Page 99 of Heir

“Did you miss me?” Sirsha grinned weakly, surprised when Loli remained silent.

The Karkaun sorceress knelt by the bed, pushing the drink into Sirsha’s hand. The girl sniffed it and winced. It smelled like rancid fruit. But she knew the power of Loli’s concoctions, so she drank it down. Almost immediately, Sirsha’s pain eased. She marveled yet again at Loli’s skill. The woman had plumbed magic most Jaduna hadn’t even heard of. She was so deeply in tune with the earth around her that plants and even animals came to her aid as if they were an extension of her.

“I told you to stay away,” Loli said when Sirsha handed her back the cup. “I warned you.”

“You know I’m rubbish at following orders.”

“Do you know what you’ve brought with you?”

“An empty stomach and dirty laundry?” Sirsha struggled up from the blankets tucked around her. Sufiyan and Arelia stood at Loli’s side,equally grim. She looked for Quil, and found him leaning against the wall behind them, arms crossed, unreadable as ever. Confusion shot through her. When she’d awoken minutes ago, he’d seemed open. He looked at her like her secrets were the sea, and he was at home in dark water.

“I’ve brought you a passel of Martials.” Sirsha shifted her attention to Loli Temba. “Don’t tell me you share those old prejudices. Besides, that one’s only half.” She nodded at Sufiyan.

Loli never smiled or laughed much. Not with humans, anyway. Right now, she had a stern furrow in her brow.

“You brought evil with you, Sirsha. I felt my doom in the weave of the earth, and I warned you not to come. Why did you not listen?”

Sirsha felt the sting of rejection in her chest. She’d thought Loli cared for her more than this.

“I— Of course. We’ll leave. My sister isn’t your problem.”

“I would fight your sister a thousand times for you, child!” Loli Temba said. “I do not fear Jaduna. But I do fear the killer you seek. For that is what chased you here, to me. That is what hunts you now.”

Quil looked sharply at Loli Temba. “You said you didn’t know what it was.”

Loli Temba kept her gaze fixed on Sirsha. “They told me you were acting strange.” Loli nodded to Sirsha’s companions. “But that you didn’t tell them why.”

Sirsha felt her fingers tingle in anxiety now that she understood why they all looked upset. They knew she’d been deceiving them. After promising she had nothing to hide.

“I—”I did what I had to do, she nearly snapped. But something in Quil’s stance shifted and he didn’t look angry or forbidding. He looked…curious.

“I felt strange, but I didn’t know why,” Sirsha said. “Hunted. Sick. I felt…something in my head. I thought it was R’z. I’ve no idea what she’s capable of—”

“You know your sister’s magic,” Loli Temba groaned at her. “How could you be so stupid?”

“We’ve been on the run for weeks,” Quil said, steady but with that flash of steel that Sirsha found intriguing. “She was tired, and J’yan suppressed her magic in Jibaut. I’d thank you to leave off insulting her. She thinks too highly of you to say it herself.”

Loli looked Quil up and down and nodded her head a fraction of an inch. Which, from her, was practically a declaration of fealty.

“Tell me everything you know about this creature you hunt.” She turned to Sirsha. “Spare no detail.”

“Her magic isn’t familiar to me. She murders young people, mostly. Teenagers. Children. Burns out their hearts with a poker. She’s left a trail of bones in the Tribal Lands, the Serran Mountains—even Jibaut. I felt her in Navium—that’s when I realized she wasn’t human.”

“That was the first time her eyes turned white,” Quil noted. “The second was right before you found us.”

“Spirit magic,” Loli Temba whispered, and Sirsha’s heart sank. She’d spent enough time with Loli to know she couldn’t abide ghost magic.

“But why did Sirsha faint?” Arelia asked. “Reactive force? Rajin’s fifth law says that every action evokes an equal and opposite reaction. Would spirit magic interact with tracking magic in such a way?”

When she was young, Sirsha enjoyed arguing about magical theory. But Loli’s anxiety was catching, and Sirsha didn’t see how Rajin’s fifth law would help.

“Maybe the killer is Karkaun,” Sirsha said. That might explain why Sirsha hadn’t tracked the magic easily. The Karkauns dabbled in things the Jaduna forbade. It had been years since Sirsha hunted one.

“If the killer is Karkaun, you must leave. I feel it—her circling. I cannot be discovered by my people. They will take me back, and they will make me pay for my defiance, all those years ago. You know this, Sirsha.”

Sirsha nodded. If indeed it was a Karkaun warlock she tracked—and if the warlock had begun hunting Sirsha instead—then Sirsha would find the bitch and bind her.

“We’ll leave.” Sirsha shoved the covers away and lurched to her feet. Quil offered his arm and she took it gratefully, head spinning. “We can’t put her at risk, Quil. If I’d known, I’d never have come here.”

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