front of the tent left the back in shadow. No one would see him if he timed it right.

Quil watched the patrols and just after one passed, he slipped from his hiding spot and past the large wagon.

The moment he reached the cliff, he realized that in the darkness, the tent only looked as if it backed to the boulder. In fact, the boulder formed one entire wall—the tent had been cut and secured to it. It was impossible to sneak in from the back.

Quil stifled a string of curses, frozen as the clouds cleared and the moon illuminated the camp—including the intruder loitering near the most well-guarded tent in the place.

"Ih! Va tu fi arda!"

For a second, Quil and the Kegari guard twenty feet away simply stared at each other, incredulous.

The prince recovered faster. Suicide mission it is. He drew his scim and ripped through the canvas.

Behind him, a warning cry went up. As he shoved into the tent, Quil sheathed his scim with one hand and drew his bow with the other. In the blink of an eye, three arrows hurtled toward the only person in the room, who sat at a desk facing away from him.

The arrows did not hit their mark.

They stopped midair, inches from the figure's back. Then they fell to the floor, and Quil felt that strange pressure in the air he'd experienced back in Jibaut. He tried to move but found he could barely breathe.

The Kegari leader stood. He had no blade. No weapons that Quil could see. It was clear he did not need them. When three soldiers rushed into the tent, the Tel Ilessi jerked up his hand.

"Ivashk."

The soldiers backed away without so much as a glance at each other, bowing their heads.

The Tel Ilessi stepped into the light, even as Quil fought against the invisible bonds holding him in place. The man's pale skin and sharp features were familiar to Quil from their encounter in Jibaut. As then, the Tel Ilessi was cold-eyed, but instead of disdain, his expression was amused.

"I'd heard you were determined," he said in perfect Ankanese. "Not witless. I'll release the wind. I trust you'll not draw your weapon. Sit down. We have much to discuss."

Quil didn't sit. He pretended to sit—and then he hurled a throwing knife from his sleeve straight into the Tel Ilessi's shoulder.

The man gasped as the blade sank into his skin, and he staggered back.

Quil closed the distance between them in an instant, short daggers in hand. He took advantage of the Tel Ilessi's surprise to sweep his legs out from under him. The bastard would have died then. Died with his throat slit open and his blood soaking the rugs in this accursed tent.

But the wind came for Quil, and this time it threw him against the hard boulder at the back of the tent. Pain tore through his spine, his vision doubled, and his knees nearly gave out. He caught himself on a table, trying to keep upright.

"Enough, Cero. Do not toy with him."

Quil froze, not because of the wind, but because of the voice. He looked up at the armored figure stepping through the front of the tent. Small-boned. Short brown hair. Pale skin and light eyes.

"Hello, Idaka."

"No—" His mind couldn't comprehend this, because the last time he'd seen her alive, she'd been speaking to Elias in the middle of a sandstorm. The last time he'd seen her at all, she'd been in pieces, scattered across a cavern in one of the most haunted places in the Empire. He'd found a book he'd seen her looking at sometimes—completely blank. The ring she was never without. Her pack.

And Ruh.

But now he understood what this thing standing in front of him was. Not the girl he'd threatened with a scim the first time he saw her, only to find he couldn't stop thinking about her. Not the girl he'd kissed beneath the desert stars. Not the first girl he'd ever loved, her eyes full of secrets he relished discovering. Not Ilo.

"You monster," Quil hissed. "Where's Sirsha?"

The creature stepped forward. Skies, she looked just like the real Ilar. The killer had done this to Sirsha when she took the form of her mother.

I knew it was the monster from the eyes. She didn't have my mother's eyes.

Quil stared, expecting to see a glimmer of malice. But the false Ilar's eyes were only tired and sad and achingly familiar. Quil's magic stirred. Use me. Look inside her.

"Where is Sirsha?" he demanded again, ignoring the pull of his power.

The false Ilar looked away. "The Jaduna you've been traveling with?"

Quil strained against the wind holding him, veins popping from his neck and arms as he pushed against it. "Damn you, where is she?"

"I don't have her, Idaka," false Ilar said. "She's probably with Mother Div. If she's as clever as Div thinks she is, she might even survive."

"Who the hells is Div?"

"Sit down, Idaka—"

"Stop calling me that!"

"Please. Quil. I have wanted to speak to you for so long. To—to explain." She turned to the tall man. "Why didn't you call me when he appeared?"

The man—Cero—shrugged and then winced as he pressed a cloth to his bloody wound. "I wanted to see what kind of man captured your heart."

The creature sighed and called out, "Tvho Ina!"

Two guards appeared at the entrance to the gate, but unlike with Cero, they bowed their heads in deference, and thumped their hearts thrice with their fists.

"Rue la ba Tel Ilessi!"

Quil stared at them—they were treating this simulacrum of Ilar as if she were the Tel Ilessi. When she gave them orders, they complied immediately, escorting Cero away.

Quil pushed experimentally against the wind; it held him as tightly as before.

"You knew me as Ilar," the creature said. "The only name I ever chose for myself. The name I was born with was Aiz bet-Dafra. And the name my people have given me is Tel Ilessi. I beg you, if you loved the girl I was, if you cared about me at all, listen to what I have to say."

Whatever this creature was, she believed herself, at least. The prince nodded once. Quil could pretend to listen—and strike when she least expected it.

"Weapons on the ground, please."

She eased the wind enough that he was able to unsheathe his scim and the dagger at his waist.

"The sleeves, too, Idaka." She said his name like the real Ilar, the slight accent on the first a , the half smile so familiar that Quil felt sick.

He dropped the blades in his sleeves. But not the one in his boot. She said nothing more and sat in a three-legged chair, gesturing for Quil to take the seat across from her.

Then monster Ilar began to tell a tale, her voice as resonant as when she traveled with the Tribes. She spoke of a failed attempt to assassinate a vicious commander. Wasting away in the prison her people called the Tohr; an escape, a ship, a seer. Arriving in the Tribal Lands. Asking Laia for help, saying she was Ankanese, when all the while she was something else. Learning of the First Durani, a storyteller full of lies, who had locked away the spirit of a Kegari cleric.

Quil would never have believed her, perhaps. Would have conjured a hundred excuses for why she couldn't be Ilar.

But then she described Ruh.

"I knew he was special from the first moment I met him," she said. "The way he told stories, the way the desert itself held its breath to listen. Oh, Quil, how I mourn him. But no—I'm jumping ahead of myself…"

The night deepened as she spoke, the smell of food and sweat and beast dissipated by a coastal wind. The camp sounds faded to a low hum. Quil's magic reared again.

Read her. Then you will know the truth. Get inside her mind. If she's not human, you will discern it.

Quil tried to resist. He feared what he would find. Yet he knew it was the only way to know if she really was Ilar, or if the monster had created an elaborate illusion. So, as the creature droned on, Quil spoke to his magic.

Show me , he said. Show me what she is.

His power flared and expanded, a flower opening to the sun. Then he was inside the false Ilar's memory as if he was her, his own consciousness in stasis as his magic carried him fully into her thoughts.

Tiral died quicker than Aiz wanted him to.

After Aiz released Div to feed—after the first flood of power rushed through her body, she wrapped the wind around Tiral's throat and squeezed. Tiral gasped and dropped to his knees as the entire airfield watched, silent. So many Snipes among them, starving and ragged and broken. Not for much longer , Aiz vowed in her mind. Not while I breathe.

Tiral grinned. "You used—the book—" he gasped. "Knew you would. It's why I didn't hunt you. Didn't need to."

Aiz's hold on the wind loosened.

"I was chosen," Aiz said. Tiral looked small this close to death. Aiz only ever feared him because she'd been a powerless child. Now she was a force even the mighty Tiral bet-Hiwa couldn't defeat. "Mother Div chose me instead of you. You dared to claim the mantle of the Tel Ilessi and Div knew ."

Tiral wheezed, tears leaking down his face, and she thought it was a death rattle until he grinned. "Spires, but you're a fool," he said. "I wish I could live, just to watch it eat you alive."

"Watch from the hells, apostate." Aiz remembered choking on the smoke of Tiral's fire long ago, wailing as the orphans' wing burned, listening to the cries of her friends—her family—fade. For years, she'd wanted this. To watch him hurt. Suffer.

But as she squeezed the life out of him, as he fell silent, she felt no satisfaction. Only a vague sense of emptiness. A hunger for something more.

Div's hand settled on her back, heavy and cold. Aiz sighed, thankful for the comfort.

Then she used the wind to rip Tiral's head clean from his body. The crowd gasped as she held it up, blood pouring from the stump.

"I am Aiz bet-Dafra," she roared with the same conviction with which she'd told the Nine Sacred Tales in the Tohr. "Daughter of the evening star, tale-spinner of the Tohr, and chosen of Mother Div. I am your Tel Ilessi."

She said the words because she knew they were true. Had she not healed herself from her fall at the Aerie, months ago? Had she not dreamt of Quil discovering the chamber, seen into his very mind? The skills might be rusty, perhaps, but—

"You will learn," Mother Div said. "I will teach you. Your people need a leader, Aiz. They need you."

The Kegari roared their approval; the flight squadrons looked on, uncertain of what to do now that their commander was dead. Aiz wondered what Quil would say if he could see her now. My Ilo. It felt like a different life when he said those words.

Am I still your Ilo, covered in blood, Quil?

One day, she would travel to the Empire, not as a fugitive but as an envoy of the Kegari. She and Quil could speak as equals about the sacrifices required to save one's people. If anyone could understand why she did what she did, it was a fellow leader.

Footsteps approached. The Triarchs. She threw Tiral's head at their feet as some in the crowd roared, "Kill them! Death to the Triarchs!"

Aiz was unsurprised when Triarch Hiwa, Tiral's father, stepped over the head, appearing only mildly perturbed.

"We thank you for freeing us from the farce that my son inflicted on us with the support"—he glared at High Cleric Dovan, on her knees and regarding Aiz with awe—"of these so-called clerics. You will be rewarded."

Div prowled behind Hiwa, hand on her nose as if to ward off a foul stench.

"He plans to kill you and the clerics," Div said. "Already he has made a pact with the others. End him, Aiz. Before his poison spreads."

A rush of power filled Aiz, cool and sweet. She did not use it. As awful as the Triarchs were, they understood the running of Kegar and its armies. After hearing Quil speak of all he had to learn, Aiz knew the Triarchs would be useful.

"Tiral manipulated the Nine Sacred Tales for his own gain," she told the Triarchs. "He burned the cloister, murdered Snipe children, and imprisoned and tortured our clerics." Aiz nodded to High Cleric Dovan, who bowed her head. "They supported him out of fear. That doesn't make them weak. It makes Tiral evil."

"Yes, yes," Triarch Oona said. "He was a fool and a cheat, but it was the clerics who—"

"You are no better!" Aiz's anger exploded. "You cast away Snipes and Sparrows alike as if we were nothing but dirt."

A roar of agreement from the crowd.

"You're supposed to lead us. Care for us. But you don't. It's the clerics who protect us. There are so many who would have nothing if not for the cloisters."

Aiz wrapped the wind around the necks of the Triarchs. They all reached for their own windsmithing immediately, but Aiz yanked it away.

"No more." Aiz's voice trembled. "I am the Tel Ilessi, and thus I declare that we are all children of the evening star. We are all beloved to Mother Div. No Kegari shall suffer more than another simply because of where they were born."

The Triarchs' silence was strategic. They would eventually plot against her. But she and Div could tackle that. If the Triarchs knelt, so would the rest of the highborns.

She transformed the wind into fists and turned them on the Triarchs' backs. Oona gasped, resisting; Hiwa paled. But then Triarch Ghaz dropped to his knees, bowing his curly head. The rest followed, and Aiz didn't have to exert her will upon the clerics or the pilots, on the people in the airfield, or those who, hearing that something momentous was occurring, now streamed from the streets of the city to watch.

By tens and hundreds and thousands, her people knelt.

A familiar and beloved voice spoke up from among the pilots. Cero stood, hand on his heart. He thumped his chest three times. "Tel Ilessi!" he shouted. "Tel Ilessi!"

A second voice rang from the crowd, its strength belying the frail body that carried it. Sister Noa. "Tel Ilessi! Tel Ilessi!"

Another voice took up the chant and another until it was a roar that shivered the dais.

"Tel Ilessi! Tel Ilessi! Tel Ilessi!"

Tears spilled down Aiz's cheeks as she looked out at their faces. She would not let them remain on this treacherous, lifeless spit of land. She would not let them starve here. They would find a way to their true home. Aiz would get them the Loha to do so.

They would need bigger Sails. Better ones. Cero was brilliant enough to engineer them. Aiz would reach a hand to the Empire for aid, and if they didn't reach back, she would force them to give her Loha with her newfound power.

Div had brought her people here a millennium ago. Now their Tel Ilessi would take them home.

"Gather the clerics," Aiz said to Dovan. "I would speak to them. And you—" She turned to the Triarchs. "Call up the leaders of the Hawk clans. I wish them to know the future I see. Are there any Ankanese in the city? Any seers?"

Triarch Ghaz was the quickest to nod. "Ambassador Danil and his retinue."

"Tell the ambassador that the true Tel Ilessi wishes to speak with Dolbra." Aiz thought of everything the woman had told her, the earnestness of her narrow face as she spoke. "We will need outside allies in this effort, and she has aided me once before. I believe she will again."

"Tel Ilessi?"

Noa's voice was so timid that Aiz almost didn't recognize it. But when she turned, her dear friend was making her slow way up the dais stairs, Olnas at her side.

Aiz enveloped them both in a hug, breathing in the familiar wet-wool scent of them.

"I didn't know if I'd ever see you again," she whispered. "I feared—"

"Our little Aiz, the Tel Ilessi!" Olnas wept freely, as if witnessing a miracle. "How, child? How did this—"

"Don't pester her with questions, love!" Noa batted Olnas away. "Let me look at you, my girl—"

Her wrinkled old face was full of affection when she took Aiz's cheeks in her hands. But her smile faded the longer she looked, and after a moment, she dropped her arms.

And took a step back.

"Aiz," she said quietly. "What has this cost you?"

In that moment, Aiz could have said a dozen things. She could have lied. She could have ignored Noa's question entirely. But she'd lied for months. Now, facing the woman who was like a mother to her, the truth was all she had.

"Too much, Sister," she said. "But it's too late to take it back now."

Cero appeared then, openly circumspect. He would have questions, Aiz knew. More than anyone else, he would prod her about the source of Mother Div's power. But she would deal with that later. Now she must think only of what was next for her people. Not questions Cero would have. Not the shadow of the little boy who helped her discover Mother Div. Not the Kegari children who'd died moments ago to feed Mother Div's need. Not Noa seeing something no one else saw, the rot at Aiz's core.

But even as Aiz tried to push away her disquiet, one word that Mother Div had uttered gnawed at her.

Your people need a leader.

Not our .

Your.

The images faded, and Quil returned to the war camp, to the Tel Ilessi pacing before him, still absorbed in whatever paltry excuses she was making for herself.

Strange that the whole world still existed outside this tent when everything he believed had been shattered. Quil felt apart from himself, as if watching from above, because the horror of being in his body and experiencing this betrayal was too staggering.

The memory told Quil all he needed to know. Ilar—or Aiz—was telling the truth. She was possessed by no demon other than her own ambition. She'd stood by as the creature she'd bound herself to—Mother Div—murdered Ruh and countless others. She'd bartered her humanity for power.

Ruh! Sweet, trusting Ruh who had tried to help Aiz. Quil's eyes went hot as he remembered Elias's broken sobs when Quil told him his son was gone. Laia's keening. Sufiyan's silence. All because of this… thing standing in front of him, feeling sorry for herself.

She might wear Ilar's skin, but she wasn't Ilar anymore. She'd never been Ilar. She'd never loved Quil, not truly. And it wasn't just her betrayal Quil reeled from. The Ankanese had been allied with Kegar all this time. Quil recognized the seer in Aiz's memory the moment she thought of the woman's face. Ambassador Ifalu—supposed friend to the Martials. Skies only knew how much damage she'd caused.

A crawling, full-body disgust gripped Quil. He'd been such a fool. Skies, everything he'd told her about Navium and Antium and Serra. About his aunt. About the drums and the Masks. Aunt Hel thought there was a spy among them. But it had been him. He hadn't even known it.

His chest twisted as he grieved again, not just for the girl who died in that terrible chamber, but for the boy he'd been, naive and starry-eyed enough to believe she was who she claimed to be. For Ruh, who had trusted them all, not knowing the fiend they'd allowed in their midst.

But now Quil knew. And he didn't have time for questions or stunned disbelief or even horror. That instinct bred into him from birth told him he'd have one chance to kill her. And it would only work if her guard was down.

So, Quil made himself look at the Tel Ilessi, listen—and wait.