Chapter 20 Quil #2
“Not quite yet.” Arelia smiled. “I was thinking of Sirsha’s reaction to it—she was horrified, do you remember? Why are the Jaduna so wary of it?”
“It kills magic. It negates everything they are. That’s enough, wouldn’t you say?”
Arelia shrugged. “Perhaps. But it felt like something more.”
“More than an existential threat?”
“It negates magic, which indicates that it must be magical itself. And if you recall Rajin’s third law—”
Quil did remember. “Magic cannot be destroyed, only contained or transformed,” he said, then frowned. “But Sirsha said the Jaduna sent Ikfa to the jinn. I assumed it was so they might destroy it.”
“Ask her about it,” Arelia said. “When she deigns to speak to you again. And don’t tell me she won’t speak to you, cousin. Find a way. We’re missing something about the Ikfa.”
Quil didn’t take Arelia’s advice lightly, but he also knew that when Sirsha dug in her heels, it was impossible to get her to move. She’d said she never wanted to speak to him again. Yet the Adah coin was as intricate as ever, the grooves in the silver deep and true.
Her feelings hadn’t faded, even if she acted like they had.
Perhaps the trick wasn’t to change her mind when she clearly had her reasons to hide her emotions, but to agree with whatever she said.
Four days into their journey, when they were halfway to the Waiting Place, Quil reached out to Sirsha.
He waited until watch, when he’d be alone. He felt strange enough talking aloud to someone he couldn’t see. He didn’t need an audience.
“Sirsha, it’s urgent,” he said in his flattest, coldest voice possible. The one she knew meant trouble.
What did I say, Quil? She sounded like she was trying to be nonchalant. We’re done.
“I’m not reaching out to you to tell you that I love you and miss you. That I hope you’re safe,” he said. “Or that I have your hairpins and would like to give them back to you someday.”
Sounds like you are. I must go, Quil.
“Wait! I have a question. About the Ikfa. What do you know about it beyond that the Jaduna abhor it?”
A long pause. Quil held his breath until finally, she spoke. I know they send it to the jinn to be destroyed, she said. And they’ve been doing so for centuries. When there was only one jinn left—Shaeva, her name was—they sent it to her in the Forest of Dusk.
Quil frowned. The supply in Serra had been blown to bits.
“But it’s a magical substance,” Quil said. “Can it even be destroyed?”
It can be neutralized. Made into something inert like sand or mud.
“Our Ikfa was destroyed by a Kegari bomb,” Quil said. “It was a Jaduna who ordered the attack.”
The Jaduna are working with the Kegari? Sirsha sounded as startled as Quil had felt. But we have a treaty with the Empire. Do you know who told the Kegari?
“It was a Raani. Goes by U’qaya. A friend of mine, Spiro, he died in the bombing.”
U’qaya was always ruthless. Sirsha’s voice was soft. I’m so sorry she killed your friend.
Quil felt unable to speak, but the silence between him and Sirsha was not awkward. It was as familiar as the quiet they sometimes had on the road, or in each other’s arms. A gentle, thinking silence.
I am certain that Ikfa can’t be destroyed by bombs alone. The Jaduna have had access to firepowder for centuries. It would be easier to blow up the bits we found instead of sending scraps to the jinn.
“And you’re certain that the jinn destroy it?” Quil said.
I can only tell you what I’ve heard. Another pause.
I asked my mother about it once. R’zwana accidentally touched Ikfa while on a mission.
It was one of the few times I remember my mother getting truly angry.
In the end, R’zwana was fine, but when I asked Ma why she was still so upset, she said, “The ghosts of our misdeeds seek vengeance. And they will have their due.” Gave me the chills even though it didn’t make any sense at the time. Still doesn’t, really.
“Could the Raani have feared the Ikfa weakening R’zwana? Could that be why R’zwana’s magic failed?”
Plenty of Jaduna have touched and handled Ikfa and our magic still works. Look at you and me.
“You and me,” Quil said, voice hollow. He thought of those nights she couldn’t sleep on the road, months ago now. Of how she always took the food or tea he made her with suspicion. Until the one day that she took it with a smile. He’d slept easier that night.
“Sirsha, I wish you’d tell me where you are. I think about you all the time. Your laugh and your insults and that night in the shepherd’s house—”
Tell me, she said, her voice soft in his mind. Tell me what you remember.
“The rain,” he said. “Your lips and the way I could have kissed you forever. Your fingers in my hair and the sounds you made. The way you tasted when I was on my knees and the way your body tightened around me when I said your name and the way your midnight eyes burned me to ash.”
I think about it too, she said. How your skin felt beneath my hands, steel and silk and fire. How you took your time and made me wait until I was in pieces. How you— A long pause.
I must go, she said, cold as he’d been at the beginning of their conversation. Goodbye, Quil.
The Adah coin cooled. Once again, she was gone.
After a week, the cracked desert sands had softened into rolling hills, thick with dead summer grasses.
The Waiting Place was a green line that shimmered in the heat of the eastern horizon.
A dry breeze blew across the plain, carrying the scent of leaves and moss.
Every now and then, a mournful wail echoed.
The wind perhaps. But more likely the ghosts of the Waiting Place, sensing and hating the presence of the living so near to them.
“It’s about two hours’ ride.” Tas nodded to the distant tree line when they stopped to water their horses. “Might as well head in now, while it’s light. All the moaning is much more sinister at night.”
“Wait,” Quil said, for he’d tried to strategize what he’d say to the jinn and hadn’t yet settled on what sounded right. “I have one chance to persuade them to help us,” he said. “I need to think about it for another night.”
“Fine by me.” Tas glanced at the forest again, frowning. “Don’t like going in there.”
“The ghosts never bothered me,” Sufiyan said.
“That’ll be Mauth’s doing,” Tas said. “A gift of sorts, to Laia. You and your kin can go many places that others cannot, Suf. Quil and I have dealt with the ghosts before. It’s…unpleasant.”
Quil grimaced. He’d been to both the Sher Jinaat and the forest surrounding it as part of his duties as crown prince.
Ghosts had surrounded him, crying out in sadness and anger.
The presence of the living was anathema to them and they made their displeasure known.
Quil wouldn’t soon forget the experience.
“You lot are horribly incurious,” Arelia said.
“In the twenty years since the jinn treaty, the Imperial Corps of Engineering has requested visitation to the Sher Jinaat every year. They’ve been rejected every time.
Who cares about a few ghosts if we have a chance to see the greatest engineering marvel in the known world?
Besides, I want to ask the jinn about the Ikfa. ”
Tas snorted. “You just wait until you get closer and they’re howling up your nostrils—”
“How can they make noise, anyway?” Arelia said. “They don’t have voice boxes. Is it a magical manipulation of the wind, perhaps? Do you think if I asked—”
“Yes, because I’m sure what will comfort tormented ghosts,” Tas muttered, “is a scientific interrogation about their voice boxes.”
“Don’t you have a go at her,” Sufiyan said. “Maybe the ghosts want people to ask them interesting questions.”
“They do not—”
“Shut it,” Quil said suddenly, for beyond their little company, a heavy silence had fallen.
There were no birds. No crickets. No insect calls. Only the hiss of leaves in the wind. Quil’s skin prickled. The hot air shimmered with flames that winked into being. Flames contained in human shapes.
Quil reached for his blade, more for comfort than because he planned to draw it, but his hand froze mid-reach. The rest of his body, too.
Shadows rose from the grasses and coalesced into a tall cloaked form, with flames for eyes and an enormous glaive in one hand.
“Prince Zacharias.” The jinn spoke, her voice the soft roar of an ancient flame. “Welcome. We have been waiting for you.”