Chapter 30 Aiz
Aiz
Ruh appeared regularly enough to Aiz that she grew used to his presence.
He visited her dreams, standing beside her as she led her people over the sea.
But often, he was simply in the room when she was awake.
A familiar, pale-eyed apparition, watching, offering advice.
Sometimes he even smiled or laughed at something she said.
Aiz understood that he was a figment of her mind.
A manifestation of her guilt. She’d led him to his death, after all.
Seeing him was a relief, in a way. Cero and Quil and Noa—even Ghaz—they all thought she felt nothing.
Oh, Ghaz pretended otherwise, of course, always fawning now that she could harness her windsmithing again.
But she heard what he said behind her back.
Ruh was a reminder that she still grieved. She still felt. She was human.
You are, Aiz. You’re still you. They do not see it, but I do, he said.
Currently, she was conversing with him in a dream.
She knew from the way everything seemed to repeat, the way Ruh looked not like a ghost—as he did when she was awake—but like his old self, his silver eyes alight with life.
Though strangely, he looked older. Around twelve or thirteen. The age he’d be now if he’d lived.
“I’m sorry, Ruh,” she said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I—”
I know, Aiz. I know what you were, once. I know what you can be again. Someone better. Someone who can save her people. But you must find me, Aiz.
“You’re gone, Ruh. It’s been almost two years.”
And yet, here I am in your dreams. He smiled, but his face went serious again. My consciousness yet exists. Help me, Aiz, and I will help you. Find me.
“How do I find you, Ruh?”
You only have to look. A tangle of images flashed before her. She flew over a desert, circling down amid ravines and hoodoos she knew well.
And then she was awake, pouring sweat, staring up into Ghaz’s face as he called her name urgently.
“Tel Ilessi,” he said. “The generals are waiting.”
She nodded and smothered a curse. She’d overslept.
No weakness. Never. Ghaz was cowed. For now. But she knew he was waiting for her to make an error.
He stepped out of her room in the Blue Palace so she could change.
It was one of the smaller rooms. She didn’t like the cavernous quarters that the highborns had all chosen; she preferred something humble.
She opened the heavy curtains and squinted at the red sunrise that painted the Nevennes Mountains bloody. An ill omen.
Distantly, she heard shouting. The clashes were nonstop, now. Every time a crowd was dispersed, another one formed, bellowing for the Kegari to leave.
Which they would. If the Empress ever gave up her Masks.
At least the crowds meant that Aiz had ample sources for her magic. In these past few weeks, Aiz had learned much about the gift that Mother Div had left her. She went to the window and looked out. The power was everywhere, really. In adults and children, Martials and Scholars and Kegari.
But children were pure and powered her for longer.
And those who came to the protests were rabble-rousers with nothing to lose.
Empire trash whom no one would miss. She watched the throng, just visible beyond the palace’s gates, and found a likely candidate.
A ragged-looking little girl begging for scraps of food at the edge of the crowd.
No one was looking at her. No one but Aiz.
She kept the girl in sight, for if she disappeared, Aiz could not use her.
She felt for the girl’s life force. Held it in her hands for a moment, marveling that such a weak little thing’s death could serve a greater purpose than her life ever would have.
Then Aiz drained her dry, sighing in relief.
This one draw would give Aiz enough magic for the morning if she was careful.
Aiz emerged to a palace bustling with Kegari. Maids dimmed lamps and swept hallways, runners delivered messages, and servers carried food. Clerics hurried to morning prayers, and highborns trudged along behind, forced into piety in honor of their Tel Ilessi.
“Those rioters outside,” Aiz said to Ghaz. “Why have they not been dealt with? Can’t we drop a bomb on some villages to get them in line?”
“We have, Tel Ilessi,” Ghaz said as he walked with her to a meeting hall. “The bombings agitate them further.”
Aiz crooked her fingers. “Shall I deal with them myself?”
“Your Holiness.” Ghaz lowered his voice. “Your magic has a cost. One that will not go unnoticed if you use it injudiciously. There are already rumors because of the sheer number of dead children.”
Ghaz had long since noticed how Aiz got her magic. He was too sharp by half. And Aiz hadn’t denied it because she wanted him scared.
“Let the rumors fly,” Aiz said. “Perhaps the Empire’s rebels will think before crossing me. As for the cost, it is a necessary sacrifice. And one our people do not pay. Am I not owed at least your trust as Tel Ilessi?”
Perhaps she should not expect Ghaz to understand what she’d given up. How much of her soul had been chipped away for her people. She took no joy from draining children for her magic. But this was the lot she had been dealt.
“Of course, I am grateful, Tel Ilessi.” Ghaz ran his hand through his curls, his anxiety as bad as a stench. “But your position—your respect is in danger. It’s not only the Martials and Scholars who protest.” Ghaz stopped her before they entered the meeting hall.
“There have been riots in the streets of Kegar for weeks. So much of our military is here that we have no way to control the populace there. Food isn’t getting back fast enough. Our people wish to come here. But even among those who are here, there is…discontent.”
“I walked among them weeks ago. They seemed perfectly happy.”
Ghaz looked pained, as if the message he was about to deliver was one that he knew could get him killed.
“There is word of a splinter group of clerics,” he said. “They are saying—they are saying you are not the Tel Ilessi. That the Ninth Sacred Tale has not been told. That if you haven’t led us home yet, you never will.”
“Your allies, no doubt.” Aiz’s fingers twitched with the desire to strangle Ghaz with her wind. “You brought over thousands against my advice. Now they turn against me. Convenient for you.”
“I swear I have nothing to do with this,” Ghaz said, blanching. “The stories are coming from two of your old allies. The—the clerics.”
Aiz gasped sharply. “Noa and Olnas? You lie.”
“I do not,” Ghaz said. “They have been spreading rumors about the source of your magic. If they were unknown, it would not matter, but…”
But Noa and Olnas were well respected among their fellow clerics, and even more so among the people, especially the Snipes. Once, Aiz would have burned at the betrayal. But now—
Now she expected it.
“Find them,” Aiz said. “Bring them in. I will speak to them myself to…change their minds. As for the unhappiness of our people here, you have a suggestion, I take it?”
Ghaz swallowed and nodded. “A long-term settlement for the Kegari here, in the Empire. I say this not to anger you but to help. Our losses have been great. Everyone wants a victory. Or at the very least, reassurance.”
“How can we give them reassurance,” Aiz said, “when we don’t know where the Empress will hit us next?”
Helene Aquilla, curse her to the hells, had struck hard and fast for weeks now.
She’d destroyed multiple food-supply trains on their way to the Sail yards where the food would be packed and transported home.
She’d decimated scouting parties and patrols, leaving only enough soldiers alive to tell the tale.
Worst of all, she’d targeted their ordnance and firepowder, finding it no matter where the hells they moved it. Someone was feeding her information.
“No progress on our mole?”
Ghaz took a sharp breath in, his hands fisting. “The only two people who knew about the ordnance moving were you and I, and those moving it—all of whom she killed.”
“It isn’t one of our own,” Aiz said. “We’ve exhausted that possibility.” She took a moment to consider, even knowing the generals within would be impatiently waiting.
There was only one outsider in the immediate vicinity. Musa of Adisa, chained and starving in the dungeons below the Blue Palace. Aiz had questioned him herself multiple times, to no avail.
You’re looking in all the wrong places, Ruh whispered in her mind. You’re asking the wrong questions.
Quil had told Aiz little about Musa, other than that he and the Empress had a close relationship. But she’d heard Laia’s stories. The Beekeeper, he’d been called, known for gathering information. He’d used some kind of magic to do so.
“Cancel this meeting.” She nodded to the room of generals. “And take me to our prisoner instead. Something tells me this all comes back to him.”
Musa of Adisa was a skeleton of his former self but somehow managed to have mirth in his eyes.
“Greetings, Tel Ilessi,” he rasped when she appeared in his dank prison cell. “Bad week?”
She turned to Ghaz. “Leave us.”
“Tel Ilessi—”
“Stay within sight,” she said. “I have my magic.”
Ghaz moved down the hall, still in earshot, her guards at his back.
Aiz paced before Musa. His chains clinked as he adjusted. After about ten minutes of her silence, he finally spoke.
“Do you have something you want to say, Tel Ilessi, or are you just here for the view?”
She turned and met his gaze, but kept quiet.
“All of this can be over,” he said. “You want to return to your homeland. I know the king of the Mariners. He will send ships if he must. They can carry you over the sea. It’s a long journey, but—”
“And you shall return by the way you left, on the mercy of the wind, for the seas will give you no succor.” Aiz smiled. “The Eighth Sacred Tale. No ship could make it to our homeland. If they could, don’t you think the Mariners—greedy as they are for goods and trade—would have found a way already?”
“A good leader improvises for the well-being of her people.”
“A good leader gets what her people need,” Aiz retorted. “No matter the cost.”
Musa snorted. “What’s the cost been to you? Your soul? Doubt you ever had one, Tel Ilessi.”
“And your empress has a soul?” Aiz laughed. “She was a monster in her youth and she’s a monster now.”
Musa shrugged. Aiz tilted her head as she watched him. “You were close once, weren’t you? Perhaps you still are? I should use you as bait.”
“As if she’d fall for that. In that way, you two are alike. You put your people first.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“Choosing the many over the one has a cost. The Empress has paid it for a long time now. If you think you’ll get away with not paying it, then you’re even more deluded than I thought.”
“I have a question for you.” She turned to him. As she did, she began to draw away his air, slow enough that he wouldn’t notice at first. “How are you doing it?” she asked. “Telling your beloved empress everything about us?”
“Can’t tell her much from down here, Tel Ilessi. Other than the fact that the rat population in my cell increased by one about fifteen minutes ago.”
“But you can communicate.” He was strong, his life force pulsing with a glow only magic-users had. “You have magic. You’re using it to tell her where to strike. Aren’t you?”
He shifted, reaching for his throat.
“What—what are you—”
“I’m stealing the air out of your lungs,” she said. “With my windsmithing.”
He said nothing after that. He couldn’t.
And then the strangest thing. The cell, empty but for herself and Musa, was no longer empty. There were other life-forms there. Creatures of magic, flying around Musa, hovering near him.
She’d have never noticed them if not for a shift in the air, a parting of the currents that ran through the cell. Through her wind, she could feel them.
“Stop—” Musa gasped. Not to Aiz, but to the flying creatures.
A shadow watched from the corner of Musa’s cell. Ruh. Very good, Aiz, he said, silver eyes like lamps in the dark. Now you know.
These creatures Musa thought she couldn’t see—they were his friends.
His spies. They could fly, which meant they’d be able to take information anywhere, to anyone.
She was breathless at the power of this knowledge.
She could manipulate him now. Make him dance to her song. And he wouldn’t even realize it.
She released Musa’s air back into him. She had to ensure he could spy on her with his little creatures and pass misinformation back to his empress.
Whom Aiz would finally be rid of.
“There, see?” she said. “I am not without mercy, Musa. You told me to stop, and I stopped.”
Musa glared at her, gasping for breath. “You don’t—know,” he managed, “what mercy is, Aiz bet-Dafra.”
“You will call me Tel Ilessi.” Aiz brought a fiery hot wind to bear and lashed him with it. “If you’d like to keep your skin, anyway.”
“Tel Ilessi.” Musa wheezed, and Aiz first thought it was in pain before she realized that he was laughing. “Skies, you are deluded.”
“You dare speak to me of delusion?” It was Aiz’s turn to laugh. “You are an Empire rat who thinks your people have a prayer of defeating mine. And I am the Tel Ilessi, chosen of Mother Div, with my boot on your neck.”
“You’re an idiot,” Musa said, chuckling even as he lay on his side, twitching in pain. “The Tel Ilessi is bloodsmither, windsmither, mindsmither, yes? But there’s more to that prophecy. You’d know, if you’d ever gone into the tunnels beneath your cloister and read what was written there.”
“What are you talking about?” Aiz felt cold suddenly, the hairs on her neck rising. “You’ve seen my power. I am she. The Tel Ilessi is real.”
“Of course the Tel Ilessi is real,” Musa said. “It’s just not you.”
Aiz swept out lest she kill him. How dare he? A pathetic spy collapsed in her prison, and he questioned her power?
But in truth, Aiz, too, had questioned. She could not seem to bloodsmith at will. Nor could she mindsmith.
She returned to her quarters, pacing, enraged, until she felt a presence. Ruh.
Do not fear, Tel Ilessi, he said. I know what you are. I know the truth of you. And soon, everyone else will as well.