Chapter 35 Quil
Quil
As the third Jaduna prison guard dropped like a stone in the middle of the prison’s hallway, Quil vowed he would never again mock Arelia’s self-loading slingshot. It was fast, its missiles were powerful, and in Arelia’s hands, it was remarkably effective.
It was also the only weapon the Jaduna hadn’t taken away when Quil and the others entered the prison, primarily because they hadn’t known what the hells it was. When one of the guards had found it in Arelia’s voluminous skirt, she insisted it was a type of Martial girdle.
Taking it is akin to violating my virtue, she insisted, causing Sufiyan to choke back his laughter.
“I told you I’d been practicing,” she said to Quil after bringing down her fourth guard.
“More guards coming,” Tas called. “Which way?”
Quil spun, peering through the gloom. The halls were poorly lit and the tarry, overcast night didn’t help.
The prison was built into a V-shaped cliff face.
And though it was a labyrinth of carved rock hallways and stiff, immovable tree vines, Quil could feel Sirsha’s presence through the bond; she was above them and to the right.
As the Jaduna that Arelia had knocked down began to stir, Quil sprinted down the hallway and toward a set of stairs.
They’d formulated the plan in the prison wagon on the way here: Escape before they were put in cells. Find Sirsha. Get the hells out.
How? Arelia had said. Horses? A ship? On foot? We have three weeks until Aiz destroys our cities. We don’t have time to traipse around Jaduna lands.
The portals, Tas had said. There’s no chance they only exist in Jaduna lands. They must have one that leads somewhere else.
Quil hoped to the skies that “somewhere else” was the Empire and not some island at the arse-end of Marinn.
The stairs took them up to a narrow walkway of black stone, the left side completely open to the ocean below, and the right a sheer cliff face covered in vines. Sufiyan grabbed him as Quil nearly skidded over the side.
“Thanks,” he said, and looked across the ravine and up, to a tangle of bark. He could feel Sirsha up there. “We have to get across.”
He grabbed his Adah coin, hoping that Sirsha could still hear through hers. “Sirsha,” he said. “I’m coming for you.”
Arelia gasped. Jaduna appeared at the end of the hall, unbothered by the sheer drop to one side.
Arelia hit one in the head, and the man’s skin split from the force of the stone that struck him.
But before Arelia could take down another, the lead Jaduna gestured and a lone vine snaked out, knocking the slingshot from Arelia’s hand.
She screamed, and Quil shoved her behind him, even as more vines came alive.
“Quil!” Tas shouted, and Quil looked back to see him hanging on for dear life as the vines grasped at him like giant bony fingers, pushing him toward the edge of the walkway.
Sufiyan grabbed him and immediately, the vines shrank away.
“Blood of Shatharin.” Quil understood immediately. “They won’t use their magic on you.”
Sufiyan stepped around Quil to lead the way. The two Jaduna manipulating the vines exchanged a swift glance before the lead Jaduna held up her hands. “Blood of Shatharin,” she said. “It is against our laws to cause you harm. Please, come quietly. We will not hurt you, nor your friends.”
Sufiyan usually preferred the bow. But he’d always been quick and clever in hand-to-hand combat, his leaner build often leading his opponents to misjudge him.
He dropped and swung his leg out in a quick sweep, knocking the Jaduna off her feet.
The man at her back leapt over her, face hard, fists flying.
Sufiyan sidestepped him and he stumbled into Quil, who greeted him with a punch to the stomach and a knee to the forehead.
“Quick.” Quil pulled Arelia after him, Tas trailing, and swept up a scim from one of the fallen Jaduna. “Before more show up.”
They raced into the hallway ahead, empty, thank the skies. At a split, Quil led them left, toward the other side of the ravine.
“Do not let them escape.” The call echoed from somewhere to their right. “U’qaya has given orders to kill. Even the Blood of Shatharin—”
“Knew it was too good to last,” Sufiyan muttered. They reached another set of steps and the Adah coin pulsed. Quil was close. They only needed to go up a few floors—
Arelia shrieked and went down as a vine grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to the floor. Quil skidded past the two targeting him, but Tas, behind Arelia, was not so lucky.
As one vine wrapped around Tas’s ankle, another punched through his shoulder in a spray of blood. Tas cried out, his face blanching.
“Tas!” Quil turned, hacking at the vines. “No!”
But more vines surged, trapping Arelia, and Quil could not cut them fast enough. Blood poured from Tas’s shoulder. Too much, Quil screamed in his mind. Have to stop it.
“Go—” Tas gasped. “Go—get her—get out—”
“Quil!” Sufiyan, ahead of them, backed up as more Jaduna appeared. They were hemmed in.
“You should have surrendered, Prince,” one of them, a Raan-Ruku, said. She twisted her hand and Quil only just shoved Sufiyan down before another vine attacked.
At his throat, Quil’s Adah coin went hot. Sirsha’s voice was flat. Distant.
Quil. Keep moving up. Stick to the stairwells.
Quil’s heart pounded at the fear in her tone, and he wanted to tell her everything would be fine, that soon they’d be together.
But at that moment, a vine snaked around his chest and pulled him tight against the wall. More caught his wrists, tightening until the scim fell from his fingers.
The Raan-Ruku strode forward, a spear meant for Quil’s heart held high. She hurled it—
It disintegrated.
Bewildered, Raan-Ruku and Empire heir stared at each other.
Then the Jaduna on either side of them began to scream as an unseen force knocked them hard to the ground.
The vines around Quil and his companions loosened and they pushed themselves free, just as a figure appeared at the end of the hallway.
She was small, clad in a green homespun dress.
A child. Red hair. Dark eyes.
“Come,” she said. “Sirsha waits.”
“Qu-Quil—” Tas rasped. Sufiyan was at his side, hands shaking as he stripped off his coat and pressed it against Tas’s wound to stop the bleeding. Tas’s skin shone with sweat, his blond hair sticking to his scalp, lips almost blue. “You—you have to leave me—”
“No, he doesn’t.” The child’s voice was so close that Quil jumped, uncertain how the hells she’d moved so fast. As she looked down at Tas, the hair on the back of Quil’s neck rose.
The air around the child felt full, like a rain cloud about to split and drench the earth.
His ears popped and his magic did something it never had before, seeming to shrink within him.
As if in horror.
As if in fear.
The child waved her hand. A simple movement, like she was brushing a fly away midair.
The color returned to Tas’s face. He pushed Sufiyan’s coat away, staring down incredulously. The wound was healed but for a pink scar. He, Quil, Arelia, and Sufiyan all stared at the child in wonder.
“What in the ten bleeding—” Sufiyan began, but the child was already walking away.
“Move,” she said. Ahead of them, a wall of vines groaned and parted. Quil led the others through, after the girl.
“How—” Quil asked her. “How did you—”
“The vines do not wish to imprison,” she said.
The child suddenly threw up her hands and the vines came together like a shield, warding off the spears knifing at them. Two guards were running down a stone path toward them, gesturing to the vines.
But instead of lashing out at Quil and his friends, the vines wrapped around the Jaduna, binding them tightly. They screamed, and the child watched with a small, strange smile on her face.
Dread pooled in Quil’s stomach, though he didn’t know why. “Where is Sirsha?” Quil said.
“She is ahead—safe. Hurry. Your escape has not gone unnoticed.”
The girl was young; she looked no more than thirteen.
But she strode ahead as confidently as if she’d created the labyrinthine prison, binding any who got in her way.
She went down two floors and across a rickety-looking bridge and into what looked like a small empty kitchen with two arched doorways.
Quil’s Adah coin pulsed gently as a figure stepped out of the shadows of one of the arches.
Sirsha had always been lean, but she was rail-thin now, her cheekbones jutting out sharply. Her clothes had seen better days, her hair was roughly braided. But her gaze was the warm, steady regard of the woman he loved. Quil took two steps toward her, even as she lifted her arms—
“No, Quil,” she whispered. Her voice was strangled. Her eyes were saying, I love you. I never stopped. I missed you. But she did not speak those words. Instead, she looked at the child.
“Stay away,” she said. “All of you. And watch what you say, because that is no child. It is Div. She isn’t dead. Or…she didn’t stay dead. She came back and she attached herself to me.”
Quil took a half step back, feeling as if he’d been punched in the stomach. This was why Sirsha hadn’t spoken to him. Why she’d pushed him away. This…abomination. No wonder his magic had recoiled.
“We have to move,” Sirsha said. “Div.”
The child scuttled ahead of them, winding her way through the prison to its ground floor. Perhaps there were other Jaduna, but if so, Div dealt with them before they appeared.
Sirsha walked in front of Quil, and Sufiyan, Arelia, and Tas trailed behind. Even as the three of them whispered to each other, clearly trying to make sense of what was happening, Quil reached for Sirsha’s hand.
She snatched hers away.
“This—this is why you were so afraid,” he said.
“Stop,” Sirsha whispered. “Don’t give her anything she can use against me, Quil.”
Quil knew little about the creature that had lent Aiz magic. But one thing he did remember was that she traded power for lives. Sirsha would never do that. Not willingly.