Chapter 35 Quil #2
What happened? he wanted to ask. How do I help you?
But she’d told him how to help. By not giving the creature anything to use against her.
The silence between them was thick as mud, but Quil kept quiet.
He gestured for his companions to move faster, all the while trying to comprehend what hells Sirsha must have gone through for the past few months.
Before long, the entrance of the prison loomed ahead of them: a high archway with light spilling through. Div slowed, glancing back at Sirsha.
“Your people will not, I think, let you leave. I have done as you asked.”
Something passed between them that Quil didn’t understand.
“You have done your part. Watch. Do not interfere. I will pay you what I owe,” Sirsha said. Div nodded, dead eyes glittering as she melted into the shadows behind them. Quil could still feel her—a strange charge in the air, like a storm about to break.
Sirsha took a shuddering breath before stepping out of the archway onto a cobbled road lined with Gandafur trees and lanterns that did little to brighten the dark night. Quil followed her out and found himself reaching for a scim he didn’t have.
The six Raanis stood before them, alone. As they were the most powerful of their Kin, Quil supposed they did not need their Raan-Ruku.
“You cannot leave, Prince,” Raani U’qaya said, and Quil waited for Raani Sh’ban to challenge her, but she remained mute, eyes cold.
The other Raanis appeared equally stern, and wrath poured through Quil.
He had not forgotten what he’d learned in their meeting hall.
He had not forgotten the havoc and death in the Empire that they’d simply ignored, never raising a finger to help even though they could have ended it before it began.
“You will not leave,” U’qaya went on. “Nor will your companions. As for you”—her lip curled and she looked at Sirsha as if she were the lowest of criminals—“I should have killed you when you brought that monster to our borders.”
“You mean when your fellow Raani kidnapped me!”
“Sirsha,” Raani D’arju said. “Tell me you have not—have not made a deal with that thing to escape.”
“I did what I had to,” Sirsha said before turning to her mother. “Ma,” she said. “I need—”
“If you will not act, sisters—” U’qaya lifted her hands, but Quil stepped in front of Sirsha.
“You will not harm her,” he growled. “Look at her. She’s suffering. Can you not see it? Why do you not help her?”
“We cannot help the likes of her!” U’qaya burst out. “She is a failure with no morals, no honor, no sense of what is decent. She let that thing attach to her, and it succeeded because her character is weak! Stand aside! I shan’t bandy words with a boy who cannot even hold on to an empire—”
“And why is that?” Quil roared, for he was done with these witches and their accusations and their excuses.
He was not a prisoner. He was not a prince of a fallen people.
He was the future Emperor Zacharias Marcus Livius Aquillus Farrar, heir to an empire that he would save, and if they did not see that, they soon would.
Everyone, even Sirsha, took a step back.
“You will not speak to her that way,” Quil said. “You have no right. She is a hundred times the woman you are. A thousand times. You will not moralize to me or to her when you have no moral ground to stand on.”
He took a step toward U’qaya, who seemed to shrink back. “You will not imprison any of us here. Not after keeping your Loha a secret for so long.”
Behind him, Sirsha gasped. She did not, he realized, know of the Loha. She didn’t know how their cities were held up. Likely only the Raanis did. That’s why they’d come alone. They must have expected he would say something.
“You will not give us Loha? Fine. Keep it. I will keep your secret,” Quil said through gritted teeth.
“I swear this as a prince of my people. My companions will too. Extract their vows when you wish. In exchange, you will free us, and Sirsha. You will send Jaduna with us to the Empire. You will help us defeat the Kegari in battle. And you will not harm a hair on her head—” He pointed to Sirsha.
“Do this, and I’ll keep your secret quiet to prevent the Kegari from bombing your cities instead of ours. ”
Raani D’arju stiffened. “How dare—”
Quil knew now that emotions lay at the heart of memories and were far more potent than mere images. So he lashed out with his magic, taking his memories of the Empire’s devastation, of all the terror, and shoving them into the Jaduna’s minds.
He unleashed emotion after emotion upon them.
His confusion at the shriek of falling bombs and the roar of fire.
His terror and guilt at the sound of his people screaming, burning, dying.
His horror at seeing a father running with pieces of a forever broken child.
His despair at watching two siblings torn away from each other, small arms reaching and never finding.
He showed them universities disintegrating into smoking craters, statues and murals and markets and homes crumbling to ash—
“Stop—” It was D’arju who spoke, hand to her head. “Please—”
But he did not, and it wasn’t until Sirsha whispered his name from beside him that he pulled back. She’d been in Navium—he hadn’t intended for her to see the memories.
Tas, Sufiyan, and Arelia had been spared the worst of it, but judging from their stricken faces, they, too, had witnessed at least the edges of Quil’s recollections.
The Jaduna stared at him, pale and shaking.
“That,” he said quietly, “is what you have wrought. You cannot undo it. But you can stop it from continuing.” He took a steadying breath.
“No more excuses, Raanis. Or by the skies, I will unleash all the magic that has been in me for years and you won’t remember your names, let alone the reason you kept the Loha secret. Are we agreed?”
“Yes,” D’arju said, looking at the others, all of whom were nodding but for U’qaya.
“Always, Kin Khind has kept our secrets,” U’qaya said. “I have traveled the world to do so, destroyed anything that can link us to—”
“U’qaya, we have kept this secret for too long,” Raani A’yaneh said. “My Sitr sisters have warned you that our home is falling to ruin. We cannot keep fixing that which is tainted.”
U’qaya glared at Sirsha, even as she spoke to the other Raanis. “Usish divda nahn cherad.”
Beside Quil, Sirsha translated softly. “We do not free monsters.”
Raani Sh’ban turned on U’qaya. “What did our ancestors create, long ago, if not fertile earth for the breeding of monsters? And what are we now, letting another nation suffer and thousands die while we crouch over our secret like spiders? If you will not send aid, that is your decision. But we will.” She swept her gaze over the other Raanis, who bowed their heads in assent.
Quil’s knees nearly buckled in relief. Thank the bleeding skies. But he’d hardly completed the thought when Sirsha spoke up from behind him.
“Raani Sh’ban, Raani D’arju,” she said. At the sound of her voice, hesitant and shaky, Quil turned, alarmed to find that her eyes were filled.
“Sirsh—” He stopped short. At his throat, the Adah coin went ice-cold.
Sirsha stepped past him so he could not see her face. He could only hear her words, falling from her lips with the devastating power of a Kegari bomb.
“I cannot honor the bond of Adah,” she said. “I beg that you break it, so I might live free.”