Chapter One

Two things stood between me and a good night’s sleep, and I was only allowed to kill one of them.

 I tromped through Hirun river’s mossy banks, squinting for movement. The grime, the later hours—I had expected those. Every apprentice in the village dealt with them. I just hadn’t expected the frogs.

“Say your farewells, you pointless pests,” I called. The frogs had developed a defensive strategy any time I came close. First, the watchguard belched an alarm. The others would fling themselves into the river. Finally, the brave watchguard hopped for his life.

Dirt had caked deep beneath my fingernails. Moonlight filtered through a canopy of skeletal trees, and for a moment, my hand looked like a different one. A hand much more manicured, a little weaker. Niphran’s hands. Hands that could wield an axe alongside the burliest woodcutter, weave a storm of curls into delicate braids, drive spears into the maws of monsters. For the first few years of my life, before grief over my father’s assassination spread through Niphran like rot, before her sanity collapsed on itself, there wasn’t anything my mother’s hands could not do.

Oh, if she could see me now. Covered in filth and outwitted by croaking river roaches.

Hirun exhaled its opaque mist, breathing life into the winter bones of Essam Woods. I cleaned my hands in the river and firmly cast aside thoughts of the dead.

A frenzied croak sounded behind a tree root. I darted forward, scooping up the kicking watchguard. Ah, but it was never the brave who escaped. I brought him close to my face. “Your friends are chasing crickets, and you’re here. Were they worth it?”

            I dropped the limp frog into the bucket and sighed. Ten more to go. The fact that Rory was a renowned chemist didn’t impress me, nor did this coveted apprenticeship. What kept me from tossing the bucket and going to Raya’s keep, where a warm meal and a comfortable bed awaited me, was a debt of convenience.

Rory didn’t ask questions. When I appeared on his doorstep five years ago, drenched in blood and shaking, Rory had tended to my wounds and taken me to Raya’s. He rescued a fifteen-year-old orphan with no history or background from a life of vagrancy.

The sudden snap of a branch drew my muscles tight. I reached into my pocket, wrapping my fingers around the hilt of my dagger. I usually carried my blade strapped in my boot, given the Nizahl soldiers’ predilection for randomly searching us. I’d used it to cut my foot out of a tangled family of ferns and left it in my pocket.

A quick scan of the shivering branches revealed nothing. I tried not to let my eyes linger in the empty pockets of black between the trees. I had seen too much horror manifest out of the dark to ever trust its stillness.

My gaze moved to the identical black marks on the row of trees behind me. Carved into each tree was the symbol of a raven spreading its wings. Each line was clean and sharp. In the muck of the woods, these ravens remained pristine. The raven-marked trees formed a loose perimeter around Mahair. Crossing the perimeter without permission was an offense punishable by imprisonment or worse. In the lower villages, where the kingdom’s leaders were already primed to turn a blind eye to the liberties taken by Nizahl soldiers, worse was usually just the beginning.

I traced one outstretched wing with my thumbnail. I would have traded all the frogs in my bucket to be brave enough to scrape my nails over the symbol, to gouge it off. Maybe that same burst of bravery would see my dagger cutting a line in the bark, disfiguring the symbols of Nizahl’s power. It wasn’t walls or swords keeping us penned in like animals, but a simple carving. Another kingdom’s power billowing over us like poisoned air, controlling everything it touched.

I glanced at the watchguard in my bucket and lowered my hand. Bravery wasn’t worth the cost. Or the splinters.

A thick layer of frost coated the road leading back to Mahair. I pulled my hood nearly to my nose as soon as I crossed the wall bifurcating Mahair from Essam woods. I veered into an alley, winding my way to Rory’s shop instead of risking the exposed—and regularly patrolled— main road. Plunged into darkness, I placed a stabilizing hand on the wall and let the pungent odor of manure guide my feet forward. A cat hissed from beneath a stack of crates, hunching protectively over the half-eaten carcass of a rat.

“I already had supper, but thank you for the offer,” I whispered, leaping out of reach of her claws.

Twenty minutes later, I clunked the full bucket at Rory’s feet. “I demand a renegotiation of my wages.”

Rory didn’t look up from his list. “Demand away. I’ll be over there.”

He disappeared into the back room. Scowling, I arranged the poultice, sealing each jar carefully before placing it inside the basket. One of the rare times I’d found myself on the wrong side of Rory’s temper was after I had forgotten to seal the ointments and sent them off with Yuli’s boy. I learned as much about the spread of disease that day as I did about Rory’s staunch ethics.

            Rory returned. “Off with you already. Get some sleep. I do not want the sight of your face to scare off my patrons tomorrow.” He prodded around the bucket, turning over a few of the frogs. Age weathered Rory’s narrow, brown face. His long fingers were constantly stained in the color of his latest tonic, and a permanent groove sat between his bushy brows. Despite an old injury to his hip, his slenderness was not a sign of fragility. On the rare occasions where Rory smiled, it was clear he had been handsome in his youth. “If I find that you’ve layered the bottom with dirt again, I’m poisoning your tea.”

He pushed a haphazardly wrapped bundle into my arms. “Here.”

            Bewildered, I turned the package over. “For me?”

            He waved his cane around the empty shop. “Are you touched in the head, child?”

            I carefully peeled the fabric back, exposing a pair of golden gloves. Softer than a dove’s wing, they probably cost more than anything I could buy for myself. I lifted one reverently. “Rory, this is too much.”

I only barely stopped myself from putting them on. I laid them gingerly on the counter and hurried to scrub off my stained hands. There were no clean cloths left, so I wiped my hands on Rory’s tunic and earned a swat to the ear.

            The fit of the gloves was perfect. Soft and supple, yielding with the flex of my fingers.

            I studied them near the glowing lantern. These would certainly fetch a pretty price at market. Not that I’d sell them right away, of course. Rory liked pretending he had the emotional depth of a spoon, but he would be hurt if I bartered his gift a mere day later. Markets weren’t hard to find in Omal. The lower villages were always in need of food and supplies. Trading amongst themselves was easier than begging for scraps from the palace.

The old man smiled briefly. “Happy birthday, Sylvia.”

            Sylvia. My first and favorite lie. I pressed my hands together. “A consolation gift for the spinster?” Not once in five years had Rory failed to remember my fabricated birth date.

            “I should hardly think spinsterhood’s threshold as low as twenty years.”

            In truth, I was halfway to twenty-one. Another lie.

“You are as old as time itself. The ages below one hundred must all look the same to you.”

            He jabbed me with his cane. “It is past the hour for spinsters to be about.”

I left the shop in higher spirits. I pulled my cloak tight around my shoulders, knotting the hood beneath my chin. I had one more task to complete before I could finally reunite with my bed, and it meant delving deeper into the silent village. These were the hours when the mind ran free, where hollow masonry became the whispers of hungry shaiateen, and the scratch of scuttling vermin the sounds of the restless dead.

            I knew how sinuously fear cobbled shadows into gruesome shapes. I hadn’t slept a full night’s length in long years, and there were days when I trusted in nothing beyond the breath in my chest and the earth beneath my feet. The difference between me and the villagers was I knew the names of my monsters. I knew what they would look like if they found me, and I didn’t have to imagine what kind of fate I would meet.

            Their superstitions came from stories preserved through generations. Mahair was a tiny village, but its history was long. Its children would know the tales shared from their mothers and fathers and grandparents. Superstition kept Mahair alive, far after time had turned a new page on its inhabitants.

            It also kept me in business.

            Instead of turning right toward Raya’s keep, I ducked into the vagrant road. Glancing over my shoulder, I checked for anyone who might report my movements back to Rory.

We had made a tradition of forgiving each other, Rory and me. Should he find out I was treating Omalians under his name, peddling pointless concoctions to those superstitious enough to buy them—well, I doubted Rory could forgive such a transgression. The ‘cures’ I mucked together for my patrons were harmless. Crushed herbs and tampered liquors. Most of the time, the ailments they were intended to ward off were more ridiculous than anything I could fit in a bottle.

            The home I sought was ten minutes past Raya’s keep. Too close for comfort. Water dripped from the edge of the sagging roof, where a clothesline stretched from hook to hook. A pair of undergarments had fluttered to the ground. I kicked them out of sight. Raya taught me years ago how to hide undergarments on the clothesline by clipping them behind a larger piece of clothing. I hadn’t understood the need for so much stealth. I still didn’t. But time was a limited resource tonight, and I wouldn’t waste it consoling an Omalian’s embarrassment that I now had definitive proof they wore undergarments.

            The door flew open. “Sylvia, thank goodness,” Zeinab said. “She’s worse today.”

            I tapped my mud-encrusted boots against the lip of the door before stepping inside.

“Where is she?”

            I followed Zeinab to the last room in the short hall. A wave of incense wafted over us when she opened the door. I fanned the white haze hanging in the air. A wizened old woman rocked back and forth on the floor. Bloody tracks lined her arms where nails had gouged deep. Zeinab closed the door, maintaining a safe distance from the woman. Tears swam in her large hazel eyes. “I tried to give her a bath, and she did this.” Zeinab pushed up the sleeve of her abaya, exposing a myriad of red scratch marks.

            “Right.” I laid my bag down on the table. “I will call you when I’ve finished.”

            Subduing the old woman with a tonic took little effort. I moved behind her and hooked an arm around her neck. She tore at my sleeve, mouth falling open to gasp. I dumped the tonic down her throat, loosening my stranglehold for her to swallow. Once certain she wouldn’t spit it out, I dumped her and adjusted my sleeve.

It took minutes. My talents lay in efficient and fleeting deception. At the door, I let Zeinab slip a few coins into my cloak’s pocket and pretended to be surprised. I would never understand Omalians and their feigned modesty. “Remember—”

            Zeinab bobbed her head impatiently. “Yes, yes, I won’t speak a word of this. It has been years, Sylvia. If the chemist ever finds out, it will not be from me.”

            I returned Zeinab’s wave distractedly and moved my dagger into the same pocket as the coins. Puddles of foul-smelling rain rippled in the pocked dirt road. Most of the homes on the street could more accurately be described as hovels, their thatched roofs shivering above walls bricked together with mud and uneven patches of cement. I dodged a line of green mule manure, its waterlogged, grassy smell stinging my nose.

            Did Omal’s upper towns have excrement in their streets?

Zeinab’s neighbor had scattered chicken feathers outside her door—a sign of good fortune. Their daughter had married a merchant from Dawar, and her dowry had earned them enough this month to feed their whole family chicken. From now on, the finest clothes would furnish her body. The choicest meats and hardest grown vegetables for her plate. Would she ever muddy her shoes in the villages again?

            I turned the corner, absently counting the coins in my pocket, and rammed into a body.

            I stumbled, catching myself against a pile of cracked clay bricks. The Nizahl soldier didn’t budge beyond a tightening of his frown.

            “Identify yourself.”

            Heavy wings of panic unfurled in my throat. Though our movements around town weren’t constrained by an official curfew, not many risked a late-night stroll. The Nizahl soldiers usually patrolled in pairs, which meant this man’s partner was probably harassing someone else on the other side of the village.

            I smothered the panic, snapping its fluttering limbs. Panic was a plague. Its sole purpose was to spread until it tore through every thought, every instinct.

A cool calm spread through me. I immediately lowered my eyes. Holding a Nizahl soldier’s gaze invited nothing but trouble. “My name is Sylvia. I live in Raya’s keep and apprentice for the chemist Rory. I apologize for startling you. An elderly woman urgently needed care, and my employer is indisposed.”

            From the lines on his face, the soldier was somewhere in his late forties. If he had been an Omalian patrolman, his age would have signified little. But Nizahl soldiers tended to die young and bloody. For this man to survive long enough to see the lines of his forehead wrinkle, he was either a deadly adversary or a coward.

            “What is your father’s name?”

            “I am a ward in Raya’s keep,” I repeated. He must be new to Mahair. “I have no mother or father.”

            He didn’t belabor the issue. “Have you witnessed activity which might lead to the capture of a Jasadi?” A standard question from the soldiers, intended to encourage vigilance towards any signs of magic. The most recent arrest of a Jasadi happened in our neighboring village. From the whispers, I’d surmised a girl reported seeing her friend fix a crack in her floorboard with a wave of her hand. I had overheard all manners of praise showered on the girl for her bravery in turning in the fifteen-year-old. Praise and jealousy—they couldn’t wait for their own opportunities to be heroes.

            “I have not.” I hadn’t seen another Jasadi in five years.

            He pursed his lips. “The name of the elderly woman?”

            “Aya, but her daughter Zeinab is her caretaker. I could direct you to them if you’d like.” Zeinab was crafty. She would have a lie prepared for a moment like this.

“No need.” He waved a hand over his shoulder. “On your way. Stay off the vagrant road.”

             One benefit of the older Nizahl soldiers—they had less inclination for the bluster and interrogation tactics of their younger counterparts. I tipped my head in gratitude and sped past him.

            A few minutes later, I slid into Raya’s keep. By the scent of cooling wax, it had not been long since the last girl went to bed. Relieved to find my birthday forgotten, I kicked my boots off at the door. Raya had met with the cloth merchants today. Bartering always left her in a foul mood. The only acknowledgement of my birthday would be a breakfast of flaky, buttery fiteer and molasses honey in the morning.

            When I pushed open my door, a blast of warmth swept over me.  “Raya will have your hides. The waleema is in a week.”

            Marek appeared engrossed in the fire pit, poking the coals with a thin rod. His golden hair shone under the glow. A mess of fabric and the beginnings of what might be a dress sat beneath Sefa’s sewing tools. “Precisely,” Sefa said, dipping a chunk of charred beef into her broth. “I am drowning my sorrows in stolen broth because of the damned waleema. Look at this dress! This is a dress all the other dresses laugh at.”

            “What is he doing with the fire?” I asked, electing to ignore her garment-related woes. Come morning, Sefa would hand Raya a perfect dress with a winning smile and bloodshot eyes. An apprenticeship under the best seamstress in Omal wasn’t a role given to those who folded under pressure.

            “He’s trying to roast his damned seeds,” Sefa sniffed. “We made your room smell like a tavern kitchen. Sorry. In our defense, we gathered to mourn a terrible passing.”

“A passing?” I took a seat beside the stone pit, rubbing my hands over the crackling flames.

            Marek handed me one of Raya’s private chalices. Come dawn the woman was going to skin us like deer. “Ignore her. We just wanted to abuse your hearth,” he said. “I am convinced Yuli is teaching his herd how to kill me. They almost ran me right into a tombs-damned canal.”

“Did you do something to make Yuli or the oxen angry?”

“No,” Marek said mournfully.

“Marek.”

 “I may have used the horse’s stalls to…entertain.” He released a long-suffering sigh. “…his daughter.”

Sefa and I released twin groans. This was hardly the first time Marek had gotten himself in trouble chasing a pretty smile or a kind word. He was absurdly pretty, fair-haired and green-eyed, lean in a way that undersold his strength. To counter his looks, he’d chosen to apprentice with Mahair’s most demanding farmer. By spending his days loading wagons and herding oxen, Marek made himself indispensable to every tradesperson in the village. He worked to earn their respect, because Mahair valued little more than calloused palms and sweat on a brow.

It was also why they tolerated the string of broken hearts he’d left in his wake.

            Not one to be ignored for long, Sefa continued, “Your youth, Sylvia, we mourn your youth! At twenty, you’re having fewer adventures than the village brats.”

            I drained the water, passing the chalice to Marek for more. “I have plenty of adventure.”

            “I’m not talking about how many times you can kill your fig plant before it stays dead,” Sefa scoffed. “If you had simply accompanied me last week to release the roosters in Nadia’s den—”

            “Nadia has permanently barred you from her shop,” Marek interjected. Brave one, cutting Sefa off in the middle of a tirade. He scooped up a blackened seed, throwing it from palm-to-palm to cool. “Leave Sylvia be. Adventure does not fit into a single mold.”

            Sefa’s nostrils flared wide, but Marek didn’t flinch. Whatever bound Marek and Sefa was thicker than blood, stronger than a shared upbringing.

            “I am not killing my fig plant.” I pushed to my feet. “I’m cultivating its fighter’s spirit.”

            “Stop glaring at me,” Marek said to Sefa with a sigh. “I’m sorry for interrupting.” He held out a cracked seed.

            Sefa let his hand dangle in the air for forty seconds before taking the seed and setting it aside. “Help me hem this sleeve?”

            With a sheepish grin, Marek offered up his soot-covered palms. Sefa rolled her eyes.

            I observed their exchange with bewilderment. I’d known them for five years now, but it never failed to astound me how easily they existed around one another. Their devotion had naturally led to questions from the other wards at the keep. Marek laughed himself into stitches the first time a younger girl asked if he and Sefa planned to wed. “Sefa isn’t going to marry anyone. We love each other in a different way.”

The ward had batted her lashes, because Marek was the only boy in the keep, and an exceptionally attractive one at that.

            “What about you?” the ward had asked.

            Sefa, who had been smiling as she knit in the corner, sobered. Only Raya and I saw the sorrowful look she shot Marek, the guilt in her brown eyes.

            “I am tied to Sefa in spirit, if not in wedlock.” Marek ruffled the ward’s hair. The young girl squealed, slapping at Marek. “I follow where she goes.”

            Their connection to one another hadn’t prevented them from taking an instant liking to me the moment Rory dropped me at Raya’s doorstep. I was almost feral, hardly fit for friendship, but it hadn’t deterred them. I adjusted poorly to this Omalian village, perplexed by the simplest customs. Rub the spot between your shoulders and die early. Eat with your left hand on the first day of the month; don’t cross your legs in the presence of elders; be the last person to sit at the dinner table and the first one to leave it. My bronze skin was several shades darker than their typical olive. I blended in with Orbanians better, since the kingdom in the north spent most of its days under the sun. When Sefa noticed how I avoided wearing white, she’d held her darker hand next to mine and said, “They’re jealous we soaked up all their color.”

            Endearing myself to the other wards hadn’t been easy. Everyone here had an ugly history haunting their sleep. I didn’t help myself any by almost slamming another ward’s nose clean off her face when she tried to hug me. My aversion to touch was well-known in the keep.

            Fortunately, Sefa and Marek weren’t scared off. Sefa was quite upset about her nose, though.

I hung my cloak neatly inside the wardrobe and thumbed the moth-eaten collar. Sadness swelled at the realization I would need to replace it soon.

I recoiled from the cloak, curling my fingers into a fist. I promptly tore out the roots of sadness before it could spread. Someone in my position could afford few emotional attachments. At any moment, a sword could be pointed at me, a cry of ‘Jasadi’ ending this identity and the life I’d built around it. A regular orphan from Mahair could cling to this tired cloak, the first thing she’d ever purchased with her own hard-earned coin.

A fugitive of the scorched kingdom could not.

I turned my palms up, testing the silver cuffs around my wrists. Though the cuffs were invisible to any eye but mine, it had taken a long time for my paranoia to ease whenever someone’s idle gaze lingered on my wrists. They flexed with my movement, a second skin over my own. Only my trapped magic could stir them, tightening the cuffs as it pleased.

Magic marked me as a Jasadi. As the reason Nizahl created perimeters in the woods and sent their soldiers prowling through the kingdoms. I had spent most of my life resenting my cuffs. Resenting my grandparents for forcing them on me as a child. I suppose they couldn’t have anticipated dying and leaving the cuffs stuck on me forever.

I hid Rory’s gift in the wardrobe, beneath the folds of my longest gown. The girls rarely risked Raya’s wrath by stealing, but a desperate winter could make a thief of anyone. I stroked one of the gloves, fondness curling hot in my chest. How much had Rory spent on this gift, knowing I’d have limited opportunities to wear them?

            “We wanted to show you something,” Marek said. I slammed the wardrobe door’s shut, scowling at myself. What did it matter how much Rory spent? Anything I didn’t need to survive would be discarded or sold, and these gloves were no different.

Sefa stood, dusting loose fabric from her lap. She snorted at my expression. “Baira’s blessed hair, look at her, Marek. You might think we were planning to bury her in the woods.”

            Marek frowned. “Aren’t we?”

            “Both of you are banned from my room. Forever.”

I followed them outside, past the row of fluttering clotheslines and the pitiful herb garden. Built at the top of a grassy slope, Raya’s keep overlooked the entire village, all the way to the main road. Most of the homes in Mahair sat stacked on top of each other, forming squat, three-story buildings with crumbling walls and cracks in the clay. The villagers raised poultry on the roof, nurturing a steady supply of chickens and rabbits that would see them through the monthly food shortages.

            Beyond the main road lay Essam Woods. The moonlight swayed over the trees stretching into the black horizon. They formed an impenetrable blanket of darkness, forbidding anyone from venturing too close.

I’d encountered my first bizarre Omalian superstition the week after I emerged from Essam. I’d spent the night sitting on the hill and watching the spot where Mahair’s lanterns disappeared into the empty void of the woods. I endured a two-hour lecture from Raya about the risk of staring at Essam Woods and inviting mischievous spirits forward from the dark. As though my attention alone might summon them into being.

            I spent five years in those woods. I wasn’t afraid of their darkness. It was everything outside Essam I couldn’t trust.

            “Behold!” Sefa announced, flinging her arm toward a tangle of plants.

            We stopped around the back of the keep, where I had illicitly shoveled the fig plant I bought off a Lukubi merchant at the last market. I wasn’t sure why. Nurturing a plant that reminded me of Jasad, something rooted I couldn’t take with me in an emergency—it was embarrassing. Another sign of the weakness I’d allowed to settle.

             My fig plant’s leaves drooped mournfully. I prodded the dirt. Were they mocking my planting technique?

            “She doesn’t like it. I told you we should have bought her a new cloak,” Marek sighed.

            “With whose wages? Are you a wealthy man now?” Sefa peered at me. “You don’t like it?”

            I squinted at the plant. Had they watered it while I was gone? What was I supposed to like? Sefa’s face crumpled, so I hurriedly said, “I love it! It is, uh, wonderful, truly, thank you.”

            “Oh. You can’t see it, can you?” Marek started to laugh. “Sefa forgot she is the size of a thimble and hid it out of your sight.”

            “I am a perfectly standard height! I cannot be blamed for befriending a woman tall enough to tickle the moon,” Sefa protested.

            I crouched by the plant. Wedged behind its curtain of yellowing leaves, a woven straw basket held a dozen sesame seed candies. I loved these brittle, tooth-chipping squares. I always made a point to search for them at market if I’d saved enough to spare the cost.

            “They used the good honey, not the chalky one,” Marek added.

            “Happy birthday, Sylvia,” Sefa said. “As a courtesy, I will refrain from hugging you.”

            First Rory, now this? I cleared my throat. In a village of empty stomachs and dying fields, every kindness came at a price. “You just wanted to see me smile with sesame in my teeth.”

            Marek smirked. “Ah, yes, our grand scheme is unveiled. We wanted to ruin your smile that emerges once every fifteen years.”

            I slapped the back of his head. It was the most physical contact I could bear to express gratitude.

We walked back to the keep and resettled around the extinguished fire pit. Marek dug through the ash for any surviving seeds. Sefa laid back on the ground, her feet propped on Marek’s leg. “Arin or Felix?”

            I slumped on my bed and set to the tedious task of coaxing my curls out of their knotted disaster of a braid. The sesame seeds were nestled safely in my wardrobe. The timing of these gifts could not have been better. As soon as Sefa and Marek fell asleep, I would collect what I needed for my trip back to the woods.

“Are names of the Nizahl and Omal Heirs.”

            “Sylvia,” Sefa wheedled, tossing a seed at my forehead. “You have been selected to attend the Victor’s Ball on the arm of an Heir. Arin or Felix?”

            Marek groaned, throwing his elbow over his eyes. Soot smeared the corners of his mouth. Neither of us understood why Sefa loved dreaming up intrigues of far-flung courts. She claimed to enjoy the aesthetics of romance, even if she didn’t believe in it herself. She had wedded herself to adventure at a young age, when she realized the follies of lust and love did not hold sway over her.

            I sighed, giving into Sefa’s game. Felix of Omal would not recognize a hard day’s work if it knelt at his polished feet. I had listened to his address after a particularly unforgiving harvest. He brought his handspun livery and gilded carriages, leaving behind words as empty as the space between his ears. Worse, he gave the Nizahl soldiers free reign, reserving his resistance to intrusion on Omalian society’s upper classes.

“Felix is incompetent, cowardly, and thinks the lower villages are full of brutes,” Marek scoffed, echoing my unspoken opinion. “I would hesitate to leave him in charge of boiling water. At least the other Heirs are clever, if still as despicable.”

            My thoughts swung to Arin of Nizahl, the only son of Supreme Rawain.

Silver-haired, ruthless, Heir and Commander of the unmatched Nizahl forces. He had been training soldiers twice his age since he was thirteen. I had always thought Supreme Rawain’s bloodthirst had no equal, since it wasn’t his kind heart responsible for murdering my family, burning Jasad to the ground, and sending every surviving Jasadi into hiding. But if the rumors about the Heir were true, I could only be glad Arin had been an adolescent during the siege. With the Nizahl Heir leading the march, I doubted a single Jasadi would have made it out alive.

            The constant presence of Nizahl soldiers was common to all four kingdoms. An incurable symptom of Nizahl’s military supremacy. But the sight of their Heir outside his own lands spelled doom: it meant he had found a cluster of Jasadis or magic of a great magnitude. I struggled to repress a shudder. If Arin of Nizahl ever came within a day’s riding distance from Mahair, I would be gone faster than liquor at a funeral.

            “Sylvia?” Marek asked. Marek and Sefa wore a familiar frown of concern. Black strands had drifted into my lap while I unbraided my hair. I rolled them up and tossed the clump into the fire, watching it blacken and curdle.

            “Sorry,” I said. “I forgot the question.”

            As it always did, thoughts of Nizahl curved claws of hatred in my belly. I wasn’t capable of sending magic flying in fits of emotion anymore. All I had left was fantasy. I imagined meeting Supreme Rawain in the kingdom he’d laid waste to. I would drive his scepter through the softest part of his stomach, watch the cruelty drain from his blue eyes. Plant him on the steps of the fallen palace for the spirits of Jasad’s dead to feast upon.

            “Ah yes, an Heir.” I paused. “Sorn.”

            “The Orban Heir?” Sefa lifted her brows. “Your tastes run toward the brutish? A thirst for danger, perhaps?”

            I winked. “What danger is there in a brute?”

 

Chapter Two

Long after decent people were asleep, I crept out of the keep.

I wrapped both arms around the basket’s middle as I sped down the hill. My hood hung low over my forehead. Loose curls gathered at the base of my neck, warming me against the wind. I hated leaving the keep without my hair in a braid. The curtain of curls was the perfect weapon for an enemy wishing to swing me around like a cattle hoop. Marek and Sefa’s impromptu visit had rushed my schedule.

Night had thickened over Mahair. A dense fog hung over the shuttered shops. In three hours, Yuli would rouse the boys sleeping in the barn to muck the grounds and release the cows for their feeding. Children would line up outside the baker’s, latticed wooden trays propped over their shoulders to carry breakfast back to their families. Mahair, like the rest of Omal, thrived best in the daylit hours.

I paused at the end of the hill and scanned the road. We lived right behind the vagrant road, but the vagrants knew better than to trouble me. The soldiers were the real problem. I couldn’t risk running into the patrol again. They only changed shifts twice: once at dawn and again at dusk.

After assuring myself of the road’s emptiness, I picked the basket up and resumed walking.

A wagon’s wheels had gouged enormous tracks. I walked inside its tread, hiding my footprints within the unsettled dirt. The sole lantern hung from the balcony at the end of the silent road. What I remembered of my childhood in Jasad wouldn’t fill a poor man’s pocket, but I knew we were a night people. Like no two villages in Omal were alike, every wilayah in Jasad kept slightly different customs. In the evenings, daughters of wealthy families relinquished their fineries for their street fare and chased each other for miles. Men gathered for tea and table games, their laughter and good-natured shouts audible throughout the street. And in every wilayah, magic swept the air. It animated the sky, rumbled in the ground. I was born to a place where magic meant joy. Celebration and safety.

I crossed the street. A prickly pear fell from beneath the blanket I’d tossed over the basket. “Dania’s bloody axe,” I swore. Scooping the vengeful fruit with the bottom of my tunic, I dropped it back inside. The sesame seed candies had added to the volume of this week’s emergency supplies. Why did I even put them in the basket? As though I’d be in the mood for sweets if the need to flee Mahair arose. I pictured myself indulging in a little treat while I hid in a ravine full of the ashes of the dead.

A disintegrating wall of soft clay brick barricaded Mahair from the woods. I gingerly felt along a cornerstone. Plumes of dust exploded from the pressure. Awaleen be damned, but I hated this village sometimes.

The wall was a relic of days past, when monsters crawled between the borders of the kingdoms, feeding on the traces of magic scattered between the trees. Terrible creatures with horns bisecting a head as large as a cow’s body and tails sharper than a polished sword. More thoughtful monsters, with lovely faces and a beckoning hand, drawing you sweetly to your bloody end. Magic had permeated Essam for most of its existence, and where magic settled, monsters spawned.

A wall would hardly have deterred the monsters if they wanted to enter the village, but I suppose its presence gave Mahair some measure of peace. I rubbed the dust covering the words etched into the limestone:

May we lead the lives our ancestors were denied.

My grandmother had told me the monsters were already dying out when Nizahl descended on the woods in powerful, crushing waves thirty-three years ago. The siege was long and deadly. Monsters had fled into villages on the outskirts of the woods, slaughtering entire populations.

I pressed close to the wall and kept moving. The purging of monsters was not the first piece of Nizahl’s campaign against magic, but it was certainly the most effective. To the other kingdoms, they were not burying their dead as a consequence of the former Supreme’s poorly planned siege, but because of magic. Magic made monsters, and monsters killed without discrimination.

It was the first real stroke of the paintbrush over Jasad’s image.

I peeled myself from the wall to squeeze past the stacks of straw barricading the path. Children tended to get sneaky maneuvering into Essam, so random blockades had been erected around the village to pen them in.

A donkey lazily twitched a fly from its ear, flaring giant nostrils at my appearance. Finally! I exhaled at the sight of a crack in the wall. I preferred to use the wall behind the vagrant road, but the encounter with the Nizahl soldier had unnerved me. This hole barely fit my basket, but it would carry me into the woods without needing to risk the main trail.

The donkey brayed. My heart somersaulted into my throat, and I hurriedly shoved my basket through the crack. Someone might stick their head outside to check for intruders and see me skulking on their grounds.

This was the excuse I gave myself for nearly rending my arm from my body to get through the hole. It had nothing to do with the old Jasadi superstition that donkeys brayed at the sight of evil spirits. Absolutely nothing.

I grabbed the basket and continued into the woods. I sidestepped the dry twigs and mud puddles, barely avoiding walking headlong into a tree. I hated making the monthly trip to the ravine, burdened with the food I judged least likely to perish in the dank underbrush.

I reached the row of trees marked with the Nizahl raven. It was against the rules to cross the line without explicit permission. Nobody sane would risk trespassing and giving the bored and bloodthirsty Nizahlan soldiers an excuse to cut them down.

The raven stared at me. Discomfort trickled in my belly. I was suddenly acutely aware of the silence of the woods. The impenetrable darkness.

If I hadn’t spent seven years of my life living in these woods, I might have turned around and run straight back to Mahair.

“You think you are the most frightening creature in these woods, but you’re not,” I murmured to the raven. “I am.”

Tightening my grip on the basket, I crossed the line of Nizahl-marked trees and continued walking. This trip was necessary. I lived against the will of those who would see me dead for the magic in my veins. Never mind that my veins were the only place my magic existed. The cuffs meant I could not so much as squash a mosquito with my powers, let alone use it to defend myself.

I glanced at my wrists. The cuffs glimmered an overly smug silver.

A shriek died at my lips as the ground gave way. “Ugh.”

I lifted my dripping sandal out of the mud. The ravine was still another three miles ahead. Sighing, I moved the basket to my other arm. I would have to hurry if I wanted to get back before Raya did her morning bed checks.

As I walked deeper in the woods, my muscles began to relax. The lines in my brow and the tight curl of my lips eased. These woods…they knew me as I knew them. The branches overhead seemed to wave in greeting. A gang of white lizards scuttled over my foot and up the side of a tree. The slight smell of rot lingered in the mist, underscoring the warmer notes of wood and dew.

I hummed a jaunty Lukubi tune I’d overheard in the duqan and reviewed my tasks for the next day. The waleema to celebrate the Alcalah would be no small affair. I shuddered, thinking of the flux of strangers that flooded Mahair during the last waleema three years ago. Restraint alone had prevented me from running into the woods until it ended.

A splash caught my ankle as a sesame seed candy tumbled out of the basket and into a puddle. With a grunt, I bent down, wrinkling my nose against the scent of excrement and rain. Maybe I could leave the flies to enjoy this one.

I straightened, reaching for the basket—and found myself face-to-face with the Nizahl soldier from Zeinab’s street.

My heart slowed. Each beat thundered in my ears.

“Sylvia, apprentice to the chemist Rory, healer of poor elderly Aya. Did I get it right?”

For a split second, as the safety of the woods and the terror of discovery shattered together, I thought: Who is Sylvia?

            A smirk played on his lips. He was waiting for me to lie. My physical appearance wasn’t enough to condemn me as a Jasadi. He’d needed more, and I had crawled through a hole in the wall and given it to him. Now he wanted to be entertained by the excuse I conjured for why I had ventured past the raven-marked trees in the middle of the night, basket of food in tow.

The resolve, once it settled, was soothing. The fear retreated. It had been a long time since I’d killed anything bigger than a frog in these woods.

I straightened to my full height, standing eye-to-eye with the soldier. “Not a coward, then.”

He blinked. “What did you say?”

“I wasn’t sure. The one decent thing I can say of your ilk is that you die early. Yet here you stand, your age written into the lines of your skin. You were either a coward or too clever for your own good.” As I spoke, I untied the clasp of my cloak. I folded it carefully and set it atop the basket. “You watched me. Followed me far enough that nobody would hear me scream.”

The Nizahlan soldier remained unperturbed. “Even if they could hear you scream, they would not come to your aide. Nobody cares for the whimpers of Jasadi scum.”

I closed my eyes briefly. With two words, the soldier had eliminated any chances of him leaving these woods alive. Feigning innocence did not matter now. As soon as the accusation of Jasadi was leveled, only a Nizahlan court could absolve it. This soldier would put me in the back of a wagon and drag me to Nizahl, where I needed zero hands to count the number of Jasadis who survived the trial.

I’d learned over the years most did not even survive the journey. The detained died in convenient accidents or in retaliation against ‘unprovoked’ attacks.

The soldier’s hand had not budged from the hilt of his blade. “You will not even try to deny it?”

I shifted my feet. Slightly, only to confirm the cool hilt of my dagger pressing against my ankle. “Would it matter?”

He freed his sword from its clasp, pointing it at my chest. “Surrender peacefully and you will face a fair and just trial in the courts of His Wisdom, Supreme Rawain.”

“Is that so?” I laughed. “Only two months ago, an Orbanian merchant illegally trading in Jasadi body parts was brought to your Supreme’s fair and just courts. He confessed to crushing and selling Jasadi bones to those eager to ingest traces of magic. His patrons believed Jasadi remains were flush with health benefits. Your precious tribunal released the merchant with a warning and a hearty chuckle. He helped people eat Jasadis and walked free.”

The soldier’s expression didn’t waver. Of course not. All he heard were more whimpers of Jasadi scum.

I stretched my neck. “Identify yourself, soldier. I would like to know what name to mark on your grave.”

“This is your last warning. Surrender. And if you try to use your magic on me, be informed it will result in a sanctioned execution.”

“‘Nizahlan idiot’ it is, then.”

The soldier lunged, swinging the broad end of sword in a powerful arc. Impressive. If it landed, it would sever my head quite cleanly.

It had been a long time since I’d fought to kill, but my instincts remained. I rolled into the soldier, grabbing his sword-arm and slamming it against my knee. His fingers spasmed. Before he could drop the sword, a blow caught my gut, knocking me to the side. I caught myself on a tree and coughed. Damn it to the tombs, he wasn’t going to make this easy.

He did not give me time to recover, slashing with determination. I twisted away, leaving his sword wedged in the bark. Lifting my leg, I freed my dagger from inside my boot. He pried his sword from the tree.

We lunged at the same time.

I moved with the vindictive speed of a wasp, avoiding his deadly swings. Each time I succeeded in moving close, he rebuffed me. It was the most frustrating dance. Too close to throw the dagger and too far to plunge it into him. His sword caught the edge of my tunic, tearing my sleeve.

“Why do you not use your magic?” he growled. “Your kind has one advantage, yet you squander it. I will not think you virtuous for withholding.”

“Rest assured, I would love to use my magic to peel your flesh and boil your eyes. Virtue. Ha! I have many weaknesses, but virtue does not fall among them.”

He wrapped both hands around the hilt of the sword and swung. I threw myself to the side, catching myself on a knee. Before I could stand, the sword was under my throat. He grabbed a fistful of my hair, yanking it hard enough to bring tears to my eyes. Hot breath wafted over my cheek. “How long did you live in that disgusting little village, fooling everyone into believing you were nothing but an apprentice? But I could see the foul stain of your magic. That your kind continues to exist is a testament to how insidiously you have snuck into our societies. Jasadis are the rot in our ranks.”

My cuffs tightened. They reacted sometimes—to certain insults or emotions. They were too random and varied for me to figure out the pattern. All it did was remind me that my magic existed, skimming under the surface of my skin, but remained impossible to access.

If I had the choice to reach into my body and tear it out, I wouldn’t be sitting here, swallowing past the blade at my throat.

“Then I suggest you do a better job,” I said, and dug my teeth into the hand holding the sword.

“Agh!” He hurled me away and I sprung to my feet. Strands of my hair were caught in his fist.

I threw a glance at the sky. In two hours, dawn would strip the darkness from the sky. Mahair would rouse for a new day, and a different pair of Nizahl soldiers would arrive to relieve the evening patrol. When this soldier did not appear, it would be a matter of minutes before chaos fell onto the village.

I am not ready to leave. The sudden thought filled my throat with ash. I had stocked piles of food in a smelly ravine for the express purpose of a situation like this. Hesitation was a luxury I rarely indulged. Mahair wasn’t meant to be permanent. I escaped these woods five years ago with blood on my hands and one clear goal: I would never be trapped again.

But it would not be this soldier who drove me from the village. He would not win that honor.

I kicked hard and fast, connecting with the crook of his arm. He howled as my boot slammed against bone. The sword dropped. He caught the side of my head with a swing, but I angled my chin in preparation for the blow. I surged forward, slicing a deep gash under his belly. The angle could not have been worse, but I quickly yanked the blade through the resistance of skin and muscle. I took no pleasure in torture.

The cut was fatal. He staggered, a scream foaming with the blood on his lips. His hands went to the stream of red coursing from his wound. The soldier collapsed to his knee.

It had taken less than ten minutes. I was almost disappointed.

“Be grateful that in death, nobody will try to sell your bones for a hearty broth.” I grimaced at the bloody dagger. I would need to wait for it to dry before tucking it back into my boot.

“Th…they will find my…body.” He spat a mouthful of blood onto my boot. “You will not…escape judgement.”

My dry eyes stung when I closed them. Even in the throes of death, this soldier thought he was my moral superior. Because he didn’t have magic? Because he was born in a Nizahlan home and I was born in a Jasadi one?

If only he knew the truth. If only he was capable of believing it.

“How many others…have you k-killed? How many?” he rasped.

The secret slammed against the inside of my teeth, eager to attack.

I tucked my dagger back into my boot.

“Not nearly as many as you hope. You think I fear the judgement of Nizahl?” I stepped toward the soldier, batting away his feeble attempts to hold me off. My hands settled against each side of his face, cradling. “Your soldiers cannot take me to your kingdom and put me before a court, because I do not exist. According to your history texts, I died eleven years ago. I burned to death alongside my grandparents and a dozen others. I believe my crown was taken for display in a war monument. Tell me, how can the dead stand trial for the living?”

He stared at me uncomprehendingly for a second before any remaining blood leeched out of his face. “Impossible. You lie.”

“Frequently.” I smiled without any humor.

“The Jasad Heir perished in the Blood Summit eleven years ago. Everyone saw the blaze take her and the Malik and Malika. You cannot be her. She burned.”

“You are correct, soldier,” I said. “The Jasad Heir did burn in the Blood Summit. She was a better person. Susceptible to such notions as honor and virtue. The Heir of Jasad had magic. She would have tried to save her kind. Protect them from the likes of you, even if it spelled her own destruction.”

“But your Supreme killed her.” I stroked a finger down the soldier’s cheek. “And Sylvia replaced her. I do not heal. I do not lead.”

I tightened my hands and twisted sharply. The snap of the soldier’s neck echoed in the silent wood. “And unlike her, I am excellent at staying alive.”

He fell forward, his body hitting the earth with a dull thump.

I stood over him for the time it took to quiet my breathing. He was dead. He would not expose me. I killed him.

Rovial’s tainted tomb, I killed a Nizahl soldier.

I looked at the sky and nearly screeched. I had two hours at the maximum before I lost the cover of darkness.

Dry leaves blew onto the lifeless soldier’s back. I did not have the tools or time to dig a grave. I couldn’t leave him here—Nizahl soldiers would come crawling through every lower village in Omal searching for the killer. Even the ravine, hidden away as it was, would be compromised. I could only think of one way to prevent them from descending on us like a swarm of death.

I grabbed the soldier’s shoulder and hauled him onto his back. “You drank your weight in ale last night. You wandered too far into the woods and stumbled upon the river. Everyone knows the riverbanks on Essam require careful navigation, and you were anything but careful. It only takes one misstep. You were found floating in the water, probably near the southern embankments, body broken from the boulders waiting beneath the tide.”

I sat on my haunches and pressed my lips together. Several flaws existed in my flawless plan. I needed time to disguise his wounds and drag him to the river. At least two miles stretched between us and the nearest riverbank. Even if I somehow managed to finish arranging him on the rocks before the soldiers’ shift change, I wouldn’t get back to Mahair in time. They’d catch me past the raven tree line and throw me in the back of the nearest cart headed to Nizahl.

My stomach turned. I couldn’t finish this alone. I needed help.

Sliding my cloak over my shoulders, I shot one more glance at the body. “I’ll be back.”

Then I ran. Faster than I had run in over five years. I had lived in these woods, yes, but I hadn’t been alone. I was with the woman who rescued me after the Blood Summit and trained me to survive. A Qayida who once led Jasad’s army into countless battles before being exiled. She would add a dozen new scars to my back if she knew the risk I was taking tonight.

I wove between the trees, pushing labored air from my nose. I did not bother avoiding the main trail this time. I sprinted up the hill to the keep and circled the garden. Please, please let Marek have left his window open. He had trouble sleeping without a breeze, but it was an unseasonably cold night.

An inch separated the window from its hook. I did not stop to process my relief, pushing the window the rest of the way in and climbing through the narrow opening as soundlessly as possible. My boots left muddy tracks on his boar hide rug.

Another stroke of fortune—he’d dumped an inebriated Sefa on his bed and fallen asleep on a stack of coats. Trying to wake Sefa without rousing the other girls sharing her room would have grayed my hair.

My heart dropped to my feet as I contemplated the sleeping figures. My friendship with these two had happened against my will. I had worked hard to prevent myself from forming any attachment that couldn’t be severed at a moment’s notice. Tonight would change everything. Tonight, I was trusting them.

And if I was wrong, Mahair would be forever lost to me.

I yanked the pillow out from under Sefa’s head. Wide, terrified brown eyes flashed open, relaxing only after registering my hooded face. A kick to Marek’s ankle, and I had a confused, drowsy audience of two.

“How fast can you run?”