Page 45 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

SYLVIA

I traced the faded words chiseled into the wall partitioning Mahair from Essam Woods.

May we lead the lives our ancestors were denied.

I was home.

Or at least, an impression of it.

At high noon, the streets should have bustled with activity. The ruckus of market preparations should have echoed all the way down to the raven-marked trees.

I glanced around, dread mounting the deeper we ventured into the empty village. Shutters had been drawn shut. The metal hooks outside the butcher’s shop swung in the breeze. I studied the ground beneath them. The dirt was still wet with the blood of whatever animal Nader had had strung up.

“Where is everyone?” Medhat whispered loudly. Kenzie slapped her hand over his mouth and shot me an apologetic glance.

I didn’t like this.

Even Rory’s apothecary had been bolted shut, the bell hanging limply from its wire above the door. Empty seed shells littered the stoop, and I fought the swell of nostalgia threatening to overtake me.

“Maybe the Omalian soldiers already came?” Kenzie asked.

The stab of fear was an instinctual reaction, but I didn’t allow it to pierce anything vital.

I leveled a stern glance at Kenzie, reassessing her.

A village pillaged by soldiers would not lie quiet and abandoned.

It would be torn apart between the two opposing forces; homes broken, carriages stolen, horses slain.

Bodies and blood, at the very least. Violence screamed in a million different voices—even its silence was loud.

I shook my head at Kenzie, once. I made a note to keep an eye on her during the fight.

“There are people nearby,” Efra said suddenly. Gold and silver churned in his eyes. “I can feel them. They’re nervous, unsure. Angry.”

A comforting combination. I scanned the dormant buildings ahead. We were in the center of the main square, and I had yet to spot any sign of life. Even the stray animals permanently wandering Mahair seemed to have vanished. “Where?”

Efra turned in a slow circle, head cocked. “Nearby.”

Dust floated over Medhat. He sneezed, the sound jarring in the stillness. “Omal is much dustier than I expected,” he grumbled. “It can’t be good for my skin.”

I wasn’t listening. My gaze had flown up, following the source of the unsettled dust, and landed on a hooded figure crouching awkwardly on the edge of a rooftop.

Notched into a bow and trained directly on us, an arrow quivered, recentered, and flew.

Directly at Medhat.

As haphazard and fractious as my magic could be, it had yet to fail me when I needed it on someone else’s behalf. Magic rolled through me, and the arrow buried itself in the ground by my feet instead of Medhat’s chest.

The figure turned, as if to run, and their hood shifted. I caught a glimpse of upturned braids and a familiar chin.

I stopped breathing.

“Fairel?”

She paused. Pulled her hood from her face and squinted down. “Sylvia?” she shrieked.

Fairel whirled around on the edge of the roof, sending alarm shooting straight to my head.

“It’s Sylvia!” she hollered.

Efra groaned, tips of his fingers pinching into his head. “People are coming. Many. They are… excited.”

The shutters over the halawany’s shop trembled as they were rolled up and the rope knotted around a catch. Faces pressed against the glass.

They came in sweeps. Raya, Yuli, Odette, Rory, Daleel, Zeinab, even Zeinab’s contrary mother. Floods of Mahair’s citizens. I glanced behind them, but no one else appeared. Where were Sefa and Marek?

“It takes Fairel a little longer to move,” Raya said, misinterpreting my frown. Heavy hands landed on my shoulders. Streaks of white shot through her light brown hair, loose around her stooped shoulders. Lines pressed indents around her tired brown eyes, adding years beyond her fifty.

It occurred to me that they must have heard the news about the Victor’s Ball. I had just used magic right in front of them. These people had been the closest approximation to family I had had for five years, and I had lied to them for every one of those years.

Yet Raya assessed me with the same keen maternal concern that had chafed my nerves so much when I lived under her roof. To see it now brought a lump to my throat.

She flicked my temple. “You had magic at your disposal and still couldn’t manage to wash your own dishes?”

A startled laugh spilled past my lips. “I wash my dishes!”

“She hasn’t touched a single one,” Namsa said from behind me. I scowled.

Fondness softened the lines in Raya’s forehead. She pinched my cheek. “Always such a shameless little liar.”

A cane appeared out of nowhere, prodding Raya in the side. She smacked it away with a glare. “Stop shepherding us, chemist. We aren’t goats.”

“Goats would have better survival sense,” Rory growled. “Why are we standing here in the open? Should we lie down and make ourselves easier targets for the soldiers? Get inside!”

The sun might fall, the earth could sink, and the moon might dim, but never would Rory know a good mood a day in his life.

Laughter bubbled in my chest. “Stop ordering everyone around, old man. They aren’t your apprentices.”

“As if I had an apprentice capable of following my orders.” He raked a critical gaze over me. “Life as the most wanted fugitive in four kingdoms suits you.”

Awaleen below, but I had missed the cantankerous mule. I took his hand, surprising us both. He recovered quickly, squeezing my fingers with a small smile. “I have missed you, Essiya.”

“Essiya?” Raya repeated. Her brows furrowed, likely struggling to place the name. It rippled through the crowd, growing louder. “Baira’s blessed hair, the rumors are true.”

The second Heir of Jasad. Niphran’s daughter.

Rory drew me close, out of earshot of the others. “I need to speak to you.” Urgent, tinged with worry.

Before I could respond, a hostile voice sliced through the din.

“Why are you here?”

With a cane tucked under her right arm and a bow hanging from the left, Fairel glowered at me.

In the four or so months since I had last seen my favorite of Raya’s wards, she had shot up to Maia’s height. Her twin braids lay docilely over her shoulders, the long strands much more amenable to braids than her short hair had been.

I remembered a pout, a petulant kick to the ground. Twelve is big, you know.

“Fay. You’ve grown.” The admission stung.

I had never particularly cared when one of the wards left the keep or marveled at their transition into womanhood like Raya and Sefa had.

Youth held nominal value to me. What was there to celebrate about entering a new era of pain, of starting to learn yourself and hating what you found?

Seeing the choices before you clearer than ever and realizing you had no real choice at all?

But then, it had been at fifteen that I chose to survive and slit Hanim’s throat. Twenty that I broke a Nizahl soldier’s neck and snapped his spine.

Twenty-one that I came to Mahair knowing what it might cost.

I looked at Fairel’s flat braids, the new length in her limbs, and in each change, I saw a universe of different futures.

“You haven’t grown at all,” Fairel said. She held herself with an uncharacteristic aloofness, staring at a point somewhere behind my shoulder. Had it not been for the tiny quiver in her bottom lip, I might have believed she wanted to notch a new arrow at my head.

“It looks like I might need to start,” I remarked lightly. “Especially if you plan to be taller than me. It would be terrible for my reputation.”

Her mouth twitched. “Sylvia, your reputation couldn’t be worse if you tried.”

“Is that a challenge?”

She swung her cane at me, hitting my knee. Kenzie gasped, but I only had eyes for Fairel.

She sniffed, and her voice turned heartbreakingly small. “Are you leaving again?”

I bent down, waiting until Fairel met my gaze and registered the truth in it. “I’m not going anywhere until you’re safe.”

The stubborn set of Fairel’s chin finally eased, and I grabbed the back of her neck and pulled her into my arms when she began to cry. She shuddered and clung to my waist, the cane and bow dropping to the ground. I didn’t pay attention to Lateef quietly collecting them.

When she had calmed, Fairel drew away, dragging her sleeve across her nose. “I replanted your fig seeds. I knew you would come back.”

Despite a new assortment of arrows and murderous intentions, Fairel still shined with an optimism I almost envied. I had thought she would outgrow it. With someone like Fairel, maybe hope would need to be taken from her by force.

I would break every bone in the hand that tried.

I glanced at the seemingly abandoned village and understood the last-ditch effort a desperate Mahair had concocted to protect itself from the wrath of its own ruler.

Play dead, let the predator prod at the corpse to its satisfaction. Pray it doesn’t see you breathe.

“Save your tears for tomorrow, Fairel.” I took her bow and cane from Lateef and passed them back to her. “Today, let me teach you how to make your enemies weep.”

The main road teemed with activity. They had accepted my orders with a surprising lack of protest. I supposed the plan to hide hadn’t sat too well with Mahair, especially after everything Felix had inflicted on them over the years.

The Jasadis worked side by side with the Omalians; Namsa beside Raya, Kenzie next to Zeinab, a rambling Medhat by a laughing Fairel.

Efra hadn’t stopped rubbing his temples and wincing since the rest of the village had emerged.

The onslaught of new people and their accompanying emotions must be wreaking havoc on him. I celebrated each time he flinched.

My plan was simple. Mahair might lack the advantages of a more war-ready village, but we were not without our strengths. Thanks to the wall surrounding Mahair, the village was already fortified against entry from Essam.

If the soldiers came from the west, we would be in more trouble.