Page 29 of Heir

“How did we get in touch with them? No one knows their language, Aunt Hel, because there are hardly any texts to reference. How will I communicate with my future wife?”

The Empress ran a hand over her crown braid. “I do not wish to discuss this with you. It is not the time or place.”

More secrets.“Then when is?” Quil asked. “Tas said that the Kegari—”

“Tas cares more about you than he does his duty as an agent of the Empire.”

Quil took in his aunt’s words. “Tas defended me.” He felt a surge of gratefulness for his friend. At least someone cared about what Quil wanted. “Because not everyone is like you, Aunt. Willing to throw their family members to the wolves for the sake of duty.”

The Empress stepped back from him, the scars on her cheeks livid white against her already pale skin. Quil opened his mouth, words at the ready, waiting to explode out of him. Years of things he’d wanted to say. Years of fear and anger and frustration. Years of hiding what was inside him because that was what his aunt taught him to do.

The air shifted. The songs of the night creatures tripped, the breeze slowed.

Aunt Hel stiffened as a drumbeat echoed across the city, sudden and frantic.

Attack—

The sound cut off and Quil met his aunt’s eyes. All was silent.

And then the sky burst into flame.

9

Sirsha

The murderer felt slick and clever as a greased eel. Unlike anyone Sirsha had hunted before.

Perhaps she should have been vexed. Instead, she was intrigued, the way she hadn’t been since she was a child first discovering her skills. After Sirsha’s people had cast her out, her jobs were simple. Too simple. She often took a second job while doing the first, because she was so damned bored.

Now, six days after she and her client had parted ways, Sirsha knelt in the winter-yellow foothills a day outside Navium, the Empire’s southernmost port city. She’d successfully avoided the small settlements along the River Rei, where people might ask her questions. From afar, she would look strange: a girl with golden-brown skin and black hair piled high, staring off into space as if thinking of a lover or a dream.

In fact, she was puzzling out the trails winding through the air and earth around her. For the past few hundred miles, she’d followed the path of a single woman meandering south. It grew thin at times, but it eventually led her here.

Now the trail appeared to split. The killer could have met someone here. But if that was the case, Sirsha would have been able to see their spoor and wherever they came from. Unless they appeared out of thin air.

Even still, her magic would have revealed a trail.

Sirsha surveyed the land ahead. A harsh mountain wind flattened the scrub, powerful enough to have long ago swept away normal tracks.

“Talk to me,” she said. “Tell me what I’m looking at.” But the air merely yanked at her hair, taunting her before racing off. All her senses felt utterly befuddled.

Her magic lived in her blood. Had since birth. It was as steady as breathing or having skin. Or it had been, until now.

Sirsha walked farther down the hillside, leaving the horse her client had given her to graze on the sparse winter grasses. She put her hand to the earth. Nothing. A thousand threads, a thousand trails—none of which mattered. The wind spun dead leaves around her, swirled dust into her eyes.

“If you’re not going to help”—Sirsha coughed and batted the dust away—“then piss off.”

A low, sullen hiss.Follow the bones.

She scanned the scrubby land, which was filled with ravines and gulches. The wind’s hints were never idle. If the bones weren’t near, it wouldn’t have said anything. She walked across the dead, snow-dusted grass to a spot that dropped away into a gully. There, at the bottom, she saw a flash of dull white.

“Got you,” she muttered, and shimmied down for a closer look.

The bones were picked clean. Smaller than an adult’s, though not by much. A young person, but not a child. Sirsha knelt beside them, closed her eyes, and touched the earth.

Her vision narrowed and went white, then coalesced into a figure running—racing, desperate to escape the killer following him. A roar. A scream.

Soul crumbled. Rotted. Monstrous. Killer of tender saplings, death in the blood, death in the bones, an ocean of death—

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