The Jasad Heir — Chapter no 11

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I was screaming, eyes shut tight, when the odor of rotten meat abruptly vanished.

I stayed frozen on the ground. Was she gone? I finally gathered the courage to crack my eyes open. The insects had vanished, and so had Hanim’s specter.

Heart in my throat, I forced myself into a seated position. The slash in Hanim’s throat had peeled back at the edges, curling like a second set of lips below her chin. It couldn’t have been her actual corpse—death magic had been eradicated centuries ago, in a rare moment of agreement between the kingdoms. Hanim’s appearance had been replicated down to the details.

Her long black hair, always pulled into a severe braid, and the way one eyebrow was slightly fuller and longer than the other. I had almost forgotten that Hanim was once beautiful.

Someone had conjured a likeness of her. Someone who knew how she died… and who killed her.

The dangerous Jasadi groups. What if he had been telling the truth?

Another worry lodged like an arrow in my gut. The “legions” Arin claimed the groups had slaughtered. What if the rumors about disappearances happening across the kingdoms weren’t rumors at all?

You thought the Jasadis wouldn’t hurt you? Hanim said, and my entire body flinched until I realized her voice was inside my head. You say you owe them nothing. If you are not their ally, you are their foe. You do not get the luxury of indifference in war.

War. I shook off the mud on my palms as forcefully as I wished to shake Hanim’s ravings from my head. Nizahl had defeated Jasad in its own lands.

Jasadis were scattered, hunted, afraid. Any tales of them scheming for a new war came from the mouths of lunatics. They were outnumbered and outmatched. The only war left was to survive.

A branch snapped. I spun around. The puppeteer for the magic-ridden

corpse must still be nearby. Why had they stopped before finishing me?

In the distance, a new sound raised the hair on my arms.

Hoofbeats.

Understanding hardened in my chest. There was only one person whose presence would scare a powerful Jasadi into ceasing their attack.

“May this night be damned right to the tombs,” I seethed, heaving to my feet. The world spun.

I couldn’t outrun him. I knew Essam better than almost anyone, but so did he. My best chance was to find Hirun and hope a ravine or gully appeared. Though with luck’s best efforts working against me, I would probably run right into the Jasadi trying to kill me.

I hurtled through the woods, heedless of the crunching leaves and my wheezing breath. He would know where I was headed no matter how well I masked my tracks. Spindly branches slapped against my face and naked arms, leaving thin white lines on my skin. Pockets of mud studded the ground, growing larger the farther east I traveled. The moon flickered between the branches, illuminating slivers of Essam between the stretches of shadow.

The scent of spoiled eggs and resin soured in my nose. Yes, yes! Hirun

was near.

But so were the hoofbeats.

The wind carried his smooth voice through the dark. “You must have an appetite for failure.”

Too close. He was too close. I pumped my arms. My bun unraveled, curtaining my vision in curls. I just needed to reach the river. It couldn’t be far.

A streak of mud caught my boot, shooting me forward. I careened right to the edge of a steep, pitch-black riverbank. I gasped, throwing my weight away from the crumbling cliff and crashing to the ground. Idiot! I had forgotten the small cliffs curving around the western bank of Hirun, eating into Essam with uneven, jagged lines.

My fingers skimmed against the bristly surface of a tree trunk. I scrambled upright, maintaining my hold on the tree. The dull roar of Hirun greeted my ears like the fondest song.

He couldn’t bring his horse. It was too slick to risk riding. He would almost certainly approach on foot. Unfortunately for him, I did not intend to

wait around.

I put my dagger between my teeth and pulled off my boots. They tumbled over the edge, crashing on the boulders below. I watched them disappear with a heavy heart. The last thing I brought with me from Mahair —gone.

You will have plenty of opportunity to be sentimental from the grave.

Climb! Hanim snapped.

A thin calfskin slipper covered the bottom of my foot and curled over my toes. I was grateful for its protection as I found a foothold. With an eye to the stones at the bottom of the riverbank, I started to climb.

The sole skill I had developed as the Jasad Heir came from my affinity for climbing. Afternoons sneaking from Usr Jasad to the courtyard outside and scaling our towering date and fig trees. I would climb to the very top and wave at Bakir Tower, imagining Niphran could see me from her tiny window. That Niphran would want to see me.

With a groan, I heaved myself onto the first branch thick enough to support my weight. I threw my leg over it and buried my face in the tree, heedless of the striations and hardened sap digging into my cheek. Let the dark swallow me from his sight. Let him forget to look up. Better yet, let him slide in the mud and right over the riverbank.

Below, unhurried footsteps crossed the spot where the mud stole my footing. I caged my breath.

“This is your last opportunity to minimize the damage you have done tonight,” Arin said. His voice came closer, and I struggled not to move my

head. Had he spotted me up here?

“Show yourself, suraira.”

Suraira again. I made a note to investigate the meaning of the Nizahlan word if I lived to see a new day. I was fluent in every kingdom’s original language, but certain dialectal words evaded me.

A long pause. A spider skittered over my elbow and onto my wrist. I didn’t dare breathe.

The soft neigh of his horse perplexed me. Had he brought it out here?

The terrain could barely support a human’s weight.

“I was mistaken in my original assessment of you. A Jasadi capable of hiding her magic from an entire village is restrained. Clever. But you insist on running in the dark, chasing monsters you are not prepared to face.” His

tone hardened, shedding its false amiability. Each word fell like the swing of an axe. “You want to be hunted?” A branch snapped somewhere below me. “Then I will gladly grant your wish.”

A strangled cry tore through my teeth as searing pain cleaved my calf.

“Son of a—” My hand flew to my leg, and there, inches above my ankle, was a knife. He stabbed me?

The knife throbbed with the blood flowing from my wound. Tossing aside my failed attempt to stay hidden, I pulled one arm from around the tree and turned to scour the ground for the Heir. How had he thrown a dagger with such force and accuracy that it found my leg?

My stomach turned to stone. With the reins in one hand and a hold on the lowest branch of the tree behind him, Arin stood on his horse’s saddle.

The cliff curved mere feet from its hooves. If it spooked, it could hurl its rider straight over the edge.

The moonlight weaved through his silver hair, loosened from its meticulous tie. Without his coat, freed from his perpetual mask of politeness, Arin of Nizahl was every inch a monster.

And he was staring directly at me.

Death had always scared me more than its fair share. I had watched it steal everyone I loved. I had guided its hand in taking the lives of others.

But one thing scared me more than death ever could: capture. Losing myself in the will of another, feeling my purpose crushed and re-molded to fit someone else’s plans. Hanim had torn the Heir of Jasad to parts. She needed a weapon, so she assembled me into one. The night before I escaped, I had pressed a dagger against the throbbing vein at my neck.

Death was a door, I told myself. An escape. One slice, and I would be free.

I killed Hanim that same night.

Arin was too strong for me to kill. What good was his offer of my freedom if it was a lie, a honey-soaked trap for the witless bear?

I wouldn’t be trapped again. I had cut and bled and fought for my freedom. I would rip his head from his shoulders with my teeth before I took his shackles.

Gripping the hilt of the dagger, I yanked it out of my leg, burying my cry in my shoulder. A fool’s move, to be sure. Depending on how deep the knife had wedged itself, removing it without a readily available tourniquet would endanger the entire limb.

Another knife slammed inches from my hand. Arin had ridden closer, looping the end of a rope around the base of my tree. “It is not mere caution stilling your magic, is it?”

I stifled my groan. Baira’s blessed beauty, was his goal to evoke my magic by riddling me with knives? I didn’t understand how it healed me last time, and I doubted it would bother to save me twice.

My leg cramped in protest as I hauled myself to the next branch. Blood dripped down the bark like grotesque sap. The wound bled freely, slicking the back of my heel. All I wanted to do was press my forehead to the tree and catch my breath again, but I didn’t have time. I anchored one arm around a thick fork of branches. With the other, I threw the bloody knife straight at the Heir.

My aim met true… in a sense. The knife sailed past Arin and sliced into his horse’s flank. It shrieked, rearing onto its haunches. Had Arin been seated, he would been thrown directly over the riverbank, his body smashed into the stones at the bottom.

I made an unintelligible noise of frustration as the rope in his hand went taut. He swung off the horse with disconcerting grace and landed at the base of my tree. His horse galloped off into the woods.

“You can’t use your magic. Someone or something has blocked it off.”

Arin’s laugh, devoid of any warmth or humor, sent shivers along my spine.

He retreated from my tree, and to my horror, began to climb the one right next to it. “How utterly miserable you must be.”

Why was he climbing the tree next to mine? I froze, unsure whether to climb higher or drop to the ground and outrun him on foot. He balanced himself on a branch parallel to mine, and I realized his intentions a split second too late.

A new dagger slammed into my arm, pinning me to the tree. I screamed, the sudden agony whiting out my vision.

You will not do this, Essiya, Hanim commanded. You will not allow the Supreme’s Heir to finish what his father started.

My cuffs tightened. I swallowed a sob. Everything hurt. I forced myself to look at the dagger. One good turn: it hadn’t hit bone.

But the next one might. He would cut and cut and cut at me until I crawled down in defeat. My blocked magic was an experiment to him, another string to tug and twist. He thought it would heal me. I did not know

how to explain that my magic cared less about my suffering than he did.

“I will not be trapped again,” I whispered.

A path to the finish appeared before me. A way to end this, one way or the other.

I stuffed the torn sleeve in my mouth and grasped the hilt of the dagger.

One breath. Two. I yanked the dagger from my arm, my muffled shriek reverberating in my ribs. My hand convulsed. Oh, it hurt, it hurt. Through blurry eyes, I watched the dagger tumble to the ground.

“You can climb down and end this whenever you want,” Arin said.

I spat the sleeve from my mouth. Fury cleared the haze of agony from my mind. He was so assured, so confident he would win. Why wouldn’t he be? Shedding Jasadi blood was his birthright.

For once, spite motivated me faster than fear. I peeled myself from the tree trunk. With my uninjured arm, I pushed myself away from the branch’s root. I scooted back—to the edge of the branch, directly above the riverbank. One stiff wind, and I would tumble over the side and splatter my insides on the stones below.

“What are you doing?” Astonishment underscored his harsh tone. He slid to the bottom of the tree and took a step toward me.

“Stop!” I shouted. “One more step and I’ll push myself off. You may think my magic might heal a few stab wounds, but can it knit together a broken body?”

In a blink, his expression went calm and steady. I wanted to slap it off.

Did he discard his frustration like a stray eyelash or merely push it down?

“You have lost a great volume of blood. I expect you have minutes until you faint. I will not be fast enough to catch you,” he said.

“Good.”

He took a step forward. Did he think I was making empty threats? I sealed my free hand around the branch and dropped to the side. I went airborne.

The branch crackled ominously, bending under the weight of my body.

The veins in my hand bulged with the strain of holding on. I dangled from the branch and felt the inexplicable urge to cackle. If this was how magic- madness felt, I understood why Rovial had wanted to burn the world down.

Arin had darted closer, but not close enough. If he took another step and I let go, I would hit the rocks before he reached me. A fuzziness had already

begun to encroach on the margins of my sight.

His manner remained unmoved. He proceeded as though we were sitting down to share a pleasant meal together. “What do you want?”

What I meant to say was “Your severed head rotating on a spit.”

What came out was significantly worse.

“Freedom. Real freedom.” The branch whined. I slid farther down, tightening my sweat-slickened fingers at the last minute.

“I offered you freedom, and you ran away.”

I scoffed. The beat of my heart slowed, becoming as heavy as the rest of me. “I have no need for your empty promises, Commander. Throw your clouds to the sky. I will keep my feet planted in the earth.”

“How can I convince you my word is true?”

I stared at him with open bewilderment. I had prepared to die in the river with the knowledge that the Heir’s offer of freedom meant nothing. Was this another game?

He started talking before I could form a coherent response. “Hundreds of people have disappeared in the last seven years, taken by two groups.

Forty-seven of them have been found dead. Likely killed by the same people who took them—Jasadi rebels calling themselves Mufsids.”

At some point, he had maneuvered closer. The woods had narrowed onto Arin, wreathing him in shadows, and I could not distinguish how much of it was due to my failing lucidity. Mufsids. I’d never heard the name before.

“You said… two.” My mouth resisted the onerous task of forming a sentence. I blinked, and when I opened my eyes, I had slid to the very last inch left of the branch.

“The others are the Urabi. A second Jasadi group, less violent than the Mufsids. The Mufsids and Urabi chase Jasadis throughout the four kingdoms, competing to recruit them for their cause. Whoever the Mufsids can’t successfully recruit, they murder. The Urabi steal their target without any trace, whether they come willingly or not. Both groups have only competed for the same person if they held some important post in Jasad.

Nobles, army officials, council members.”

Important post?

A distant alarm sounded behind the wall of my fatigue.

“And you think… they want… me?” It took everything not to close my eyes. If I did, they would not reopen, and I was starting to worry I had made

a grave error in judgment. What if everything the Heir said in the cabin was the truth?

“I am certain they do. Once I see my plan to the end, freedom is yours.

If you do not believe in my honesty, believe in my loss. If it is revealed I allowed a Jasadi to stand as Nizahl Champion in the Alcalah, it will cast my reputation and my throne into ruin.”

Skepticism etched itself into every line of my face. The best way to ensure no one ever found out his treason was to simply dispose of me after he captured the Mufsids and Urabi.

He plucked the next thorn of uncertainty before I could speak. “You will be constantly surrounded by guards if you win the Alcalah—independent guards from every kingdom who do not obey any command but yours. Not even mine.”

It didn’t matter. We both knew that if he wanted to kill me, he would.

Yet I found myself struggling to believe he would risk plunging his own kingdom into turmoil by murdering his Champion. If he accused another kingdom of killing me, it would be grounds for war. Even Felix, whose intelligence I admired less than a rutting pig’s, had not dared to lay a hand on me after Arin’s declaration.

The world swayed. My fingers strained around the branch. I could no

longer keep the darkness at bay.

“I believe you,” I slurred.

My last recollection before my hand slackened and my body dropped was of the Nizahl Heir running, sliding in the mud trail, and the collision of our bodies over the edge of the cliff.

OceanofPDF.com