The Jasad Heir — Chapter no 2

CHAPTER TWO

Long after decent people were asleep, I crept out of the keep.

I wrapped both arms around the basket’s middle as I sped down the hill.

My hood hung low over my forehead. Loose curls gathered at the base of my neck, warming me against the wind. I hated leaving the keep without my hair in a braid. The curtain of curls was the perfect weapon for an enemy wishing to swing me around like a cattle hoop. Marek and Sefa’s impromptu visit had rushed my schedule.

Night had thickened over Mahair, and a dense fog hung over the shuttered shops. In three hours, Yuli would rouse the boys sleeping in the barn to muck the grounds and release the cows for their feeding. Children would line up outside the bakery, latticed wooden trays propped on their shoulders to carry breakfast back to their families. Mahair, like the rest of Omal, thrived best in the daylit hours.

I paused at the end of the hill and scanned the path. We lived right behind the vagrant road, but the vagrants knew better than to trouble me.

The soldiers were the real problem. I couldn’t risk running into the patrol again. They changed shifts only twice: once at dawn and again at dusk.

After assuring myself of the road’s emptiness, I picked up the basket and resumed walking. A wagon’s wheels had gouged enormous tracks. I walked inside its tread, hiding my footprints within the unsettled dirt. A silly precaution, given Mahair’s rigid sleep schedule. Very few homes or businesses bothered to invest in outdoor lanterns, and if they did, they used the kind shaped like a shell and filled with just enough oil to illuminate their immediate surroundings. The sole lantern on this entire road hung from a balcony six buildings down.

What I remembered of my childhood in Jasad wouldn’t fill a poor man’s pocket, but I knew we were a night people. Just as no two villages in Omal were alike, every wilayah in Jasad kept slightly different customs. In the evenings, daughters of wealthy families relinquished their finery for their

street clothes and chased each other for miles. Men gathered for tea and table games, their laughter and good-natured shouts audible throughout the street. And in every wilayah, magic swept the air. It animated the sky, rumbled in the ground. I was born to a place where magic meant joy.

Celebration and safety.

Lost in thought, I crossed the street. A prickly pear fell from beneath the blanket I’d tossed over the basket. “Dania’s bloody axe,” I swore, scooping up the vengeful fruit with the bottom of my tunic. The sesame-seed candies had added to the volume of this week’s emergency supplies. Why did I even put them in the basket? As though I’d be in the mood for sweets if the need to flee Mahair arose. I pictured myself indulging in a little treat while I hid in a ravine full of the ashes of the dead.

A disintegrating wall of mud-and-straw brick barricaded Mahair from the woods. I gingerly felt along a cornerstone. Plumes of dust exploded from the pressure. Awaleen be damned, but I hated this village sometimes.

The wall was a relic of days past, when monsters crawled between the borders of the kingdoms, feeding on the traces of magic scattered between the trees. Terrible creatures with horns longer than my arm and tails like a polished sword. More thoughtful monsters, with lovely faces and a beckoning hand, drawing you sweetly to your bloody end. Magic had permeated Essam for most of its existence, and where magic settled, monsters spawned.

A wall would hardly have deterred the monsters if they wanted to enter the village, but I suppose its presence gave Mahair some measure of peace.

I rubbed the dust covering the words etched into the limestone: May we lead the lives our ancestors were denied.

My grandmother had told me the monsters were already dying out when Nizahl descended on the woods in powerful, crushing waves thirty-three years ago. The siege was long and deadly. Monsters had fled into villages on the outskirts of the woods, slaughtering entire populations.

I pressed close to the wall and kept moving. The purging of monsters was not the first piece of Nizahl’s campaign against magic, but it was certainly the most effective. To the other kingdoms, they were burying their dead not as a consequence of the former Supreme’s poorly planned siege but because of magic. Magic made monsters, and monsters killed without discrimination.

It was the first real stroke of doom over Jasad’s image.

I peeled myself from the wall to squeeze past the stacks of straw blocking the path. Children tended to get sneaky maneuvering into Essam, so random blockades had been erected around the village to pen them in.

A donkey lazily twitched a fly from its ear, flaring giant nostrils at my appearance. Finally! I exhaled at the sight of a crack in the rows of brick. I preferred to use the wall behind the vagrant road, but the encounter with the Nizahl soldier had unnerved me. At this hour, the patrol was harder to shake than fleas on a dog. The hole barely fit my basket, but it would squeeze me into the woods without needing to risk the main trail.

The donkey brayed, irritated with my prolonged presence. My heart somersaulted into my throat, and I hurriedly shoved my basket through the crack. Someone might stick their head outside to check for intruders and see me skulking on their grounds.

This was the excuse I gave myself for nearly rending my arm from my body to get through the hole. It had nothing to do with the old Jasadi superstition that donkeys brayed at the sight of evil spirits. Absolutely nothing.

I grabbed the basket and continued into the woods. I sidestepped the twigs and mud puddles, barely avoiding walking headlong into a tree. I despised making the monthly trip to the ravine, burdened with the food I judged least likely to perish in the dank underbrush. Especially during winter, when the wind carried out its personal vendetta against my thin cloak.

I reached the row of trees marked with the Nizahl raven. It was against the rules to cross the line without explicit permission. Nobody sane would risk trespassing and giving the bored and bloodthirsty soldiers an excuse to cut them down.

The raven stared at me. Discomfort trickled in my belly. I was suddenly acutely aware of the silence of the woods. The impenetrable darkness.

If I hadn’t spent five years of my life living in these woods, I might have turned around and run straight back to Mahair.

“You think you are the most frightening creature in these woods, but you’re not,” I said to the raven. “I am.”

Tightening my grip on the basket, I crossed the line of Nizahl-marked trees and continued walking. This trip—and my trespass—was necessary. I

lived against the will of those who would see me dead for the magic in my veins. Never mind that my veins were the only place my magic existed. The cuffs meant I could not so much as squash a mosquito with my powers, let alone use it to defend myself.

I glanced at my wrists. The cuffs glimmered an overly smug silver.

When I took a step around a patch of wet moss, my foot failed to land. A shriek rose and died at my lips as the ground gave way.

“Ugh.” I lifted my dripping sandal out of the mud. The ravine was still another three miles ahead. Sighing, I moved the basket to my other arm. I would have to hurry if I wanted to get back before Raya did her morning bed checks.

As I walked deeper in the woods, my muscles began to relax. The lines in my brow and the tight curl of my lips eased. These woods… they knew me as I knew them. The branches overhead seemed to wave in greeting. A gang of white lizards scuttled over my foot and up the side of a tree. The slight smell of rot lingered in the mist, underscoring the warmer notes of wood and dew.

I hummed a jaunty Lukubi tune I’d overheard in the duqan and reviewed my tasks for the next day. Preparations for the waleema had spun Mahair into a frenzy. Celebrating the Alcalah was no small affair. I shuddered, thinking of the influx of strangers that flooded the village during the last waleema three years ago. Restraint alone had prevented me from running into the woods until it ended.

A splash caught my ankle as a sesame-seed candy tumbled out of the basket and into a puddle. Kapastra’s twisted horns, these candies were a curse. I bent down, wrinkling my nose against the scent of excrement and rain. Maybe I could leave the flies to enjoy this one.

I straightened, reaching for the basket—and found myself face-to-face with the Nizahl soldier from Zeinab’s street.

My heart slowed. Each beat thundered in my ears.

“Sylvia, apprentice to the chemist Rory, healer of poor elderly Aya. Did I get it right?”

For a split second, as the safety of the woods and the terror of discovery shattered together, I thought: Who is Sylvia?

A smirk played on his lips. He was waiting for me to lie. My physical appearance wasn’t enough to condemn me as a Jasadi. He’d needed more,

and I had crawled through a hole in the wall and given it to him. Now he wanted to be entertained by a fumbled excuse for why I had ventured past the raven-marked trees in the middle of the night, basket of food in tow.

The resolve, once it settled, was soothing. The fear retreated. It had been a long time since I’d killed anything bigger than a frog in these woods.

I straightened to my full height, standing eye to eye with the soldier.

“Not a coward, then.”

He blinked. “What did you say?”

I adopted a light, conversational approach. “I wasn’t sure. The one decent thing I can say of your ilk is that you die early. Yet here you stand, your age written into the lines of your skin. You were either a coward or too clever for your own good.” As I spoke, I untied the clasp of my cloak. I folded it carefully and set it atop the basket. “You watched me. Followed me far enough that nobody would hear me scream.”

The Nizahl soldier remained unperturbed. “Even if they could hear you scream, they would not come to your aid. Nobody cares for the whimpers of Jasadi scum.”

I closed my eyes briefly. With two words, the soldier had eliminated any chance of him leaving these woods alive. Feigning innocence did not matter now. As soon as the accusation of Jasadi was leveled, only a Nizahlan court could absolve it. This soldier would put me in the back of a wagon and drag me to Nizahl, where I needed zero hands to count the number of Jasadis who survived the trial. I’d learned over the years most did not even survive the journey. The detained died in convenient accidents or in retaliation against “unprovoked” attacks.

The soldier’s hand hadn’t budged from the hilt of his blade. “You will not even try to deny it?”

I shifted my feet. Slightly, only to confirm the cool hilt of my dagger pressing against my ankle. “Would it matter?”

He freed his sword from its clasp, pointing it at my chest. “Surrender peacefully and you will face a fair and just trial in the courts of His Wisdom, Supreme Rawain.”

“Is that so?” I laughed. “Only two months ago, an Orbanian merchant illegally trading in Jasadi body parts was brought to your Supreme’s fair and just courts. He confessed to crushing and selling Jasadi bones to those eager to ingest traces of magic. His patrons, blessed with the brains of a

goat flea, believed Jasadi remains were flush with health benefits. Your precious tribunal released the merchant with a warning and a hearty chuckle. He helped people eat Jasadis and walked free.”

The soldier’s expression didn’t waver. Of course not. All he heard were more whimpers of Jasadi scum.

I stretched my neck. “Identify yourself, soldier. I would like to know what name to mark on your grave.”

“This is your last warning. Surrender. And if you try to use your magic on me, be informed it will result in a sanctioned execution.”

“ ‘Nizahlan idiot’ it is, then.”

The soldier lunged, swinging the broad end of his sword in a powerful arc. Impressive. If it landed, it would sever my head quite cleanly.

It had been a long time since I’d fought to kill, but my instincts remained. I rolled into the soldier, grabbing his sword arm and slamming it against my knee. His fingers spasmed. Before he could drop the sword, a blow caught my gut, knocking me to the side. I steadied myself on a tree and coughed. Damn it to the tombs, he wasn’t going to make this easy.

There was no time to recover. The sword slashed inches from my ear, nearly slicing my shoulder. I twisted away at the last second, leaving his sword wedged in the bark. I freed my dagger from inside my boot while he

pried his sword from the tree.

We lunged at the same time.

I moved with the vindictive speed of a wasp, avoiding his deadly swings. Each time I succeeded in moving close, he evaded me. It was the most frustrating dance. Too close to throw the dagger, too far to plunge it into him. His sword caught the edge of my tunic, the rip of my sleeve cutting through our labored breathing.

“Why do you not use your magic?” he growled. “Your kind has one advantage, yet you squander it. I will not think you virtuous for withholding.”

“Rest assured, I would love to use my magic to peel your flesh and boil your eyes. Virtue. Ha! I have many weaknesses, but virtue is not among them.”

He wrapped both hands around the hilt of the sword and swung. I threw my weight to the side, catching myself on a knee. Before I could stand, the sword was under my throat. He grabbed a fistful of my hair, yanking it hard

enough to bring tears to my eyes. Hot breath wafted over my cheek. “How long did you live in that disgusting little village, fooling everyone into believing you were nothing but an apprentice? But I could see the foul stain of your magic. That your kind continues to exist is a testament to how insidiously you have snuck into our societies. Jasadis are the rot in our ranks.”

My cuffs tightened. They reacted sometimes—to certain insults or emotions. They were too random and varied for me to figure out the pattern.

All it did was remind me that my magic existed, skimming under the surface of my skin, but remained impossible to access.

If I had the choice to reach into my body and tear it out, I wouldn’t be sitting here, swallowing past the blade at my throat.

“Then I suggest you do a better job,” I said, and dug my teeth into the hand holding the sword.

“Agh!” He hurled me away and I sprung to my feet. Strands of my hair hung from his fist.

I threw a glance at the sky. In two hours, dawn would stripe across the horizon. Mahair would rouse for a new day, and a different pair of Nizahl soldiers would arrive to relieve the evening patrol. When this soldier didn’t appear, it would be a matter of minutes before chaos fell upon the village.

I am not ready to leave. The traitorous thought filled my throat with ash.

I had stockpiled food in a smelly ravine for the express purpose of preparing for a situation like this. Hesitation was a luxury I rarely indulged.

Mahair wasn’t meant to be permanent. I had escaped these woods five years earlier with blood on my hands and one clear goal: I would never be trapped again.

But it would not be this soldier who drove me from the village. He would not win that honor.

I kicked hard and fast, connecting with the crook of his arm. He howled as my boot slammed against bone. The sword dropped. He clipped the side of my head with a forceful blow, but I twisted my chin in preparation. I surged forward and plunged my dagger deep into his lower belly. The angle could not have been worse. I quickly yanked the blade through the resistance of skin and muscle, slicing him open from hip to hip. A lesser gut wound would leave him writhing in agony for hours, and I took no pleasure in torture.

He staggered, a scream foaming with the blood on his lips. His hands went to the stream of red coursing from his wound. The soldier collapsed to his knees.

“Be grateful that in death, nobody will try to sell your bones for a hearty broth.” I grimaced at the bloody dagger. It hadn’t seen this much excitement in a long time.

“Th… they will find my… body.” He spat a mouthful of blood onto my boot. “You will not… escape judgment.”

My dry eyes stung when I closed them. Even in the throes of death, this soldier thought he was my moral superior. Because he didn’t have magic?

Because he was born in a Nizahlan home and I was born in a Jasadi one?

If only he knew the truth. If only he was capable of believing it.

“How many others… have you k-killed? How many?” he rasped.

The secret slammed against the inside of my teeth, eager to attack.

I wiped my dagger with the piece of sleeve he’d torn and tucked them both into my boot.

“Not nearly as many as you hope. You think I fear the judgment of Nizahl?” I stepped toward the soldier, batting away his feeble attempts to hold me off. My hands settled against each side of his face, cradling it.

“Your soldiers cannot take me to your kingdom and put me before a court, because I do not exist. According to your history texts, I died almost eleven years ago. I burned to death alongside my grandparents and a dozen others.

I believe my crown was taken for display in a war monument. Tell me, how can the dead stand trial for the living?”

He stared at me, uncomprehending, for a second before any remaining blood leached out of his face. “Impossible. You lie.”

“Frequently.” I smiled without any humor.

“The Jasad Heir perished in the Blood Summit. Everyone saw the blaze take her and the Malik and Malika. You cannot be her. She burned.”

“You are correct, soldier,” I said. “The Jasad Heir did burn in the Blood Summit. She was a better person. Susceptible to such notions as honor and virtue. She would have tried to save her kind. Protect them from the likes of you, even if it spelled her own destruction.

“But your Supreme killed her.” I stroked a finger down the soldier’s cheek. “And Sylvia replaced her. I do not heal. I do not lead.”

I tightened my hands and twisted sharply. The snap of the soldier’s neck

echoed in the silent wood. “And unlike her, I am excellent at staying alive.”

He fell forward, his body hitting the earth with a dull thump.

I stood over him for the time it took to quiet my breathing. He was dead.

He would not expose me. I killed him.

Rovial’s tainted tomb, I killed a Nizahl soldier.

I looked at the sky and nearly screeched. I had an hour and a half at the maximum before I lost the cover of darkness.

Dry leaves blew onto the lifeless soldier’s back. I lacked the proper tools and time to dig a grave, and I couldn’t leave him here—Nizahl soldiers would come crawling through every lower village in Omal searching for the killer. Even the ravine, hidden away as it was, would be compromised. I could think of only one way to prevent them from descending on us like a swarm of death.

I grabbed the soldier’s shoulder and hauled him onto his back. “You drank your weight in ale last night. You wandered too far into the woods and stumbled upon the river. Everyone knows the riverbanks require careful navigation, and you were anything but careful. It only takes one misstep.

You were found floating in the water, probably near the southern embankments, body broken from the boulders under the tide.”

Not the worst plan, but also not my best. I sat on my haunches and pressed my lips together. I needed time to disguise his wounds and drag him to the river. At least two miles stretched between us and the nearest riverbank. Even if I somehow managed to finish arranging him on the rocks before the soldiers’ shift change, I wouldn’t get back to Mahair in time.

They’d catch me past the raven tree line and throw me in the back of the nearest cart headed to Nizahl.

My stomach turned. I couldn’t finish this alone. I needed help.

Sliding my cloak over my shoulders and picking up the basket, I shot one more glance at the body. “I’ll be back.”

Then I ran. Faster than I had run in over five years. I had lived in these woods, yes, but I hadn’t been alone. I was with the woman who rescued me after the Blood Summit and trained me to survive. A Qayida who once led Jasad’s army into countless battles before being exiled. Hanim would add a dozen new scars to my back if she knew the risk I was taking.

I weaved between the trees, pushing labored air from my nose. I didn’t bother avoiding the main trail this time, not when fortune had clearly

chosen to spit on my efforts tonight. I sprinted up the hill to the keep and circled the garden. Please, please let Marek have left his window open. He had trouble sleeping without a breeze, but it was an unseasonably cold night.

An inch separated the window from its hook. Without stopping to process my relief, I pushed the window the rest of the way in and climbed through the narrow opening as soundlessly as possible. My boots left muddy tracks on his boar-hide rug.

I silently cheered at finding he’d dumped an inebriated Sefa on his bed and fallen asleep on a stack of coats. Trying to wake Sefa without rousing the other girls sharing her room would have grayed my hair. I set the basket aside with shaking hands.

My heart dropped to my feet as I contemplated the sleeping figures. My friendship with these two had happened against my will. I had worked hard to prevent myself from forming any attachment that couldn’t be severed at a moment’s notice. Tonight would change everything. Tonight, I was trusting them.

And if I was wrong, Mahair would be forever lost to me.

I yanked the pillow out from under Sefa’s head. Terrified brown eyes flashed open, relaxing only after registering my hooded face. A kick to Marek’s ankle, and I had a confused, drowsy audience of two.

“How fast can you run?”

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