Arin answered. I wasn’t listening, focused on corralling my magic and my frantic breathing.
The gates parted with a groan.
“Loyalty rears its mutinous head,” Arin said softly. “Mervat Rayan.”
I looked into his wintry blue eyes, so like his father’s. The air held itself still around us. The Nizahl and Jasad Heir. I would leave this carriage to deliver the Supreme the most complete victory over me. Over Jasad.
One day, I would stand trial before the spirits of my dead. One day, the bodies I never buried would call upon me to answer for my sins.
One day, but not today.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I was ushered into my room without fanfare. Three women arrived to attend me. Or they tried. I told them—quite emphatically—I could bathe and undress myself.
Sefa groaned when I closed the door on the baffled attendants.
“Lukub does not value hospitality as highly as Omal,” I said, defensive. “The Sultana will not care.”
After months of the tunnels’ stark walls and dusty corridors, the chaotic rooms in the Ivory Palace shocked my nerves. Tapestries dyed in bright shades of red hung from the walls, their white tassels dangling over fox-fur rugs. Bundles of bukhoor mixed with resin hovered above the lanterns, saturating the air in a sweet, floral aroma. An ivory mask was propped in front of every candle. The light flickered behind its carved eyes.
“Lukubis may not care about hospitality, but they place great value on service,” Sefa said. “Servicing the body and the spirit. Finding harmony between the two.” She stepped over Marek, who had fallen asleep with a chunk of mushabak on his chest. The honey-soaked coil of fried dough shifted with the rise of his chest.
I squeezed the excess water from my drying hair. “Is it strange, visiting Lukub? You are a citizen here by blood.”
Sadness tinged Sefa’s smile. She removed the mushabak from Marek’s chest and tossed it in the wastebasket. “I am not a citizen. Nizahlan law does not permit marriage outside its territories unless one of them renounces their kingdom of origin. My father gave up his right to Lukub’s protections when he married my mother.”
I drew the absurdly plush pillow against my chest. Sefa grew up caught between Nizahl and Lukub, but I had rarely given Omal a second thought. Though my father’s Omalian blood ran in my veins, my grandparents had done their best to purge my interest in him. As though my worth as a Jasadi would decrease if I entertained any notion of my Omalian heritage.
“Let us not get distracted,” Sefa said, stern. She flopped onto the enormous bed, running her dark fingers through the sheepskin covers. “Baira’s kingdom is a land of illusion. They build lavish libraries and fill them with empty books, commission glorious paintings on the walls of deteriorating villages. My father told me a story about the feasts they host to celebrate the anniversary of the entombment. A tradition in the lower villages requires every family to leave an offering at Hirun’s banks on the eve of the anniversary. These days, it’s usually trinkets and what food they can spare. But in centuries past, the Sultanas encouraged the lower villages to throw the strongest child of every family into Hirun. If the child drowned, the family would say the river had blessed them by taking the child’s strength for its own. If the child survived, the family would be barred from having more children.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “The lower villages were starving. The children most likely to survive the brutal winters were tossed into Hirun, leaving the weak ones to wither away.”
“Fewer mouths for the former Sultanas to feed,” Sefa confirmed. “Lukub’s Sultanas are not women to be trifled with, Sylvia. Their skills of deception are parallel to none.”
If they had managed to convince parents to drown their offspring with a smile, what sinister whispers could they weave into my own heart?
The rumble of Marek’s snores and the amber glow of dawn behind the tapestry lulled me into a restless sleep. I dreamed of red-eyed masks grinning in the dark and children splashing into a boiling Hirun. When I careened to consciousness again, the sun hung much higher in the sky, and someone knocked insistently at the door.
“Sylvia?” It was Jeru. “Are you all right?”
Marek and Sefa were gone. I cursed, rolling to the wardrobe in a tangle of limbs. The women from earlier had arranged my belongings inside, and I yanked out the first article of clothing I touched.
“What time is it?” I flung the gowns to the floor.
Jeru’s weary voice came through the door. How long had he been knocking? “It’s past noon.”