“I guess Felix is not as familiar with Arin’s ‘eccentricities’ as Vaida is.” At Wes’s frown, I raised my hands in surrender. “His phrase. If you want to come inside and rest your feet, you are welcome. I do not see how Felix could attack me in a hall teeming with Nizahl soldiers.”
“You do not see it,” Wes said. “I don’t. But the Commander does, and we will minimize the risk accordingly.”
I rolled my eyes, kicking the door shut behind me. After the sparseness of the Champion’s Pavilion in Orban, these rooms dripped with extravagance. Light streamed in from open windows shaped like crescents and triangles. A tiered chandelier held dozens of candles above a round table. A sculpted rochelya’s long neck wrapped around the table, its stone tail winding up the table’s leg. The bed could fit every girl in the keep, piled with frilled pillows and fitted with a patterned white headboard. I stood on the plush blue divan and peered out the window, leaning my elbows on the vaulted pane. The sky opened in a light rain.
We were in my father’s home. Had he read his books by the fountain? Charmed a girl to round the gardens with him under the stars?
Queen Hanan was my grandmother, Felix her nephew. Rumor said Queen Hanan rarely left her wing of the palace anymore, not since losing her son in Jasad and her husband at the Blood Summit. Felix controlled Omal in all but name, and the evidence of his incompetence was everywhere.
The Omal palace had leeched its kingdom’s wealth for its own. Lukub was the wealthiest kingdom because every citizen had a home to call their own, food in their bellies, and a trade to practice. Orban rejected the concept of hierarchical villages and towns, and one could only gain a title or a noble status from earning distinction in Orban’s army. Their southern villages still fared worse than the rest, and I wondered if Orban’s determination to claim equality in their kingdom kept them from seeing all the places where it crumbled. Meanwhile, Omal had the largest population, the wealthiest nobles, the most profitable markets, and yet its lower villages slipped closer to starvation each winter.
I flopped onto the bed, pitching the unnecessary pillows to the side. One of them sailed past the bedside table, sending an object clattering to the ground.
Kicking aside the overstuffed pillow, I picked up a gray clay doll. The toy spanned the length from my wrist to the tip of my tallest finger. Stiff black twine wrapped around it from head to foot.
The twine. The twine should have been unwrapped. Why was it there? The doll needed to breathe. It couldn’t breathe with the twine around it.
Dreamily, I slid my nail under a strand of the twine and plucked. The doll slid from my grasp, slipping across my wrists before I caught it.
In a blink, my mind cleared. As soon as I separated the doll from my cuffs, the haze settled over me again, and I frowned at the twine. It should not have been there. The doll couldn’t breathe. I had to give it back its air.
I dropped the doll and scrambled away. “Ghaiba,” I gasped.
There weren’t many people who would leave such a thing in my quarters. I used a discarded tunic to pick up the doll. Hesitantly, I pressed its head against my left cuff and braced myself.
Nothing.
Soraya had said my cuffs resisted the strongest tracking spells. I assumed the spells simply couldn’t find any of my magic to track. What if my cuffs deflected some types of spells? If the runes kept my magic in, it was possible they also kept magic out.
Felix must have hoped I wouldn’t recognize this terrible doll. Said to come from Lukub during Baira’s rule, the ghaiba was an ancient entity that manifested as a shapeless, vicious cloud. Once inside a victim, it tore into their minds, distorting reality and showing them visions of every regret, agony, or secret doubt they kept hidden. If left inside too long, the ghaiba could leave its host catatonic or dead. After the entombment, Lukubis found a way to trap the ghaiba in these dolls and seal it with black twine. Hanim spent months trying to find one and test whether my magic could expel the ghaiba once it sank into me.
Why would he leave one in my quarters? If he was trying to intimidate me without alerting Arin, the easiest targets were—
I hurried from my room and shoved past Wes, breaking into a run. The hall stretched endlessly, and I nearly wept with relief at the sight of Jeru. A symphony of terror exploded in my chest when I threw open their door.
Jeru and Wes crashed into me from behind. Wes uttered a low oath.
“Get the Commander,” Jeru croaked. “Now!”
Jeru tried to enter after me, but I shoved him back. “The ghaiba can split itself among multiple people. Do not enter.”