Page 154 of Heir

“The ambassador has nothing to gain from allying herself with the Kegari,” he said. “She would certainly not risk Ankana’s relationship with the Empire. If we break our treaty with you, we also break it with the Mariners. The Tribespeople. You tell me, prince. Why would she risk such a thing?”

“Perhaps she doesn’t care about the Empire or the Kegari.” Quil had been mulling this over all night. “Perhaps she has another master. I have met the Kegari leader, High Seer. I have met the Tel Ilessi. Her power is immense, and dreadful. I wonder if she has allied herself with something unnatural, and if Ifalu has done the same. So again, I ask—when you look at Ifalu, what do you see?”

“Nothing,” the High Seer murmured. “I see nothing. Her future is veiled. It has been for years, and though I have tried to see anything to do with her, I have failed.”

“And you’ve told no one,” Quil surmised. “Because doing so would indicate that your power was weakening, and you feared you’d be forced to step down.”

“If she has betrayed your people—”

“It’s not just my people,” Quil said. “Yours, too. You had a shipment that was supposed to arrive in the Vault of Seers—”

“Yes,” Remi said. “Mehbahnese ore engines, for our ships. I usually don’t pay attention to such things, but it was stolen last night—”

“No,” Quil said. “Not engines. Ikfa.”

Remi recoiled as Sirsha had. “Impossible,” he sputtered. “That substance is banned. And in any case, there’s hardly enough of it in the world to—”

“There are mines full of it in Kegar.” Quil shared what Tas had told him, for if the High Seer was in league with the Kegari, he already knew this information. “Ifalu had it shipped here. What, I wonder, would the Jaduna say to that? They are your allies too, are they not?”

Quil put his hands on the desk. “Look me in the eyes, High Seer Remi. Tell me if I lie about the ambassador’s perfidy. If so, I will apologize and leave you. But after hearing what I told you, if you have even the slightest suspicion that Ifalu might have misled the Martials and betrayed her own people, I implore you to call her to you. Ferret out the truth. I’ll take my leave while you do so. I will ask you for one thing, though.”

Remi sighed. “You make many requests, prince.”

“This one is fair. If I am right—if your ambassador is guilty as I say she is—then I need a favor.”

Quil made it back to the Pennybrush a few hours later. The sun was well up and Tas, Arelia, Sirsha, and Sufiyan waited in the courtyard, packed and ready, their horses idling outside the stables.

“About bleeding time.” Tas stood when Quil entered. “Don’t know how the hells we’re going to get out, they’ve closed nearly all the gates. What did the High—”

“Tas,” Sirsha said, holding up a hand. “Listen.”

Tas fell silent. Beyond the voices spilling from the inn’s dining room, they all heard an unmistakable sound. Boots, marching in time, toward the inn.

“Did you lead the bleeding guards to us?” Tas stared at Quil, wide-eyed with incredulity. “Of all the amateur, basic—”

Before he could move on to more colorful language, soldiers poured into the courtyard. An officious-looking captain in finely tooled gold armor approached Quil without hesitation.

“Prince Zacharias of the Martial Empire,” he said. “You are suspected of stealing a pallet of goods that belongs to the nation of Ankana. You will come with me to be questi—”

“We did it.” Quil drew his sword and laid it down at the guards’ feet, gesturing to the others “All of us. We’re thieves. We confess.”

45

Aiz

It took more than a week to find the children.

Not children, Aiz reminded herself as she and Cero—with whom she flew—approached Serra from the air.They are killers. Masks.

The little savages had, after all, booby-trapped the fields around the house they’d holed up in, deep in the Serran Mountain Range. Aiz had lost thirty soldiers before her troops even reached the dwelling, and another five inside. In the end, she’d been forced to blast the roof off with her wind and pin them one by one. Only then did the Kegari capture the Masks.

Now, under Triarch Ghaz’s watchful eye, they awaited her at the pilots’ barracks, gagged and heavily chained. Aiz was victorious. But she was also tired, her bones enervated from the use of so much power.

“What’s taking so long?” Aiz called to Cero, who navigated their Sail through the mountains with painstaking care. She was still angry at him for losing Quil. After the Empress’s escape, the news had been a terrible blow. Aiz had ordered Cero out of her sight, fearing her own anger. “We should have landed by now.”

“Tel Ilessi,” Cero said. “They’re young. Children. Only fourteen.”

“They’re snakes, Cero. You saw how many of our soldiers they killed.”

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