Page 114 of Heir

“We accepted you into this Tribe,” Elias said. “We took salt with you. My wife hunts a story for you. We trusted you. And you told my child to keep something from me—in addition to whatever lies you told about who you are and where you’re from. No longer. You will gather your things and your horse, and you will leave. You will not interact with anyone. You will certainly not say a word to my family—and that includes Tas and Quil. I will be watching. Go.”

Aiz trudged toward her tent, Elias’s gaze boring into her back. She wanted to turn and tear Elias’s weapons from his hand, let the wind spin him up and into nothingness. How dare he speak to her like she was a common criminal? How dare he kick her out of the Tribe as if the past few months meant nothing?

As Aiz threw her things pell-mell into her pack, sand scoured the sides of the tent. The storm was nearly here—where would Aiz and Tregan take shelter? There must be someplace in Nur that would have her. Surely Elias wouldn’t turn the entire city against her in one night.

“Ilar!”

A knife came through the back canvas of the tent, and Ruh’s face popped in, his dark hair a haystack.

“No, Ruh,” Aiz said. “You— I can’t talk to you. Your father—”

“He’s watching from the other side of the camp. Ilar—I heard what the Kehanni said in the end.She had followed the archer north across the sky from the City of Light, only to be felled by his arrow.”

“She spoke in another language,” Aiz said. “How could you evenunderstand—” It didn’t matter. She didn’t want Ruh to end up in trouble. “Go, Ruh. Before your father—”

The child lengthened the rip in the tent and pulled Aiz out. “Ilar. Look.” He pointed directly upward. A wall of dust moved toward them, but it had not yet obscured the stars, and she saw the constellation he pointed to before it was swallowed up.

“Those stars,” Ruh said over the wind, “that’s the arrow—the archer’s arrow.” He looked toward the rock formations north of Nur.

“I never finished telling you the story.” He spoke so quickly that his words tripped into each other. “About the Durani. And the boy from Tribe Nur.”

It was weeks ago he’d mentioned it. “The chaos storyteller lured him out to the desert. They—they followed a constellation.” Aiz’s skin tingled as she spoke. “That constellation—the archer. And—and there was a hole that led—”

“To the sky, yes!” Ruh said. “The Durani wanted to eat him, but she was old and she fell asleep. He was small in the hole she’d put him in, still as the air itself. It smelled awful, like rotting things. He was scared of the mountain’s shadows, but he waited until he wassureshe was asleep and then he ran. But he wasn’t the same after he came back. He was…empty.”

“No rain penetrated its shriveled hollow, no wind blew in to freshen the stale air,” Aiz whispered, quoting “The Vessel of the Fount.”

Her gaze went west, to the immense mountain range that burst up from the earth. “In the lee of a giant’s fangs…”

The wind screamed, as if in exultation. Suddenly, with the kind of knowing that could only come from beyond, from Mother Div herself, Aizknew. She knew where her cleric’s spirit was trapped.

32

Sirsha

Sirsha wanted one simple thing: to stop seeing Loli Temba die. But when she looked into a fire, she saw her friend’s incinerated heart. When she boned a fish for a meal, she thought of the way Loli’s body disappeared into the river.

The tracker’s thoughts cascaded, and she found herself dwelling on older memories. Of the days before she was driven out from Jaduna lands. Of her failures, and the havoc she’d wrought.

Quil let her set the pace, and she pushed them hard and fast across the highlands, keeping away from trails so the Kegari sky-pigs wouldn’t spot them. All her will was bent on tracking, on reading earth, wind, and water.

The earth offered its secrets freely, whispering of the monster and where she had walked. Who she had murdered. A young woman beside a river, a few miles from where they passed. A Thafwan child who’d wandered too close to a forest in the evening. Each time, Sirsha flinched, disgusted and enraged. Each time, the earth shrieked at the wound, and guided Sirsha east, toward the Thafwan coast.

Quil understood Sirsha’s silence and gave her space during the day. But the first night they stopped, as she curled up against a tree trunk, he knelt beside her, dark hair falling into his eyes. Despite the highland cold, his hands were steady as he pulled her into his arms. For a second, she held herself stiff. But he was warm and solid, and in the end, she tangled her fingers in his and melted into his hard chest.

“I’m here, Sirsha,” he murmured in her ear, and she couldn’t help the heat that bloomed through her blood. “You’re not alone.”

Her Adah coin warmed, chasing away the cold. Its formerly flat surface was etched with thin, linked lines. The closer she and Quil became, the deeper and more intricate the etching. The harder it would be when they inevitably had to sever their connection.

Sirsha knew this. But in the dark nights, she didn’t care.

On the fifth day of travel, as a storm rolled in, they took shelter in an abandoned shepherd’s house overlooking a mist-shrouded valley.

The stone structure was bigger than it looked on the outside. It had a large main room with a dusty table and chairs shoved in a corner, two smaller rooms with no furniture, and a privy. Someone had long ago lit a fire in the hearth, and the privy had a pump, a tub, and a low stone pit for heating water.

Sirsha had dropped her pack to the floor when the wind curled into her senses, bringing a deeply unwelcome scent.

R’zwana.

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