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“For someone who hates the Karkauns,” Sufiyan said, “you sound a lot like one of their warlocks.”
“Shut it,” Quil ordered his companions. “Both of you.” He turned to Loli. “Please, tell us. We need the knowledge. My people—”
Loli Temba huffed in disgust as she washed a bouquet of thick green leaves. “Yes, your people,” she said. “Your people barely knew Kegar existed. When they learned, the first thing your Empress did was demand the secrets of flight. When the Kegari failed to offer them, your people refused to speak with their envoys.Your peoplearen’t as deserving as you think.”
Quil’s magic, quiet these past few days, warmed in his chest. A memory lived at the core of this woman. He could feel it. A pain that made her who she was.
He considered her. She was a loner. But she’d helped Sirsha. She understood abandonment. For the first time, Quil noticed the scars all over her pale skin. Tiny lines, as if she’d been cut repeatedly. He thought ofhow her lip curled when she’d said,You hate my people. Good. I hate them too.
“When I first understood that the Kegari were attacking us,” Quil said, “I hated them. I still hate them. But hate doesn’t fix anything.” He leaned forward. “I must understand what they want from the Empire. If they have magic, why are they attacking us? If all they need is food, there are a dozen countries they can raid thousands of miles closer than the Empire.”
Loli looked at him steadily. “You’re an Aquillus, yes?” she said. “Nephew of the Empress?”
Quil was surprised—and unnerved—that she recognized him. Loli smiled, but there was no joy in it as she explained. “When my people attacked yours,” she said, “twenty years ago, I was there as a sacrifice. I saw the Blood Shrike walking the walls. And another who walked in shadow with his other half behind him. The first ghost in the city.”
“My father,” Quil said, voice flattening like his aunt’s did when she spoke of Marcus Farrar. “The ghost was that of the twin brother he killed.” Or so the rumors said. Emperor Marcus was known to pace the city’s walls, muttering to someone only he could see.
Quil shook thoughts of his father away, and sadness filled him at what Loli had suffered. “You were a sacrifice, you say. But the Karkauns killed their sacrifices, used spirit magic to chain their ghosts and unleash them upon the city.”
“Indeed,” Loli Temba said. “The warlocks wanted my ghost badly, for the ghost of a human imbued with magic, as I was, is far more powerful than one without. But I escaped them.”
She gestured them to the table. The meal was fragrant and fresh—a salad topped with seeds, salted legumes, and a nutty oil; a thick, bouncy bread slathered in butter; and a mountain of the sweet pink fruit tossed with red chili.
Quil didn’t realize how hungry he was until he’d demolished the plate,and Loli was heaping on a second helping and sitting down herself.
“You ask why the Kegari attacked you,” she said. “You’re a child of Gens Aquilla. Whatever your woes, they have not involved watching your people die from empty bellies. Hungerispart of it.” She glanced at Arelia. “But perhaps this is only the beginning of the reason they chose you.”
“Their magic,” Quil said. “Is it spirit magic, like the Karkauns’?”
“Don’t be foolish, boy,” Loli Temba chided. “They keep their Sails aloft by manipulating the wind.”
Arelia frowned. “That doesn’t make sense.” She’d softened her tone, though Quil could tell it was taking a great deal of effort. “Even if they could manipulate the wind, that would only provide lift. They’d need thrust, too, to maneuver the Sails forward. I didn’t get a close look at them. But I didn’t see an engine.”
“And what about their weaponry?” Sufiyan asked. “Do they use magic for that, too? I’ve never seen weapons that appear to move on their own like that. As if they’re alive.”
“I do not know much of their weapons,” Loli Temba said. “Listen to my words. Even with magic, the Kegari were nothing. Less than nothing. They raided and stole and barely subsisted. Then, many months ago, that changed.Theychanged. They began to rally around one man. A highborn leader, the rumors say. They call him the Tel Ilessi.”
The words felt like thunder in Quil’s ears.
“Rue la ba Tel Ilessi,” he whispered. He’d heard those words over and again. He’d had no idea what it meant. Loli Temba nodded.
“An honorific or prayer,” she said. “I do not know what the words mean. But I have heard they call upon him, invoke his name every time they kill. Or die.”
“What does he want?” Sufiyan said.
“Maybe he wants what they’ve always wanted,” Arelia said. “Food.Security. But unlike the leaders who’ve come before, he knows how to get it.”
“So, the Tel Ilessi is everything to them,” Quil said. “Not just a leader. A—a savior.”
“Yes,” Loli said. “His people would follow him into the sea if he asked. Without him, they would be nothing.”
“We met him,” Quil said, turning to Sufiyan. “In Jibaut. The man who stopped us—who captured us with wind.”
Sufiyan shook his head. “That could have been anyone.”
“It was him.” Certainty pounded through Quil’s blood. “He knew me. He knew I was the crown prince and that I went not by Zacharias, but Quil.”Long have I wished to look upon you.
“He’s the one we have to talk to,” Arelia said. “The one we need to treat with.”
