Reaching the carriage, Arin took in my thunderous expression and glanced at my companions.
“I did not force them,” he said, guessing the source of my ire. “Jeru, ready the horses. We will take the southern route. Tell the soldiers to keep within our radius, but not to converge on the path. Sefa and Marek, your carriage will go ahead of us.”
“Wait, I have—” My objections were drowned out by the flurry of activity as riders leapt to their horses, and the thirty Nizahl soldiers began a procession from the palace.
“He didn’t call you the boy!” Sefa said in a loud whisper, hopping into the carriage. Marek followed her with an eye roll.
Swearing, I shoved into the carriage. I wouldn’t have an opportunity to speak to Marek and Sefa until we stopped at the first cabin. By then, it would be too late to change anything.
The sun rose in the east, a palm of blushing light unfurling behind the Omal palace. We rode past the crystalline gates. Their contours gleamed in the nascent morning.
“You knew they would come if you said it was for me,” I accused an hour into the ride. We had finally rumbled into Essam Woods. The sight of gnarled trees threatened to catapult me into reliving last night’s hike with Dawoud in my arms. I swallowed, fighting the instinct to shove the memory aside. An instinct as natural to me as breathing. He deserved to be remembered, even if it made me wish I had died with him.
We are who we come from. Dawoud was Jasad to me. He was love and warmth and free compassion. I anchored his memory, fixing it to the inhospitable soil of my mind, and some piece of me sighed in relief.
“I did not ask.” Arin had spread his parchment around as soon as the carriage lurched out of the palace, making meticulous marks every here and there. “I relayed my intention to draw out the groups and told them they were free to decide their course.”
The plan had formed in the madness of our last evening in Omal.
Instead of waiting for the Mufsids, Urabi, or Soraya to move first, Arin intended to lure them out during the third trial. The guards would spread rumors about the Orban Champion’s declining health, which would spread among the soldiers, who would spread it through the upper towns. Sefa and Marek would ride into the lower villages with a few disguised soldiers, pretending to be beleaguered organizers for the Alcalah. They would drink in various taverns, and under the guise of inebriation, complain about the weak security the third trial offered compared to Omal and Orban.
With Diya’s supposedly failing health increasing my likelihood of becoming Victor, and therefore being assigned personal guards for the rest of my days, the groups would see their window of opportunity closing. Sefa and Marek maligning the protections around the third trial would provide further incentive to attack.
“Wouldn’t the groups suspect something was amiss? If they have managed to evade you this long, I struggle to believe a hefty amount of trickery is what will move them to act,” I had said.
“Oh, they will almost certainly see through the ploy.” Arin had deftly buttoned his coat, observing the servants rushing between the fountain and my burning room. “But none of them will be willing to risk that another might take the bait and succeed in catching you first.”
The trip to Nizahl passed in a blur of arguments and cold cabin rooms. Sefa hummed every time I tried to talk sense into her. Marek would dip his hands in mud and chase me around the cabin. Idiots, both of them.
We were due in Nizahl today. To distract from my churning dread, I plucked one of Arin’s maps and smoothed it open on my legs. I studied the map for long moments, trying to decipher the unintelligible markings.
“Have you started doodling in your spare time?” I asked, squinting at the downward V shapes and scribbled names. I traced a bridge that might have been Sirauk.
Arin didn’t ask to see the map. “The mountains.”
My forehead furrowed. The carriage’s motion jostled me into the window. “Which ones?” Hundreds of mountains bordered the kingdoms, theoretically overlooking seas and deserted lands. Theoretically, because fewer than five had completed the journey to and from the mountains. Vast as they were, the most attention the mountains were given on maps was a quick scribble of their general locations.
“All of them,” Arin said. He crossed his ankle over his knee and separated the papers over his triangled lap. Met with my silence, he glanced up.
“You have a map of the mountains?” I asked faintly. “A detailed map?”
Arin’s expression strongly suggested he thought I had knocked my head against the carriage door one too many times. “I have several, but they’re far from finished.”
The fist around my heart squeezed. Acknowledging the Heir’s brilliance came naturally, but at some unidentifiable point, I had grown to admire it. Forgetting his peerless mind was in service to a pitiless kingdom. “We never stood a chance against you, did we? Rawain’s siege never really ended, because he has you to see it through to the very last Jasadi. Given a thousand fortresses, Jasad would still be doomed.”
Arin’s gaze shuttered. A chilly guardedness that had been gone long enough to make its return startling descended over the Heir.
“I can circumvent much,” Arin said. “But even I might falter at a thousand fortresses.”
A few miles from the Citadel, Ren steered Sefa and Marek’s carriage south. Only the Champions and the royal guests were permitted to enter the Citadel grounds, and of that exclusive few, none could spend the night inside the Citadel. The royals would lodge in the upper towns for the night, and the trial would be held in the morning. At the conclusion of the Victor’s Ball the following evening, everyone would be required to show a purpose for remaining in the kingdom.
Hospitality did not rank among Nizahl’s limited virtues.
Sefa and Marek would begin their portion of the plan tonight. After donning their disguises, the pair would sow rumors about the third trial’s security throughout the lower villages. I wanted Sefa and Marek to spend tonight in the Champions’ suites with me, but the rooms were wedged between the second and third gates to the Citadel. Too close to the Nizahl royals and people who might recognize them.
I wouldn’t see them until after the trial. They would wait for me in the carriage during the Victor’s Ball. We would ride out with a brigade of Nizahl soldiers and, if I won, the Victor’s appointed guards.
“We know how to take care of ourselves,” Sefa assured me.
I allowed Marek to pull me into a light hug, pushing my uncooperative arms to pat him on the back. “Trust yourself,” he murmured. When I nudged him loose, his gaze was on Arin’s carriage. “No one else.”