by Rena Barron
Someone pulls the craven bone from my chest and turns me on my back. I stare up at a man in a black elara, his face covered in thick dark hair. He lifts my head to expose my bare throat. I struggle to move, to fight, to save myself, but my body feels like heavy stone. Magic rushes into the wound in my chest, filling it with warmth and light, sealing it, repairing it. As the assassin brings the jagged bone down on my throat, Tyrek strikes. He runs the man through with his sword. Blood splashes in my face.
Tyrek ducks out of the way of another assassin and almost trips over the dead man next to me. The new attacker swipes his sword at the prince and misses. Tyrek uses the opportunity to plunge his shotel in the man’s belly.
More assassins charge him as the pull of ascension sweeps through me. My body isn’t healing fast enough to hold my ka. I begin to drift up again, but the chieftains surround me. They grab my arms, my back, my shoulders, to keep me rooted in place. He is here, too—his presence a soothing song, his soul calling to mine, and it feels like he’s always been with me. . . .
Grandmother’s spirit materializes in front of me, her gray hair in that familiar crown. A twinkle in her dark eyes. “You must resist, Little Priestess.” Even as magic repairs my body, the call of death is so strong. I’m so tired. I want to rest—I want to sleep. I want the pain to go away.
Sukar and Essnai keep fighting as Tyrek drags the dead assassin and the craven dagger away from me. The magic burrows deeper into my flesh, leaving a trail of pure agony in its wake. It repairs my torn skin and makes blood to replace what was lost. This hurts worse than the dagger—and more than once, I scream through the pain. As I draw in a ragged breath after it’s done, Tyrek kneels beside me. “They win if you die.”
My lips form the word who, but I am struck by the desperation in his voice. I should mean nothing to him. He offered to kill me only days ago, but, then again, I’m the only one who truly knows the havoc my sister wreaked on his mind. I am the only one who understands the guilt he lives with every day.
“Get away from her!” Sukar shoves Tyrek aside. “Arrah, you’re going to be okay.” His hands tremble as he cups my face, and his touch is warm, so gentle.
Essnai kneels opposite him, pressing a cloth to my wound. “Get some water.” Tyrek stumbles away, doing as she asked. “Heka, heal her.”
I inhale another sharp breath in exhaustion. “I . . . I’m okay.”
Tyrek returns with a waterskin, and Essnai pours some into my mouth. When she checks my wound, it’s almost healed. She swears and looks up with tears in her eyes. “That’s quite the trick.” She smooths a hand across my skin. “You’re not allowed to die today, tomorrow, the next day, or ever.”
I look over her shoulder to where Tyrek stands, meeting his gaze. “You saved my life.”
The prince gives me a lazy grin and flops to the ground, clutching a wound on his side. “Consider my debt to you repaid.”
Eighteen
Arrah
The air burns with the stench of anti-magic, blood, and bile. Essnai and Sukar help me to my feet, and I close my eyes until my head stops spinning. My chest still aches, but it’s bearable. For these men to be here, someone besides Tyrek’s “friend” must have overheard my conversation with Rudjek. Both Essnai and Sukar look bleak as they search the assassins for clues. Tyrek presses a cloth against the wound on his side, his hand trembling. If it weren’t for his quick thinking, I would be dead right now.
“Let me help you with that,” I say.
Tyrek grumbles as he comes closer. “It’s just a scrape.”
While he holds the rag against the wound, I tie a strap of cloth around his waist to keep it in place. “Thank you for saving me.”
Tyrek stares at me through a fan of dark lashes. “You did the same for me not so long ago.”
Remembering his words from earlier, I pitch my voice low as I ask, “Who wins if I die?”
He pulls down his bloody tunic and glances at the dead bodies. “The person who sent these assassins, Efiya, the demons, the whole cast of bad actors out to ruin your day.” He shrugs like it’s no big deal, but he’s still shaking. “They’re all the enemies, aren’t they?”
“Add the Sukkaras to that list.” Essnai holds up five chains covered in blood, with craven bone crests dangling from them. “These are all ram’s heads—the mark of your family.”
“That’s impossible.” Tyrek crosses the space between them to see for himself. “No Sukkara would move against us without the head of the house’s blessing. Uncle Derane may be . . . boisterous, but he’s no fool. He wouldn’t do something like this.”
Prince Derane tried to convince me to help him build support against Suran Omari to win back the throne. Was he so offended that I refused that he would send assassins? I don’t know him well enough to say, but I wouldn’t put it past him. Except how would killing me help his agenda?
“Where’s your family crest?” I realize that Tyrek hasn’t been wearing it.
“Suran Omari took it.” Tyrek looks down at his bloodstained hands. “He seized my accounts and everything in the royal coffers. Craven bone included.”
Essnai fishes out the bone dagger the assassin had attacked me with, then she thrusts it in Tyrek’s face. “Did you know about this?”
The prince grimaces as he shakes his head. “No . . . I wasn’t even sure that craven bone really worked against magic until now. It didn’t work against Efiya.”
“This one’s still alive.” Sukar kneels beside an assassin coughing up blood. “Who sent you?”
“Piss off,” the man spits.
“That’s not the right answer,” I say, magic rising in my blood. There is a hiccup, a hesitation. My power is exhausted from healing my wound, but I call more magic from the night sky. Hundreds of sparks rush from every direction like fireflies coming to roost on my skin. The magic gives me more strength and fuels my anger. It sears against my flesh, but I ignore the pain.
Sukar glances up as it happens, his eyes glowing from the light. I know he can’t see the magic, but he can feel it. It makes me long for the times we traveled to the tribal lands for the Blood Moon. The celebrations, the dances, the hope that magic would come to me. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?” he breathes. “I’ve never felt anyone take so much at once.”
“I have a few more tricks.” The assassin’s limp body rises from the ground. Blood gushes from a wound across his stomach, and he groans in anguish. The cut is deep, but not so deep that he wouldn’t die a slow, painful death. Something dark crawls from the bowels of my mind, and all I can think about is revenge. My heart thunders in anticipation.
“Who sent you?” I ask, the chieftains’ voices eerily overlaying my own. It’s a horrible sound, even to my ears. Tyrek backs away, and Essnai and Sukar tense as I stand face-to-face with my would-be killer. “You’ll tell me, or I’ll make your death last for as long as I see fit.”
“Do your worst!” the man barks at me. “Owahyat!”
He has the same hatred and fear in his eyes as the mob who called my mother and me worse when Suran Omari banished my family. There will always be people like him who despise me because of magic. More assassins waiting in the shadows to strike. When will it end?
I take a breath, and against my better judgment, I press my hand to the man’s wound.
“Don’t touch me, tribal witch,” the assassin yells as his skin begins to knit beneath my fingers. He gasps for air in surprise, his eyes wide. When I let go, he stands on his own again.
“Is that better?” I ask, thinking that maybe we can do this another way.
The man stares down at his stomach, stained with blood, his fingers tracing an invisible scar.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I say, my voice returning to normal as the chieftains’ kas settle. “Tell us what we want to know.”
The man meets my gaze again, his eyes burning with rage. His lips tremble like he’s struggling to get the words out.
Then he spits in my face.
“That was rather pointless,” Tyrek muses.
I hold up my hand, palm flat to the sky. Curls of magic bleed from my fingertips until it hones into a knife as black as night. I’ve given him a fair chance—more than he deserves. He makes to step back, but my magic holds him in place. I drag the dagger across where his wound had been on his belly. It’s only a light touch, barely grazing his skin, but the magic cuts him deep. I hold my breath as his wound tears open, gushing with fresh blood.
“The Almighty One!” he screams, straining against my magic to no avail. “He sent us to kill you and Second Son Tyrek.”
“That coward,” Tyrek groans, his eyes wide. “Can’t say I’m surprised.”
It takes a moment for the truth to sink in. Rudjek’s father sent assassins to kill me. Ruining Arti’s life all those years ago hadn’t been enough for him. He’s a menace, a canker. Prince Derane and the loyalists were right. He mustn’t be allowed to rule—not without oversight from the Temple.
Sukar rests his hands on his sickles. “Are there more assassins on our trail? Who else knows that Suran Omari sent you? How often do you report back to him, and by what means?”
“It’s just us, and no one else knew,” the man blurts out. “We’re supposed to send a message back to the palace after we kill the witch and the prince.”
I let go of my hold on the assassin, and he bends over onto his hands and knees, blood dripping from his wound. There is a subtle shift in his energy, and a cloak of shadows wraps around him. “He’s lying.” I dig the dagger into his shoulder to loosen his tongue.
“There’s a camp not far from here with another thirty men,” the assassin confesses through gritted teeth.
“What are we going to do?” Tyrek asks, looking down at the man.
“We take the camp by surprise,” Sukar suggests, “and cut the snake’s head off now.”
“Too risky,” Essnai says. “Besides the obvious chance of getting hurt, we can’t let this set us back from looking for the tribal people. With Arrah’s . . .” She glances at Tyrek. I can imagine what she wants to say. Her affliction, her problem, her little secret. “We do not have time on our side.”
I heal the would-be assassin again. “Stand up.”
The man’s eyes brim with hate. Suran will never give up—not until he gets what he wants: me out of his way. As I take a step back, the assassin draws a blade to my throat. The movement is so quick that I barely have time to react. I seize his hand with my magic, and he drops the knife. I reach for Beka’s scrivener gift and combine it with the Kes chieftain’s intimate knowledge of souls. This time I don’t need ink and a needle; instead, I forge a symbol with magic: two glowing serpents intertwined. The symbols for binding. I narrow my focus and trace the symbol in the air with the dagger. The magic becomes tangible, visible for all to behold.
“What is that?” Tyrek whispers, staring at the symbols.
“Arrah,” Sukar says, his voice cautious. “Don’t.”
Sukar’s plea is a distant echo lost in the maelstrom of my mind. I must send a message to Suran Omari and everyone like him. I will not live in fear and let them destroy my life, not after surviving Efiya and Arti, after losing my father. The symbol careens into the assassin’s chest, and he screams as it burns into his flesh like hot iron put to cowhide. Smoke billows up from his skin.
“Gods.” Tyrek fumbles with the blade at his side. He launches for me, his moves clumsy but quick. He aims for my heart, making good on his promise. But I stay his hand with a flick of my wrist. He grits his teeth, fighting against my hold on him.
Someone else grabs my arm and spins me around. I blink a few times to see it’s Essnai. She’s yelling at me, but I only hear the beat of the assassin’s heart, and the chains forging inside his mind—chains that bind him to me. Essnai slaps me hard. “What have you done!” When I don’t answer, she slaps me again. Harder. Her hand stings against my face, dragging me out of a daze.
The assassin drops to his knees, convulsing. His eyes roll into the back of his head. My hold on Tyrek falters. “Mistress,” the would-be assassin coos as he looks up at me. “I am yours to command.”
I stumble back, and a scream tears from my lungs. Sukar takes me into his arms. “Shhh,” he whispers. I frown at him, confused. Why is he comforting me? “It isn’t your fault.”
“How is this not her fault?” Tyrek demands.
“Don’t you see that the Demon King made her do it!” Sukar bites back in my defense, and I burn with shame.
Essnai crosses her arms, glancing between the assassin and me. “Did he make you turn this man into a ndzumbi?”
My heart pounds against my chest. The answer is worse than that. “No.”
“I need a moment.” Tyrek stumbles away from camp.
“This isn’t a good time for people to be going off alone,” Sukar calls after him. Tyrek keeps walking.
I pull away from Sukar and step back in the opposite direction.
“Arrah,” he says, but Essnai puts a hand on his shoulder to stop him from following me. The assassin climbs to his feet, and Sukar turns his attention to the man. I walk away, but I can hear the assassin struggling as my friends hold him back.
When I’m out of his line of sight, the assassin screams my name, his voice echoing against the mountain. I send a command through our bond, and he falls silent. I stumble on rocks and tree roots in the dark as I move farther from camp. Shadows melt around me; cold creeps inside my soul. The wind whips the tears from my cheeks. I keep seeing the disappointment in Essnai’s eyes, Tyrek’s fear, Sukar’s denial.
What I’ve done is unforgivable. I am no better than Arti or Efiya.
I’m something worse.
Nineteen
Rudjek
A welcome perk of my craven heritage is that I need less sleep. I spend my days and nights with Fadyi and Jahla poring over the reports and maps from my father’s spies. Tonight Kira and Majka are with us, hunched over scrolls sprawled across the floor. An attendant pushes into the salon at midnight to bring another round of tea and spiced bread.
Jahla reaches for a plate, and Majka scrambles to his knees to grab it for her. “Allow me,” he says with a winning smile.
She hardly notices his gesture, but Fadyi glances at them, his expression unreadable.
I return to my pile of shipping manifests and skim through the extensive lists of cargo and crew. Every record has an addendum from my father’s spies of black market items. Ivory, red powder, cursed trinkets. Delenian poisons. Weapons. Twenty-gods. I reel when I see manifests of people sold in the warmongering northern state, Fyaran. Most of them are Yöomi from the nomadic lands to the east of the Serpent River. How can the Kingdom turn our backs on this atrocity and the countless others listed in these pages? I realize, not for the first time, that I don’t know enough about how the world works—or my own country, for that matter.
One manifest, of a Fyaran ship lost at sea ten days ago, lists a crew complement of forty-five and a hundred and thirty-two Yöomi. The ship sailed from Yöom via the strait between Galke and Estheria and disappeared near Zeknor. In ordinary times, a ship lost at sea in that region isn’t unheard of, but these aren’t ordinary times. “Who has the weather charts for the Northern city-states?”
“I’ve got them.” Kira waves a fistful of scrolls at me.
“What was the weather like around ten days ago?” I ask.
Kira shuffles through a dozen scrolls before she finds an answer. “No storms reported, clear skies.”
“A ship of a hundred and seventy-seven people was lost in the Great Sea. It happened somewhere between Zeknor and Galke.” I frown, flipping through accounts of other ships that sailed the day before and the day after. “It might be nothing, but it doesn’t sit right with me.”
“This is interesting.” Majka clears his throat and glances at Jahla. “Abezer, a town in Zeknor, started rerouting ships to neighboring ports around the same time.”
“That can’t be a coinciden
ce.” I push aside the manifests and snatch up a detailed map of Zeknor. I draw my finger across the paper until I pinpoint Abezer between two rocky shores. The nearest towns are three days away on horseback. “It’s isolated.” I look up from the map. “And the ports are small enough that no one would raise concerns about redirected ships.” I come to my feet, every muscle in my body firing. “Re’Mec!” I call for the sun god.
He appears in a cloud of shifting shadows perched on the back of a couch. “Am I wrong to think that you’re starting to enjoy my company again, Rudjek?”
“Don’t fool yourself,” I say dismissively. “I need you to check on a town in the north called Abezer.” I grimace, remembering how my last five hunches haven’t panned out. “I have a good feeling about this one.”
Re’Mec smiles. “Admit it. You like having a god as your little errand boy.”
“Get on with it, will you,” I grumble, not-so-secretly glad for his help. “We haven’t the time for games.”
The sun god’s eyes change from sky blue to stormy gray and back to blue again. It happens so fast that one could easily miss it. “It’s empty.”
“What do you mean empty?” I ask obtusely.
“I can’t sense a single soul,” Re’Mec says.
“How did we not see this before now?” I bite back a curse. “The demons never invaded the North. Let my mother tell it, the Northerners don’t even believe that the demons are back. It’s the perfect place to hide.”
I could laugh. After searching through manifests, maps, and reports for days, we’ve found Shezmu and the bulk of his demons. I’m sure of that, but I’m less sure of what to expect when we arrive in the port town.
“We have our answer.” I stare at the sun god. “Now we need a ship.”
Belowdecks, the ship smells like urine and vomit, and the air has a greasy texture that sticks to my skin. When I close my eyes, my other senses sharpen into knives. I hear rats gnawing in the bowels, the sway of the sea, and . . . intimate interactions I wish I could leave unheard. I groan in annoyance and rattle the shackles on my hands and feet to drown out the other sounds.
