Chapter 23 Quil
Quil
Quil should’ve realized that the jinn would be waiting, for they’d been whispering at him—watching him—for days. Besides which, they were ruled by a Council of Seven, one of whom he’d heard was a seer.
As for this jinn, he knew her story well. Her name was Umber, and her hatred of humanity during the war with the jinn twenty years ago was near-legendary. Quil’s magic stirred as he faced her; he quashed it. He wasn’t stupid enough to use memory theft on a bleeding jinn.
Quil had been to the Sher Jinaat exactly twice.
Once as a seven-year-old, to meet the Council of Seven.
And again when he was fourteen, to swear the oath his aunt had taken: I will uphold the treaty between the Empire and the jinn until my death.
I will ensure any heir of mine swears to do the same within a week of their fourteenth yearfall.
Not doing so will result in assassination by the jinn and the end of the Aquilla line of Emperors. This I swear, by blood and by bone.
The jinn would never again be caught unawares by the humans. They would never watch as their cities were destroyed, their children slaughtered in the forest in the dead of night, their hope extinguished.
Quil bowed his head. “I am honored that you would speak with me. I—”
“You are here to listen, not speak,” Umber said. “I will carry you to our city, the Sher Jinaat. Your friends will remain here.”
A squeak out of Arelia. Her jaw was agape as she stared at the jinn—it was clear she’d never met one before; the reality defied any expectations she might have had, as well as any description she might have read.
“I’m going with him,” she said breathlessly, hooking her claws into Quil’s arm so firmly that he was sure she’d drawn blood. “If you want to stop me, you’ll have to rip his arm off.”
Umber looked Arelia over, taking two steps toward her, glaive glimmering in the fading sunshine.
“You’ve an interesting mind, girl,” she murmured. “A maker. There are so few amongst your kind. One of my brethren may wish to meet you.” Then her gaze shifted to Sufiyan, who held up his hands.
“I’m fine staying behind,” he said quickly. “Ghosts don’t bother me—”
“You are Blood of Shatharin,” Umber said, using Laia’s title among the jinn. She Who Tells the Tale. Umber’s voice went from cold to grudgingly respectful. “You may go wherever you wish within our land and you shall never be troubled. As long as your line tells the Tale.”
There was a warning in those words, though there needn’t have been. Laia had long ago sworn to tell the full history of the Nightbringer, the long-dead jinn king who’d nearly destroyed the world. All Laia’s children were taught the Tale.
Sufiyan looked so startled, all he could manage was a nod. Finally, Umber looked to Tas and cocked her head. “Tas of the North,” she said. “Do you, too, wish to accompany your friends?”
To Quil’s surprise, Tas shook his head. “I’ve business with the Bani al-Mauth,” he said before turning to Quil. “By your leave, of course.”
Quil nodded, and Umber reached out her hand to him.
“Then let us depart,” she said. “Maker, Blood of Shatharin. Hold fast to each other and to the prince.”
Quil expected the jinn to begin moving the way Elias did when he windwalked, like he was running impossibly fast over vast distances.
She did windwalk them—but only to the tree line of the Forest of Dusk.
There, she stopped before what appeared to be a doorway.
But Quil didn’t get a good look at it before they were through.
He was suddenly weightless, and saw a flash of sickly yellow sky, a seething ocean beneath.
Something screamed in his memory, but by then, they were standing on the outskirts of an enormous, shining city.
The buildings were made of a smooth, reflective material that looked like obsidian. The walls curved with impossible elegance. Music echoed from the city, but it was unlike any melody he’d ever heard, both in harmony and in the nature of the sound itself.
“Those are the jinn pipes,” Arelia whispered. There were tears in her eyes. “Scattered all throughout the city and finely tuned so that no combination of notes heard in a day will ever be heard again. They’re played by the wind.”
The song was multilayered and mournful, each note leading to the next so exquisitely that all Quil wanted to do was listen. Umber turned to Arelia.
“You know much of our people,” she said, clearly pleased. She called out and two jinn in shadow form materialized. “Take her to Brinwa.”
“I’ll go with her,” Sufiyan offered. “We can keep each other out of trouble.”
The jinn guards led Sufiyan and Arelia away, and Umber gestured for Quil to follow her.
She did not speak as they traversed the streets of the Sher Jinaat.
Other than the music of the pipes, it was quiet, oddly so; though, here and there, Quil heard snatches of laughter and conversation.
The push of a broom, the rush of water from a pump.
Once, he thought he heard the clamor of a market, but the sound faded too quickly to know for certain.
Images danced on the walls of some of the buildings, but as quickly as Quil saw the movement, it would disappear, and the walls would go blank.
“How did we get here so fast?” he asked Umber. “That wasn’t windwalking.”
“An ancient magic,” Umber said after a moment.
“With paths that abut the Owa Khel, Mauth’s dimension.
For there, the walls between worlds are thin enough that physical distance becomes irrelevant.
Creating such paths is an art lost to most of humanity.
But not to us. There are many magics your kind barely understands.
Portal magic. Shapeshifting. Dreamworking. The jinn have practiced all of them.”
“Dreamworking,” Quil said, thinking of Ruh—or something that looked like him—appearing in so many of his dreams. “What’s—”
“We’re here.”
They’d made their way to an immense, perfectly round building that overlooked the River Dusk. As Quil followed Umber up the smooth black steps, he recognized it as the place where he’d made his vows, Aunt Hel at his side. This was where the Council of Seven met.
He entered a huge hall of dark stone blocks, the walls glowing with blue-fire torches.
It was filled with jinn in one of their three forms—flame, shadow, or human.
None of them so much as looked at Quil when he entered.
Some argued, some talked, some meditated.
Many of those in human form hovered near tables of food that were filled with bowls of cut fruit, glistening cheeses, and steaming tureens of stew.
Quil tried not to stare. He’d never imagined jinn eating. He’d always thought that as creatures of smokeless flame, they subsisted on air.
Along the walls of the building, jinn reached out to touch the stone, watching as images appeared. Quil recalled Laia once speaking of a jinn named Supnar, who animated the walls of the city with memory so that any jinn might harness the wealth of knowledge their people possessed.
All the jinn in this room, Quil noticed, were adults.
At the head of the room, a pool of water glimmered before a bench where a woman sat. Her red hair was long and coiled into a bun at her nape, and her gold skin had that ageless quality that all jinn seemed to have. Quil knew her, too. Diriya, who led the Council of Seven.
She was thousands of years old, nearly as old as the Nightbringer had been, and had seen nearly as much. Quil knew she could bend water to her will, but he’d heard she had other powers, too. Diriya stood when he approached and acknowledged his bow with one of her own.
“Shall we walk, Prince?”
She took his arm when he offered, and they moved through the huge doors of the hall and out through the gleaming streets of the Sher Jinaat.
The sun dipped into a thick bank of clouds in the west, burning flame red.
Refracted against the curved walls of the city, the light faded into a soft copper.
The music of the pipes rose and fell around them, soothing as rainfall.
Quil searched for the words that might convince Diriya to help him. Before he could find them, she spoke.
“You have used your magic,” she said. “When I last saw you, it had not bloomed so.”
“I—I have,” Quil stammered. He hadn’t expected her to lead with that. “I am ashamed.”
“One is not ashamed of using an axe or a saw, Prince. Unless one uses it for ill. Your magic is strong and to chain it is against its nature.”
Quil’s skin prickled at those words. They were almost identical to what Ruh and Aunt Hel had said to him.
“It is…the theft of memory,” Quil said. “A violation.”
Diriya halted in her tracks, startled. Around them, the pipe music went soft, as if the city itself was listening.
“That is the least of what your power can do, Prince,” she said. “You are a Yaad. Your magic lies in obtaining memories, yes, but memory is more than what we keep in our minds.”
She began to walk again, but slower, her eyes never leaving Quil’s. They moved downhill, toward the gleaming expanse of the River Dusk.
“Memory lives in the body, in the blood, in the bones. It can induce terror or calm. It can make us feel guilt or generosity or hunger. Memory lives in the earth—think of what you’ve experienced by touching a place imbued with strong history.
Memory is the heart of love, and love is one of the greatest powers there is.
You can take memory, certainly, but you can also offer it.
You can uncover it. Do not reduce what you are to mere violence.
That is an insult to the gift you have been given. ”
“The Bani al-Mauth tells me I should train with the Jaduna.”
The jinn’s gaze dropped to the Adah coin. It was clear she knew what it was.
“The Jaduna—” She paused. It seemed as if she wanted to say more but didn’t think she should. The sun had faded now, and long-limbed willows trailed their branches in the shadows along the banks, tangling with lily pads and cattails.