The Jasad Heir — Chapter no 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

The villagers scattered as a carriage bearing the Omalian crest rode through the center of the road, led by horses saddled in white chains. Giant wheels, lacquered in sparkling blue and white gems, fought their own weight as they spun over the uneven dirt. The carriage stopped in front of the platform, and two guardsmen flanked the door as the steps unfurled.

I angled my body behind the wall, just out of sight. Only Arin and his men remained standing. I spotted a puzzled and stained Fairel, clutching a yam sticky with molasses in her fist. “Fairel!” I hissed. I wanted her far away from whoever was about to step out of that carriage. Oblivious, Fairel slipped behind one of the chairs, nibbling at her yam.

A tangle of emotions somersaulted in my chest when the Omal Heir descended. He was smaller than I had imagined him. I searched for any family resemblance in his feathered dark hair or the proud nose sitting below darting hazel eyes.

At a glance, no one would ever assume I shared blood with the Omal Heir.

My father was born Emre, Heir of Omal. Three months after I entered the world, an arrow cleaved his throat open during a hunting trip for my mother’s birthday. Although Emre had left behind a rightful Heir—me—my grandparents had balked at the possibility that I might inherit Omal’s throne before I inherited Jasad’s. With my mother grieving in Bakir Tower, no one stopped the Malik and Malika from renouncing my claim to the Omal throne. For its part, Omal was all too eager to strip me from their line of inheritance; I imagined the rumors of my grandparents’ role in Emre’s death played a part.

Felix was my father’s nephew. The laws of Omal’s lineage should have prevented the throne from ever passing to him, but the murder of most of the royal family at the Blood Summit complicated matters. Though Queen Hanan would hold the throne until her death, I’d heard my paternal

grandmother had all but sequestered herself in her palace. Leaving Omal in Felix’s highly incapable hands.

No one in the village liked Felix, and for good reason. From the stories I’d heard, he had less political acumen than a rabid goat. They clearly weren’t wrong; there must have been miles of empty space in that giant head of his if he thought riding into Mahair in a carriage worth more than the entire village was the right move.

But an idiot Heir was still an Heir, and I mapped my escape. If I cut through the vagrant road, I could circle the crowd and sprint to the keep in under twenty minutes.

Arin met Felix by his carriage. Felix bounced on his shiny shoes. “So it is true. I heard you were patronizing our lower villages. It would have been remiss of me not to welcome you myself.”

“A generosity not soon forgotten,” came Arin’s mellifluous response.

“Mahair is wonderful. A true tribute to its kingdom.”

“It has been too long since last we met.” Felix extended his hand to Arin. I cringed.

How could the Heir of the largest kingdom in the land be so unstudied in Nizahl’s customs? Inviting a touch from the Nizahl Heir carried dangerous implications. A child with the faintest trace of royal blood would know better. Two things were widely known about Arin: he was never seen without his gloves, and he did not touch unless he meant to kill. Fantastical gossip, I’d thought. Just more village nonsense. Now I wondered if Felix was aware of his fellow Heir’s ability to sense magic.

My brow furrowed. How had Marek been aware of it?

Arin’s gloved hand closed around Felix’s briefly. “Indeed. Shall we move to more private quarters to continue our reacquaintance?”

Felix glanced around. “Has the waleema concluded?”

“Nearly.” The first signs of impatience leaked into the Nizahl Heir’s tone. He glanced at the kneeling crowd. “You must be weary from your journey.”

“Nothing a hearty brew cannot fix,” said the royal dunce. He instructed the rider to house the horses with Arin’s and not “leave them alone with a half-wit stable hand.”

Maneuvering a carriage in such a tight space irritated the horses. They harrumphed, hooves clomping in a wide loop. One of Nadia’s chairs stood

directly in the path of the carriage’s wheels. My heart dropped. I knew what would happen as soon as the rider reined the horses back, but I was too late.

“Stop! Stop!” Fairel shouted, launching herself toward the chair. I vaulted to my feet, braced to watch her get split in two. Yuli grabbed Fairel’s frock before she could intercept the carriage’s path. The chair splintered beneath the wheels, and Fairel shrieked. Spooked, the horses reared, sending an Omalian guardsman crashing into Felix. They went down in a heap.

Dusty and red with embarrassment, Felix slapped aside the guard’s hand and clamored to his feet. He glowered at Fairel. “Come here.”

Pulse pounding, I took a step from the shadows. The crowd sobered, watching Yuli unwillingly release Fairel. Bowed in front of the Omal Heir, her braids coming loose from their upturned horns, she was as much a threat as a river gnat.

“I apologize sincerely, my lord,” Fairel hurried to say. “The chairs— they’re my responsibility, you see, my mistress tasked me with their safe return—”

Felix shoved Fairel in front of the horses.

Later, I would wonder whether I might have acted differently had it been anyone other than Fairel, who was mine since the day Raya brought her to the keep. If under alternate conditions, I might have stayed hidden and merely added this kernel of rage to the collection.

The villagers screamed as the clustered horses kicked at Fairel, and the sound of breaking bones fired across the main road. My magic seethed forward, and I gripped my dagger, Felix’s viscera bright in my mind’s eye. I was moving for Felix before the horses had finished their assault on Fairel’s still body.

Arin moved faster. I hadn’t taken more than a step, and he was already there, blocking my path. He knocked the dagger from my hand. My magic did not approve, howling as the horses trotted past Fairel, their hooves red with her blood.

The pressure on my cuffs tightened, familiar pain roaring beneath my skin, and then—the impossible.

The dagger shuddered into the air and flew. My magic hummed, keeping the dagger’s course true. I gasped, the incomprehensible sight made more confounding by the cuffs’ unchanged presence around my wrists.

Arin didn’t turn around to see the dagger embed itself into Felix’s thigh, not even when the other Heir screamed. He didn’t turn at the shouts from the guardsmen or the sobs as the village physician crouched by Fairel’s prone form.

Inches separated me from the Nizahl Heir. I stood close enough to see the dark victory eclipsing the frost in Arin’s eyes. I had done it—given him the evidence he needed.

Horror thrilled down my spine. I tried to jerk back.

When he spoke, the words brushed my temple. “If you wish to keep your head today, stay still.”

His hand closed around my wrist. My livid magic danced beneath the surface of my skin but did not break through a second time.

The Heir turned to ten of Felix’s guardsmen brandishing their swords in my direction. The villagers who weren’t occupied with moving Fairel’s splayed limbs onto a stretched calfskin watched with apprehension.

Apprehension for me. They thought I had thrown the dagger. They hadn’t seen Arin knock it from my hand before it flew. A trickle of relief tempered some of the nausea churning in my gut.

Congratulations, it was only the Nizahl Heir who saw you use magic!

Hanim yelled. No one important.

“Arrest her!” Felix screeched. “For her attack on the Heir of Omal!

Where is the physician? Leave the girl! Can’t you see I’ve been stabbed?”

Fairel’s sudden, strangled cry pierced through me. I tried to go to her, but Arin’s grip on my wrist didn’t falter.

The Omalian guardsmen moved, but Arin’s men closed in front of us.

Murmurs rose from the crowd. Heirs raising arms against one another was tantamount to a declaration of war.

“What is this?” Felix asked, and though his retinue blocked him from sight, his voice pinched with bewilderment. “Instruct your guards to stand down! I am after the girl, not you.”

I tried to yank my hand away. If I fled into the woods fast enough, I could climb a tree near the bend of Hirun and wait out any pursuers. I still had food waiting for me in the ravine. I would keep company with its ghosts while I devised my next steps.

“My men are not protecting the girl,” Arin said. “They are protecting your kingdom from incurring the full wrath of the Citadel.”

“Move!”

Felix’s protectors melted to the side, exposing the Omal Heir leaning against the carriage steps. The dagger jutted out of his thigh. The Nizahl guardsmen veered to the side, swords pointed at the Omalian guardsmen.

Felix ignored me, which was just as well, as my perplexed expression would likely ruin whatever story Arin was spinning.

“Why?” Felix demanded. “Who is she to you?”

I spied Rory in the crowd, tending to Fairel. A bone jutted out of her right leg. Sefa knelt at his side, rubbing a clear liquid beneath Fairel’s nose.

The girl’s pain-stricken eyes drooped shut, leaving her body still. Rory wrapped a cloth around the exposed break with a confidence his petrified features did not share.

They both stopped when they saw who stood behind the guards’ barricade. Rory went the color of the bone protruding from Fairel’s thigh, and Sefa clapped a hand over her mouth.

Arin didn’t react. In fact, it appeared as if the lot of us had vanished from his sight. Clear blue eyes flicked from side to side. I braced myself, for I had reason to worry. Wasn’t this how the most lethal corners of his mind worked? Chasing a million futures, probably calculating the far- reaching impact of each moment?

“Sylvia of Mahair is protected from harm under amnesty laws,” he said.

Felix blinked. Ah, there was our familial resemblance—confused grimaces. “How?”

“She is Nizahl’s chosen Champion for the Alcalah.”

The Commander’s control over his soldiers was commendable, for none of them flinched at this staggering announcement. Only Vaun’s hold on his sword budged, as if keeping it aimed forward required every ounce of his discipline.

The ground shook as Mahair surged to its feet as one, the air exploding with their exaltations. They struggled to identify me the ensuing chatter, everyone rushing to claim familiarity. “Raya’s ward! Rory’s apprentice!”

Then, “Nizahl’s Champion!”

Felix’s lips parted. “You cannot be serious. A lower village brat? One who just assaulted me? There are a thousand better choices.”

“I choose her,” Arin said. Final.

Felix opened and shut his mouth. Just as I thought he would be stupid

enough to argue, he snarled. “Withdraw!” he snapped to his guards. “We cannot harm a Champion.”

Arin dropped my arm instantly. Vaun and the bald guard outpaced the Heir as he strode away, cutting a path through the onlookers. The Omalian guards hoisted Felix onto a taut buckskin, carrying him a few paces behind Arin.

I was not the Commander. My mind was not suited for elaborate deceptions and chilling foresight. A few moments ago, I had been primed to abandon Omal forever or die. I could not find footing in the steep spiral of this new development.

Jeru and the other guard remained. “The Commander would like you to wait for his return at a private location.”

I balked. “What?” Were they responding to some invisible signal he issued? Had he planned this?

“I have to see Fairel,” I said, the words coming from a faraway place.

“Rory cannot treat her alone.”

“This is not a request,” Jeru said. “The people do not need another spectacle.”

“You’re right.” I giggled. Hysteria closed tighter and tighter in my chest, crystallizing into shards under my breastbone. “They have seen more than enough.”

The room they thrust me into straddled Mahair’s border, pungent from the odor of nearby livestock. The door slammed shut, leaving me alone with my whipping panic.

“No, no, no,” I repeated, pacing the length of the room. The Nizahl Heir could not name me Champion, not after he saw my magic. He knew. He had the evidence he sought against me. The Commander would never knowingly assign the honor of Champion to a Jasadi. It must have been a tactic to delay Felix. Hunting me had taken more than two whole days’ worth of effort—it seemed fair he would want to kill me himself.

I needed to get out of here. Where in the tomb-damned earth had they

taken me? Dozens of maps covered the walls of the room, names and dates scrawled on their surfaces by the same hand. A single straight-backed chair was tucked near a table barely wide enough to support a cup of tea. A glass cabinet stretched along the left wall.

I yanked at the cabinet’s handles. The locks held fast. Behind the glass sat replicas of the Awaleen’s most famed possessions, some of which I recognized, some I was glad not to. The tree branch Dania swung into the heart of a new mother. An axe forged to resemble Dania’s, rusted with blood. The sight of a ragged doll hewn from animal hide repulsed me a step backward. The doll leaned at a forward angle, childlike eyes drawn onto its rigid flesh. I didn’t remember the doll in any of the Awaleen’s stories.

I studied the cracked lines of its skin and pursed my lips, distracted by a vague recollection from Hanim’s lessons. The doll wore Orban’s flag from the ancient Battle of Zinish. Lukub had won by using magic, which Nizahl had expressly forbidden in times of war. The magic Lukub’s captain drew upon to defeat the Orbanians during the Battle of Zinish was too awful to recall, an evil that consumed the land like a mighty pestilence. Some of the Orbanian soldiers had been torn apart, their bodies warped and condensed

into— —into small, humanlike dolls.

I tore my gaze away, pressing two fingers to my lips to fight a surge of bile. No wonder the battle ended the way it did. Nizahl, who rarely muddied their boots in territorial feuding, had marched through Lukub. Only the clever and quick politics of the then-Sultana kept Nizahl from tearing Lukub apart. The Battle of Zinish had led to a peace accord between Nizahl and Lukub. One each subsequent Supreme and Sultana upheld.

Of course, the Battle of Zinish took place when magic was forbidden only as a weapon of war. Peace was an option for them. Peace, which my magic had permanently forsaken by hurling a dagger at the Omal Heir.

If I could repeat this evening, I would never leave Rory’s side. We would bundle up whatever we had not sold at the booth and go back to the shop. Maybe we could have heated enough water for two mint teas in the back room and laughed at the children tripping over one another in the street.

I would not be in this room of war relics, standing in the ashes of my second life.

Escape was the only option. Even if Arin condescended to listen to an explanation, his mercy would not extend beyond staying my execution until after a trial.

I paced the room. If Arin maintained his pattern of dismissing his guards, he would be the only obstacle between me and freedom. His guards would patrol the perimeter, and even if they spotted me running, they would not give chase. They had pledged to protect their Commander, and they would go straight to him. Once they realized I’d slain him, well, I would need to run very far and very fast indeed.

I glanced down at my torn and bloodstained clothing. Sefa still had my cloak. The dagger I kept in my boot had found a new home in Felix’s leg. I would vanish without taking so much as a sesame-seed candy with me.

Tears pricked my eyes. I felt utterly, achingly alone.

I pulled at the handles of the cabinets again. I hurled my body against the glass, but the thick surface didn’t bend. If the cabinet could withstand the passing centuries, my paltry efforts would not break it.

The doll’s eyes seemed to follow me. Mocking my failure.

I knew what I needed to do, but it would hurt. Was it too much to hope for a bloodless solution, just once? By Sirauk’s cursed depths, I had not come this far to be foiled by a pane of glass. My magic lay dormant, unaffected by my efforts. I could not fathom how it had escaped my cuffs, and I did not have time to waste hoping for two impossibilities in the same night.

I grabbed the slit on the bottom right of my tunic and yanked down. I tore the amount needed to completely wrap my elbow and lower arm.

Sweat beaded at my forehead. I closed my free hand around my other wrist and raised my cushioned elbow to shoulder level. “No broken bones,”

I ordered. Life with Hanim had made for some strange habits, including speaking to my body as though it could hear me.

I swung my elbow into the glass as hard as I could. Pain exploded into my arm, reverberating through me until I tasted it behind my teeth. Using my grip on my wrapped arm to angle my right side forward, I hurled my body weight behind my elbow at every hit. If I stopped now, I wouldn’t start again. The agony radiating in my arm wrestled with the reality of confronting the Nizahl Heir without a weapon, and I swung until blood soaked the tunic strips.

A crack formed in the glass. Small, barely consequential compared to the sheer size of the weapons cabinet. I drew my arm back, choking down a whimper, and slammed my elbow into the fissure. The bottom half of the glass shattered. I turned my head as shards rained onto the ground, covering my face with my bloodied arm. Bloodied, but not broken.

I shoved my arm through the pane, reaching for the rusted axe behind the Lukubi doll. My nails scraped the handle, my fingers struggling to close on it. Had I mangled my elbow to miss the Awaleen-forsaken axe by mere inches?

Footfalls sounded outside. A low murmuring rumbled at the door. I craned for the axe, but I would need to break more of the glass to reach it.

I swore and grabbed the first weapon I could fit through the jagged edges. A short blade, half the length of my battered forearm, sharp despite its years. Not as good as an axe by half.

Twin footsteps grew loud, then faded in the distance. The two guardsmen assigned to my door departing on their Commander’s orders. I tucked the blade into the waist of my pants. The handle burrowed into the

small of my back.

He was here.

I peeled the wet strips of fabric from my arm and flicked them aside. I had played his game from the moment he stood over me at the river. The boring, unassuming village ward. A girl either naïve enough to perform burial rites on a fallen Jasadi or clever enough to hide her magic for five years. Until my magic reacted, I was simply Sylvia.

My magic tore the illusion of Sylvia to pieces and rebuilt her to represent one word only: Jasadi.

I straightened my shoulders. The chase had ended, and the Nizahl Heir

was merely another monster at my heels.

The door opened.

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