Page 64 of The Jasad Crown

When Arin straightened, he found himself inches away from his mother.

Fidgeting toward the end of a long table, Queen Isra’s fingers twisted in her lap, knotting in the sleek fabric of her dress. The sun glowed across her tawny brown skin. A delicate chain bearing the Nizahl crest hung from her neck. Her gown was a perfect fit, but from the way Isra pinched at it, it may as well have been suffocating her.

Arin struggled to draw his breath. This was no lifeless stone statue.

Whose memory was this?

Under the table, a ringed hand squeezed Isra’s wrist until her restless fingers spasmed and lay still.

Rawain subtly drew away from his wife and smiled across the table. Age had yet to leave its mark on his father, and untamed power rolled off the young Supreme.

“Be reasonable, Niyar. What can any of us do with five percent of the magic? That will hardly sustain us a single winter.” Rawain tucked his scepter under his arm, the other propped on the table.

“You are not in a position to quibble with me over the terms of how we divide our people’s magic. You get what we give you,” Malik Niyar said. The ruler of Jasad leaned forward, raising his brows at Rawain. “If you need more than five percent to survive a bitter winter, you should consider whether your kingdoms have greater problems to handle.”

No.Arin couldn’t be hearing this.

Sultana Bisai, Vaida’s mother, scowled. “These agreements have been in place for nearly five hundred years. Why are you changing them now? It used to be an even split.”

Five hundred years?

Arin took a step back, every inch of his being recoiling from the scene in front of him.

Peals of laughter echoed across the table as Malika Palia clapped. “Yes, and five hundred years ago, you still had magic to trade. Today, you sit here with nothing. This is not a transaction, Bisai. You come here as beggars, and you should mind how you address us.”

“Beggars? You foul wretch,” King Toran snarled. He leapt to his feet, smacking the shoulder of the young man beside him. “Emre, draw your sword.”

Emre of Omal. Sylvia’s father.

Emre glanced up from the book on his lap, blinking owlishly behind his spectacles.

“Sit down, Toran,” snapped the woman on Emre’s other side. Arinbarely recognized Queen Hanan. The scowling ruler looked nothing like the sorrowful cloud of a Queen sitting on the Omal throne.

What he was witnessing didn’t meld into any plane of reality Arin understood. It repelled comprehension. Every time Arin tried to process it, he slammed into the iron resistance of his mind.

Arin needed to exercise care. It was an inopportune time to implode.

Settling back, Arin scanned the table once more. With an impassive hand, he began to take the scene apart.

The rulers of each kingdom had assembled here to discuss how they should divide stores of mined Jasadi magic between themselves.

The trade apparently began five hundred years ago, before Sultana Nafeesa’s lifetime. In the age when the kingdoms still carried their own magic, every ruler had apparently mined from their own people. It would have cost thousands upon thousands of lives.

The practice had continued into Arin’s lifetime, and his father had engaged in it. Rawain, who pummeled into Arin never to rely on or trust magic, had sat across a table and complained about only receiving five percent of magic brutally mined from its Jasadi owners.

The Malik and Malika of Jasad were not the original magic miners. They were just the last.

“Whose memory is this?” Arin asked flatly. “Whose bones did you use?”

Patience, young King.

Queen Hanan held her head high. “Consider it compensation for Jasad’s raids, Palia. Are the three hundred of our soldiers you slaughtered last month not worth more than five percent?”

Palia leaned back in her chair, affecting an innocent mien. “I am sure I don’t know what you mean, Hanan.”

“Orban will accept five percent,” King Murib bellowed. He clapped hands wide as paws together. “It will be enough to lift our drought, and we can handle the rest.”

Groans around the table. The arguing resumed in full force, but Arin had ceased listening.

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