Page 97 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

ESSIYA

T he Sareekh loosened its hold around my middle, and my feet touched Jasad for the first time in eleven years.

Some of the Jasadis were crying. Others had dropped to the ground to vomit—a mixture of traveling with the Sareekh and relief, I guessed.

The sea chopped against the shores of Janub Aya as the Sareekh’s red scales curled inward.

Waves flared over one another in their rush to shore, crashing against my ankles.

“Thank you,” I murmured. The debt I owed the Sareekh wasn’t one I could ever repay.

When you remember what you lost, come back for me. The vibrations of the Sareekh’s voice were wistful. The sea is emptier than it used to be.

The churning water closed over the Sareekh. With one last ripple, the surface once again lay smooth.

The steep climb up the sandy hills sloping from Suhna Sea to Janub Aya had tested the mettle of the arriving Urabi. Hundreds of footprints lined the hills on every side. Heaving a sigh, I traipsed to the top of the hill, ignoring the breeze and its sand-swept kisses.

Wiping the grains from the corner of my eyes, I trailed my watering gaze over the ruins of Jasad’s southernmost wilayah.

Unlike the upper wilayahs, where the wealthy had bought acres of land to build multistoried family estates, the homes in Janub Aya weren’t much different than Mahair’s.

Many of them looked to have fallen into shambles long before the war.

Squat buildings with swathes of gray cement streaked across their mudbrick sides, attempts at paint long worn away.

The dirt roads had caved toward the center from the number of horses that must have thundered along these paths, forming shallow gulleys.

A clothesline fluttered from a half-destroyed balcony, as though waving hello.

I spotted Maia peering into a woven basket, the handle roped to the third-story balcony of another abandoned building. I had seen those baskets in Mahair, too—the patrons on my route would let down the basket with money inside and pull it up with whatever they had ordered from Rory.

It was bizarre, seeing how this corner of Jasad matched the village I had called home for years. I had never been south of Har Adiween. Janub Aya and its tiny population might as well have been the other side of the world.

A horse clomped from around the remains of what might have been a butcher’s shop, led by a smiling Namsa.

I dusted the front of my tunic to avoid her searching gaze.

After summoning the final kitmer, my magic had overwhelmed me.

I did not remember anything between raising the kitmer and gasping as I burst through the surface of the lake.

Namsa jerked her chin at the clouds draped low over the wilayah, a fine white mist trailing beneath them.

“In case you’re wondering, no. The clouds never go away.

Between the sea and Sirauk Bridge, we were lucky to get twenty days of sun a year down here,” Namsa said.

She patted the neck of a white-and-brown mare.

“Amu Dawoud would always joke that growing up in Janub Aya meant I’d never wrinkle. The moisture keeps you young.”

I threw my leg over the mare and hauled myself up, tightening my knees against its quivering torso. Thinking of Dawoud here hurt in an unfamiliar way, raking at a wound I’d forgotten to properly cauterize.

“He is buried at the top of the hill in Silsilit Abeer,” I said without looking at Namsa. “You can visit him.”

Namsa’s head whipped toward me. Disbelief spilled over her features, pooling into a pained whisper. “Amu Dawoud died in Omal. Silsilit Abeer is in Alb Safi.”

He will be buried in a spot where the grass still grows.

“The hill is the highest spot where the grass in Jasad still grows.”

I spurred my horse forward, leaving Namsa to scramble onto her own mount. I wouldn’t allow her or Dawoud or anything else to carve away at the calm I had finally achieved.

In two days’ time, Nuzret Kamel would clear the mist from Sirauk and I would raise the fortress. For once, I didn’t need to worry about the consequences—I wouldn’t be around to bear them.

Cornered by Sirauk and the sea, Janub Aya’s only points of entry were from Eyn el Haswa to its right or Ahr il Uboor to the north. The tiny wilayah had been the last to fall in the war solely due to the sheer inconvenience of accessing it.

“The scorch marks have strange patterns,” Namsa murmured.

I glanced up, scanning the dilapidated buildings looming above us. Scorch marks devoured the frame of every door, licking to the outer walls in black stripes. For most, the roofs had collapsed in, but the structural integrity of the rest of the house remained intact.

“The glass. It exploded outward.” I nodded to the warped hinges of a window, shards of glass buried in the dirt beneath it. “The residents set the fires from inside.”

It took nerve to leave your life blazing behind you and ride into the unknown.

Despite their less-than-flattering reputation in the northern wilayahs, Janub Aya had had the bravery to do what no other wilayah would once they realized defeat was imminent.

They burned their crops, destroyed their homes, and dammed their waters as their final message to the other kingdoms.

They had left in a blaze, and they would return in one.

By mutual agreement, those of us from the Gibal had decided to sleep on the ground. Someone suggested seeking shelter inside one of the empty barns and received grumbles in response.

“It doesn’t feel right to disturb anything,” Mona, a girl with permanently sad eyes and hair the brown of granulated honey, murmured. “Not yet. Not until we’ve won.”

Shining mist washed over the valley, spools of white curling over the dry plains. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and I didn’t have to glance around to know the rest felt it, too.

Magic.

Like dew glistening on a blade of grass at dawn, the magic-charged mist settled over the slumbering Jasadis.

“If the mist is so strong from miles away, imagine how it must feel on the bridge,” Mona reflected, curling into herself around the fire.

“I always thought the stories about people who tried to make the crossing were exaggerated. Who would be so stupid?” Her eyes slid shut.

She inhaled deeply. “I should’ve held my tongue. ”

I offered to keep watch.

“You need your rest,” Namsa protested.

“I slept plenty before we left the Gibal,” I lied. “Let’s not waste more energy debating it.”

Namsa didn’t need to know I hadn’t slept in days. It would worry her, and her worry annoyed me.

Besides, I wasn’t alone.

The mist isn’t safe , my magic whispered. It hides other dangers.

I smiled, leaning back against the prickly bark of a decaying tree. I counted each sleeping Jasadi, my vision perfectly clear despite the dark.

The most dangerous thing hiding in these mists was me.

I pressed my palm to my stomach, forcing down my churning unease.

At the bottom of the hill, Jasadis stretched as far as the eye could see.

They wrapped around the edge of Sirauk Bridge, swarming the border to Ahr il Uboor and disappearing around the valleys leading to Eyn el Haswa.

Thousands upon thousands of Jasadis crowded into a wilayah capable of hosting a third of their number.

“Awaleen below,” Namsa marveled. “It worked. Your kitmers led them home.”

“Some of them.” I assessed the crowd. They had arranged makeshift huts from shaved tree bark and boulders.

Hundreds of little fires danced across the horizon.

The smell of cooking meat sweetened the lingering whiffs of rotted wood.

“I imagine there are still plenty fighting their way through the trade routes or coming down from the north of Jasad.”

Agitation burned the film of confidence around my heart, and I swallowed a surge of bile. If I failed, this was it. The last of Jasad, destroyed. Our people annihilated, our legacy ended.

And if I succeeded, the fortress would protect them from the outside, but there would be nothing to protect them from the magic-mad Malika on the inside.

Death lingered over the merriment like the hum of a coming storm, raising the hairs on the back of my neck.

“Essiya!” Lateef rounded on a group of children Fairel’s age and grabbed the nearest one by the scruff, pulling him toward us. “Take the horses to feed,” Lateef ordered.

The boy pouted and snatched the reins from me and Namsa.

Lateef clicked his tongue, a sharp sound inside his teeth. “Children these days. No discipline. Go on, you two, go get yourselves a meal and an empty spot to sleep.”

The others rushed forward without a second’s hesitation. Huh. I should be hungry, too, shouldn’t I?

When was the last time I ate?

Lateef shuffled in my direction, flicking a glance around us before murmuring, “I left the scepter with your friends. I suggest you keep hold of it.”

I looked at him askance. “Any particular reason?” None of the Urabi had succeeded in eking out any of the magic within the scepter. It was useless, and I did not want it in my sights.

He scowled. “Does nobody listen to the word of their elder anymore? Rovial’s tainted tomb! Just go.”

I huffed. Lateef and Rory would have been the best of friends.

Dried husks of empty date palms crunched beneath my boots, and I rapidly drew my hood when a woman glanced in my direction. Nobody would recognize me by my face alone, but the magic that had not stopped swirling in my eyes since I raised the last kitmer would surely give my identity away.

I shifted into the head of my kitmers as I walked, seeing through their eyes.

A handy trick the Visionists had taught me.

I had been tracking the kitmers’ progress since I left the mountain.

A dozen of my littlest ones dipped over a colorful town with tiled roads and lamps swaying from red rope fiber.

Lukub. Ha! The Lukubi nobles were screaming louder than the prisoners in the Traitors’ Wells.

Still in the kitmer’s head, I jerked my chin to the left.

As pleasant as I found the prospect of infuriating Vaida, the odds of finding hidden Jasadis in the noble quarters of Lukub were slim.

Most of those families had been entrenched in their wealth and prestige for centuries, making it nearly impossible for anyone other than old-blood Lukubis to exist among them.

Through the eyes of another kitmer, I saw countless bodies crushed throughout Essam. Nizahlan uniforms, Lukubi uniforms. The khawaga waited in the trees, leaping onto any convoy that stopped a wagon in the trade routes regardless of the color of their uniforms.

Sorn had kept his promise.

I maneuvered into the head of a kitmer in Orban. It swooped, its left wing catching on a string of lanterns. The lower villages were left in pitch black as the kitmer flew into the starless sky, a rope of sputtering lanterns trailing behind it, the flames winking out one by one.

In the head of a kitmer flying above the Ivory Palace, I nearly shocked my poor creature out the sky at the sight of Ruby Hounds prowling beneath the obelisk at Vaida’s front gates.

Nizahl soldiers raised their swords into the air, but I couldn’t imagine how any simple steel might pierce the hard shell of those beasts.

More of them were moving across the woods, weaving a red trail across Essam’s constellation of shadows.

Well, at least we knew what Vaida had done in the Mirayah.

A hand at my elbow snapped me back into my own head, and I jerked away from Efra. He raised his hands apologetically. “I called your name several times.”

Which name?

“What do you want?”

“You shouldn’t waste your energy where it is not absolutely needed,” he said. “If your magic takes over you again, we have no way to bring you back this time.”

My stony silence seemed to perturb him. He cleared his throat. “Are the kitmers coming?”

“They will be here by midday.”

He hesitated. “And the large one?”

I narrowed my eyes. Efra’s obsession with the large kitmer verged on disturbing. “Tomorrow.”

“Good, good.” He raked a hand through the brown waves of his hair, which had grown out considerably since I first met him. “There is one more thing.”

If he asked me about another kitmer, I would instruct them to eat him.

“The Nizahl Heir was right.”

I hadn’t looked in the mirror since I raised the last kitmer, but I had witnessed the colors in my eyes unnerve more than their fair share of people. Efra joined their ranks when he stepped away from the full force of my gaze.

“There are roughly two thousand Nizahl soldiers descending from the north. The largest regiment was last spotted in Alb Safi, but our rider said there was evidence of another regiment coming through Essam Woods.”

My teeth ground together, my veins giving a single, dangerous pulse.

It would take a dedicated Nizahl soldier perhaps seventeen hours to get from Nizahl’s southern border to Jasad’s.

A regiment of two thousand would need considerably longer, which meant they must have started moving at the same time the Nizahl Heir arrived at the Gibal.

As he had predicted, Rawain must have emptied out the compounds, filling Jasad with the youngest, greenest recruits he could spare.

“Don’t tell Marek,” I said. If he was forced to face former colleagues on the wrong side of the battle, he might waste time appealing to me on their behalf.

Anyone entering Jasad with a sword raised against us would die on that sword.

“Keep the others away from me. I’ll track the soldiers so we can make our preparations.” I would find a quiet spot between the buildings to disappear. “And, Efra—if you touch me again, you had better mean to kill me.”