The Jasad Heir — Chapter no 3

CHAPTER THREE

Marek and Sefa stared at the soldier’s body. Ants crawled over the crusted blood on his chin.

Sefa spoke first. “Your knife work is excellent.”

“Sefa!” Marek snapped.

“It is! You work with animals; you know how hard it is to cut so deep and so long into the underbelly. She did it while under attack. It’s impressive.”

“Were you?” Marek said to me. His golden hair stuck out in every direction. “Under attack, I mean?”

They hadn’t asked questions when I dragged them from their beds and forced them to run at full speed into the woods. Even when we passed the line of raven-marked trees, they had plunged after me without a second’s hesitation. I owed them some part of the truth. The pieces I could spare, at least.

“Yes. He would have killed me if I hadn’t killed him. I breached the raven-marked line to collect some ingredients I forgot for Rory, and he would not accept my explanation.” I gestured at his fallen sword. “They’ll put me on trial if I do not mask his death as an accidental fall into Hirun.”

The violence of Nizahl soldiers required little elaboration. Everyone had felt the lash of their terrible power at some point. What my non-Jasadi friends did not need to know was how he accused me of more than merely trespassing. They might feel more sympathy for the soldier if they knew what kind of hand had felled him.

I described my plan, mindful of my race against the dawn. Every instinct rebelled against letting them help. If they made a mistake, it would be my neck. Teamwork, however, was a necessary evil to see this night through.

“Preparing him will not be a delicate affair. If you doubt your tolerance, you can wait behind those trees. I only need your help with carrying his body to the river.”

“This is a bad omen. A bad, bad omen. The Alcalah is only seven weeks away. Isn’t it meant to bring prosperity and good fortune?” Sefa appeared transfixed by the unnatural angle of the soldier’s neck. “What if this means the Awaleen are closer to waking from their slumber?”

“Don’t be a fool.” Marek collected branches to spread over the blood- dampened earth. Impressive forethought. “The Awaleen’s sleep is permanent. If a tournament as bloody and random as the Alcalah could influence the Awaleen, they would have cracked out of their tombs and killed us centuries ago.” Marek scattered the branches with more force than necessary. The mention of the Alcalah must have prodded an old wound. I wondered if Marek had ever joined the legions of competitors vying for a position as their kingdom’s Champion. “Think carefully, Sefa. If the Alcalah or its Champions had the power to bring good fortune, the Supreme would have called it magic and eliminated it after the war. What we are witnessing here is the result of a Nizahl soldier’s hubris.”

Sefa shivered. In our rush, she and Marek had left the keep without any shields against the wind. She looked small and profoundly pathetic. It wouldn’t do—I needed her in action-ready condition.

I shoved my cloak toward her. “Avoid getting it bloody.”

As I moved to the soldier, a hand thrust forward, halting my path.

“Sylvia, you cannot think you have the strength to break this man’s back.” Marek crossed his arms over his chest. “I have seen you struggle to lift a crate of apples.”

I choked on a bark of laughter. Oh, but there was not any sport in winning a game the other side wasn’t playing. “You saw what I wanted you to see. Sefa, please find as many small, jagged stones as you can fit in the

cloak’s pockets.”

“Let me do this part,” Marek argued.

I took a fortifying breath, releasing it through my nose. He was trying to help, I reminded myself. “I can handle it. Alone.”

Flipping the body facedown on the ground, I grabbed the arms and hoisted the body back. Sefa turned green. I couldn’t blame her. The body was on its knees, pulled back by its arms, its mutilated and mud-stained torso pointed in her direction. A macabre sight, to be sure.

“At least we do not plan on eating him,” I grumbled to myself. Marek shot me a bewildered glance.

Keeping a firm grip on the body’s elbows, I planted my boot at the base of his back. Sefa scurried into the trees, covering her ears. Marek watched with a skeptical frown.

A sinister voice bloomed in my mind. In a matter of hours, you may have destroyed the identity you spent years building. You cannot even protect your own pathetic, pointless life, Hanim whispered in my ear. My darkest thoughts always spoke in her voice. Years had passed since I last heard my former captor. That I heard her now could not signify anything good.

I heaved the body’s arms toward myself. Breaking a grown man’s back at this angle required a significant amount of force. Hanim had compared it to pretending I was trying to shove my foot through the person and toward the ground just ahead of them. The arms needed to be pulled back far and held fast. Otherwise, the shoulders would pop loose, and the back would remain undamaged.

I slammed my boot downward against his back. The thunderous crack sent Marek’s brows disappearing into his hair. Satisfied, I dropped the body onto its broken bones and pointed at the gash on the soldier’s belly. “This cut is too clean. I need you to make it seem as though he sustained the damage from the boulders in Hirun.”

Marek accepted my dagger with a slow smile. “I can’t break a grown man’s back, but I can certainly whittle a messier wound.”

I left him crouched beside the soldier and went to find Sefa. I stumbled on her apologizing to a colony of ants for stealing the rocks they were hiding behind. “I am almost finished,” she said.

Suspicion thickened into a brick in my chest. Aside from her spat of superstitious paranoia, she seemed utterly nonchalant. So did Marek. I had dragged them out of the village in the middle of the night to help me mangle a soldier’s corpse and carry it to the river. I’d seen them react with more horror to the discovery that I routinely forgot to water my fig plant.

I slid into a crouch, grimacing at the sight of my cloak dragging against the ground. It swallowed Sefa’s small frame. “Speak plainly. Why are you doing this for me?”

Undeterred by my harsh tone, she blew gently on the rocks in her palm, flaking away the loose debris. “Despite your strong resistance to the concept, we are friends.”

“Friendship has its limits.”

“Perhaps.”

“I wouldn’t do this for you or Marek.”

The corner of her mouth lifted like I had said something amusing. “I know.”

“If I’m caught, I will be executed. You would be thrown to the mercy of a Nizahlan tribunal for helping me.”

“If you are hoping to light a fire of fear in me, you are too late. It was lit long ago.” Sefa tucked the rocks in her pockets. “Be at ease, Sylvia. Before it ever came to a tribunal, I would promptly follow you into death.”

Sefa and I stood at the same time. Only a Jasadi would have need for such a disturbing vow, but Marek and Sefa did not have a trace of magic.

Living as closely as we did, I would have seen it. What cause did they have to fear Nizahl?

I evaluated Sefa as though seeing her anew. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Now, Sylvia. You may have my loyalty without cost.” The rest of the rocks tumbled into her pocket. “But you must earn my secrets.” She smiled, whites of her teeth bright against her skin.

I caught my breath as an earth-shattering possibility shook through me.

A possibility winding into everything I thought I knew about Sefa and Marek. Marek, who leaned on his a’s and l’s when he spoke in anger. Who complained about the weather in Mahair as though it were any different in the rest of Omal.

“Marek called the tomato by the wrong name,” I said suddenly.

Remembering. “A week after I came to the keep, I saw you two in the kitchen. He asked you to pass him an oota. Omalians call tomatoes ‘tamatim.’ I thought it was strange, and I kept a close eye on him for the next month. I heard him call a slew of vegetables by other names. Lukubi, Orbanian, Nizahlan names for vegetables. He said Yuli was making him practice for the visitors who come on market days. But he was just trying to cover, wasn’t he? He was trying to cover the very first slip.”

Sefa forcefully clapped the dust from her hands. Her face was unreadable. “The corpse will be more challenging to carry after it stiffens.

We should go.”

You have been so preoccupied with your own secrets, you did not bother

to see theirs, Hanim murmured. Pathetic.

I wanted to drag Sefa back and shake her until the truth fell out. If what I suspected was true… but no, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. The lives we led before reaching Raya’s keep were not discussed. As long as their secrets couldn’t harm me, I would not ask. Curiosity was always repaid in kind.

Marek had done a commendable job turning the lines of the wound jagged and uneven. We scattered rocks into the open meat of the body.

Hopefully by the time they found the soldier, the fish would have made quick work of the exposed skin flap.

The run to the river felt eternal. I carried the front while Marek and Sefa supported the rest of the body. The trees closed around us eagerly, the ground dipping lower with every dozen steps. I spotted Marek shuddering.

The deeper we ventured into Essam, the more it felt like the teeth of a beast too vast to comprehend were closing around us.

We stopped only twice to catch our breaths, all too aware of the crisp morning breeze and pinkening sky.

Sefa began to sing, her warbling voice covering the squelch of our footsteps. “The Awaleen came sight unseen, to survey the empty land.

Abound, abound!”

“Sefa, please,” Marek groaned. I didn’t recognize the melody, but he clearly did.

“Above the hills and valleys to the west, Kapastra laid her crown.

Mother of Omal, Beast Tamer of blue, abound!”

“She won’t stop,” I warned Marek. My boot went through a rotted log.

Crickets exploded from the hole, hopping over my leg. Their indignant chirps joined Sefa’s incessant tune.

“Beam of beauty, sharper than ruby, Baira, Baira, Baira,” Marek intoned flatly. “To Lukub she took her light, abound, abound!”

“Battle beat in Dania’s bones, and in Orban she sang its bloody song.

Abound, abound!”

A cricket jumped onto the corpse’s cheek. I watched it crawl into his nose and grimaced. I could predict what came next in the song. Or rather, who didn’t.

In the early days, the four original kingdoms—Lukub, Omal, Orban, and Jasad—had been flush with magic. Nizahl came after the Awaleen’s entombment, created to arbitrate peace between the other four kingdoms.

But the centuries passed, each taking a little more magic with it, until only Jasad’s magic remained. Nizahl’s armies grew, scaring Lukub and Omal, even battle-hungry Orban. But not Jasad. Not even Nizahlan armies stood a chance against Jasad’s unassailable fortress.

At least, they shouldn’t have.

To my surprise, Sefa’s song continued, albeit softer and more reserved.

“Rovial heard the hum of Jasad and gave his soul to keep her awake.

Abound! Abou—”

“Quiet.” I stopped walking and listened. There it was, the best song of them all—the gurgle of Hirun. We broke through the trees, skidding to a halt at the edge of the riverbank.

“Oh,” Sefa breathed. “I have never seen Hirun with its banks so far apart.”

Hirun wound through every kingdom like a mighty serpent, sustaining life across the land. In some areas of Essam, the river stretched no wider than a tree trunk. Here, the opposite bank of Hirun was at least half a mile away. The full moon’s reflection rippled on its dark surface.

“I’ll take him.” Marek rolled the body down the riverbank, mindful of his weight on the damp earth. He grunted as he carried boulders to place around and beneath the body.

I could feel Sefa’s gaze boring into the side of my head. “Can I ask you a question?”

My teeth hurt from grinding down the answer I wanted to give her. “I suppose.”

“Why did you need to break his back? Isn’t a broken neck enough to make it seem like he slipped?” Sefa asked. I could hear only curiosity in her voice, but I still paused before responding.

“If they decide to investigate his death as a killing, the broken back means they will be searching for a man.”

Her lips parted. “Because of the force needed to cause such a break.”

“Yes.” It felt beyond strange to share this part of myself. The balance of our relationships had shifted, and I no longer knew where we stood.

If you were the girl I raised you to be, you would finish them here, Hanim said. I scraped a hand down my face. When would she go away?

Once Marek finished arranging the body, Sefa helped him out of the riverbank. I lingered out of reach. A touch right now would snap the last of

my already fraying calm.

“We need to run. Fast as you can. We won’t be in Mahair in time for the shift change, but we need to be within the boundary of the raven-marked trees.” I picked at my wrist, gaze somewhere above their heads. “Thank you. This favor will not be forgotten.”

We ran against the dawn. Sefa stumbled more than once, but Marek remained near with a steadying hand. I focused on avoiding the puddles.

There was no guessing how deep they went, and they had already caused plenty of trouble. A broken ankle was exactly what this catastrophe of a night needed.

I tried to put my suspicions about Sefa and Marek’s backgrounds out of my head. It was too big a thread to unspool in my current state of mind.

We crossed the raven-marked trees without incident. A collective exhalation passed between us. “We should walk the rest of the way,” Marek said. “We’re wearing the sweat of the guilty.”

“Neither of you are guilty,” I said sharply. “If it comes between protecting me or yourselves, make a smarter choice than the one you made tonight.”

“Is she trying to protect or insult us?” Sefa asked Marek. “I can never

tell.”

“Both, I think.”

“We have all heard the rumors about the random disappearances happening across the kingdoms in the last year,” I said. “This was just another disappearance.”

“Those rumors aren’t true.” Sefa glanced around, more alert than she’d been a moment ago.

“Maybe not, but their existence might buy us some time.”

As we reached the end of the trail, a wagon rumbled past us, stacked with towers of crates bound together with water-stem rope. The smell of fresh aish baladi drifted from the main road as the kids threw loaves of the dense flatbread into baskets or onto the wooden lattices propped on their shoulders.

The warm scent of wheat tugged at my memory. How many mornings in Usr Jasad did I spend with crumbs on my clothes, burning my tongue on aish baladi hot from the palace ovens? The bread was more common in Jasad’s rural communities, but my mother had asked the bakers to prepare

us two loaves each morning. So many of Jasad’s customs had been adopted by the other kingdoms. Jasad’s food, art, traditions—pretty spoils of war for the circling scavengers.

I turned away from the bakery. Jasad was gone. Mourning a kingdom I barely knew was a disservice to the life I had built.

“It’s my turn to pick up the fūl for breakfast,” Sefa said. “If I go home without it, Raya will mop the keep with my neck.”

“We don’t have the pot,” Marek said.

“Hamada is nice. He’ll let me borrow his extra pot.”

“Nice,” Marek repeated with derision. “Only oil, salt, and black pepper this time, all right? Nobody likes lemon on their fūl except you and Fairel.”

Sefa rolled her eyes. “I’ll ask for it plain so you can season it your way.

Your wrong way, I might add.”

We stopped at the fūl cart. Hamada dismissed Marek and me with a glance, homing in on Sefa. While he poured the steaming beans out of a massive metal jug and into a lidded pot, I surveyed our surroundings. The shift change had happened twenty minutes ago. Even if they allowed the soldier a few minutes for tardiness, they would not have waited twenty minutes before calling in reinforcements. Dread swelled in my chest. Why did I come back? I should have left the soldier and kept running. I knew how to hide in the wilds of Essam. I had had a basket of food and a head start. I could have eventually found my way into the lower villages of Lukub or Orban and started over. What kind of simpleton was I to stumble back to the cage and hope they didn’t close the lock?

They would barricade any entry or exit within Mahair. Every home would be combed for Jasadis. Trade would halt. They might even cancel the waleema, one of the greatest sources of income for the village.

“Soldiers disappear frequently,” Marek murmured. I flinched, surprised to find him openly watching me. “They will not waste resources on a middling Omalian village until they are certain he was killed.”

“They have plenty of resources.”

“Not with the Alcalah only a few months away. They divert a massive retinue of soldiers into the woods to protect the Nizahl Heir while he searches for a Champion.”

I stared at Marek. I had the scars on my back to testify to the thoroughness of Hanim’s education. She had ensured I studied the dialects

of each kingdom, the common language shared between them, their habits and history. Yet I had less than a cup’s worth of knowledge about the Nizahl Heir. Hanim hadn’t talked about him beyond telling me he’d kill me without losing his breath unless I made my magic work. Given her fervent hatred for my grandparents and Supreme Rawain, I imagined it stung to see the ways the Supreme succeeded where she had failed. He raised a warrior, and she… she raised the person who’d be spotted from a watchtower fleeing the battlefield with the other soldiers’ food.

Some of my regret subsided. If I’d gone running into the woods and encountered Arin of Nizahl, the question of my fate would have been instantly decided. Jasadis did not leave an encounter with the Nizahl Heir alive.

How did Marek know how many soldiers Nizahl diverted while its Heir chose his Champion for the Alcalah? My earlier suspicions returned with a vengeance. “You certainly seem familiar with Nizahlan customs.”

His raised eyebrow was pointed. “As do you.”

“You’re sure they will not raise the alarms unless they find a body?” I

badly wanted to believe him.

“Sure enough.”

“Will one of you take a handle?” Sefa wheezed. Hamada had filled the pot to the brim with fūl. Sefa staggered, and some of the beans dribbled over the side. Marek and I snatched the handles, and we returned to the keep unscathed.

Raya shouted at us for ten minutes about the filthy state of our clothes.

As soon as she finished, the three of us split up. Me to bathe, Sefa to help with breakfast, and Marek to change for a day of hard labor.

As I dragged the towel over my body, I wished I could rub the tension from my limbs through sheer force. I was strung tight in a way I hadn’t been since my first few months in Mahair. I wrapped my wet curls in linen pants, tying the ends at the nape of my neck. Not even dropping onto my bed helped me relax. Outside my door, a flurry of footsteps and conversation signaled the start of the new day.

The younger girls in the keep did not like me much. I lacked the gentle, nurturing touch that came so naturally to Sefa. Though I tried to be softer with them, I possessed the maternal instincts of a bloodthirsty cockroach.

Yet for some unfathomable reason, I found their presence grounding

whenever fear tightened its noose around me. Raya would rather die than let these children feel the pressure of the responsibilities she carried on their behalf. She made sure they were free to worry about urgent problems like who could claim the prettiest dress in the monthly donation carts or who could carry the biggest goat the farthest. These orphaned girls were as close to happy as their circumstances permitted.

“You shouldn’t hide the realities of the life they face outside this keep,”

I’d said once, a few days after I turned sixteen. I’d been sharpening the kitchen knives by the fire while Raya counted her weekly earnings for the sixth time. “The more responsibilities you place on their shoulders, the better they will become at bearing them.”

She’d looked at me so long that I’d started to tense, tightening my grip on one of the knives. Dark circles hollowed the space under Raya’s eyes.

“Children are not meant to bear the woes of this life, Sylvia. It breaks them.

They will spend their adult lives doing everything in their power to never feel the weight of the world again.”

Exhaustion tugged at me. I hadn’t slept in two days, but each time I closed my eyes, I saw Nizahl soldiers riding into Mahair with swords and torches.

Any illusion of safety here had been shattered.

You are the Jasad Heir. Safety was not written for you, Hanim said.

I shoved my face into the hard pillow. I mentally recited the herbs I would pack for Rory and planned the best spot to set up our table for the waleema.

When nothing else worked, I resorted to a practice as old as the scars on my back. I pressed my cold palm against my heart and counted the beats.

One, two. I’m alive. Three, four. I’m safe. Five, six. I won’t let them catch me.

I stand alone at the head of a vast ballroom. An audience of faceless Jasadis waits breathlessly for my address. My bodice is in the shape of a lotus flower, curling out and around my ribs. Jasad’s iridescent symbol is etched

on my skirt. The head of a falcon and gold wings sit on the body of the sleek black cat. A gold kitmer, a feline of pure magic and legend. The kitmer circles within my dress, agitated.

On my head rests a crown.

“Queen Essiya! The lost Heir has returned to reunite Jasad!” shouts a

man of twisted shadow and smoke.

“Magic will prosper once more!”

I try to flee, but I am immobile beneath the weight of the crown. Golden thread stitches my lips shut. I silently bear their exultation, their relief, as it batters me from every side. Savior. Hero. Queen.

Red drips down my chin as I force my lips apart, pulling the stitches taut. An iron tang fills my mouth, trying to drown out my words at their inception. “Please, I am not who you seek! I can’t help you!” I drop to my knees.

The stitches tear, beautiful golden threads fluttering to the ground in a bloody heap. My freed voice rings in the empty ballroom.

A strong grip lifts me to my feet. “Essiya, you’re going to wrinkle your dress.”

Shock ripples through me. I stand over my mother by nearly a full head.

The shoulders I used to climb are half the width of mine. I have curves in the places where she’s slim, and I am strong where she’s soft. “I’m taller than you,” is all I can think to say to my dead mother.

Niphran’s laugh is music. “Only by a little. You take after your grandmother in shape.”

The ballroom dissolves around us. We stand on the surface of a frozen lake stretching for miles on every side.

Orange flames dance at Niphran’s legs. “A kingdom cannot fall when its Heir still stands. You cannot outrun your duty, ya umri. It is an inheritance by blood.” I scour for the source of the fire that steadily eats at her body.

There is none. “More than that,” Niphran continues, as though she’s not burning alive two feet away, “it is an inheritance by right. Who we are, who we might have been, our identity as a kingdom—do the people who have lost their home mean nothing to you?”

I pound my foot against the hard surface beneath us, but it does not break. We are surrounded by water, and yet my mother burns.

“Don’t leave me,” I gasp. They already took her once. I reach for

Niphran, cringing back as the fire blazes higher.

“Then save me.”

“It won’t crack!” I drop, hitting the ice with my fists. My knuckles split in vain. The layers of ice are too thick, too deep.

The inferno roars, swallowing Niphran whole, but her words are clear.

“Shatter it.”

“I don’t know how!” I raise my fists to beat against the ice again—and stop.

My wrists are bare. Where my cuffs should be is smooth skin.

The fire licks into the sky, consuming the night in its monstrous glow. It illuminates thousands of shadow people, standing still at the shore.

Watching. Judging.

“Essiya!” Niphran shrieks.

I scramble back, throwing an arm over my face.

The flames burst. We are consumed.

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