I fell silent as Arin approached. He was wearing a thin black shirt and pants, light fare compared to his usual layers of black and violet. Silver hair fell around his jaw, highlighting the fading bruise on his cheekbone. His ability to intimidate wasn’t softened by his relaxed attire. Vaun fell to a kneeling position, lowering his head. “Forgive me, my liege. I acted without consulting you.”
“Yes, that much seems apparent,” Arin said. “Leave. We will discuss this at a more appropriate juncture.”
Vaun glanced up. “What should I do with the girl?”
“You should do what I ask and only that.” Again, Arin remained perfectly pleasant, but Vaun paled like the Heir had personally called for his beheading. “Go.”
I massaged the roots of my hair with a wince. First the Nizahl soldier in the woods, now Vaun. My scalp had taken a beating in the last two weeks.
I remained close to the door, carefully avoiding glancing at Arin. I didn’t want to risk exiting into the hall with Vaun still nearby, so I took my time studying the Heir’s room. There wasn’t much to see. A tall wardrobe, a bed only slightly bigger than my own, a tiny square table no wider than a book, and a much larger table covered in inkwells and partially unrolled maps. I wondered what he thought of the tiny table. They were once a staple in every Jasadi household, folded and tucked behind the furniture until a guest arrived. The host would place a saucer and an aromatic, palm-size cup of ahwa on that table, maybe slide a plate of biscuits or kunafa beside it. I’d loved the smell of ahwa, though the one time I’d tasted it I’d spat it right out. But Soraya would still sneak me empty cups from the kitchen so I could sniff the leftover dark sludge like a candle.
I couldn’t seem to get Jasad out of my head lately. Surrounded by Nizahlans wasn’t the optimal setting to be dwelling on my former home.
A small box at the corner of the small table held the Nizahl royal seal and a bottle of wax. I picked it up. The seal was untainted iron, heavy in my palm. Molded into the bottom were two swords clashing. A raven emerged where the swords met, its wings unfurling on each side. I traced its contours, mesmerized.
“Careful,” Arin said. “Wax burns.”
The seal fumbled in my grip. I dropped it, trying to claw at the fog over my senses. Navigating a conversation with the Heir drained me on a good day, and today was far from good.
“What do you use this for?” I held up the seal, expecting him to wrench it from my grip and toss me from the room.
“My maps.” He satisfied a part of my prediction and held his hand out for the seal. I dropped it into his palm, careful to maintain distance from his bare skin.
“Can I see them?”
Arin regarded me for a long minute. I squared my chin, anticipating some remark on my literacy or intelligence.
He pivoted to the map table. I blinked at his back.
“Well?” he said. “Come and see.”
I tripped over my feet in my rush. Dozens and dozens of maps sprawled over the table’s broad surface. A pitcher full of a lavender liquid sat in the corner with the inkwells.
I couldn’t believe he was allowing me to see this. The Commander’s maps were almost as infamous as his gloves. Some of the sketches were undoubtedly collected by the Nizahl spies scattered across the kingdoms, but I doubted he placed a high value on them. His nature did not seem to allow for anything less than absolute perfection. And of course, absolute perfection could be rendered only by him.
“What do you want to see?”
“Anything. Everything.”
“Decide.”
The name flew from my mouth on reckless wings. “Jasad.”
The Heir paused. I thought he would refuse until he pulled out a scroll tucked at the bottom of the organized stack and spread it over the table. The map covered the smaller maps beneath it. Fitting, since Jasad had possessed all the territory east of Hirun and north of Sirauk. Where the kingdom had once stood was the new Nizahl-approved name for Jasad.
Scorched Lands.
My cuffs strangled my wrists. This, at least, I could understand: my magic reacted to grief. Grief about a kingdom I had barely known before I lost it. Before it was used to define and damn me.
“I can feel my magic,” I said with the detachment I’d use to remark on the weather. Reporting the fluctuations in my magic had been one of his first requirements after my escape attempt.
Arin dragged his thumb over the area where Hirun bisected Jasad’s southern wilayahs. I might have thought he was uninterested if it weren’t for the slight lift of his left eyebrow. “First Fairel, then your friends, now a map of the Scorched Lands. You haven’t noticed a connection?”
Grief. Rage. Fear. But I usually felt all three without my magic reacting.
“No.”
Arin hummed. He didn’t believe me. It would have bothered me had I not been so confident my conjectures didn’t matter. They were like the sketches drawn by the spies: glanced over and discarded in favor of Arin’s own skill.
“Why did you defend me?” At Arin’s glance, I clarified. “With Vaun.”
He faced me, balancing a hip against the table. I trained my attention on the map of Jasad. I didn’t want to ask, but I knew the question would eat at me. There were enough mysteries haunting my sleep.
“I did not defend you. I defended my laws.” He tapped a scroll written in swirling script, pinned to the front of the table. First Decrees of Arin of Nizahl, Commander in Power and Heir.
It was a list of immediate revisions to the governing code of Nizahl soldiers. I scanned the list quickly, eyebrows rising higher with each line. The provisions in this scroll prevented Nizahl soldiers from acting as the final authority in judging a Jasadi. If a confrontation with one was inevitable, the soldier was to do everything in their power to prevent harm or death. Only if the soldier’s life would be forfeit were they permitted to use fatal force.
I remembered the soldier responsible for killing Adel blanching at the sight of his Commander. Now it made sense. An entire village had watched him and his partner violate the Heir’s decree and pummel Adel to death for merely tossing the soldier a few feet.
The next line made me laugh.
“Any physical or emotional mistreatment of Jasadi captives, including but not limited to beating, tying, cutting, spitting, baiting animals to attack them, sexual threats, sexual violence—” I snorted. “Vaun would sooner sexually touch a dead fish.”
“He laid hands on a captive. His intentions are irrelevant.”
My teeth dug deep enough into my lower lip to draw blood. “Stop calling me a captive. I am here by choice.”
“I thought it would make it easier for you. Thinking of yourself as a captive might remove some of the guilt of betraying your own kind. Or is guilt beyond you?”
He thought he could prod at my loyalties, but I had none. Not anymore. Where loyalty might have existed lived only an echoing regret. Niyar’s ashen face as he bid me to flee, Palia’s scream behind me. My mother, assassinated alone in her tower. The bodies I had never buried.
Loyalty meant nothing when it was for the dead.