Chapter 4 Quil
Quil
For months, Quil had sought out the Jaduna, desperate for their help in finding Sirsha. He hadn’t heard so much as a rumor of one in the Empire, Marinn, or the Tribal Lands.
Now, with the rain beating down and the window for escape closing, Quil had the chance to finally speak to one.
Quil tapped Elias. “Go,” he whispered. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Elias frowned. “We stick together.”
“Just go.” Quil wanted to shove Elias on his way. He couldn’t lose the Jaduna.
Elias squinted as he looked over Quil’s shoulder. Quil turned and cursed. The Jaduna had emerged from her tent to pull something from her saddlebag. There was no mistaking what she was or why Quil was trying to go off on his own.
“We cannot be caught. Not for anything.” Elias cast Quil a sharp glance.
Quil considered his aunt’s wrath. What it would mean if he was captured. And he considered the months of silence from Sirsha. Their Adah coin flaring hot and cold in a way that made little sense to him.
“I have to know, Elias,” Quil said. “You think I’m a fool, but you’d do the same for Laia.”
His old friend considered him for a tense moment. “I’d do worse,” he finally said. “Hurry. And watch your left flank. You always forget.”
Elias gave him a gentle nudge. They would have to work out their issues. But with an actual conversation, Quil suspected.
Quil moved swiftly, slinking alongside the tent. He’d have to cut through it—
He froze as the canvas rippled and parted to reveal the Jaduna. She looked vaguely familiar, though Quil couldn’t place why. She motioned him inside.
“Hail, Adah y Sirsha,” she said, nodding to his necklace. “That is a great gift you flash so carelessly. Come in, lest it catch the wrong eye.”
Quil flushed and tucked the necklace away, following the woman into the tent. It was generously furnished, with a fur-covered cot, table and chairs, and a brazier glowing with coals. The Jaduna was clearly an honored guest.
“I have a question,” Quil said.
The woman wrinkled her nose, appearing almost nauseous. “You stink of Ikfa,” she said. “Do you have some of that dreadful material on you?”
“No—that’s…that’s not why I’m here.” Quil had been forced to memorize hundreds of names and titles as heir of the Empire. And yet he couldn’t recall this woman’s. But it didn’t matter right now.
“How do I find Sirsha?” Quil asked. “Do you know where she is? Is she—is she still alive?” Considering any other possibility made his chest ache.
The woman sniffed and sat down, tracing circles on the table. Quil fidgeted. His entire body was tense as a wire. Answer me, damn you, he wanted to scream at her.
“Sirsha was the greatest Inashi we’d seen in an age. Yet she bound herself to you. Even for an outcast, it was highly irresponsible of her. Hear me, boy. The girl you loved is lost. Forget her.”
Shock slammed into Quil like a fist, followed quickly by suspicion. He’d heard enough of Laia’s tales to know that words mattered.
“Lost?” he asked. “Or dead?”
The Jaduna’s face tightened, as if she was hoping she wouldn’t have to make the distinction.
“She’s not dead,” she admitted, but at the relief that swept across Quil’s face, she scoffed. “If you deserved that coin around your throat, you would know this. An Adah bond cuts to the soul. It knows your heart.”
At Quil’s obvious surprise, the Jaduna’s nostrils flared in irritation.
“Your lack of education on this matter is astounding. The coin is not a mere gift or symbol. It is a blood bond seared into you by magic. If your feelings change, or hers do, the etchings will fade. If you betray her, her coin will break and yours will burn your skin, branding you a traitor. If she dies, your coin will disappear, and the grief of her loss will break over your mind like a wave with no end.”
“But I still have my coin.” He held it up. “So she’s alive—”
“Listen to me,” the Jaduna said. “Though she might live, she is gone. Were you to see her, you would not know her. She is not as she was, and never shall she again be whole. That is all I will say.”
“What the hells does that mean? Has she been injured? How do I find her?”
“The coin will tell you,” the Jaduna said. “If it does not, then perhaps she does not wish to be found.”
“The coin doesn’t bleeding talk!”
“And that,” the Jaduna sneered, “is why a firnasch like you should not have an Adah oath, jinn-touched though you might be.”
Quil knew firnasch meant “outsider,” but jinn-touched, he didn’t understand. Frustration flooded him.
As did his magic. He fought it down, but some part of him whispered: You could take the knowledge from her. So easy. She wouldn’t know. Her memories could be yours.
Quil had sworn to himself that he would never use his power except in times of utmost extremity. Like now.
Outside, a rumble. Something small, exploding. He had to get out. He’d risked too much. And he still had no idea how to find Sirsha.
His magic surged out of him as he locked glares with the Jaduna. A wave of memory crashed over him—a forest, a room lined with books and scrolls, words in a language he did not speak—and then she cast him out of her mind, cursing.
“What—” she growled. “What are you—”
Elias’s face poked suddenly through the back of the tent. “We need to leave,” he said. “We’re too close to the ordnance. Raani”—Elias addressed the Jaduna—“you should leave too.”
Raani.
The woman drew herself up. “What devilry have you wrought?”
Elias, impatient now, grabbed Quil’s shoulder, dragging him out of the tent. “Cover your ears!” he bellowed, running at full speed toward the woods.
As Quil did so, the ordnance exploded.
BOOM.
The earth shook from the blast, which was followed by another and another. Elias was thrown to the ground and Quil grabbed him, dragging him up. “Are you all right?” he shouted—no one could hear them through the sound of the explosions.
Elias nodded. “Rolled my ankle.” He coughed as smoke billowed through the woods, thick and noxious.
Quil put his shoulder under Elias’s arm and together, they stumbled down the mountain. They were the last to the rendezvous point, and Aunt Hel awaited them, her face thunderous enough that even Elias winced. Sufiyan, Tas, and the legionnaires were behind her.
“What in the hells took you so long!” she hissed. “I thought you were dead. I thought they’d caught you!”
Sufiyan stepped between them, ever loyal. “He must have had a reason, Empress.”
“There was a Jaduna,” Elias said. “Raani U’qaya of Kin Khind. She visited you right before the Kegari invasion.”
Quil remembered then. He’d seen U’qaya in Navium months ago and feared she was there to corner him about his magic.
“I wanted to ask her about Sirsha, Aunt Hel,” Quil said. “I had to try—”
But Aunt Hel appeared not to have heard. Instead, her eyes widened. Quil didn’t hear the arrow knifing through the dark. He only saw his aunt leaping for him, knocking him out of the way so that the arrow whizzed past his shoulder.
And straight into Aunt Hel’s chest.