Page 50 of The Jasad Crown

I could spend an eternity plummeting through the depths of her audacity without reaching the bottom. “I repeat: I went to your Aada this morning. I waved my arms, I shouted, I begged them to find a way to reverse this disaster Efra set into motion. Now you want me to come back and listen to another doomed plan?”

“It isn’t doomed. We—”

“Go to your Aada, Namsa.” I tried to maneuver around her. “If you decide to invade the Omal palace, let me know what time we ride to our deaths.”

A lightly muscled arm thrust itself in my path. “Leadership comes to you naturally. Why do you insist on walking away from it?”

I tipped my head to the stars and sternly advised myself against hurling Namsa into the lake. Leadership couldn’t be more unnatural to me. I was short-tempered and impatient, and I firmly believed compromises were an empty solace for the unwittingly defeated. Toss in the voices in my head, the unpredictable magic, and the random hallucinations? They would be better off flinging my crown into the sea.

“He will win,” she said.

The stars winked.

“You can anticipate problems we cannot. You know how these rulers think. He showed you maps of their palaces, trained you in the ways of their courts. Before the Alcalah, you were already a formidable force, but now?” Namsa’s laugh floated, disembodied, over the dark mountains. “Arin of Nizahl created his own worst enemy.”

Sefa’s soft voice swallowed Namsa’s, as though whispered from the clouds.The way he looks at you sometimes. Like you are a cliff with a fatal fall, and each day you move him closer to its edge.

A shudder entirely unrelated to the cold worked its way down my spine, and I forced my gaze back to the mountains. To Namsa.

He may have created his own worst enemy, I wanted to say,but I am my own worst enemy, too.

“I will sit in on the meeting,” I said. “But do not expect me to do more than observe.”

“My, my!” I raised my hands over my head and clapped. “If the goal is to expedite your own gruesome murders, I must say—you have all applied yourselves to the extreme.”

The members of the Aada regarded me with varying levels of indignation. Thick cushions covered the ground, arranged in a loose semicircle around the room. The aim behind removing the table and chairs was supposedly to strip away barriers to communication. Or, in my hands, potential weapons.

“Queen Hanan does not care a whit about me. Felix could pulverize me into soil for their gardens, and she wouldn’t stop to smell the flowers growing from my carcass.”

Dust motes drifted across the speechless room. After a minute, Lateef cleared his throat. “Your… vivid… objection is noted, Mawlati. We understand your doubt, but we have reason to believe Queen Hanan may be easier to persuade than you think.”

The urge to draw out the knife hidden in my boot and stab it into the nearest hard surface nearly overwhelmed me. Hours we had spent in this fashion.Hours, while my hair took on a texture akin to burnt bread and the members of the Aada exerted themselves to incinerate every last one of my nerves. I took solace in my putrid smell. In this coffin of a room, they were probably choking on it.

“Reason, reason, reason.” I drew my wrist across my nose, wiping the layer of dust settling above my lip. Awaleen below, but I was tired. “A reason you refuse to share, but continue to cite as a valid rebuttal to any of the points I raise. Tell me, then: Why am I here? You do not treat me honestly, you will not hear my counsel, and you expect me to join you in a pointless death based on a trust you will not return.”

Lateef and Namsa glanced at each other. On the other side of the room, the three Aada members I didn’t know avoided my eyes.

“Oh, just tell her!” Maia burst. She pushed off the wall she’d been slouching against and strode over to Lateef. She held out her hand.“She’s right. How can we ask her to trust us when we will not do the same?”

Namsa leaned back with a slight smirk. She shrugged at Lateef. “You know where I stand.”

“Why should we trust her? She—”

“Be silent, Efra.” Lateef scowled. “You have become unbearable since the Malika arrived. If you intend to drown yourself in childish petulance, do not drag us down with you.”

I wouldn’t laugh. I absolutely would not laugh at the affronted look on Efra’s contemptible face.

Properly chastened, Efra huffed, but did not speak again.

A bundle of parchment rolled together with twine dropped into Maia’s hand. “Give it to the Malika,” Lateef sighed. To me, he said, “Dawoud brought this to Namsa six years ago. He recovered it from a high-ranking general in Nizahl’s army in the first month of the siege.”

I dragged a lantern closer to my lap as Maia handed me the bundle. The current state of my vision did not easily lend itself to reading, and it blurred double at the tiny script squeezed onto the pages.

Already dreading the headache this would shepherd my way, I sifted through the bundle. The damaged edges of the parchment crackled beneath my fingers. If Dawoud had taken this in the first month of the Jasad War, then it was nearly half my age. “What am I looking at?”

Namsa threw her arm over the back of Lateef’s cushion, one leg spread and the other bent at the knee. She was different in these meetings. Cockier. Namsa in the Aada was a relaxed woman of thirty, and I barely recognized her.

“Reason,” she said.

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