Page 155 of Heir

“Because we surrounded them. We gave them no choice.”

Aiz bristled. Cero had pressed her, recently. Disdaining how Mother Div got her power. Questioning Aiz about the missing children in Kegar. Criticizing the treatment of captured prisoners.

“Thosechildren,” Aiz said, “are trained killing machines. We will remove their heads, and their masks, and feel no guilt in doing so.”

Cero was silent the rest of the way to Serra. After a time, the city appeared below, a pocked, ruined shadow of its old self, the River Reichoked with debris. The signalers cleared them to land, and as they spiraled down to the makeshift airfield, the stench of smoke and refuse and blood choked Aiz’s nostrils.

Guilt swept through her, bees beneath her skin. Ruh had loved this city.The fountains are huge and there’s an entire street of storytellers and another of kite makers, and another that sells silk in every color—

Aiz wondered if Laia lived. If Elias and Kari and Zuriya lived. Then she realized she didn’t care, really. Ruh was the only one she’d loved.

Something flickered at the edge of her vision. A flash of silver. A familiar giggle. Aiz turned as she dropped from the Sail, startled, seeking the child amid the ruins of Serra. For a second, she was certain Ruh was here.

“Tel Ilessi?”

Cero called to her, and she remembered. Ruh was dead.

“Come,” she ordered Cero. “The Masks are at the barracks. It’s not far.”

“If you want to kill those children”—Cero stood rooted in the shadow of his Sail, fiddling with the straps on the pilot’s chair—“go ahead. But I won’t be a part of it.”

As Sails took off and landed around them, Aiz examined her oldest friend. He was worn. He’d been by her side for months now, carrying out orders, listening to her talk about Mother Div, helping her plot the takeover of the Empire. He’d believed. But now he seemed tired. So many of her soldiers seemed tired. They needed a victory.

The Loha would give them that.

“Very well.” She tried to sound reasonable. “I’ll handle it myself. Why don’t you take a few days away—”

“Before you murder those poor children”—Cero shoved his goggles on his head—“there’s someone you need to speak to.” Cero reached for Aiz’s hand, tentatively, as if he thought she’d slap him away. “Don’t be angry at me. You’re not yourself, Aiz—”

“Tel Ilessi,” she reminded him. The airfield was loud with the movementof aircraft, but that didn’t mean that others couldn’t hear. Respect must be maintained. “And I am more myself than I’ve ever been. I don’t have time to—”

“Aiz, my love.”

She turned to find the gnarled old figure of Sister Noa. She hadn’t seen the sister in weeks—not since the war began. In Kegar, in the months of planning, Aiz grew more distant from Noa. For while High Cleric Dovan, Olnas, and the rest of the clergy looked at Aiz with apposite awe, Sister Noa only ever appeared chary. Even unfriendly at times.

“It’s Tel Ilessi, Sister,” Aiz said.

“Walk with me.” Noa took Aiz’s arm. The old woman was so frail, so small that Aiz let herself be tugged along.

Noa was silent as they reached the edge of the airfield, and began to pick their way through the quiet, rubble-strewn streets.

“So much death,” Sister Noa said. “An apocalypse for these people. A genocide. I wonder if, a thousand years from now, they will think of us as their cataclysm.”

“A thousand years from now, they will have all murdered each other,” Aiz said, grimacing as she caught sight of a dog gnawing at something large and white in the ruins of a house. “They are a violent and warlike people, Sister Noa. In any case, it won’t be any concern of ours. For we will be far away, across the sea. Home.”

“Home, yes,” Sister Noa murmured, slowing before what was once a large sculpture, surrounded by a fountain. The water was gray with ash now, shattered shards of clay poking out like scavenged bones.“A fair gold and green land that was ours alone. It had at its heart a Fount of golden light, and that was the source of our magic.”Noa smiled as she quoted the Nine Sacred Tales. “Do you know the stories of what caused the cataclysm, Aiz?”

“That isn’t in the Nine Sacred Tales. Mother Div didn’t mean for us to know.”

“Or perhapsTenSacred Tales didn’t have quite the same ring,” Sister Noa said dryly. “But we do have records. Reliable ones, for Mother Div was nothing if not meticulous. The Fount, legend says, was poisoned. Tainted with evil magic. It didn’t happen overnight. It was gradual, else Mother Div would not have had time to find a new homeland for her people.”

Aiz tried to pull Noa from the broken fountain, but the old woman held firm.

“Our people turned on each other,” Sister Noa said softly. “The tainted magic drove them mad, pitted parent against child, siblings against each other, leaders against their people. Tens of thousands died. The First City, the Home of the Fount was consumed. It was only people from the outer villages and districts whom Mother Div could save.When humanity turns on its children, she was rumored to say,then you know we are lost.”

Aiz felt a chill, thinking of what Quil had said to her at the war camp.When you sacrifice other people’s children on the altar of your ambition, it’s only a matter of time before you’ll be willing to sacrifice your own.

Sister Noa turned to Aiz, and she flinched at the disappointment in the cleric’s eyes.

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