Page 151 of Heir

Sirsha only realized she’d left the room when Quil grabbed her hand, pulling her from her trance.

“Sirsha.” Quil had stopped her in the middle of the Pennybrush’s narrow upper hall. What must he think of her, walking out in the middle of a conversation. “Are you all right?”

Sirsha didn’t even consider hiding the truth. There didn’t seem to be a point to doing so anymore.

“The vow I made to Elias,” Sirsha said. “It’s affecting my mind, Quil. I should have told you before—but I was too confident in myself. Too sure I’d catch the killer. An oath like this must be fulfilled. If it isn’t, it will be the only thing I can think about—I’ll be a danger to you—to everyone around me.”

“I know,” he said after a pause. “J’yan told me the night before he died. He thought the oath was to me—wanted me to break it.” Quil looked off, face briefly murderous. “I’ll have choice words for Elias the next time I see him.”

“Get in line.” Sirsha sighed and put a hand to her temple. “I need some air.”

“Do you want company?”

Sirsha smiled, glancing over his shoulder. “Not as much as Arelia wants to know the precise internal mechanism you use to trigger your magic. Go on—I have a feeling you four have a lot to talk about. Tell her to keep that Ikfa away from you. I’ll be back in a bit.”

As Sirsha walked the streets of Ankana, her pack slung over her shoulder, she considered something Arelia had said of magic weeks ago.Rajin’s fifth law says that every action evokes an equal and opposite reaction.

Sirsha learned the same concept as a child. After much pestering by Sirsha, her mother, the Raani, told her the story of the Nightbringer—the most skilled and wily of the jinn. A thousand years before, an enemy king imprisoned the jinn and stole their powers. The Nightbringer, the only one to escape the genocide, spent a millennium trying to free his people.

It was the indifference of Mauth, the Nightbringer’s creator and the source of all magic, that set the jinn on his path, Sirsha’s mother said.And it was the love of Rehmat, his beloved wife, that released him from it. Sometimes, the only way to blunt the violence of twisted magic is to confront it with its opposite.

Stars still scattered the dark sky, bright even with the streetlamps. In the north, it was late winter, but here in Ankana, it was a cool summer night, flowers and trees in bloom, the capital almost offensively beautiful.

It reminded Sirsha of the Cloud Forest. In a few months, it would be full spring there. The vines would be heavy with honeyflowers and the bees that loved them. The Raanis would bemoan the pollen staining every window of their homes in the Gandafur trees.

For Jaduna, spring and summer were the seasons of giving. Friends made daisy chains, lovers proposed, Adah oaths were celebrated. Sirsha was twenty now—an adult by Jaduna standards. This would have been the year she and J’yan had their full Adah ceremony, honoring the vow they’d made as children.

It would be weeks before R’zwana reached the Cloud Forest. Weeks before J’yan’s Kin knew what happened to him. Sirsha hoped R’z told Ma about her fading magic. She hoped her sister made peace with what she’d lost.

Which might include Sirsha, if this vow—or Div—killed her.

I need more information, Sirsha told the elements.Where can I find it?

Hunt, the earth rumbled.

Hunt, the sea roared.

Read, the wind whispered.

The streets were empty, the stores shuttered. What the hells did the wind want her to read? A signpost?

Then she remembered shedidhave a book.Recollectionsby Rajin of Serra. She’d stolen it from Quil a few weeks ago.

Yes, the wind hissed, and Sirsha found a bench next to a lamppost and dug the battered little book out of her pack.

The old philosopher lived five centuries ago and did so love to drone on. But his insights were worth his verbosity, as long as you accepted that reading his work was like digging through horse dung for gold.

Even Jaduna instructors had a few of his books in their libraries. Most of them especially enjoyed his chapters on how the youth of his time were wastrels contributing to the destruction of society.

Sirsha had never readRecollections; as she flipped to a short section about Jaduna magical theory, she wished she had.

The Jaduna lasso their magic with emotion, using it to control an element. The emotion is most often desire—an exertion of willpower. They understand the third law—that magic cannot be destroyed, only contained or transformed.

He waxed ecstatic for a bit about how the Jaduna eschewed the hoarding of power. Clearly, the old windbag never met R’zwana. Sirsha read on.

The Jaduna value the community over the individual. Humility above bluster. Service and giving above greed. Sacrifice above selfishness and magical gluttony.

Sirsha shut the book, her mind snagging on Rajin’s third law:Magic cannot be destroyed, only contained or transformed.

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