Page 116 of The Jasad Crown
“As far as I know,” Jeru said. He studied Marek’s rigid posture. “Breathe, Lazur. This is good news.”
Swiping the rancid pile of fabric masquerading as his coat, Marek fished around the pockets. He tossed a cuff link at Jeru. “I found this in the Shinawy matriarch’s wardrobe, buried behind her massacre of goose-feather gowns. The symbol in the center—is thatwhat you’re looking for? Orbanians flew that symbol on their banners during the Siege of Six Dawns, right?”
Pilfering through Mira’s belongings after bedding her was not one of Marek’s proudest moments, but it also was not among his worst. The cuff link had been the only inconsistent item in Mira’s heaving wardrobe. The leather cuff link bore three suns, the spheres overlapping in the shape of a ram’s head. Three smaller suns gathered at the nexus where the spheres connected, as though giving the ram three eyes at its forehead.
“Yes.” There was a hard look in Jeru’s eyes as he traced the symbol. “You should bathe and prepare yourself for travel. Fifteen hundred recruits will be leaving for the southern border of Lukub by dawn.” Jeru tucked the cuff link into his pocket, laying an absent hand on his sword. “I should warn you—Sefa may not be in the Ivory Palace. She might have escaped Huz while she was at the palace and fled elsewhere.”
“By the mist-damned bridge, I hope she did,” Marek said fervently. “She would be safer on the streets than in the Ivory Palace. She knows how to survive as a vagrant, but a royal court? Sultana Vaida’s court?”
A shudder slid through him.
“By the mist-damned bridge?” Jeru repeated, a hint of a smile breaking through the somber set of his features. “You sound Nizahlan.”
There was a time when hearing that would have sent Marek into a panic. It summoned the whispers of his family, echoing their vile voices in his ear. In Nizahl, he was a failure. The son who fled. Threw the Lazur legacy into the dirt the minute he laid violent hands on the High Counselor, and for what?A girl who will not marry you, Caleb, who has no father and no name to speak of. Your brothers and sister died so you might be given this chance. So you could saunter to greatness the way you saunter through everything in life, even if this greatness is wasted in hands morefamiliar with the shape of a woman than the weight of a sword. Is this who Amira, Binyar, and Hani left behind? Is—
Marek stood abruptly. It had been a long time since he allowed his parents to linger in his thoughts.
A violet raven stared at Marek from Jeru’s lapel. The swords clashing beneath it were stitched with a bright silvery thread Marek had never seen anywhere other than on Nizahlan-made clothes.
“I sound Nizahlan because I am Nizahlan,” Marek said. “Even if sometimes I wish it were otherwise.”
His parents might not be happy to have lost the tally of another hero child to bury, but his siblings—the only family he had cared about—would never have wanted Marek to follow them into the ground.
He was not the Lazur who fled; he was the Lazur who lived.
“I understand,” Jeru said, and he sounded like he meant it. “Go ready yourself, Marek. We leave for Lukub at dawn.”
Marek had been dropped into this compound with the clothes on his back. He had approximately three belongings, and most of them were edible. “Readying himself” would consist of bathing and trying not to think about what Sefa might have endured at the Ivory Palace.
“What do you need with the cuff link? Livening up His Highness’s uniform?” Marek asked. With his imminent—and by the grace of the Awaleen, permanent—departure from the guardsman looming, Marek could afford a little curiosity.
The cuff link crumpled beneath Jeru’s tightening fist. “Not exactly.”
Several hundred men, half of whom would have stuck a sword through your ear if you tried to remove them from their bed so soonafter their return from Galim’s Bend, gathered at Fareed Mill to watch a guardsman of the Commander prepare to engage in combat to the death with Sulor, their least favorite section leader.
“Does anyone know what’s happening?” Zane muttered, rubbing his giant knuckles into his eyes. At roughly six foot eight, Zane was the largest recruit in the compound, and also the reason Marek had escaped Galim’s Bend without becoming a midday treat for a nisnas. Zane had lifted Marek off the ground like he weighed less than a sack of flour and kicked the nisnas clear across the road with his boot. Were Marek a different man, his ego might have suffered a blow, but those different men were probably busy dissolving in nisnas toxins.
It wasn’t Marek who answered, but the recruit next to him, a reed-thin noble from Almerour. Marek had only spoken to him a handful of times—Almerour was two towns over from where his parents lived, and though the odds of a boy four years his junior recognizing a Lazur were slim, Marek kept his distance. “His Highness’s guardsman issued an arrest for Sulor to be tried for his crime in the high courts of the Citadel. Apparently, our fearless Sulor has been taking bribes from noble families in the eastern quarter to reroute patrols in Nazeef, Tower Row, and Mandara.”
Zane and Marek pinned Almerour with matching stares of confusion. “Reroute patrols? Why?”
More importantly, why would a guardsman of the Heir care so much about some side dealings in the noble quarters that he’d lie to his Heir and ask Marek for help?
Almerour seemed only too happy to explain. “The conscription ban. When the Citadel lifted it, noble families started cutting deals with section leaders to hide their eligible children. Pretend Zane is the son of a wealthy eastern quarter merchant. The patrols come knocking on the door to take Zane away, so what does Papa Merchant do? He offers the section leader responsible for recruiting from their quarter a handsome sum to drag a non-eligible child outof the lower villages, call him Zane, and throw him in the compound. Zane’s name is recorded as a recruit, while the real Zane gets to stay home and hide under Mama and Papa’s pillows until the other Zane finishes his service.”
Marek and Zane exchanged a stunned look. Forcing a non-eligible lower villager—someone vulnerable like a child or the sole caretaker of a family or a person struggling with a disqualifying injury—into a military compound under a false name in an effort to line your own pockets?
“That is despicable,” Zane growled, Marek’s own revulsion echoed in the giant. “How do you know so much about this?”
Almerour shrugged. “Because Sulor offered the deal to my parents, and they turned him down.”
Marek winced in begrudging sympathy. If he’d still been in the Lazur house, his parents would’ve tossed Marek into the wagon themselves.
As the Ravening compound watched, Jeru walked to the center of the field wearing a standard recruit uniform. Marek searched for the guardsman’s pin, but he must have removed it when he changed. If Marek had harbored any doubt about whether Jeru intended to fight Sulor, it would’ve vanished right then. The Heir’s guardsmen never removed their pin—even in death, they kept it with them. To take it off indicated a betrayal of their vows. It made them a traitor.
Comprehension slapped Marek across the face.
Aren’t you worried about defying your Commander? If you are caught, I imagine he will greet your deception with a nice sturdy noose.
