Chapter 46 Quil #2
“We are backed by the Jaduna,” Aunt Hel said.
“They’ve brought down nearly thirty of your Sails and we’ve captured more than forty of your pilots.
We will continue to bring them down, as long as you continue to send them.
I am making you an offer. Leave them.” She nodded to the line of dazed children behind Aiz.
“Take your Sails and go back to your homeland. We will discuss reparations in the future.”
Aiz’s laugh echoed off the high rock walls.
“Oh, you are bold, Empress,” she said. “I like that about you. There will be no reparations. You have a handful of Jaduna and I have more than a thousand Sails. Your sorceresses cannot be everywhere at once, and you cannot bring all my Sails down. So, I shall lay out my terms.”
As they spoke, Quil realized Musa was staring directly at him. Quil’s power stirred and when he reached for Musa’s mind, the memory came easily, as if Musa had anticipated Quil’s magic.
He knew, Quil realized. He knew about my magic. And he’s kept it secret.
Quil slipped into the memory. He was in a dungeon in Estium. Pale morning light leaked into the cell through a high window.
“Don’t cross Aiz, Quil.” Musa was speaking as if to himself but looking directly at Quil. “You must survive. Trust your aunt. And trust yourself.”
The memory ended, and Quil found himself back behind his aunt, only a moment having passed. He didn’t understand Musa’s message. Of course he trusted his aunt. As for Aiz, he would bleeding kill her just as soon as he could work himself free.
“My terms,” Aiz said, “are as follows. You will give the order for every Mask in the Empire to deliver themselves to me—”
“It won’t be enough,” Aunt Hel said. “We have so few Masks left. You’ve taken out hundreds of them. The rest are scattered.”
Aiz kept her distance but paced, growing more agitated with every step. “I think, Empress, that you do not take me seriously. Perhaps the deaths of so many of your people have no impact. Perhaps you need someone closer to home. Hold him.”
Two of her soldiers grabbed Musa’s arms. Another yanked his head up by his hair.
Musa had eyes only for Aunt Hel. He smiled. “Until the after, Empress,” he said.
Aunt Hel strained against the wind holding her—
“No, Aiz,” Quil screamed. “No—”
Aiz sneered and slit Musa’s throat.
I can save him, Quil thought as he tried to lunge forward. Hold the wound together until Aunt Hel can heal him with her magic. But he couldn’t move at all. Blood poured from Musa, and he collapsed to the dirt. His handsome face, always so full of humor, was slack and empty.
He was dead.
Even as Elias roared in rage and the Blood Shrike cursed and Tas cried out, Quil could only stare. Despite all the death he’d witnessed these many months, Musa’s did not seem real.
He’d survived wars and heartbreak and betrayal. He’d spied for the Empire, put himself in incredible danger—all to get Aunt Hel information. That he’d been felled by someone as loathsome and weak-minded as Aiz made it all the more infuriating.
Quil found himself looking at Aunt Hel, as if she would tell him any moment that Musa would wake.
But the Empress only stared at Aiz silently, jaw gritted tight.
“I have your attention now, I think,” Aiz said. “You watched your father’s throat slit. Your mother’s. Both of your sisters’. What about your heir, Empress? Shall we watch him bleed out in the sands of this Spires-forsaken place?”
Quil would not have been able to speak. His grief had robbed him of words. But Aunt Hel straightened, glaring daggers at Aiz.
“I can get you Loha. There is another source. The Jaduna,” Aunt Hel said to Quil’s astonishment. How did she learn about it?
“The Jaduna have the Loha,” Aunt Hel said. “That is where my people got it from, though I did not know until recently.”
A terrifying hunger lit Aiz’s face. “You’re lying.”
“Look at me, Tel Ilessi,” Aunt Hel said, and her voice was oddly conciliatory.
“You have me on my knees. You have killed my lover. You have my heir and my friends at your mercy. You know the location of my encampment. You have nearly every advantage. I am giving you the last one. The Jaduna have the Loha. They have had it all this time. They have manipulated the Kegari, doling out tiny amounts so you would never have enough.”
Aiz grabbed Aunt Hel by the throat, something she’d never have had the courage to do without her ill-begotten magic. Quil growled, and the wind around him tightened.
“You toy with me, Empress,” Aiz whispered.
But Quil could feel the desperation rolling off her.
Aunt Hel was offering Aiz everything she’d ever wanted.
“And I will punish you for it. I will use my wind to flay your nephew’s precious skin.
It will not be quick, like Musa of Adisa.
I will make Quil hurt. I will do the same to your Shrike. To your soldiers.”
“I do not lie,” Aunt Hel ground out, arms still bound at her sides by Aiz’s power.
“I have no reason to. The Jaduna will not let you get within a hundred miles of their city. You have seen their power. There is another way. One of them travels at speed to the cave where Ruh died.” Aunt Hel took a deep breath.
“I do not know why. Only what I was told. She is powerful, this Jaduna. She can give you what you want.”
Quil didn’t understand how his aunt had learned of the Loha. And what she’d just said was patently untrue. Either that or she had information she hadn’t shared with Quil. But he didn’t understand why.
Trust your aunt. Musa’s last words to him.
Aiz appeared to undergo the strangest transformation. Her face flushed. Her eyes filled with tears. Moments ago, she’d been almost feral with want. Now she appeared to be experiencing some sort of spiritual transcendence.
“You knew,” she murmured, glancing down again as if speaking to someone none could see. The wind loosened around Quil ever so slightly. “You knew and I doubted you, but you—”
Light glimmered ahead of Quil. A knife in his aunt’s hand. She tore through her bonds, took two steps toward Musa’s body, pulled the Ikfa chain free, and cast it at Aiz.
The smaller woman screamed and for a moment, the wind holding Quil and the others fell away. Arrows rained from the ridges, taking out Aiz’s troops. Masks rappelled down and as Quil desperately tore free of his bonds, Aunt Hel was on Aiz, plunging a knife into her side.
But one of Aiz’s pilots used his wind to drag Aunt Hel back. She screamed in rage and Aiz flung off the Ikfa chain. Behind her, the children wailed as two more fell lifeless to the ground, Aiz drawing away their spirits to fuel her power.
“Damn you!” Aunt Hel roared, but she could not break free of the pilot’s powerful wind. “The children!” Aunt Hel screamed to her soldiers. “Get the children!”
Elias and Quil, free of their bonds now, attempted to rush Aiz, but she flung them both back. Elias’s head hit the stone of the ravine wall and he crumpled to the ground, unmoving. Tas ran to his side even as Quil roared, straining to break away from Aiz’s hellish wind.
Against her power, they were nothing but bits of fluff in a hurricane.
But Aiz could not use her wind on dozens of people at once.
Behind her, her soldiers desperately fought off the Masks, who tore through the Kegari with merciless precision.
Rallius got to the children, slicing through the ropes binding them, and they scattered.
Aiz shrieked in frustration and fed wind to the signal fire, still burning. It exploded, embers flying onto the dry brush and erupting, seemingly all at once, as Aiz fed more and more wind into it.
The Blood Shrike, who’d managed to keep out of Aiz’s sight, sent an arrow flying at the windsmither driving Aunt Hel back. It landed in the woman’s shoulder with a sickening thunk, and Aunt Hel was free again, racing through the flames toward Aiz.
As she did, a child ran toward her, dark-haired and fine-featured. She was a Scholar, as wretched as the others, but determined, it was clear, to get away from the monster trying to drain her dry.
Aiz fixed her gaze on the girl and Aunt Hel screamed.
“No!”
Aunt Hel grabbed the child and spun, putting herself between Aiz and the girl.
“Take her, Quil! She can’t use them if she doesn’t have line of sight!”
Quil grabbed the girl and ran. When he glanced back, Aiz’s veins seemed to glow green beneath her skin as she threw Aunt Hel into the burning scrub beneath the arch. Aiz laughed when the Empress cringed back from the flames, which leapt higher by the second.
“I’ve seen your end, Empress,” Aiz shouted, the fire lighting her pale eyes an infernal red. “Stop fighting it.”
As Quil shoved the child into the waiting arms of a Mask, who climbed up and away, Aiz lifted her clawlike hand to the arch.
The stone, which had withstood millennia of storm and wind, fire and rain, groaned—a deep, booming sound, almost a protest—before it cracked and came tumbling down in an explosion of dirt and rock.
“Aunt Hel!” Quil screamed, running toward where he’d last seen her, even as the fire rose around him, roaring as it gobbled up air and unleashed a searing updraft. All the scrub Aunt Hel had tried to clear was ablaze now, the dead dry trees flaring like hellish torches.
Quil’s skin burned, but he clambered over the stone. “Empress!” he screamed. “Aunt Hel!” He could scarcely see past the smoke and dust, but there was a path through the rocks into the tangle of dead branches and bushes. She was there—her pale crown braid glowing orange as fire erupted around her.