Page 150 of Heir

“Breathe, Suf,” Quil said in his quiet way. “We’re here. We’re all right.”

“I’m sorry,” Sufiyan said as the others talked. “Sorry I got angry at you, Quil. I—I won’t again—”

Quil sighed then, and for the first time, Suf took in how awful he looked, his hair a mess, his eyes red-rimmed, his clothing, usually neat even after days on the road, askew.

“You’ll get angry again, Suf,” Quil said. “You’ll have every right to. Especially after you hear what I have to say.”

43

Sirsha

As Quil told his friends the story of what happened in the war camp—and of his own magic—Sirsha struggled to silence the voices in her mind.

The earth shifted, and a breeze scraped at the window of the room. Sirsha’s ears filled with the roar of the sea. The three elements spoke as one.

Leave this place. Leave, and hunt Div.

Their voices had plagued her since she’d fled Thafwa, and grown more insistent the less she tried to think about Div. By the time she and Quil reached Burku, it was all she could do to ride in a straight line. Every part of her wanted to follow the pull of her vow out of the city.

A pull that would only grow stronger in the coming days, until it would supplant the need for food, water, sleep. Until it consumed her. She had weeks, at best.

She’d planned to head to Burku’s docks. Get a ticket out of here, find Elias, and get him to release her from the vow. She’d pushed a blood oath before. It wasn’t easy, but she could outlast it until she reached the Empire.

But a week on the road with Quil made it clear he was still planning on hunting the Tel Ilessi. And not just because of the carnage she’d unleashed on the Empire. That bitch had betrayed Quil and killed Sufiyan’s little brother. For Quil it was personal. He wouldn’t stop until she was dead.

Which created a problem for Sirsha.

Quil couldn’t kill the Tel Ilessi while Mother Div lived. That creature fed the Tel Ilessi too much power. Div would kill Quil.

Unless Sirsha killed Div first.

“What do you mean you havemagic?” Sufiyan practically shouted, and Sirsha grimaced at the sadness and shame she felt through Quil’s oath coin. He’d nearly broken down when he’d told Sufiyan of the Tel Ilessi’s true identity. To their credit, Quil’s friends had shown wrath for that Kegari snake and empathy for Quil—Sirsha would have accepted nothing less. It wasn’t Quil’s fault his old lover was a lying hag.

The concealment of his magic, however, appeared to have struck a nerve.

A surge of tender exasperation swept through her. Of course, if anyone could suppress magic so even an Inashi couldn’t sense it, it would be Quil. He wouldn’t have wanted to burden anyone with the struggle of it. The magic also explained why he didn’t have typical Martial suspicion of magic-users. Why it felt like he understood Sirsha. Had always understood her.

When he’d explained his magic, Sirsha classified him immediately. He was a Yaad. A type of magic-user so rare that Sirsha had never met one. Most had died out.

“If you do have magic,” Arelia was saying, “then you should react to these—” She pulled a set of purple-black chains and manacles from her coveralls and Quil grimaced. Sirsha, barely paying attention to the conversation until that point, recoiled.

“Ikfa,” she said. “You shouldn’t have that!”

Tas, meanwhile, tried and failed to snatch them from Arelia. “Those were supposed to go to the Empire.”

“They will, eventually,” Arelia said. “But for now, we have them, and we can study them. Sirsha, I’d wondered if you’d be familiar with the metal, as a Jaduna—”

“We don’t keep Ikfa,” Sirsha said, pulling an ill-looking Quil away from the metal. Almost immediately, the color returned to his face. “We use magic to suppress magic. We only trust the jinn to be custodians ofIkfa. When we find it, we give it to them. Don’t tell methat’swhat you sent to the Empire—”

“We spoke of reactive forces before,” Arelia said. “Is this Rajin’s fifth law again? Does the metal—”

“It doesn’t matter.” Sirsha thanked the skies R’zwana wasn’t here. Her sister’s head would have exploded at the sight of so much of the hated metal. “Ikfa is dangerous to anyone with magic—”

Quil immediately perked up. “Then it will work on the Tel Ilessi,” he said. “Do you think it’ll work on Div?”

“I—I don’t know.” Sirsha hadn’t considered such a thing because she’d never seen so much Ikfa at once. If it was found, it was usually no more than a thimble’s worth. “I—”

Div. Hunt her.The elements possessed her. Took full control of her body.Get up. Move. Hunt. Hunt. HUNT—

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