The Jasad Heir — Chapter no 13

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The first week tested my limits. How fast could I run on land? How nimbly could I maneuver in rushing water? How far could I throw? Every evening I fell into bed convinced I had reached the peak of exhaustion, only to be disproven the following night. If it hadn’t been for the drawings Jeru delivered to my room, I would have written off the exercises as another peculiar viciousness of the Commander.

“What are these?” I asked as I spread the pages on my bed. Jeru dutifully remained behind the threshold. White chalk dusted the top of his curls.

“A collection of Lukubi artists created drawings of the tournament dating back centuries. A gift for Sultana Vaida. His Highness thought you should study them.”

“In my plethora of free time?” I was intrigued despite myself. I unwrapped the strip of rabbit hide bundling the parchments. Some of the pages were yellow with age. “How did they come into the Heir’s

possession?”

“He borrowed them from her.”

Of course. Because the ruler of Lukub, rumored to be the most vicious Sultana since the Howling Crown, was friendly with Arin. He borrowed precious parchments from her and probably advised her on the best torture techniques over a hearty meal.

Jeru veered down the hall before I could press for more.

The sketches were divided by trial, then by year. I flipped through the images of the first trial, my curiosity morphing into apprehension with each new set of Champions. The number of Champions dropped from five to four suddenly, and I knew the bottom sketches had been done after the Blood Summit.

I traced the shaded drawings of the forested Orban canyon. The artist had used a knife to press ridges into the trees, the grim-faced Champions

posed beneath its sinister branches. Ayume was an Orbanian forest where the first trial would be held, brimming with the horrors wrought by Dania’s ancient war magic. Dania was a master hunter, as austere in life as she was brutal in battle. Orbanians commemorated her with a trial testing physical endurance in the heart of the forest where she’d waged her most infamous battle.

A corner of the parchment chipped when I turned the page. Black chalk sliced across the cover, and the words Dar al Mansi titled the top. The second trial had changed in recent years. In the new one, Champions entered an abandoned village in Omal and fought off the magical creatures released within its borders. Not only did the Champions need to cross the village in one piece, they needed to acquire three trophies from their kills to proceed. The second trial served as a grisly celebration of Awala Kapastra and her vulgar pets, held in her home kingdom.

I followed the line of Al Anqa’a’s fiery glass wings with my thumbnail.

The sketches depicted Champions in the second trial carried away by the massive bird as claws sharper than any sword closed around the helpless Champions. Those who evaded Al Anqa’a were torn apart and eaten by the nisnas, a ghoulish humanlike creature with lumbering limbs on one side and spikes of dangling flesh on the other. The artist outlined the other monsters lurking in the periphery, jealously watching the nisnas reach a Champion first.

What was he hoping I’d learn from this? I flipped away from the second trial, sickened, to the third. The third trial would be held between the final two Champions remaining. In honor of Awala Baira’s talent for illusions, the Champions would be given elixirs to bring visions springing up around them. In a pit of sinking sand, the Champion with the strongest will would parse through the real and the hallucinations before the sand swallowed them whole or the other Champion cut them down.

Ten minutes later, I stormed into the training center and threw the paintings on top of the weapons chest. Jeru and Wes paused their swordplay, wearing the fatigue of new parents taking their squalling child to

the shop. “Where is he?” I demanded.

Wes pursed his lips. “Not here. Why?”

I gestured at the sketches. “If Lukub is hosting the Banquet, then the third trial will be in Nizahl.”

The guards exchanged a glance. “Yes,” Wes said slowly. “Baira’s trial will be held in Nizahl.”

Jeru’s thick brows drew together. “You are the Nizahl Champion; did you think you could avoid visiting the kingdom you’re competing for?”

The question circled in my head. In the whirl of change, I had not stopped to consider I would be meeting Supreme Rawain again. The man who slaughtered my family, who eviscerated Jasad, would be delivered glory by the very same Heir he had failed to kill.

I walked out without another word. My surroundings dipped in and out of focus. If I failed in the Alcalah, Felix’s ego would not rest until my head was mounted on Mahair’s flag post. If I did win, I would be granted a Victor’s immunity, but I would be spitting on the grave of every Jasadi cut down by a Nizahl sword. Which I could have borne, were it not for the fact that apparently, two groups of Jasadis probably suspected I was the Heir.

Perhaps they were even stupid enough to want me at the helm of their pointless cause. What other reason could they have for chasing me?

Certainly not the draw of my magic.

At some point, I had slid down the wall in the hallway. I wrapped my arms around my knees, and a part of me noted this fit could have been delayed for the ten steps it took to reach my room. I started to laugh.

If Arin knew the real reason the Mufsids and Urabi were competing, if he thought for even just one second that the Jasad Heir was alive and living two halls away from him—I laughed harder. They’d have to scrape what was left of me off the walls. He was not a man who played the odds, and the risk that the Mufsids or Urabi could capture me and lend legitimacy to their cause was too great.

Maybe they didn’t hope to recruit me. It was entirely possible they simply wanted to kill me themselves. Take their well-deserved revenge on the Heir who had forsaken them.

“Careful, sire,” came Vaun’s voice, but it seemed to emerge from a narrow tunnel. “Her kind lash out during outbursts.”

I trained you to lead Jasad, and he is training you to betray it. What freedom can you gain after this? Where can you go where Essiya won’t follow? Hanim’s words bled into my thoughts, until I could not distinguish what was mine and what was Hanim’s. I became vaguely aware of a shape settling in front of me in the hall. I cringed, drawing my knees closer. I hope

you perish in the very first trial. Sylvia is worthless, and if you succeed as Nizahl’s Champion, Essiya will be, too.

How did they know where to find me? Why would they conjure Hanim’s rotting specter if they meant to recruit me? I could not guess where to begin to make sense of any of it. There was only one truth amidst the chaos.

I should never have stayed in Mahair so long. I would not have loved Fairel nor cared for Rory’s good opinion. Sefa and Marek would have remained untouched by the horrors of their past.

Everything you touch, you ruin, Hanim said.

When Hanim’s voice had grown hoarse, and the disjointed laughter trickled to a stop, I slowly settled into myself. My shattered thoughts knit together, their seams red with Hanim’s venom but mine once more. I unfurled from my pose, rubbing sensation into my tingling muscles. I was afraid of how much time might have passed.

The shadows shifted, and I nearly shrieked at the dark figure seated on a chair near the opposite wall. My vision adjusted to the dim light. I found myself staring into Arin’s impassive face.

“Have you returned?” he asked.

I leaned my head against the wall. Vaun was nowhere to be seen, and I wondered how long Arin had sat there. “I never left.”

He stood, the bottom of his coat rippling around his boots. “Yes, you did.”

That night, I paced. Barefoot on the cold stone, hair freed from my braid, in the same dirty clothes I’d trained in. I traveled up and down the halls, losing myself in the complicated maze of tunnels winding through the complex.

The blue light inside the walls followed me, so reminiscent of the gold streaks in Jasad’s fortress that I bit my lip. Every now and then, I would spot one of the guards from the corner of my eye. They were keeping watch from a distance. I was grateful for the space.

My first year in Mahair, I’d skulked around the village every night until sunrise. Memorizing escape routes, finding the corners to duck into when

Nizahl soldiers passed. The perimeters of the village had seemed enormous.

I had spent ten years comfortable in the opulence and majesty of Usr Jasad, followed by half a decade living in a hollowed-out tree infused with Hanim’s magic to fit exactly two cots and stacks of scrolls.

“Go back to your room. Now.” Vaun’s voice gave him away before he turned the corner.

I was too exhausted to handle Vaun. The other guards left me alone.

Why couldn’t he? “You first.”

His lips curled back, and he stepped toe-to-toe with me. I ignored the urge to antagonize him further and ground out, “I can’t sleep. Walking calms me down.”

“I did not ask for your worthless opinion. Return to your room. If you leave again, I will drag you before His Highness myself.”

Loathing trickled over my lethargy. I hated every Nizahl soldier, but Vaun—Vaun represented a type I despised above all else. The kind of soldier who thrilled in the ounces of power the colors on his uniform lent him. The kind for whom inflicting misery was not a byproduct of necessity, but the purpose. Vaun was a soldier who would learn about merchants selling Jasadi bones and give the offenders a wink.

I glanced at my cuffs. The silver shifted, tightening around my wrists.

My magic was upset. Why? Why now and not during breakfast, when Vaun called me a dog’s whore?

“I was not given orders from your Commander to remain in my room at all times,” I said. I didn’t flinch from his pungent breath or cower to his sad attempts to raise himself taller than me. “And I certainly do not take orders from you.”

Wes appeared behind Vaun. The older guard rubbed his eyes and yawned. “Vaun, enough. Jeru and Ren are maintaining watch. We were not ordered to confine her.”

Vaun didn’t budge. Ah—now I understood. I turned my chin and met Wes’s exasperated gaze. “He is baiting me. He wants me to attack him so he has an excuse to drag me before the Heir.”

The furrow on Wes’s brow deepened. He reached for Vaun’s arm. Before he could make contact, Vaun settled a hand on my waist.

I tensed harder than if he had spit in my face. I pushed his hand off.

“Don’t touch me,” I hissed.

Keep your calm, Essiya, Hanim cautioned. He is goading you.

The next hand was on my arm. I tried to shove past him, but he clasped my elbow. His other hand went to my stomach, right above my navel. Any measure of composure sizzled to nothing.

Hanim tossed a rag. “Press it over the wound and stop crying. You shouldn’t have let it catch you.”

I turned my face into my hair. She hated the sight of my tears. I almost never cried anymore, but the pain—this pain eclipsed any I had known before it. My blood poured over my hands, soaking the rag in seconds.

Hanim crouched next to me and pried my hands away from my stomach.

A sharp inhale whistled through her teeth. “Dania’s rusted axe, Essiya, what did you do?”

“I w-wanted to let it get c-close enough,” I moaned. Hot tears slid over my temples and into my hair. “I cut its head off. Like you said.”

I faded in and out of consciousness as Hanim loomed over me, working to wrap my torso in strips of linen and rabbit hide. A bubble of happiness rose above my agony. She cared. She didn’t want me to hurt.

A sting on my cheek pulled my eyes open. Hanim slapped me again.

“You do not get to die,” she snapped. Her eyes were pitiless. “Death is not

for those with debts to repay.”

“Sylvia! Sylvia, stop!”

I became aware of arms winding around my chest, holding me back.

Vaun was on the ground, clutching his bleeding nose. I shoved Wes away.

My back hit the wall.

“I told him not to touch me.” I sounded delirious even to my own ears.

“I told him.”

Vaun surged to his feet and knotted a fist in my hair. He yanked hard, knocking me to the ground. “She will be taken to His Highness.”

Wes watched Vaun maneuver my kicking form down the corridor with no small amount of disbelief. He didn’t follow.

Vaun dragged me down the hall with both hands in my hair. The stone scraped and tore at me, and he moved too fast for me to try standing. I kept my hands in my hair, trying to minimize the pressure against my scalp.

Each time I resisted, he yanked harder, and my eyes watered.

He released one hand to shove open a door. I was tossed onto a thick blue rug.

“My liege, I apologize for interrupting you so late in the evening. I discovered the Jasadi exploring the tunnels and behaving evasively. When I questioned her, she turned violent. She clearly has intentions to cause you harm.”

I used the wall to hoist myself to my feet. Seated in an armchair by the window, very much looking like he’d planned to retire for the night, was the Nizahl Heir. Without looking up, he closed the text on his lap and set it to the side.

“He is lying,” I said, but it emerged tired and without any fire. What did it matter? He would not take the word of a Jasadi over his own guardsman.

Arin ignored me. “Did she express these intentions to you?”

Vaun shifted. “No, of course not, but—”

“Was she wielding a weapon when you apprehended her?”

Vaun and I were equally baffled. “She means you ill, sire!”

“I am certain she does.” He tapped the arm of the couch. The sight of Arin’s bare hand was startling. “Many do. Arresting them all would be a

lofty task indeed.”

“She—”

“She is not easily provoked,” Arin said. “Aside from her fits and failures of humor, the Jasadi is not prone to rabid reactionism.”

I frowned. Failures of humor?

“He put his hand on my waist.” I stared straight at Vaun, not bothering to hide my vindictive satisfaction. He had dragged me to the Heir only to have his own legitimacy questioned. “When I told him not to touch me, he put a hand on my stomach.” I spoke the last part through clenched teeth, resisting the instinct to wrap my arms around my middle. “I am a weapon for the Heir, and you will treat me with the dignity you afford a sword, if not a person. You are not meant to wield me.”

Arin’s gaze slid to Vaun and hardened. Though his voice didn’t change, a frigid chill swept through the room. “You put your hands on her.”

Vaun dropped his chin, which I imagined to be the Nizahl version of wringing one’s hands. “I had no other option, my liege. She would not return to her room.”

I wanted to lunge at him, tear his sinew with my teeth and stomp his chest into a feast for the dogs. “I am here because I chose it, not because you have trapped me, you pus-ridden swine b—”

I fell silent as Arin approached. He was wearing a thin black shirt and pants, light fare compared to his usual layers of black and violet. Silver hair fell around his jaw, highlighting the fading bruise on his cheekbone. His ability to intimidate wasn’t softened by his relaxed attire. Vaun fell to a kneeling position, lowering his head. “Forgive me, my liege. I acted without consulting you.”

“Yes, that much seems apparent,” Arin said. “Leave. We will discuss this at a more appropriate juncture.”

Vaun glanced up. “What should I do with the girl?”

“You should do what I ask and only that.” Again, Arin remained perfectly pleasant, but Vaun paled like the Heir had personally called for his beheading. “Go.”

I massaged the roots of my hair with a wince. First the Nizahl soldier in the woods, now Vaun. My scalp had taken a beating in the last two weeks.

I remained close to the door, carefully avoiding glancing at Arin. I didn’t want to risk exiting into the hall with Vaun still nearby, so I took my time studying the Heir’s room. There wasn’t much to see. A tall wardrobe, a bed only slightly bigger than my own, a tiny square table no wider than a book, and a much larger table covered in inkwells and partially unrolled maps. I wondered what he thought of the tiny table. They were once a staple in every Jasadi household, folded and tucked behind the furniture until a guest arrived. The host would place a saucer and an aromatic, palm-size cup of ahwa on that table, maybe slide a plate of biscuits or kunafa beside it. I’d loved the smell of ahwa, though the one time I’d tasted it I’d spat it right out. But Soraya would still sneak me empty cups from the kitchen so I could sniff the leftover dark sludge like a candle.

I couldn’t seem to get Jasad out of my head lately. Surrounded by Nizahlans wasn’t the optimal setting to be dwelling on my former home.

A small box at the corner of the small table held the Nizahl royal seal and a bottle of wax. I picked it up. The seal was untainted iron, heavy in my palm. Molded into the bottom were two swords clashing. A raven emerged where the swords met, its wings unfurling on each side. I traced its

contours, mesmerized.

“Careful,” Arin said. “Wax burns.”

The seal fumbled in my grip. I dropped it, trying to claw at the fog over my senses. Navigating a conversation with the Heir drained me on a good

day, and today was far from good.

“What do you use this for?” I held up the seal, expecting him to wrench it from my grip and toss me from the room.

“My maps.” He satisfied a part of my prediction and held his hand out for the seal. I dropped it into his palm, careful to maintain distance from his

bare skin.

“Can I see them?”

Arin regarded me for a long minute. I squared my chin, anticipating some remark on my literacy or intelligence.

He pivoted to the map table. I blinked at his back.

“Well?” he said. “Come and see.”

I tripped over my feet in my rush. Dozens and dozens of maps sprawled over the table’s broad surface. A pitcher full of a lavender liquid sat in the corner with the inkwells.

I couldn’t believe he was allowing me to see this. The Commander’s maps were almost as infamous as his gloves. Some of the sketches were undoubtedly collected by the Nizahl spies scattered across the kingdoms, but I doubted he placed a high value on them. His nature did not seem to allow for anything less than absolute perfection. And of course, absolute perfection could be rendered only by him.

“What do you want to see?”

“Anything. Everything.”

“Decide.”

The name flew from my mouth on reckless wings. “Jasad.”

The Heir paused. I thought he would refuse until he pulled out a scroll tucked at the bottom of the organized stack and spread it over the table. The map covered the smaller maps beneath it. Fitting, since Jasad had possessed all the territory east of Hirun and north of Sirauk. Where the kingdom had once stood was the new Nizahl-approved name for Jasad.

Scorched Lands.

My cuffs strangled my wrists. This, at least, I could understand: my magic reacted to grief. Grief about a kingdom I had barely known before I lost it. Before it was used to define and damn me.

“I can feel my magic,” I said with the detachment I’d use to remark on the weather. Reporting the fluctuations in my magic had been one of his first requirements after my escape attempt.

Arin dragged his thumb over the area where Hirun bisected Jasad’s southern wilayahs. I might have thought he was uninterested if it weren’t for the slight lift of his left eyebrow. “First Fairel, then your friends, now a map of the Scorched Lands. You haven’t noticed a connection?”

Grief. Rage. Fear. But I usually felt all three without my magic reacting.

“No.”

Arin hummed. He didn’t believe me. It would have bothered me had I not been so confident my conjectures didn’t matter. They were like the sketches drawn by the spies: glanced over and discarded in favor of Arin’s own skill.

“Why did you defend me?” At Arin’s glance, I clarified. “With Vaun.”

He faced me, balancing a hip against the table. I trained my attention on the map of Jasad. I didn’t want to ask, but I knew the question would eat at me. There were enough mysteries haunting my sleep.

“I did not defend you. I defended my laws.” He tapped a scroll written in swirling script, pinned to the front of the table. First Decrees of Arin of Nizahl, Commander in Power and Heir.

It was a list of immediate revisions to the governing code of Nizahl soldiers. I scanned the list quickly, eyebrows rising higher with each line.

The provisions in this scroll prevented Nizahl soldiers from acting as the final authority in judging a Jasadi. If a confrontation with one was inevitable, the soldier was to do everything in their power to prevent harm or death. Only if the soldier’s life would be forfeit were they permitted to use fatal force.

I remembered the soldier responsible for killing Adel blanching at the sight of his Commander. Now it made sense. An entire village had watched him and his partner violate the Heir’s decree and pummel Adel to death for

merely tossing the soldier a few feet.

The next line made me laugh.

“Any physical or emotional mistreatment of Jasadi captives, including but not limited to beating, tying, cutting, spitting, baiting animals to attack them, sexual threats, sexual violence—” I snorted. “Vaun would sooner sexually touch a dead fish.”

“He laid hands on a captive. His intentions are irrelevant.”

My teeth dug deep enough into my lower lip to draw blood. “Stop calling me a captive. I am here by choice.”

“I thought it would make it easier for you. Thinking of yourself as a captive might remove some of the guilt of betraying your own kind. Or is guilt beyond you?”

He thought he could prod at my loyalties, but I had none. Not anymore.

Where loyalty might have existed lived only an echoing regret. Niyar’s ashen face as he bid me to flee, Palia’s scream behind me. My mother, assassinated alone in her tower. The bodies I had never buried.

Loyalty meant nothing when it was for the dead.

Arin continued, “Then again, perhaps it is a sign of your shrewdness that you care so little. Jasad was always damned. A kingdom so mired in treachery is the architect of its own ruin.” He bowed over the map, bracing his weight on his knuckles.

Mired in treachery? Now I was sure he wanted a reaction. Jasad was the only kingdom without twisted court politics and double-dealing deceptions.

I turned to face him. This was the closest we had been without someone actively bleeding. I would be happy to rectify that.

“No one follows your edicts. Why would they? Your father controls the courts, and the soldiers know any Jasadi they capture will be put to death immediately. Jasadis are guilty by existence.”

The scar curving beneath his jaw caught the lamplight. “Do you deny your nature?”

Disgust suffused my words. “What nature? If you mean my tendency to violence, it is no greater than yours.”

To my shock, a small smile curved the corner of his lips. “Perhaps. But there will never come a day where my nature will overcome my mind.

There is no magic in my veins that will turn poisonous and drive me to madness.”

I shook my head. What was I doing, wasting my breath reasoning with Supreme Rawain’s son? Rawain was hardly the first Supreme to work against Jasad—he was just the most successful. Jasadi magic had been hated and feared for centuries, and it was only a matter of time until they devised a reason to invade strong enough to overpower their guilt. The Blood Summit killed a dozen royals, including Supreme Rawain’s wife— Arin’s mother.

He would never suspect what I knew to be true. Arin would never believe his father was behind the deaths at the Blood Summit.

“For someone so convinced of his own brilliance, you do seem to neglect quite a glaring flaw.”

He stayed quiet. Refusing to engage me. I didn’t care.

“You think your mind is a blank slate, where you can build your own networks of information from scratch, through pure logic and reason. You ignore that each child enters a completely unique world, founded on different truths. We build our reality on the foundation our world sets for us.

You entered a world where magic is corrosive and Jasadis are inherently evil. I entered one where turning a shoe into a dove made my mother laugh.

Have you considered, in that infinite mind of yours, that the truly brilliant people are the ones who understand the realities we build were already built for us?”

My muscles locked in anticipation. Had I spoken with such impertinence to any other Heirs or royals, I would be on my knees with a sword at my jugular. Even my grandfather would have belted my hands, or at the very least banished me to my quarters.

Arin, expression thoughtful, poured the lavender liquid from the pitcher into a chalice and passed it. “Here.”

With a sizable helping of bewilderment, I accepted the chalice. Better than a sword. I sniffed the drink. The smell burned my nose, far stronger than any ale in Mahair’s taverns. Under Arin’s watchful gaze, I tipped the chalice into my mouth, swallowing with a grimace. Ugh. Eating dirt after a fresh rain would probably taste better.

“You are not what I was expecting,” Arin said. He drained his chalice and set it aside carelessly. It dawned on me, embarrassingly slow: this was not his first drink of the night. Each of these drinks was likely as strong as three ales. Even in a diminished state of reason, the man possessed more restraint than the entirety of the kingdom combined.

I hated him for more reasons than I could ever name. But his restraint— it infuriated me beyond sense. How do you predict the patterns of a river that never floods, never ebbs or flows?

Hanim’s years of discipline had failed to corral my reactive nature. What training must he have endured to become this way?

Arin reached around me. I recoiled, acutely aware of his bare hands. But he only unfurled a new map, smoothing it over the first. I pulled in a breath.

Was it—

JASAD, the new map proclaimed, the letters bold and golden. A line weaved around the border where our impenetrable fortress had once loomed, barricading Jasad from Essam and any outside threats. The fortress was keyed to every Jasadi citizen’s magic to allow us to pass freely through the fortress, like it was nothing more than shining air. Anyone else was met with hard resistance.

I traced the lines of Usr Jasad, following it to the tiny letters pinning Bakir Tower. My home, then my mother’s. Down I went, through the borders of Jasad’s twelve wilayahs. An indescribable emotion rose in my chest. Jasad had existed. It had been real, once. More than Scorched Lands.

It had been known for more than its fate.

“Read the names of the wilayahs,” Arin said.

I flinched, shrinking from the map. The Nizahl Heir would not show me this out of kindness. He had an ulterior motive. But what?

I thought fast. The wilayahs were named in Resar. Jasad’s dead language. He already knew I was literate in Resar thanks to the death rites I performed over Adel. What benefit could he derive from hearing me read the names of twelve vastly disparate wilayahs in Jasad?

Your accent is perfect.

Baira’s bountiful beauty, how could I have missed it? My accent—or lack thereof. The wilayahs had slight dialectal differences in their speech and small variations in their naming systems. If he knew which wilayah I belonged to, he’d begin to cull the list of possible important figures I could

be.

An idea unfurled its petals.

“Har Adiween,” I began. I moved my finger along the wilayahs as I spoke. “Janub Aya, Eyn el Haswa, Kafr al Der, Ahr il Uboor.” I continued until the very last wilayah, tucked right next to Sirauk Bridge.

“How odd,” Arin said once I had finished. His hair fell like spools of silk between his fingers when he raked it from his face. “You seem to have developed an accent since you last spoke Resar.”

I widened my eyes and flared my nostrils. Nuanced, minuscule indicators of fear. I had spun lies around Mahair as skillfully as a halawany spun sugar, but they were not Arin of Nizahl. They did not have senses honed against falsehood. “I—I do not have an accent. I misspoke. You

make me nervous.”

Arin tilted his head. “A sliver of truth in a stream of lies. But which is which?”

“I am not lying. I was nobody in Jasad.”

The steadiness of his conviction worked opposite my own, unraveling me at the seams. I wanted to lash out, force the specter of discovery and certain death into his bones until the shadows on the wall were indistinguishable from the ones in his nightmares. But Arin was not Hanim, or any other adversary I had gritted my teeth against and overcome.

He was my discovery. He was certain death.

My cuffs tightened almost beyond the point of tolerability. Arin stepped closer. If he touched me in that moment, my magic would overwhelm him, just as it had in the Relic Room. The incensed throb of it skimmed along my skin.

“I do wonder just what you’re capable of,” he murmured.

“Be patient, my liege,” I said. “You might yet find out.”

This time, when the Commander moved toward me, it was a strike of lightning. He spun me around, pinning my arms behind my back.

“Is that a promise?” His voice was the whisper of a practiced sword leaving its sheath, soft and deadly. “Tell me, Sylvia of Mahair, how does a ‘nobody in Jasad’ learn to read Nizahl’s old tongue?”

What?

He jerked my arms, pointing me toward the scroll pinned to the table.

First Decrees of Arin of Nizahl, Commander in Power and Heir. Horror washed over me in thick waves.

The entire decree was written in a language Nizahl had not spoken in two hundred years.

I had been so distracted by the maps, I had forgotten to pretend I couldn’t understand it.

“The Citadel records all new decrees in Nizahl’s original tongue. I suppose they taught you a dead language in Ganub il Kul,” he murmured in my ear. His sardonic chuckle sent chills running along my spine.

Arin released my arms. “If you have any ambitions in the art of deceit, I suggest you plan more carefully. There are few things more disappointing than a careless crook.”

The dismissal was unmistakable. I had used a lifetime’s allotment of

carelessness already, and I would not spend any more by ignoring him. I fled from the room, pausing at the door. I glanced once more at the Commander. I emblazoned him as he was in that moment, standing over the map of the world. Its towering conqueror.

If Jasadi bones could speak, they’d warn Arin of Nizahl that nothing stays untouchable forever.

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