Chapter 12 Quil
Quil
The welfare of the Ikfa smiths had been Quil’s responsibility for weeks now. Spiro Teluman had selected each smith with great care, for they were to aid him in his quest to master the material.
They lived and worked at the edge of Serra, far from the rest of the settlement, to ensure the secrecy of the endeavor.
When Quil reached the hidden underground lair, passing through three sets of guards, the place was in chaos.
Though it was evening, every smith was here now, some securing their tools, others stirring huge vats of dark, liquid metal. The Ikfa.
Arelia, who’d been essential to figuring out the properties of Ikfa, came running to Quil. Her curls stuck out in a halo, her coveralls splattered with small burn holes. She looked like she hadn’t slept in a week.
“Elias said we have to move,” she said with no preamble, “but the Ikfa is at its most delicate stage. If we move it now, most of it will be lost. Oh—” She seemed to take in the fact that Quil stood before her.
“Welcome back. Glad you’re alive. Now I don’t have to sabotage Suf’s laundry.
I suppose I’ll have to set the vipers free. ”
Quil gave her a quick hug. “The tempering,” he said. Spiro Teluman had explained the process to him.
“We can’t move it or alter the heat on it for two full days.” Arelia nodded to the vats of liquid that looked like boiling blood. “Then we can pour it into molds and forge it once it cools. We need that time.”
“We could cast it into the molds now,” he said. “Then retemper when we get to a safe place.”
“It will risk the integrity of the entire batch,” a deep voice said. Spiro Teluman appeared from where he’d been speaking to a group of smiths. “Either we stay until the end, or we accept that the tempered Ikfa is lost. And we find more.”
“There is no more.” Quil suppressed a curse. Time. Never on their side. “How long do you need?”
“We started this batch last night. We’ll need until midnight tomorrow.”
By then, the Kegari would already have flattened what was left of Serra. And yet this was the only Ikfa they possessed. Without it, they had no hope against the Kegari.
“Everyone who isn’t essential to this endeavor must leave,” Quil said. “There will be guards waiting to escort them to the closest refugee camp and keep them isolated. Only one of you can stay to oversee this.”
Spiro and Arelia began to protest, but Quil didn’t have time for arguments. “Spiro, I leave it to you. Get everyone else out. I’m not asking.”
Quil left to arrange the smiths’ exit with the stablemaster. All around him, families and orphans who had taken refuge in Serra hurried to leave, bringing out horses and wagons from their hiding places in the ruins.
“I hear tell that we’re about to be bombed into oblivion?” Sufiyan, directing a group of children to a waiting wagon, spoke in an undertone as Quil approached.
“Best get packing, Veturius.” Arelia appeared behind Sufiyan, and her voice was tight with anxiety. She turned to Quil. “Spiro will stay with the Ikfa until it’s tempered.”
“Ride with Tribe Saif, Arelia,” Quil said. “You need to be gone well before dawn.”
“I’m ready to leave.” Arelia held up a pack, which Sufiyan immediately took from her, frowning as he shook it; it rattled with tools.
“You’re telling me to pack?” Sufiyan peered into the bag. “You’ve got no rations, Reli. No clothes. No weapons—”
“My self-loading slingshot is as good a weapon as your bow. And anyway, I’m not planning to leave without you, Quil.”
“Obviously not.” Sufiyan frowned, as if the very suggestion of it was offensive. He turned to Quil. “You’re plotting something, I assume. Count me in.”
Quil glanced between his cousin and Sufiyan, irritated at their stubbornness, moved at their loyalty, and unwilling to quarrel with either of them.
He sent them on their way as a plan began to take shape in his mind.
An hour later, he approached the Empress’s war room.
Rallius and the Blood Shrike lurked outside, not so surreptitiously eavesdropping on the intense discussion taking place within.
“—only seventeen!” Laia’s voice echoed. “She’s far too young for something like this.”
“How old were you when you spied for the Resistance?” Aunt Helene responded, and she sounded exhausted.
“Too young!” Laia snapped. “Musa has no right—”
“Musa is deploying a recruit in the safest way he knows how in the middle of a war,” Aunt Hel said. “Better to send her on a mission than let her die in the heat of a useless battle. In any case, Elias is the one who—”
“Oh, hang Elias! I’ve already shouted at him! Please, Hel. I—I’ve failed Kari in so many ways. I must at least try to protect her. You tell Musa that…”
Quil shot a chiding glance at Rallius and the Blood Shrike before clearing his throat and entering the room.
It was in the ruins of a cooper’s workshop.
Stacks of wood still sat heaped in the corners, and the old workbench was strewn with maps and missives.
Laia sat perched atop a barrel, face softening when she saw Quil.
“Hello, love,” she said. “All right?”
He nodded. Laia’s usually neat bun hung limply, and her healer’s smock was stained and wrinkled.
Since she’d told Quil of her connection to Div, she’d stopped telling stories.
This is the last, she’d whispered to him at the end of that terrible tale.
I am not worthy. The stories do not speak to me anymore.
She blamed herself. It was a feeling he knew well.
“A moment please, Laia,” Aunt Hel said, and when Laia had taken her leave, the Empress met Quil’s gaze, her face drawn. “Tell me the smiths and the Ikfa are clear. I need good news.”
“They’re not,” Quil said. “And they can’t get clear until midnight tomorrow. But I have an idea.”
Aunt Hel sighed, eyeing him. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”
Not one bit. “We’ll place Masks in the ruins to lure Aiz down,” Quil said.
“She wants Loha badly enough to investigate. Sufiyan will watch my back, Arelia will watch Spiro’s.
Once Aiz is here, I’ll reveal myself and negotiate with her so she stops bombing Serra.
I’ll say you and I disagree. That I can get her the Loha.
If she buys it, it will get us the time we need to temper the Ikfa and get it out of here. ”
“That’s a scanty plan, nephew. You wish me to leave while you risk yourself, the Ikfa, Sufiyan, Arelia, a group of Masks—”
“And Spiro Teluman.”
“And our greatest blacksmith. Are you sure about this?” Aunt Hel considered him, her head tilted, the way it was when they were about to enter a room full of courtiers or generals or Illustrians.
She used to wait outside those rooms for a moment.
Sometimes I’m nervous before I go in, she’d say.
If I take a second to breathe, it helps.
He knew now that she was always ready to walk into those rooms. That she’d sensed his nerves, his indecision, and she was giving him a moment to collect himself.
“Trust me, Aunt.” Before, perhaps, he would have been indecisive. No longer. Neither he nor his people could afford inaction.
The Empress considered one moment longer, before nodding.
“See it done, then, nephew.”
A few hours later, Quil watched the skies from a fortified building in the old Scholars’ Quarter of Serra, as the sun lingered behind the jagged line of the eastern Serran Mountains.
Stars still twinkled above, and something flickered out in the dark.
Quil tensed, awaiting the whine of a Kegari bomb.
Zacharias Marcus Livius Aquillus Farrar. He seemed to hear a voice on the wind. We wait.
Quil turned—expecting to see someone materialize out of the darkness. But the only thing that moved was the desert sand, swirling in fitful eddies.
Moments later, as the last star faded into the dawn, the first bomb fell. And thoughts of anything but the Kegari fled his mind.
Quil braced. He was alone. The city appeared empty, but in addition to the Masks serving as bait, Arelia and Sufiyan were both nearby, and Spiro Teluman was hidden in the forge.
“They’re punctual, at least.”
Quil jumped at the deep voice behind him. Elias.
“I thought you were supposed to be with the Empress,” Quil said.
“You really think Laia would let me leave you alone here?” Elias snorted. “Have you met her?”
Quil smiled, despite his frustration with Elias. Laia was protective of her children, true, but she had always been just as protective of Quil.
“She seems a bit angry at you.”
“When Karinna wanted to leave for the Resistance, I took her side instead of Laia’s.”
“Is that, um—” Quil considered how to phrase what he was about to say in a way that wouldn’t get his head bitten off. “Is it safe to send Kari to fight? She’s a bit…” Impulsive. Belligerent. Sensitive. Arrogant.
Elias raised a brow and when he spoke, his voice was deceptively soft. “Do you have an observation to make about my daughter, Quil?”
Ten hells. “Only that she’s angry, Elias. Like all of us. But she’s trained to kill.”
After a moment, Elias grunted something that might have been agreement. “Fighting for the Resistance will teach her control. Besides, she’s seventeen—”
“Seventeen?” Quil said, surprised. “When the hells did she even turn sixteen?”
Elias sighed. “While we grieved, Quil. In any case, Laia will come around. Eventually. For now, making myself a bit scarce seems like a wise decision.” He glanced behind him—something had caught his eye. “The Masks are in place. They should lead Aiz right to us.”
Quil nodded. He needed to lure that hag to him. But he needed Aiz to think it was her own idea. The Masks would take care of that.
“I need to say something to you,” Elias said after a long moment. “If you’ll listen. I am sorry. For what happened to Sirsha. For what our vow put her through. One day, I hope to tell her myself.”
Another bomb shook the earth. Dust drifted down through the boards above them; a window shattered.