Chapter 20 Quil
Quil
Quil and his companions left the Empire encampment well before dawn, when most everyone would be sleeping. A hot late-summer wind blew through the canyon, sending thick clouds of dust into the air, obscuring the stars.
Elias and Laia planned to ride with them to the edge of the badlands, and the group was still saddling their horses in the warm dark when the Empress and Blood Shrike appeared to see them off.
“I wish you’d let me come with you,” the Shrike muttered as Quil clasped her hand in farewell. “Don’t trust Tas to keep you safe.”
“Trust me to keep me safe, Shrike,” Quil said. He considered his conversation with his aunt the day before and the worry for her that had been gnawing at him all night. “Keep an eye on Aunt Hel, will you? Make sure she eats. Sleeps. You know how she gets.”
“How do I get?” His aunt had approached on cat’s feet, gaze narrowed. Quil hadn’t even noticed her until she spoke. The Shrike excused herself hastily.
Quil considered an about-face but decided honesty was wiser.
“You’re not sleeping properly,” he said. “You’re not eating enough. But we’re at war. We don’t have the luxury of losing our empress to self-neglect. Promise me you’ll take care of yourself.”
Aunt Hel nodded distractedly. “Don’t fuss,” she said. “I just forget. My mind has been in the past of late.”
“Thinking of what?”
“The day you were born, as it happens.” Her face was turned away, barely lit by the dim lanterns scattered through the canyon.
“Laia handed you to me,” Aunt Hel said. “Told me to whisper my hopes for you in your ear. It was good luck, she said. I wished you joy and a family that loved you, adventures to shape you, and true friends to have them with.” Her voice dropped to a whisper.
“What have I bequeathed you instead, nephew? A broken Empire. A scattered family. Friends in danger. A Gens credo that will always demand more than any human should have to give. Loyalty above all else. Above freedom, even.”
Quil’s heart quailed at his aunt’s despair. He had seen it before in flashes. In her memories. But never this potent and raw. His heart ached. He could not fail.
“Aunt Hel.” Quil took her hands. “Look at me. Look at me.”
She complied with reluctance, her cheeks hollow, her eyes wretched.
“You have given me joy,” he said. “More than my fair share, really.
You have loved me as well as my own mother would have and far better than my father was capable of.
You have taught me the skills to survive my adventures.
And you have given me the humility and kindness to keep my friends.
Do not take the sum of my life and make it into something tragic. It is not. Nor shall it ever be.
“I will go to the jinn,” Quil went on. “The Jaduna. I will get our people help. And while I’m gone, you will make life as hellish as possible for the Kegari, Aunt.
You told me only days ago that I must not forsake hope.
I say the same to you now. We will be stronger on the other side.
As for the words of our Gens—you are the one who taught me that they do not ask more of us than we are willing to give. Say them with me now.”
Aunt Hel squeezed his hands tightly, so tightly it hurt. She met his gaze, a spark of her fierce will surfacing through her grief. Together, they spoke.
“Loyal to the end.”
After leaving, Elias ranged ahead, seeking any threat that might lurk amid the brilliantly striated spires and deep ravines of the badlands. Quil was relieved. He and Elias hadn’t finished their conversation about Ruh in Serra. But the big man hadn’t forgotten; Quil was sure of that.
He was also sure Elias wouldn’t bring it up around Laia. So, he rode beside her and Sufiyan, trying not to laugh as Laia pelted her son with advice.
“—don’t trust anyone, no matter how helpful they might seem. And for skies’ sake, think before you spend the night in someone’s bed—”
“Enough, Ama.” Sufiyan squirmed, glancing surreptitiously at Arelia, who was speaking animatedly to Tas ahead of them.
Laia glanced at Arelia, and then back at Sufiyan, surprise and delight warring on her face.
“Oh,” she said before Sufiyan groaned and nudged his horse into a trot.
The second he was out of earshot, Laia turned to Quil, who couldn’t help but smile at her glee.
“Do tell, Quil,” she whispered. “Anything. Everything.”
“Maybe he should be the one to—”
“Zacharias Marcus Livius Aquillus Farrar, I brought you into this world and changed your nappies when you were a baby. Don’t you dare hold out on me now.”
Quil winced at the deployment of his full name. “It’s new, I think,” he said. “Half the time I can’t tell if they’re irritating each other or flirting. But he seems happy. More himself than he’s been since—”
Ruh died. The light went out of Laia’s face, and Quil cursed himself for being an insensitive boor.
Laia forced a smile. “Let me go chat with her, then,” she said. “Arelia spent so much time with Spiro these last few months. I hardly know her.”
As Tas galloped ahead to make room for Laia, Elias dropped back to Quil, his attention on the earth around them.
“Coyote tracks,” he said. “How many, do you think?”
“Just the one,” Quil said. “I saw him sniffing us out a few miles back, but then he wandered off. Probably got separated from his pack.”
“A shame,” Elias said. “Most creatures are nothing without the trust and support of their family.” He glanced over at Quil, his implication obvious.
Bleeding hells. Of course Elias wouldn’t let him depart easily. He wanted to know about Ruh. He wanted to know what Quil had seen in that cave.
Dash that thought from your head, boy. The Bani al-Mauth had given Quil orders. He wasn’t about to break them.
“You have a question,” Quil said. “I am asking you—as your friend, your student, your prince and future Emperor—to forgive me for not answering. I cannot.”
“Is he truly dead?” Elias’s voice was flat, like a Mask’s. Quil thought of Aunt Hel when she was facing something that terrified her.
“Is he, Quil?” Elias pressed. “Because I looked in the crevasse. I rappelled all the way to the bottom, into the darkness. Ruh wasn’t there.” Elias pinned Quil with his pale gaze. “Where is his body? Where is my son?”
The fate of our world depends on how well you tell that lie, boy. Quil wished the Bani al-Mauth would appear. He wished she’d never pulled him into keeping her secret.
“Quil, bleeding hells—” Elias’s voice broke. “Please just tell me.”
“Ruh’s heart was torn from his chest.” About this, at least, Quil could tell the truth. “I saw it with my own eyes. No one could survive that.”
At his old friend’s anguish, Quil looked down. His hands shook as he remembered. “I won’t say more. No matter how you push.”
“Did you—did you make some sort of vow to someone?” Elias said.
Quil gave his answer with his silence.
“I see.” Anger flashed across Elias’s face, but that wasn’t what ate at Quil. Elias had been angry at him plenty of times in the last twenty years.
No, it was the hurt on Elias’s face, the betrayal. Quil cursed the Bani al-Mauth. Her own relations with Laia, Elias, and her grandchildren were strained. What did she care if the vow ruined Quil’s relationship with Elias too?
All he could hope was that Elias would think on Quil’s words and puzzle out their meaning. He’d be wondering who Quil would keep a vow to, who might have that kind of power over the crown prince. And if he guessed the Bani al-Mauth? Well, that was her problem.
“I trust that you are trying to do the right thing,” Elias said. “And I trust that I—we”—he nodded to Laia up ahead—“have helped teach you what that is. It is—difficult to not know, Quil. I cannot explain how much.”
“I am sorry.” Quil didn’t know what else to say. “But I think, Elias, that this is perhaps not your battle. I know that seems wrong. He was your son. But he was loved by many. None of us will forget him or stop seeking vengeance for his death.”
“You know, he always surprised me with how much he saw.” Elias looked out at the desert, rolling away in a moonlit blue stretch of cracked sand and loose tumbleweeds.
“I would say, The weather’s turned, and he’d say, You make poultices for the aunties’ bones and I’ll make stories for their ears and everyone will be happy even if it’s raining.
I would say, I’m tired, and he’d drag me away from camp to look at the night sky and say, Aba, it’s not your body that needs rest, it’s your eyes that need stars. ”
Elias turned to Quil. “I don’t just want vengeance, Quil. I want my boy back. That will always be my battle. Though perhaps one I cannot win.”
He looked tired then, and older than his years. Quil had no words, only the burn of their shared grief.
They reached the edge of the badlands shortly after and said their farewells. Quil, Arelia, and Tas stepped away as Sufiyan’s parents embraced him, until Laia disentangled herself and pulled them all into the hug.
Elias nudged Quil, nodding to Sufiyan. “Keep that one out of trouble, will you? And good luck. If anyone can get those fiery bastards to help us, it’s you.”
With that, he swung onto his horse. After a few minutes, he and Laia were lost from sight.
As Quil stared after them, he saw lights flicker at the edge of his vision. Tiny twin flames, winking out of the night.
A whisper found Quil on the wind. Zacharias Marcus Livius Aquillus Farrar. Come.
That night, as Quil attempted to work out how, exactly, he was going to approach the jinn, Arelia found him. Her gaze dropped to his coin, which he hadn’t realized he was fiddling with.
“Before you ask,” he said, “no, I haven’t spoken to her again.”
“Nice to know.” Arelia sniffed. “I’ll let you agonize over that on your own in the dark, the way you like. I came to talk about something else. I’ve been thinking about the Ikfa.”
“Please tell me you figured out how to conjure some from thin air?”