Chapter 27 Quil
Quil
Quil’s exit from the Sher Jinaat was as abrupt as his arrival.
Diriya bid him farewell, ignoring his questions, and Umber took him to the edge of the jinn city and through the portal there.
He caught a glimpse of dark shores and pallid sky before stepping into the Forest of Dusk.
Umber windwalked him to where they’d picketed their horses, a few miles away.
“I will bring the others momentarily,” she said, but as she turned to leave, Quil spoke.
“Umber,” he said. “I had a question. About—dreamworking.”
“We have no dreamworkers.” Umber glanced over her shoulder, fist tight on her glaive. “The last one died in the war with your kind.”
“But what could they do? Could they alter dreams? Make you see things like—like people who are dead, for instance?”
Umber turned fully now, and the weight of her attention was menacing enough that Quil had to force himself not to take a cautious step back.
“Why do you ask me these questions, Prince?”
“My dreams have been unusual,” Quil said. “I want to know if I’m being manipulated.”
Umber wore her shadow form, and in the deepening night, all Quil could make out were her flame eyes.
“A dreamworker can illuminate that which already lives in one’s mind. The possibilities. The fears. The memories. And they can only ever appear as themselves.”
She was gone then, and Quil mulled over her words in confusion as he kindled a campfire. He’d just gotten the flame going when Sufiyan and Arelia appeared, the latter full to bursting with all she’d learned.
“Quil!” She was breathless as she hurried to him.
“The things I saw! Brinwa—that’s the jinn I met, she’s brilliant—she taught me all about their buttressing and how they create the curves in their walls.
But more importantly, she told me the jinn don’t destroy Ikfa.
Brinwa said Ikfa cannot be destroyed, only contained or transformed with its opposite.
I was right! But I was thinking—Ikfa is a metal that nullifies magic.
Is Loha a metal that amplifies it? If I could get my hands on some Loha—”
“Arelia, a minute,” Sufiyan said, frowning as he took in Quil’s expression. Quil was grateful his friend was perceptive enough that he didn’t have to pretend everything was fine. “I take it the jinn refused to help?”
“Of course they did,” a voice growled from the darkness. “Not without a price anyway. Isn’t that right, Prince?”
The Bani al-Mauth appeared from the shadows beyond their fire, Tas in tow carrying a large basket. She didn’t wait for Quil’s answer to her question. Instead, she turned to Sufiyan, wariness in the deep lines of her face.
“Grandson,” she said. “Greetings.”
“Nan,” Sufiyan said, arms crossed.
Quil recalled the rift between them. Laia had fought bitterly with the Bani al-Mauth after Ruh was killed, demanding to meet the ghost of her child so that she might say goodbye. But the Bani al-Mauth had refused. Laia hadn’t spoken to her since.
It had been nearly two years.
For a long moment, the Bani al-Mauth and her grandson stared at each other, equally stubborn, equally stern-faced.
Then Sufiyan cracked the smallest of smiles and his nan grabbed him in an embrace.
“I missed you, Sufiyan.”
“I missed beating you at archery, Nan.”
“As if you’ve ever beaten me, boy.”
The Bani al-Mauth was still smiling when she looked again at Quil, but her smile faded quickly.
“The worse for wear, I see, Your Highness,” she said, and her tone was gentle.
“Typical for a visit to the jinn. I’ve brought food.
” She nodded at Tas. “Come, let us eat, and we can discuss whatever deal those fire-faced devils wish to make.”
“It’s not a deal so much as a demand,” Quil said. Tas passed out the food as Sufiyan heated water for tea, and Quil told them of his visit. The only thing he left out was his conversation with Umber about dreamworking. He needed more time to think on what Umber had said.
“I can’t do it,” Quil said when he’d finished explaining Diriya’s offer. “After the way Sirsha’s family used her, I can’t hand her over to the jinn.”
“Diriya knows what an Adah is,” Arelia said. “Why would they ask you to deliver your soul half to them just so they could torment her?”
“They don’t like humans,” Sufiyan said. “They killed tens of thousands in the war twenty years ago. One more won’t matter to them.”
“Humans persecuted them,” Arelia said. “Murdered their children in the middle of a forest and imprisoned all the adults. I can understand why they wouldn’t trust us.”
“And why we shouldn’t trust them,” Quil said. “Diriya can’t guarantee Sirsha’s safety. All she can guarantee is her suffering.”
“We don’t know where Sirsha is,” Sufiyan said. “You can’t hand her over, even if you wanted to. Didn’t she say she never wanted to speak to you again?”
“You’re the crown prince of your people.
” Tas spoke up, and his voice was more severe than normal.
Whatever he’d discussed with the Soul Catcher had drained his usual humor away.
“The jinn made clear what will happen to innocent Empire citizens if you do not deliver Sirsha. I don’t think you have a choice.
You must find her.” He looked to the Bani al-Mauth, who shrugged.
“The dead are dead whether they’re Kegari or Martial or Scholar,” she said. “I don’t have a horse in this race.”
Tas’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. Quil wondered again what they had spoken of. You could find out, his magic whispered. Take the knowledge. To chain the magic is against its nature.
Arelia cleared her throat, her irritation plain. “You might want to ask Sirsha what she thinks,” she said. “She doesn’t simply resent the fact that her family used her. It’s that they didn’t even ask. They just made decisions for her.”
“Of course she won’t want to do it,” Sufiyan said. “She doesn’t have a death wish.”
But Quil didn’t know about that. He’d only spoken to Sirsha twice, but she’d not been herself in either conversation.
He reached for their Adah coin. She was afraid.
He could feel it through the coin. And she was fighting that fear, and he didn’t like what that could mean for her.
What danger was she putting herself in? Despite her previous claims of selfishness, she seemed to have little regard for her own health.
The fact that she’d sacrificed herself to kill Div was proof of that.
“Whether she’d want to or not, the jinn aren’t an option,” Quil said.
“I won’t put her at risk. Not after everything she’s gone through.
We must go to the Jaduna. They’re the only ones powerful enough to take on the Kegari.
And at least we know she won’t be there—she’s not allowed back. ” Thank the bleeding skies.
For the first time, he was relieved that Sirsha wasn’t with him. He didn’t want her to know about the jinn’s demands. Didn’t want to risk her getting hurt. Skies knew she’d given up enough for others.
“I can get you to the Southern Continent, at least,” the Bani al-Mauth said in her raspy voice. “Mauth will not protest and the other Soul Catchers can take over for a time. We can leave in the morning.”
“What of the magic, Quil?” Arelia said. “You’re supposed to practice it.”
“You can practice on me,” Sufiyan offered. “Nan always says I couldn’t keep a baby jinn out of my brain, even if I tried.”
“And me,” Arelia said. “I’ve never gotten any sort of mind-training, but if it will help beat the Kegari…” She shrugged.
It moved Quil that they volunteered themselves up so readily. “I can’t do that to you,” he said. “What if I accidentally erase an important memory? Or harm you?”
“Diriya wouldn’t tell you to practice unless there was a reason for it,” the Bani al-Mauth said, sipping at her tea. “The jinn do not speak idly. Take the help your friends are offering.”
Sleep was elusive that night, but what little Quil did get was haunted by Ruh, small beside him as they sat together in the cave where he died. Even dreaming, Quil knew he shouldn’t be able to see Ruh. A dreamworker can only ever appear as themselves. But Ruh was dead.
Why do you fear your magic, Quil? Ruh said.
“I don’t,” Quil said. “I mean, I do—I don’t know. You never had magic, Ruh. It’s hard to explain.”
I don’t have magic? Then how am I talking to you now? He had a slight smile on his face.
Ruh couldn’t be sending these dreams. And yet he looked so real. Different than before—older. Nearly thirteen. The age he would be if he yet lived.
You will not win this battle with your blades, Quil, Ruh said. Nor with pleas for aid. And yet it is you who must win it for all of us. The leaves will turn, and this will all be decided. I will need your help. You will come to me here, yes? When the time comes? You will find me. Promise?
“Yes, Ruh,” Quil said. “I promise, I’ll find you.”
Ruh’s words echoed in Quil’s head long after he awoke, after the Bani al-Mauth took them away from the Waiting Place.
Even as they spent the next two days windwalking across the vast expanse of the Tribal Desert and the Serran Mountain Range beyond, the scenery nothing but a sand-colored blur, Quil found himself more convinced that someone was sending the dreams. He only wished he understood why.
After three days, and with Mauth’s full power fueling her, the Bani al-Mauth had gotten them south of the Karkaun Range and almost entirely across Firan.
When she finally stopped, thousands of miles from where they’d started, she surveyed them as they all collapsed to the ground.
Quil clasped his face in his hands, trying to ease a splitting headache, while Sufiyan, Arelia, and Tas were all moaning in pain.
“Too bleeding fast,” Tas gasped, sweating even though it was early in the day and much cooler in the Southern Continent. “Why so fast?”