Page 21 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

MAREK

J eru stared at Marek like he’d seen a ghost. Except for a row of violet ravens stitched along his right lapel and a pin of Nizahl’s crest carefully obscured beneath the flap of his chest pocket, Jeru was dressed like the rest of the soldiers.

The hidden pin marked him as the biggest threat in the room, the one all arrows should take aim at.

“You tombs-damned idiot” were the first words out of Jeru’s mouth, exhaled in a disbelieving rush. “What are you doing here?”

Marek frowned. “Don’t call me an idiot.”

“Don’t call—” Jeru touched the top of his curly hair, perhaps to ensure there wasn’t blood seeping out of his head. “Marek, why are you in Nizahl? In a training compound ?”

“I could ask you the same thing.” Marek could feel himself begin to devolve with defensiveness, his grip on maturity deteriorating under the weight of his panic.

Sefa considered it one of his worst habits.

Faced with the urge to mock the man likely tasked with murdering him, Marek couldn’t disagree.

“A guardsman has to pay a visit anytime a compound welcomes more than two hundred new recruits! His Highness almost sent Vaun . Do you understand what Vaun would have done if he found you here?” Jeru sounded faintly nauseated.

From a Nizahl guardsman, who had seen more bloodshed and horror than most men encountered in ten lifetimes, the unease was no small thing.

“And you closed the door. Recruits are instructed to leave their doors open during a visit to permit ease of inspection.”

Oh. Maybe relying on the stories he’d heard from his siblings wasn’t a foolproof method of blending in. The blunder made Marek’s voice rough with aggression. “Well, it’s not Vaun who found me. What are you going to do?” Marek still hadn’t lowered his arms from their defensive pose.

“What am I going to do?” Jeru sank into the only chair in the room and clasped his hands together. Strain showed itself in the lines creasing his face. “Excellent question.”

Marek measured the distance between Jeru and the door. Jeru had the muscles and the training. Even Marek wasn’t brash enough to believe he could win a fight against the Heir’s guardsman. He had exactly one option.

Marek bolted for the door.

He managed to open it an entire inch before Jeru grabbed his collar and yanked him back. Marek, reacting on pure instinct, swung without aim or finesse. His fist connected with the hard resistance of a jaw, eliciting a hiss from Jeru.

His satisfaction enjoyed a short life. Jeru, who had been holding Marek’s writhing form at arm’s length as one might keep a grip on a rabid cat, reared his arm back and struck Marek so forcefully that for a minute, Marek wondered if he’d swallowed his own teeth.

If Jeru didn’t still have a grip on his collar, Marek would be a human-size hole in the ground.

“Stop. Fighting!” Jeru dragged Marek until they were almost nose-to-nose. “He wants me to bring you back to the Citadel! Alive. ”

The world stopped.

No.

The floor of Marek’s chest disappeared, plunging his heart straight to his feet.

The fight drained out of him. No wonder Jeru looked so tortured.

Much as Marek loathed to admit it, Jeru was a good man.

He’d treated Sylvia kindly, even when the rest of the guardsmen barely acknowledged her.

When the arrows had begun to rain down at the Meridian Pass, Jeru had immediately ridden for Sefa and Marek and led them to safety.

He was a good man, which meant it wasn’t easy for him to deliver Marek to a fate worse than death.

“I’ll ask again. What are you doing here?”

A new terror gripped Marek, and he clapped his hand over his mouth as bile surged in his throat. Jeru released him—quick thinking that narrowly saved him from the delight of Marek’s vomit spewing over his uniform. Marek hunched over, his arms going around his contracting middle.

“He doesn’t have Sefa. Right? Tell me he doesn’t have Sefa, Jeru, tell me that mad, coldhearted bastard doesn’t have— ”

“No one has Sefa!” Jeru regarded Marek with an exhaustion hedging on pity. “But he’s looking for her.”

The relief crushed him. Marek slid to his knees, shoulders bumping against the chair Jeru had knocked over. “He wants to use us to lure Sylvia, doesn’t he?”

Jeru said nothing.

Fighting another wave of nausea, Marek shut his eyes. “If he tries to use her against Sylvia, Sefa will let him kill her.”

The guardsman blanched. “She wouldn’t—”

“She would. If she feels escape or rescue are impossible, if she knows the Heir is planning to execute Sylvia, she will not be a pawn to it. Sefa will remove herself from his game board.” Tears gathered behind Marek’s closed eyes. His brave, loyal, self-sacrificing fool of a friend.

Pushing to his feet, Marek thought fast. If Jeru had been instructed to capture them, perhaps he had an idea where Sefa might be. Maybe he could even get Marek out of this compound.

“I woke up in a storage room in this compound after the Victor’s Ball. I don’t know where Sefa went. I can’t leave the compound, and even if I could, I don’t know where to start looking for Sefa and Sylvia.”

Jeru winced. “I wouldn’t recommend trying to look for Sylvia. The Malika of Jasad is a part of an entirely different game now—one neither of us is qualified to play. Pursuing her will get you killed, and you will be no use to anyone dead.”

Part of a different game? If Marek had anything left in his stomach, he would be donating it all over Jeru’s shoes. “Is that your sorry attempt to calm me down?” Marek lowered himself to a seat at the edge of the bed before his legs gave out. “I love that girl.”

Jeru paused his pacing to raise his brows. Marek rolled his eyes. “Like a sister,” he snapped.

“Good,” Jeru muttered. Marek couldn’t be sure, but he could have sworn he heard the guardsman grumble, “We don’t need to give him another reason to kill you.”

“You can’t let him find Sefa, Jeru. At least Sylvia has her magic and the leverage of her title. People to support her. Sefa doesn’t have anyone but me.”

“I told you, we don’t know where Sefa is.

I haven’t found her. But I did find you, and I don’t—” Jeru scrubbed a hand down his face.

“I don’t know what to do. His Highness isn’t…

he isn’t himself. The prospect of war haunts him, and Sylvia’s betrayal cut him deeper than anyone knows.

If I hand you to him, there’s no telling what he might do.

And if he kills you knowing how it would destroy Sylvia, we may lose him altogether. ”

“You’re worried about how killing me would emotionally impact him?” Snorting, Marek wondered why he was surprised. The guardsmen always put their Commander first. Frankly, Marek was shocked Jeru was still talking and hadn’t already summoned the carriage to haul him to the Citadel.

Jeru stopped pacing. He pivoted on his heel, taking stock of Marek with an inscrutable expression. “You were a crook before Mahair.”

Marek raised a blond brow. “Looking for a career change?”

“Shut up.” Jeru ran his thumb over the row of embroidered ravens, lost in thought. “You managed to hide in Mahair under a false name for seven years.”

Marek eyed the door longingly, touching his throbbing jaw.

“I’ll help you find Sefa.”

The scattered pieces of Marek’s attention gathered themselves, welded into a steely focus, and aimed their combined force at Jeru. Marek stood slowly, a dangerous pulse in his veins. “Do not toy with me.”

“Shouldn’t you know what a proposition sounds like, Lazur?

” Jeru crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m searching for a relic I believe to be hidden with a Nizahlan noble family.

An insignia that vanished around the Siege of Six Dawns.

It was once used as a token of favor, and I suspect they have it. ”

Marek racked his memory for the Siege of Six Dawns.

His attention span in class had ranged from abysmal to abominable.

“The siege where they burned all the fields in Omal?” Marek didn’t consider himself an expert on the kingdoms’ many, many conflicts, but he had passed the scorch marks on the wall dividing Mahair from Essam a thousand times.

A long black streak stretched right under the words May we lead the lives our ancestors were denied .

Even hundreds of years later, the land remembered what had been done to it by the Orbanian invaders.

Orban used a nasty—and more importantly, prohibited—curse to transform a regiment of Omalian soldiers into ravenous cannibals.

The Omalian soldiers turned on one another, leaving eviscerated and half-eaten corpses strung from Abeiyla to Mahair.

For six agonizing days, Orban had reigned over the lower villages of Omal, their horde of feral soldiers left to feast on the helpless population.

A victory as briefly enjoyed as it was horrifically earned.

They had broken the laws of war to win the battle, and the arbiters of magic swiftly marched to level the crime.

Nizahl soldiers flooded the villages to expel Orban, summarily executing the cursed soldiers.

Omal had hailed Nizahl as its hero, despite the fact that Nizahl would have allowed every single lower villager to die if Orban had been smart enough to attack them with a sword instead of a curse.

When he was a child, Marek had suffered nightmares about those cursed Omalian soldiers. Not all of them had been caught. Several had fled from the Nizahl soldiers into Essam Woods, disappearing without a trace. Nobody knew if those soldiers had found the Mirayah, or if it had found them.

Overly pleased with himself, Marek grinned as he leaned against the bedpost. “What does an insignia have to do with the Siege of Six Dawns?”

“That’s not for you to concern yourself with. When the next rotation leaves to quarter in the noble towns, I will send you to the Shinawy manor. Find me the insignia, and I will help you find Sefa.”

“Consider it done,” Marek said, shrugging. Stealing from a spoiled Nizahlan noble family? Marek had expected a challenge. “Aren’t you worried about defying your Commander? If you’re caught, I imagine he will greet your deception with a nice sturdy noose.”

A wall sprang up behind Jeru’s eyes. A wall Marek had bloodied himself against anytime he tried to speak ill of the Nizahl Heir during those weeks in the tunnels. Even Sylvia, who held nothing sacred beyond the coin in her pocket and the aim of her blade, had fortified herself behind it.

It was the wall Marek recognized from his childhood, as one after the other of his siblings signed their lives to the Citadel.

“Focus on your own neck,” Jeru said. “I will arrange your visit to take place at the next available opportunity, and you will report to me what you discover. Hide a single detail, and our arrangement terminates. Understood?”

Unspoken between them was what else the termination of the arrangement would spell: the termination of Marek’s time among the living.

He flipped Jeru a glib, easygoing smile.

Living as a fugitive for nearly ten years had increased Marek’s threshold of what properly qualified as a dilemma.

He had grown up as Caleb Lazur. For a very long time, he’d called the world of upper Nizahl home.

He may not be able to fight like Jeru or use magic like Sylvia, but damn it to the tombs, nobody could charm a sophisticate like Marek.

“Deal.”