Page 42 of Heir

“Are you stupid?” Sirsha shouted, certain he’d get himself skewered. “What are you—oh—”

The Martial tore the Kegari apart, cutting through them so fast that she struggled to follow his blade strokes. Another fighter whirled toward him, movements similarly graceful—a boy who was younger and leaner than the Martial, but as deadly.

The younger man—a Tribesman from the looks of his clothing—sheathed his blade and drew his bow, seemingly in the same motion, and a volley of arrows sliced through the air. He threw himself into the fight with seemingly no care for his own body.

“You’re going to get yourself killed, Sufiyan!”

A curly-haired girl in a shredded green dress shouted at the archer as she dashed past, though he didn’t appear to hear. She leaped onto the shabka, panting. When she spotted Sirsha, her relief was palpable.

“Sailor, thank the skies,” Green Dress said in a rasp, her throat damaged from the smoke. “We feared that they killed everyone. Where are the ropes? The anchor?”

“How the bleeding hells—”would I know, Sirsha nearly said, before realizing that if the girl thought she was a sailor, she and her brawny friends wouldn’t throw Sirsha off the shabka. Not yet, anyway.

“There.” Sirsha pointed to a rope that appeared to be tethering them to the dock. “And that’s the crank for the anchor, which, since it’s the anchor, probably needs to be, um, on the ship—”

Luckily, Green Dress didn’t notice that the supposed sailor was babbling like a chatty drunk. The girl lunged for the rope, while, on the docks, the tall Martial battled two Kegari.

“Sufiyan, help Arelia!” the Martial called to the archer. “Sailor! Engine!”

Skies, the man was bossy as a general. Though he wasn’t wrong. The problem was, Sirsha had no bleeding clue how to start a Mehbahnese ore engine. She’d never heard of one until about seven minutes ago.

Sufiyan leaped onto the boat and hauled up the anchor. Upon closer glance, Sirsha realized that he was only dressed like a Tribesman. He had the sharp features and height of a Martial, but the dark eyes of a Scholar. She realized she was staring at him but couldn’t stop because there was something familiar about his face.

“Quil,” Arelia shouted at the bossy Martial, who was still locked in a scim battle. “Hurry up!” She turned to Sirsha. “Sailor, where’s the engine room? What happened to Captain Tanlius?”

“Ah—he—he died,” Sirsha said. “Kegari got him. I’m…I was second mate.” Or was it first?

Arelia gave her a skeptical look, but Sirsha pointed to the aft of the ship, as poor, dead Tanlius had when he was speaking of his special engine. “Do you mind…turning it on?” Sirsha said, hoping to the skies the girl knew something about the engine. “I’m going to—bleeding hells, Martial, on your left!”

As a Kegari raider lunged from the boulders along the dock, the Martial called Quil spun his scim, knocking his attacker’s metal whip away. A moment later, he’d ripped a knife across the raider’s throat.

Quil then leaped onto the deck, kicking away the gangplank and finding Sirsha with that singular, cat-eye gaze.

“Well?” he said impatiently. “Let’s go!”

“Yes!” Sirsha said. “Because I’m a sailor.” The metal around her throat must have addled her brains. She felt a sudden thrum—the engine—and hurried up a set of stairs to the quarterdeck, having traveled on enough ships to know that she needed to find the damned helm.

She’d just gotten her hands on the big wheel when her spine prickled. She caught the scent of death—old death—and bones.

She’s here.

The sea, which rarely spoke at all to Sirsha, whispered so quietly that she froze, uncertain if she’d heard it at all. The air changed, going still and noxious. Distantly, Sirsha heard Quil calling to her. She saw moreKegari approaching, their whips snaking out from their wrists like living white chains.

It all faded beneath the choking blanket of malevolence that settled over Sirsha’s mind.The killer is here.

But no—Sirsha realized almost instantaneously that this wasn’t true.

To the elements, the past, present, and future can blend together. You must learn how to tell them apart.It was one of the first lessons her mother taught her about tracking and was burned into her mind.

Sometimes, a person left an imprint so powerful that it felt fresh, even if it was months old. Sirsha had a knack for sussing out when she was looking at an old trail versus a fresh one. It’s why she’d been so valuable to her Kin.

This trail was old. And yet the flavor of death that Sirsha had been hunting for a week now was close. Slowly, Sirsha swung her gaze to Sufiyan and Quil. A boy with dark eyes and a laughing mouth that reminded her of someone, and a young man with cut-glass features and clothes spattered with Kegari blood who was saying something she couldn’t hear.

The killer had been near these two men—marked them somehow with sorrow or violence. Sirsha felt dizzy and reached out a hand to the Martial, grabbing his taut shoulder. Images flashed through her. A woman with short, dark hair currying a horse; a child who looked like Sufiyan, his features soft and round. And then…then—

—a shadow with teeth and claws—

—a killer, drenched in blood—

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