Page 193 of The Jasad Crown
We stood in Hirun, trailing the tips of our fingers over the rushing current, and listened to the world’s heartbeat.
“Why ‘Jasad’?” Dania asked. She stood on top of the hill, hands on her hips. Surveying our newly claimed corner of the world with the efficiency and tactical analysis she never quite managed to suppress. There was not yet much to see. The meadow stretched around us in endless green hills, not a sign of life to be seen. “A bit ambiguous, is it not? Morbid, even.”
We plucked a cracked date from a bed of burs. Ants spilled out from the tender inside of the fruit, fleeing over our fingers and along our wrist.
We pressed the ruined date into the soil beneath the tree and whispered a promise to it.
“Ambiguity is not morbid. Ambiguity is a question, and our existence is the answer,” we said. “Yes,Jasadmeans body. Yes, it also means corpse. What this kingdom becomes—whether it breathes or suffocates, lives or dies—is a question only it can answer.”
Dania rolled her eyes. “Not sufficiently dramatic enough for you to say you like the way the word sounds?”
We caressed the fresh dirt over the buried date and laughed. “I also like the way it sounds.”
Breathe, little date. Breathe, and I will build a world for you.
Thunder growled over the horizon. Blue light forked through the sky, striking the earth like the flick of a serpent’s tongue.
We closed our eyes and smelled burning. Hundreds of miles away, a hut had caught fire. The entire village was in flames.
We tried again to command the rain to fall, and again we crashed into a barrier. Kapastra had locked the sky after her villages had flooded thanks to Dania’s attempt to lift the drought from her own kingdom. A drought we had punished her with only after her callous mistake killed hundreds of our children in the south.
Their screams rang in our ears as if we stood in the center of the burning village. We sank to our knees, covering our face with our hands and rocking. Helpless to do more than feel the panic of mothers reaching into their children’s beds splintering our chest, howling alongside the farmers fighting to herd their sheep away from the blazing fence. Their farm, their pride and joy, their life’s work. The roof caved, and their hearts caved with it. Donkeys and mules choked the only safe passage out of the village, and a child fellbeneath the rampaging hooves. Each bone she broke fractured in our own body.
We sobbed until hands found our shoulders, shaking us.
“Rovial, what is it? What’s wrong?”
What was wrong?
What waswrong?
We placed the thinnest wall between ourself and the collapsing village. A wall just thin enough for us to find the strength to shove off Kapastra’s hands and glare through bleary eyes.
“Get out of my kingdom,” we snarled.
A date fell on our shoulder.
With a hand against the trunk, we tipped the tree over and set the exposed roots on fire.
“I heard you made a man,” we said, leaning against Baira’s door. She jumped, and in the distance, half of a mountain splintered and slid into the open sea.
The surprise in her eyes cooled to stiff disdain. “I am not in the habit of making men these days.”
“True. Breaking them is more your style.”
“What are you doing in Lukub? I told you. I am on Dania’s side in this war of yours.”
“Lukub. Lukub, Lukub.” We toyed with a carved stone chip, smirking at the inscription. Another discarded lover fancying themselves a poet. Pathetic and lost, like everything Baira touched. “Tell me, did Dania give you an earful about what you decided to name your kingdom, or was that judgment reserved for me alone?”
We stepped forward, tossing aside the chip. It landed on a pile of leathery skin Baira’s weavers must have forgotten to collect. By tomorrow, the carefully flayed flesh would be sewn into the tapestry at the front of the Ivory Palace. A parting gift for the families of traitors; were they so inclined, they could visit the tapestry and identify which patch of skin belonged to their loved one.
A howl turned Baira’s head. A second and third joined it. The mournful howls became a symphony, twisting through her kingdom.
Baira shoved the drapes apart, throwing open the door to her balcony. “What did you do to my Hounds?” she gasped, frantically scanning the moon-drenched expanse of Essam Woods. “I can feel—what did youdo?”
We followed her to the balcony and stepped onto the ledge. “Worry less about the Hounds and more about your subjects in their proximity. Flesh tears much easier than ruby.”
Baira’s nails bit into her scalp as she shook her head back and forth.
