Page 156 of Heir

“You are lost, Tel Ilessi. How many have died to satisfy this creature that feeds you power? And do not call her Mother Div. Our Holy Cleric would never sanction such violence. Not against the guilty, and certainly not against the innocent.”

Sister Noa squeezed her hands with the same understanding she’d offered Aiz her whole life.

“Cast that thing from yourself, my girl. You can still lead us. You can still be our Tel Ilessi. But not like this.”

Aiz’s fury seethed low, like a carpet of fire ants. Something else surged beneath it: despair.

“Perhaps I am lost,” she said. “Perhaps I did make sacrifices I didn’texpect. And there—there is much that will haunt me. But if it is for my people, it is worth it. I can’t turn back now, Sister, nor cast Mother Div from my mind. I will not.”

“This cannot be who you are,” Sister Noa pleaded. “Do you remember the question I used to ask you? What do you dream? Is it really this?” She gestured to the wreckage surrounding them. “Tell me, Aiz. Tell me what you dream.”

Hunger gripped Aiz. Then satisfaction. Far away, Mother Div fed.

Aiz stared out at the destruction she’d wrought. “I dream of victory,” she said. “And death.”

Then she yanked her arm free from Noa and left to claim her Loha.

The young Masks knelt in the courtyard of the pilots’ barracks, gagged, blindfolded, beaten. Aiz ordered their blindfolds removed. Their silver faces gleamed in the winter light.

Their hair and skin and genders ranged, but they all had the same worn, dark fatigues, the same set to their shoulders, the same defiance in their faces. As if they’d murder every Kegari they could get their hands on.

Ghaz, pacing before them, stopped when Aiz appeared and, at her order, removed the gag and blindfold of the first Mask.

The young woman looking back at her had red hair and brown eyes. Her lip curled as Aiz entered, and she spat on the courtyard’s stones.

“If you’re going to kill us and take our masks, get on with it,” she said.

“So eager to die?”

“Eager for you to let me out of these chains so I can wrap them around your throat and watch you choke.” The girl’s voice was chillingly calm.

A sudden presence at her back had Aiz smiling, as did the cool rush of power filling her.

“Will you let this insolent pup speak to you so?” Div’s righteous angersoothed Aiz’s bruised ego. “Set your interrogators upon her. Perhaps she will know where there is more Loha.”

“I’d rather take her mask, Mother Div.”

The cleric considered. “Let me feed upon her,” she said. “She is violent certainly, but young still, and pure.”

Aiz was about to answer when a commotion on the edge of the airfield caught her attention. A Sail landed with all the grace of a wounded grouse, and a messenger stumbled from it, gasping for breath. Her hair was in disarray, her breath short with panic.

“Tel Ilessi!” She staggered toward Aiz. “An uprising in the southern part of the city. Nearly a full legion approaches. They—they just appeared. Out of nowhere! We’re awaiting another arms shipment from Kegar. We don’t have enough bombs to stop them. The—the Empress leads them.”

“Why were we not told?” Aiz demanded. “Whose clan had watch duty?”

Ghaz had joined Aiz at the arrival of the messenger, and now he spoke. “Hiwa’s.”

She would kill the man herself. But now she required more power. A great deal more.

Mother Div sensed it, anticipated Aiz’s need.

“A few hearts will not be enough to stop a Martial legion, daughter of Kegar,” Mother Div warned. “I need more than that. If you are so deeply opposed to me taking more hearts, I can extract the power. But it requires…pain.”

“I am ready.” Aiz lifted her chin. Mother Div canted her head, teeth glinting.

“Not your pain, Aiz. Theirs.” She nodded to the Masks. There was a devilish eagerness to Div. A surging excitement Aiz couldn’t ignore.

“You mean to torture them.”

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