Page 136 of Heir

“Weapons on the ground, please.”

She eased the wind enough that he was able to unsheathe his scim and the dagger at his waist.

“The sleeves, too, Idaka.” She said his name like the real Ilar, the slight accent on the firsta, the half smile so familiar that Quil felt sick.

He dropped the blades in his sleeves. But not the one in his boot. She said nothing more and sat in a three-legged chair, gesturing for Quil to take the seat across from her.

Then monster Ilar began to tell a tale, her voice as resonant as when she traveled with the Tribes. She spoke of a failed attempt to assassinate a vicious commander. Wasting away in the prison her people called the Tohr; an escape, a ship, a seer. Arriving in the Tribal Lands. Asking Laia for help, saying she was Ankanese, when all the while she was something else. Learning of the First Durani, a storyteller full of lies, who had locked away the spirit of a Kegari cleric.

Quil would never have believed her, perhaps. Would have conjured a hundred excuses for why she couldn’t be Ilar.

But then she described Ruh.

“I knew he was special from the first moment I met him,” she said. “The way he told stories, the way the desert itself held its breath to listen. Oh, Quil, how I mourn him. But no—I’m jumping ahead of myself…”

The night deepened as she spoke, the smell of food and sweat andbeast dissipated by a coastal wind. The camp sounds faded to a low hum. Quil’s magic reared again.

Read her. Then you will know the truth. Get inside her mind. If she’s not human, you will discern it.

Quil tried to resist. He feared what he would find. Yet he knew it was the only way to know if she really was Ilar, or if the monster had created an elaborate illusion. So, as the creature droned on, Quil spoke to his magic.

Show me, he said.Show me what she is.

His power flared and expanded, a flower opening to the sun. Then he was inside the false Ilar’s memory as if hewasher, his own consciousness in stasis as his magic carried him fully into her thoughts.

Tiral died quicker than Aiz wanted him to.

After Aiz released Div to feed—after the first flood of power rushed through her body, she wrapped the wind around Tiral’s throat and squeezed. Tiral gasped and dropped to his knees as the entire airfield watched, silent. So many Snipes among them, starving and ragged and broken.Not for much longer, Aiz vowed in her mind.Not while I breathe.

Tiral grinned. “You used—the book—” he gasped. “Knew you would. It’s why I didn’t hunt you. Didn’t need to.”

Aiz’s hold on the wind loosened.

“I was chosen,” Aiz said. Tiral looked small this close to death. Aiz only ever feared him because she’d been a powerless child. Now she was a force even the mighty Tiral bet-Hiwa couldn’t defeat. “Mother Div chosemeinstead of you. You dared to claim the mantle of the Tel Ilessi and Divknew.”

Tiral wheezed, tears leaking down his face, and she thoughtit was a death rattle until he grinned. “Spires, but you’re a fool,” he said. “I wish I could live, just to watch it eat you alive.”

“Watch from the hells, apostate.” Aiz remembered choking on the smoke of Tiral’s fire long ago, wailing as the orphans’ wing burned, listening to the cries of her friends—her family—fade. For years, she’d wanted this. To watch him hurt. Suffer.

But as she squeezed the life out of him, as he fell silent, she felt no satisfaction. Only a vague sense of emptiness. A hunger for something more.

Div’s hand settled on her back, heavy and cold. Aiz sighed, thankful for the comfort.

Then she used the wind to rip Tiral’s head clean from his body. The crowd gasped as she held it up, blood pouring from the stump.

“I am Aiz bet-Dafra,” she roared with the same conviction with which she’d told the Nine Sacred Tales in the Tohr. “Daughter of the evening star, tale-spinner of the Tohr, and chosen of Mother Div. I am your Tel Ilessi.”

She said the words because she knew they were true. Had she not healed herself from her fall at the Aerie, months ago? Had she not dreamt of Quil discovering the chamber, seen into his very mind? The skills might be rusty, perhaps, but—

“You will learn,” Mother Div said. “I will teach you. Your people need a leader, Aiz. They need you.”

The Kegari roared their approval; the flight squadrons looked on, uncertain of what to do now that their commander was dead. Aiz wondered what Quil would say if he could see her now.My Ilo.It felt like a different life when he said those words.

Am I still your Ilo, covered in blood, Quil?

One day, she would travel to the Empire, not as a fugitive but as an envoy of the Kegari. She and Quil could speak as equals about the sacrifices required to save one’s people. If anyone could understand why she did what she did, it was a fellow leader.

Footsteps approached. The Triarchs. She threw Tiral’s head at their feet as some in the crowd roared, “Kill them! Death to the Triarchs!”

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