Chapter 51 Quil
Quil
The first memory Quil had of his aunt began with the color blue. A sky the brilliant azure of the Southern Ocean. The cold gray walls of a castle. The pale gold of his aunt’s hair. There was a chill in the air and he remembered being unable to sleep. He remembered wanting something. Someone.
Aunt Hel leaned over him, hair bound up in a crown braid, black fatigues open at the throat. Her scim poked up across her back. Her hands were strong around him, and he put his head on her shoulder. As he cried, he felt her palm making circles on his back. Together, they looked out the window.
The white clouds were so vivid against the sky, a color that reminded him of his aunt’s eyes. A color that made him so immeasurably sad that he didn’t know what to do with the pain, other than hold tighter to her.
She sang a song that seemed like it had always lived in his bones. He ceased crying, but she rocked him still. She was always the Empress. Imperator Invictus. High Commander. But in that moment, she was mother and father, sister and brother, friend and companion.
I’m here, little one, she had whispered to him. I am here.
Someone dragged Quil from the fire. Took him to his mount. That someone was speaking to him. Tall with broad shoulders. Short auburn hair. A mask on her face. His aunt’s Blood Shrike.
No. Your Blood Shrike now.
His mind shied away from the thought. From what it meant. But she was shaking him. Making him listen.
“Your Majesty.” The Blood Shrike spoke in the icy tones of a Mask, fourteen years of strict training keeping her calm and level.
“We must get you back to the encampment. You must be recognized by the Gens leaders and the army generals. We must send runners to Delphinium, Tiborum, Estium, and Antium. You must take full control of what remains of our army before your enemies—within and outside the Empire—can take advantage of any instability. Your Majesty. Your Majesty.”
“Stop, damn you! He needs a moment.” Tas stepped between the Shrike and Quil, glaring at her, at Elias, at the soldiers gathering around them.
Tas’s blond hair was crusted with blood, his skin covered in cuts and scratches from Aiz dragging him along the ground.
But he was fierce as he faced off the Blood Shrike, fighting for something Quil hadn’t realized he needed.
Quil took the moment. He made himself breathe and look up at the night sky, hazy with smoke.
His attention fell to the children clustered in fear between the soldiers.
The twenty or so they’d been able to save.
He met the eyes of the little girl the Empress had passed to him.
The one she’d saved from Aiz, just before Aiz brought the arch down on her.
The girl wasn’t crying. She looked how Quil felt. Numb.
Quil straightened. He grabbed the reins of his horse, then looked back at the arch. He didn’t want to leave Aunt Hel behind. She didn’t deserve to remain there under the broken rocks, surrounded by a burning landscape.
“Her body—” Quil said. “We—”
“We’ll come back for it.” Elias spoke up, and his voice was low with grief. “I’ll do it myself. The Shrike is right. You must return to the encampment. You must—break the news.”
As he rode, Quil was not thinking of breaking the news.
He was thinking of Aiz. Of the fact that he knew exactly where she was going—the cave where Ruh died.
Aunt Hel had told her that was where she would find a Jaduna to give her Loha.
Aiz would have no sources of magic there, for that haunted place was abandoned. She would be vulnerable.
He could kill her.
He nearly wheeled his horse south. The Empire would not have another opportunity like this.
No, Quil. Think. She would take a Sail and arrive there within an hour.
It would take him a half day to reach that place.
She might be gone by then. And then he’d have left without even securing the fealty of his court and military.
After everything his aunt had done to keep the throne for him, he would throw it away. He forced himself to cast the thought of hunting Aiz aside. He would deal with Aiz. At the right time.
Later, Quil would only remember flashes of the next hour:
Laia, running from the infirmary, where soldiers were evacuating injured patients. Her dawning understanding as she looked from Quil’s face to Elias’s. Her cries as she sank to her knees, as Elias held her and she screamed, Not Hel—no—how—how—take me to her—
The Blood Shrike gathering the Scholar representatives, the Maters and Paters of Martial Gens, the army generals and their officers, while the Jaduna looked on with stricken expressions.
The strong, sober echo of the Shrike’s voice off the canyon walls as she declared, The Empress is dead. Long live the Emperor.
Tas dropping to one knee first. I pledge my loyalty to you, Emperor Zacharias Marcus Livius Aquillus Farrar, by blood and by bone.
It was in this moment that time ceased to blur.
Tas was followed swiftly by the rest, rumbling their fealty as one, and the sound brought Quil fully back to his body.
In the long moment of quiet that followed, Quil looked over all of them and wondered if this was the curse of his family.
To be forced to draw on strength he didn’t have in a moment when all he wanted to do was grieve.
He supposed he should give a stirring speech. Perhaps, at his coronation, he would. For now, he simply said, “I will henceforth be known as Emperor Aquillus, in honor of the woman who saved us all more times than we can count.” He looked to General Dex. “We must continue the evacuation.”
Grief rippled through the camp and the evacuation routes as the news spread. Quil had no time to join in it. He sent a legionnaire to find Sufiyan, Arelia, and Sirsha, for they’d not yet appeared. He ordered Tas to the infirmary for his head wound.
There was rockfall to clear to the east—how many soldiers should they send?
The horses were panicked from the bombing—they’d need to be taken out another way—but there weren’t enough grooms. When should they send runners with the news, and to which cities first?
Question after question after question, until the Blood Shrike, who had departed when a messenger entered the command tent, returned, her face pale.
“Clear the room,” she barked, and briefly, Quil’s heart clenched, wondering who the hells had died. As his officers left the tent, Quil heard gasps and murmurs outside it. Moments later, the Shrike gestured for someone to enter.
Four figures ducked inside, tall and heavily cloaked. Their identities were apparent from the fiery eyes that peered out of their hooded cowls. Jinn.
“Emperor Aquillus.” One of them stepped forward. “I am Pithar, a son of the Sher Jinaat. The Council of Seven has sent myself and three of my companions to aid you in your battle with the Kegari, in accordance with the deal you struck with Diriya, leader of our council.”
“Deal?” Quil said. “I didn’t break the coin. Those were the term—”
He reached for his pocket to show them, but even as he spoke, the image of Sirsha flashed through his head. She had pulled him close. They had kissed. She’d promised she would wait.
Ten bleeding hells. She’d learned of the coin. Taken it. Broken it.
“Where is Sirsha?” Quil said. “Where did your people take her? When?”
Pithar glanced at his fellows, surprised. “The coin was broken only a few minutes ago. The council has taken her to the cave where the Blood of Shatharin was murdered. It is only there that Sirsha Westering may be sundered from the creature that has joined with her.”
The cave where Aiz was headed. The cave he’d dreamt of a hundred times in the past few months. Always with Ruh. And when he’d last dreamt it, Ruh had implored him. I will need your help. You will come to me here, yes? When the time comes? You will find me. Promise?
The cave—something was happening there. Something beyond the jinn freeing Sirsha or Aiz hunting down Loha. Everything that had gone wrong in the past two years began in that cave, with Ruh’s death.
All this, every thread, was connected back to Ruh. Quil would bet the Empire on it. He had to get to that cave. He’d promised Sirsha he would be there. And he’d promised Ruh.
“Pithar,” Quil said. “I need you to take me to the cave. As swift as possible.”
“We are here to help,” Pithar said. “If that is your request, then I must take you.”
“Emperor Aquillus,” the Blood Shrike said. “You cannot leave in the middle of the evacuation.”
“Blood Shrike,” Quil said. “In what I hope will be many long years together, you will likely have to cover for me when I choose to do things no one understands but that I know are for the good of the Empire. This is the first.”
“But the messengers, Your Majesty,” she said. “We must tell—”
“Hold the messengers,” Quil said. “Until I return. Deploy the jinn as you see fit.”
He nodded to Pithar before the Shrike could lodge yet another protest. Seconds later, he and Pithar were on the wind, moving so fast that he was flesh no longer but air itself. He hung on to the jinn for dear life. They slowed only minutes later.
A tall, skeletal spire thrust into the sky before Quil, surrounded by dozens of smaller rock formations that hunched like silent sentinels. A chill wind scraped through the dark, craggy terrain of the desert. Ahead, the gate to the cave glowed blue.
“I will come with you, Emperor Aquillus,” Pithar said. “Something feels…”
He frowned and they walked through the gate silently. The passage narrowed until they were traversing a tunnel luminescent with blue ore. There were symbols and words carved on the walls, but Quil didn’t recognize the language.