Page 182 of The Jasad Crown

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 forcenturies, 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?”

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