The Jasad Heir — Chapter no 8

CHAPTER EIGHT

The shadows in the room silhouetted the Nizahl Heir. The lanterns flickered with the rush of wind accompanying his entrance. He shut the door behind him, removed his coat and lifted it to the hook. Ease in his movements, as though we were two companions meeting for a meal.

I was sweating to rival one of Felix’s overworked horses. I feared the slickness of my palm against the blade’s smooth handle.

This was not like the soldier in the woods. I could not assess him for weaknesses to exploit or avenues of attack. I was a bird flying into the heart of a windstorm, and the millisecond of surprise between my attack and his defense would decide the outcome of my flight.

When he finally glanced up, it was to look beyond me, closing in on the

cracked opening in the war cabinet.

My blood beat in my ears.

The Nizahl Heir’s gaze met mine. Whatever he saw brought a cold smile to his lips. Relics of every kingdom’s gruesome history surrounded me, and only this man drove ice through my heart.

“There you are,” he said. “We meet at last.”

I closed the distance between us in a single bound. Terror churned in my veins, carrying the momentum of my swinging knife. Had my opponent been any other, my aim would have been true. I had acted fast, and I would have struck him at an angle from which there was no recovery. My greatest trouble should have been pulling the dagger from the stubborn clutch of his

corpse.

But my opponent was not any other.

Arin caught my knuckles in a flash. Without a flicker of hesitation, he snapped my wrist to the side.

I choked on a scream at the crunch of bone. My limbs went lax in the bright bloom of pain. The dagger clattered, falling from my grip.

He pulled me closer, sliding his hand to my elbow. His breath touched

my temple. From the outside, my body curving into his, it could have resembled a lover’s embrace.

“Is this all you have to offer me?” he whispered.

He hurled me back. I slammed into the cabinet, glass raining down around me. When I hit the ground, a few of the cabinet’s effects fell with

me.

Among them, the axe.

Glass crunched under his boots. “Sylvia of Omal, I find you guilty of wielding magic against another.”

We were skipping the pretense of explanations, then. I turned onto my elbow with a groan and grabbed the axe. My shoulder, already aching, popped under the weapon’s weight. With a grunt, I swung at Arin’s legs.

He sidestepped, but not quite fast enough. Satisfaction surged through me at the slash of blood beading on his left thigh.

It lasted until he slammed his boot down on my hand. Agony blackened my senses, and the axe dropped from my limp grip.

But of course, he wasn’t done. Arin crouched by my head, and in my failing lucidity, he was death himself, arriving to reap my soul. To finish what the Supreme began and destroy the last of Jasad’s royal line. I clawed at him, a dying rabbit clasped in the vulture’s claws, heedless of the crushed glass embedding itself deeper into my skin.

The Commander threw a knee over my bucking body, pinning my mangled hands above my head.

I was held fast, helpless to resist as he raised a gloved hand to his mouth and caught the leather in his teeth. He tugged at each finger meticulously, and the glove slid loose. It dropped onto my chest, and my magic seethed forward, fracturing against my cuffs.

“There is nowhere left to hide,” he said softly, and curved his bare hand against the side of my face.

The bones of my splintered wrist imploded beneath the unbearable strain of my cuffs. I was eaten alive from the inside out as my magic beat against me, seeking an outlet that did not exist. Tears ran down my temples, pooling between the Arin’s fingers. What was he doing to my magic?

A ring of blue survived in eyes gone pitch-black. His lips parted, features awash in wonder. “How are you hiding this?” he said, voice low and accusatory. “I can feel—how can you—”

The door opened, almost hesitantly, and I glimpsed Jeru blanching before Arin snarled an order, and another surge of agony scattered my thoughts. He was flaying me alive with nothing more than a searing touch.

What brand of cruelty was this? What manner of murder?

A soft touch against my forehead forced my eyes open again. Niphran

smiled down at me.

“Can I come home?” I wept. “Please?”

Her skin was fragments of the sun, her shifting eyes stolen from the surface of the sea. “Fight.”

I twisted weakly. Arin’s hand dug deeper, curling into my hair. His eyes were blank, swallowed whole by darkness.

“I cannot!”

Did the Nizahl Heir have magic? How else could he be doing this?

“He is reacting to your magic, and it is stealing him from his right mind,” Niphran said. The sun inside her shone brighter, blinding me. “He will kill you if you do not resist.”

I sank into the raging froth of my magic. It battered against me, growing more enraged with each ineffectual attempt at gaining freedom. His touch drew at my magic without an avenue of release, leaving it shrieking just beneath my skin.

“Do not resist who you are,” Niphran murmured. The sun engulfed her, a white inferno bursting forth and flooding the room in an unbearable brilliance. “Essiya.”

They have taken enough. Nizahl will not destroy what is left of my family.

The ground shook beneath me. The cabinet rained debris as the maps on the wall fluttered wildly. I screamed with a thousand voices as something crumbled inside me. A whisper of relief eased the pressure on my cuffs, and Arin flew into the wall on the opposite side of the room. He caught himself before hitting the ground.

The earth rocked, tilting the cabinet forward.

It was not Niyar’s or Palia’s face I conjured as the cabinet groaned, but Rory’s scowl. Sefa’s musical laughter. Marek rubbing soot from his roasted peanuts and offering a handful to Fairel.

Alarm flashed across Arin’s expression, now devoid of its delirium. The cabinet yawned forward. I had enough time to close my eyes before

something collided with the side of my body, hurling me into nothingness.

I swam circles in the velvet darkness of the lake. The creatures dancing down here were much more intriguing than anything waiting for me on the surface.

Wake up, said a disgruntled fish with six lavender tails. It used Rory’s voice.

I frowned and swam toward a large bolti with Dawoud’s stern nose. You

cannot sleep any longer, Essiya.

Who was Essiya?

I started to tell the Dawoud bolti it was mistaken—my name was Sylvia, probably—but the water rushed into my mouth, choking me. I kicked up, reaching for the waning, shimmering surface of the water. Almost there. If I could just reach the sunlight… With a gasp, I bolted upright. A shout rose and died in my throat.

Pressing a hand to my racing heart, I struggled to calm myself as my eyes adjusted to the dimness of my new setting.

The room of relics had vanished. This room was smaller, containing only a mirror, a rocking chair, and the cot beneath me. No war cabinets or weapons. Thick, mossy vines weaved over the dirt floor, explaining the scent of damp decay. The walls had been erected directly around the floor of the woods. I sniffed, searching for a note of manure or rotten eggs to determine my distance from Hirun, and instantly regretted it. An overwhelmingly foul odor gagged me. If this was death, my soul hadn’t wound up anywhere good.

On the off chance I was still among the living, I pressed my hand over my nose, sipping the air in tiny, careful pulls. From the size of the vines winding over the ground, this room had been built a long time ago. Perhaps he enjoyed killing me so much that he moved me somewhere new to do it again.

I reached to scratch my shoulder and flinched. My wrists. The Commander had snapped the right one and crushed the other, and I

distinctly recalled my cuffs grinding the bones of both to dust. Bewildered, I rotated them. Nothing—no pain. Baira’s blessed hair, had I finally gone mad?

My torn clothes had been replaced by a simple linen gown. The thought of one of the Nizahl guardsmen stripping my clothes while I slept made me grit my teeth. I cast an assessing glance over the room once more, searching for anything I could use as a weapon.

Because your last endeavor to kill the Heir was so exceedingly successful, Hanim bit out.

Who said anything about trying to kill him again? My intentions began and ended with getting out of this room. I turned on the cot, setting my feet on the ground. They settled over a bulbous, springy surface. I frowned.

Odd, why would the vines be— I looked down and screamed. My legs violently recoiled, knocking my knees against my chin.

Stretched on the ground beside my bed was the soldier I killed.

A bone of his snapped neck protruded from the waxen glaze of his skin.

Insects skittered in the open gash under his belly. My stomach turned as his lips pulsed, parting briefly as a roach escaped onto his cheek.

I had seen many corpses, but never quite this far into death. Yuck. He must have been a nightmare for the guards to carry. I stretched my leg to hop over him when something much more unsettling caught my eye.

On the soldier’s chest lay a wrapped sesame-seed candy.

The door opened. Jeru and Vaun entered, moving to opposite sides of the frame. They stood at attention.

Arin strode past them. With his hair swept tidily from his face and his vest meticulously laced beneath his coat, it was hard to imagine someone with such self-possession had nearly strangled me to death.

His attention found my face and settled, eradicating the small hope I had indulged that perhaps the soldier’s body had been in this room before I arrived. Arin wanted a reaction.

I had a split second to decide which one I should give. I could give him innocence, feign shock and horror at the mutilated corpse and maybe break into tears. I could offer the Heir subdued distress and ask him what happened. Every option I considered fell flat, because they all inevitably led to the same consequence: my death. He had declared as much in the war

room.

I bent down and plucked the candy from the soldier’s chest. I studied it between two fingers, bringing it to my nose for a sniff. Filth and sugar.

“I think you misplaced this,” I said, casual.

No response. I may as well have spoken to a stone. He wanted a reaction? Well, that made two of us. I flicked the candy. It fell against his boot. “I do not care much for sweets, myself.”

Vaun stepped forward, a hand on the hilt of his sword. Jeru grasped his elbow.

“Out.” Arin did not raise his voice or move his eyes from mine. A sour- faced Vaun wrenched his elbow away and stormed out. Jeru followed,

closing the door behind him.

We were alone.

I bit my lip. The urge to break the silence battered me, an unfortunate relic from my time with Hanim. Silence was danger. The more still he was, the more unsettled I became. I forced myself to hold his gaze. The blackness was gone, replaced with his placid blue. Not a suggestion of the savagery I had witnessed remained in his frosty disposition. One question pushed and pushed, forcing itself into creation.

“Is Fairel—” I cleared my throat. “Is Fairel alive?”

Arin arranged himself on a long-backed wooden chair, crossing his ankle over his knee. His gloved hand dangled loosely over his bent knee.

“Yes,” he said. Relief crashed through me, and I exhaled. I wanted to press further, inquire after her condition and recovery. But my affection for Fairel had plunged me into this disaster, and I could not move forward while she weighed on me.

She was alive. Raya and the other girls would not leave any of her needs unmet. The villagers would come to the keep with food and supplies.

Despite their apathy concerning Adel, Mahair’s villagers knew how to support their own. If she had died at her own Heir’s hands, the village would never have recovered. The lower villages tolerated much from the Omal crown. Killing their children would be the torch to light resentment’s kindling.

Fairel would be taken care of. I could do nothing more for her.

“How am I alive?”

He tilted his head. The perfect polish of his expression had worn away,

leaving faint distaste in its place. If his actions in the war room were any indication, few emotions were strong enough to overwhelm Arin of Nizahl’s command of his body. Which meant the look of faint distaste masked a much deeper hatred.

“Your magic saved you. Knitted you back together. You have slept for eleven hours.”

What a preposterous concept. My magic could not be convinced to dislodge a stone stuck in my boot, let alone repair broken bones and knit new skin.

I spoke without thinking. “My magic tried to kill me.”

A charged silence preempted his careful words. “You speak as though your magic has a will of its own.”

A fly buzzed over the corpse’s exposed insides. I was out of plans. If our roles were reversed, his silver tongue might bend this situation to his favor, weave glittering nets to evade his certain doom. But my own tongue was brutish, lacking fluency in the speech of serpents. I was versed in subterfuge and escape, and he had quite definitively proven I did not have a prayer of besting him at either.

I needed to change the direction of his questions. Exposing my cuffs and their hold over my magic might give the Heir momentary pause, but the law was clear: I possessed magic, and its presence would corrupt me regardless of its actual exercise.

You cannot mention your cuffs. Any information you give this man, no matter how inconsequential, will return to haunt you, Hanim warned.

For once, I agreed with her. No one had reason to believe Essiya of Jasad was alive. If Arin even suspected my true identity, he would slit my throat in the same time it took to blink.

“Why am I alive?”

“Good,” he said. “You have arrived at the right question.”

“You knew I was a Jasadi the moment you met me.”

“I do not make accusations indiscriminately.”

I picked at the quilt’s threading, keeping his glove hidden from my sight.

I couldn’t forget the weight of it falling on my chest, the red pain of his bare hand. “Why not allow the Omal Heir’s guardsmen to kill me at the festival?

It would have been justly earned, and your task completed in efficiency.”

A more perfect solution could not have presented itself. Yet he had

blocked me before I had taken a step toward Felix. The price for magic was my head. What difference did it make which sword lopped it off?

“Your fate lies in my hands. Not in that wastrel’s fumbling guard,” he said. His level gaze found mine. “Not in yours.”

I burned blisteringly hot, then cold. He thought I brought the cabinet down on purpose? “Satisfy your hubris, then. You are my arbiter to the afterlife. End this cleanly.”

“Your infantile mastery of your emotions has done you no credit. I could have seen you dead a thousand times since I arrived, but there you sit, insolent as ever.”

I scooted to the opposite side of the cot. The thick scratch of vines beneath my feet was a welcome replacement for the soldier’s body, and I stood.

Arin did not react as I approached. Why should he? My hair fell down my back in unkempt knots, and I was lost in this sack of a gown. I was truly Niphran’s daughter. The madwoman in the tower births the madwoman of the woods. It would take less than nothing for him to block an attack. To plant his boot on my throat and press.

“You could have seen me dead a thousand times, but you haven’t.”

If I were the Nizahl Commander, what would keep me in an obscure Omalian village to hunt down one impotent Jasadi for this long? What benefit could I gain from preserving her life?

His was a deliberate game, removed of the incendiary trappings of emotion.

Before arriving in Mahair, the rumors placed Arin in Gahre. If he’d found the soldier’s body, then he must have been traveling south along Hirun. Along the outer edges of the lower villages.

I thought of the inexplicably stationed cabinet of war relics, leagues away from the Citadel. Our very first meeting—hadn’t the guards mentioned releasing someone? The layers knit together, and it hit me with such clarity that I placed a bracing hand on the wall.

“This isn’t about me at all, is it?”

I laughed, the sound grating and overly loud. I had played his game as Essiya, a girl who merited such attentions from the Nizahl Heir. But Sylvia was nothing. No logical reason existed for why the Commander of the Nizahl army himself should devote his energy toward my capture.

The truth is always in the beginnings, Hanim murmured. What is his basic truth?

Arin of Nizahl had trained thousands of soldiers on identifying and combatting Jasadis. The raven-marked trees, patrols, and trials were his prerogative. Where the Supreme just conquered and killed, his Heir turned Nizahl’s power into a political stranglehold on the other kingdoms.

Two obligations could compel the reclusive Nizahl Heir from his kingdom: choosing a Champion for the Alcalah and hunting a Jasadi threat of extraordinary danger. I’d assumed the wrong obligation brought him here.

“There is another Jasadi. Maybe a group,” I said. Slowly, the pieces slotted into place. I couldn’t believe how stupid I had been. “You’ve used the guise of choosing a Champion to hunt them down undetected.” The copious maps mounted in the war room, covered in lines and scribbles.

“You’re after them. I am only convenient.”

I drew closer. A herd of deer stampeded on my chest, warning me back, Haven’t you learned anything? But if my suspicions were right, I had nothing to fear. Not yet. I leaned into the Commander’s space, gripping the arms of his chair. I gazed down at him, stirring the hair at his temple with my words. “I am alive because you need me, don’t you?” I lingered close enough to count his silver lashes. “And you’re furious.”

Arin smiled, pulling his scar tight. “Finally.”

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