Chapter 5 Sirsha
Sirsha
Seek her and bring her to us! The zealot’s words rang in Sirsha’s ears. Our savior’s magic is boundless.
Sirsha hadn’t tried to see who the woman was, for fear she’d be spotted. If she was at full strength, she’d have waited in the shadows and then questioned the woman at knifepoint on what, exactly, she knew about Div.
But as it was, Sirsha didn’t have the strength to fight a kitten. The zealot would have to wait.
Someone shoved into her and Sirsha immediately grabbed for the purse buried beneath her clothing.
Still there, but she’d lose her money and possibly her life if she lingered any longer on the streets.
She needed to find Kade. Her fatigue and confusion were dangerous; Jibaut’s denizens did not suffer the weak.
Hunched in her cloak, Sirsha scurried through the alleys, occasionally begging for a coin so that any eyes on her would quickly pass over.
She didn’t have to act too much. She caught a glimpse of herself in a shop window and winced at the starved, stenchsome beggar who looked back.
There were chicken feathers in her hair.
Probably a good thing. At least Kade wouldn’t flirt with her. No one would. Not even Quil, if he magically appeared. She was hideous.
But no, that wasn’t true. She might be stinking and scrawny and plagued by a heart-eating demon, but if Quil saw her, he would pull her close and never let her go.
He would wrap his big arms around her and laugh at her gallows jokes and tell her that all would be well.
That together, they could face anything.
Her Adah coin warmed at the thought. Somewhere far away, his would warm too.
Sirsha missed him like a honeybee misses spring. Her throat went tight. Enough. He’s not here. You’re alone. Get to Kade.
She waited until just before midnight to sneak into the trader’s home, and found him in his library, hunched over a scroll with gloves on and a seeing glass in hand. He muttered to himself, taking notes in a large black journal, so engrossed that he didn’t see Sirsha.
He smelled her. He grimaced and stood, glancing around. When she stepped out of the shadows, he yelped and threw his seeing glass at her before attempting to flee.
“Skies, you’re lucky I’m not here to kill you.” Sirsha plucked the glass from the air and flung it back, smiling at the thunk it made against his skull.
Kade turned, rubbing his crown. “Sirsha?” He looked her up and down, aghast. “What in the ten hells happened to—” He wrinkled his nose. “You stink.”
Yes, well, four months of avoiding humans because a demonic creature has latched on to you will do that. “We need to talk.”
“Couldn’t you have dunked in a river somewhere, ten bleeding hells—”
“Did you hear me?” Sirsha said. She didn’t know how long Div would stay away, and she didn’t want to find out the hard way. “I said, we need—”
“Not when you look like a wraith and smell like you’ve been bathing in bird dung,” Kade said. “I still have some of your old clothes. Come on. You need a wash and a meal. Skies, you’re skin and bones.”
She was starving and exhausted, so when he handed her a couple of cold meat pastries, she ate them without tasting them.
And when he led her to a bath—steaming hot and fragrant with scented salts—she didn’t mock him for how many people he could probably fit into the sunken stone tub at once.
She just stripped, not caring that he was still in the room, and dropped into the water as he hastily left, closing the door behind him.
Thank the skies Kade was such a sybarite.
He had oils and soaps and scrubs galore, and Sirsha let herself enjoy them for a long while.
Kade’s maids drained and refreshed the water twice before Sirsha felt fully human again, and by the time she emerged in fresh clothes, two hours had passed. Kade looked relieved when he saw her.
“There she is.” He smiled and offered her a freshly stocked pack.
“Clothes, foodstuffs, supplies, and a new bedroll. I also had your boots cleaned.” He nodded to where they sat beside the door, the oxblood leather gleaming once more.
Sirsha took the pack, oddly touched. Kade’s voice softened. “Come on, Sirsh. Let’s eat.”
The table was laid with another meal, and Sirsha’s stomach growled at the sight.
Fluffy flatbread stuffed with cheese and topped with honey and nuts; chickpeas deep-fried and sprinkled with spicy tamarind sauce and translucent onions.
A salad of minced cucumbers soaked in vinegar and studded with tiny, gemlike pomegranate seeds.
She fell upon it like a starving hound, ignoring the pity in Kade’s face.
“You’ll make yourself sick,” he said, wincing at her lack of decorum.
“Worth it,” Sirsha muttered before pushing her empty plate away a few minutes later. “Thank you,” she said. “And now that everything about me isn’t offensive to you, I have questions.”
Kade opened his mouth to head her off, no doubt, but Sirsha forged on, driven by the sense that at any moment, she would get that heavy, crawling feeling and Div would reappear.
“The creature I was hunting,” Sirsha said. “You tried to warn me. You knew about her. How?”
“What does it matter?” Kade said. “I’m free of her now. You destroyed her. I knew the moment it happened because I felt as if a vise around my chest had finally released. I’ll be grateful to you forever. You don’t know what she was like.” He shuddered. “I curse the day I found that book.”
Sirsha forced herself to breathe normally. Kade had held the book that had started this madness.
“Where did you find it?” Sirsha said. “Don’t spare any details.”
Kade looked startled at her fierceness. “I discovered it in Raider’s Roost a few years ago, before you settled there,” he said. “I was trying to get my hands on a Mariner navigational chart—they’re very protective of them—and the book was sitting on a table I happened to pass.”
“Skies, but you’re an idiot,” Sirsha groaned, stunned at Kade’s naivety. “No one simply stumbles upon that sort of book, Kade.”
“I know that now,” Kade said. “I didn’t realize it then. I picked it up and…” He crossed his arms tight, as if an attack was imminent. “At first, I didn’t understand what was happening. It just had some stories in it—”
“What were they called?”
“I only remember a few,” Kade said. “ ‘The Demon at the Wedding.’ ‘The Dragon of Wit and Wile.’ I knew the moment I finished that second story that there was something wrong with the book. I didn’t want to buy it, but—”
“You heard a voice in your head,” Sirsha said. “Ordering you to.”
Kade nodded miserably. “I brought it here and I kept hearing that voice. It knew things about my father. The—the way he treated me. The way he hurt me. It seemed to know how hard I’d worked to build my business.
Said there were treasures in the desert beyond my comprehension.
Vast stores of forgotten knowledge. I had only to claim them. ”
Kade shivered. “Felt wrong, listening to it. I resisted. Tried to learn about the book and the author, Laia of Serra. But I didn’t want to leave Jibaut, and information was limited here. And then I got a visitor. An Ankanese seer. Name of Dolbra.”
Sirsha met Kade’s eyes, startled. She knew a woman named Dolbra had been involved with Aiz. Quil had told her as much. But not that she’d handled the book.
“She bought the book from me. I was grateful it was gone, but I—I couldn’t talk about it.
Even when you questioned me, I could barely answer.
When Dolbra bought it, I thought I was free.
But after a while, I started hearing the voice from the book again.
It told me terrible things. I stopped sleeping. ”
Kade looked away from Sirsha, ashamed. “Your sister came to me when I was delirious and hallucinating,” he said. “R’zwana said she could help.”
Sirsha felt a bolt of sympathy for him. After all, she’d not been able to sleep well for weeks. She knew how grueling it could be. “How did R’zwana know about it?”
“Your people have their ways,” Kade said. “Your sister said she’d stop the voice in my head. You told me Jaduna couldn’t break vows, so—”
“We can’t break blood oaths,” Sirsha said. “Did she cut her hand and mix her blood with yours?”
“No.” He stood up now, running his hand through his blond hair in agitation.
“The oath was meaningless. I know that now. But I didn’t realize it then.
After I sold you out”—he looked away from Sirsha’s glare—“she left and I was in despair. Not only had I betrayed an old friend, I’d done it for nothing. I—”
He shuddered and clenched his fists. “I wanted to end it. But I also knew that with you hunting this thing, I finally had a chance to be free of it. And I was right.”
Well, not exactly. Div had returned, after all. But it was clear that for however brief a moment, Div’s hold on this world had been broken. Otherwise, whatever she’d used to bind those who read her book would still be in place.
Div could be killed. Sirsha just had to figure out how to make it permanent.
Kade knelt before her, taking her hands. “I am sorry.” He looked into her eyes. Sirsha, irritated as she was, nodded in acknowledgment at the anguish there. She might have done the same in his situation.
“I hope one day you’ll forgive me,” he said. “Until then, whatever aid I can give you is yours.”
“Oh, get up.” Sirsha kicked him in the knee, but gently.
“I’d have taken aid from you whether you wanted to give it or not.
I already have.” The last time she’d seen Kade, she, Quil, and the others had taken four of his best horses as they fled Jibaut.
“Right now, I need your brain. A lot happened after you sold Dolbra that book. Help me untangle it.”
She told Kade her whole tale, from the moment Elias made the blood oath with her to waking up on an Ankanese shore with a monster attached. Kade looked horrified at that bit and glanced around shiftily.
“She’s not here,” Sirsha said. “But you can see why I need to know as much about her as possible. I need to understand her weaknesses. Her flaws. Tell me everything you learned about her and the book.”
“Scraps,” Kade said, tipping back in his chair.
“There’s nothing else like that book. Nothing gets in your head the way it does.
I looked for stories like those I remembered from the book but found nothing.
I suppose you can’t go home? Get help from your family?
” Kade asked, and Sirsha shook her head.
“Not unless I want my skull decorating a vulture’s nest,” Sirsha said. “When you were searching, did you see anything linking the book to the Owa Khel? The Tribes call it—”
“The Sea of Suffering. I know. I have a copy of the Tribal Mysteries. But”—Kade shrugged—“I didn’t see anything about the Owa Khel.
I did figure out that whatever possessed the book isn’t a wraith, efrit, or ghul,” Kade said.
“Not powerful enough. The magic seems to have similarities to Karkaun death magic more than anything else.”
Sirsha shuddered. The Karkaun barbarians, who were neighbors and sworn enemies of the Empire, were known for their unholy skills in raising the ghosts of the dead.
“Is she an old warlock, then?” Sirsha asked, but Kade shook his head.
“The Karkauns haven’t practiced death magic since Empress Helene lopped the head off their high mucky-muck twenty years ago. Doubt they could even get organized enough to create something like Div.”
Kade looked out the window, where the sounds of revelry drifted up from the streets. Jibaut was loudest in the deep night. The ebullience of the distant roistering made Sirsha feel less alone.
“What you need,” Kade said, pouring himself a glass of wine, “is someone who was ensnared by the book but who understands magic. Laia of Serra, perhaps? She is the author.”
“Not Laia,” Sirsha said. “She’s likely to be near Quil. Dolbra, I think. She handled the book. And she’s a seer. She must know what kind of magic spawned it.”
“Ah.” Kade grimaced. “Getting to her safely might be difficult. Dolbra’s joined a group of zealots. They call themselves Duranis. They were the original readers of the book. Scattered at first, but Dolbra appears to have organized them.”
Sirsha groaned, thinking of the proselytizer she’d seen hours ago.
“Chaos storytellers,” Sirsha said. “Quil told me about them. I heard one in the night market. They’re looking for me. Ranting about joining Div and me together. You think Dolbra’s here in Jibaut?”
“No,” Kade said. “I’ve had my people keeping an eye on her. Last I heard, she was in a town south of here. Hang on, I’ll get you a map.”
Kade rose, muttering as he rifled through his bookshelves. As Sirsha watched, her hand went unbidden to her Adah coin. The feel of it sent calm flowing through her. It warmed beneath her skin.
Sirsha. She heard Quil’s whisper. A flood of images swept through her. His face as he fought off Div. His hands on her waist as he pulled her close. Your eyes look like you’re saying goodbye.
Sirsha, he said again in that way he had, as if a storm were whispering her name, and she found herself smiling. Quil. She held on to the coin, relishing its warmth. Div and her malice felt very far away indeed. Deep within, Sirsha’s magic stirred. Clean. Untainted.
Sirsha reached for it instinctively, calling to the element that had always been closest to her. The earth.
Beware, little one, it said in a soft whisper. She does not know your insides, nor your story. But she watches.
Sirsha hardly heard the warning because for the first time in months, the magic felt good. Normal. It felt like it was hers again.
“You look happy,” Kade said as he walked back from the shelf. The lamps on his wall dimmed, and in the low light, he appeared hunched and grim.
“It won’t last.” His voice grew strangely guttural, chilling Sirsha like a gust in a graveyard. She knew when she looked in her friend’s eyes that it was not Kade speaking to her.
“He was mine once, and I can take his mind when I wish, even without your permission,” Div growled through Kade’s mouth. “Soon, you will be mine too. You, your magic, everything you are. All those who read my tale are mine. I claim them. I use them. They are puppets. You are no different.”
Wrath consumed Sirsha so swiftly that she didn’t realize she’d leapt forward. Her heart pounded in her ears as her hands closed around Kade’s throat. How long had Div been watching her through his eyes, letting her think she was safe? How much had she heard?
“Stop,” Sirsha whispered. “Stop hounding me—”
Kade’s face grew red and something burned Sirsha’s throat, but she didn’t care. She wanted to end Div. To make her hurt. To make her stop.
“Die,” Sirsha groaned. “Die—”
Kade, red-faced, went limp. Suddenly, Sirsha realized what she was doing. She wasn’t harming Div.
She was killing Kade.