The Jasad Heir (The Scorched Throne, #1)
Sara Hashem
To Hend, for being my first reader, friend, and little sister.
And to every eldest daughter who chooses to be brave.
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CHAPTER ONE
Two things stood between me and a good night’s sleep, and I was allowed to kill only one of them.
I tromped through Hirun River’s mossy banks, squinting for movement. The grime, the late hours—I had expected those. Every apprentice in the village dealt with them. I just hadn’t expected the frogs.
“Say your farewells, you pointless pests,” I called. The frogs had developed a defensive strategy they put into action any time I came close. First, the watch guard belched an alarm. The others would fling themselves into the river. Finally, the brave watch guard hopped for his life. An effort as admirable as it was futile.
Dirt was caked deep beneath my fingernails. Moonlight filtered through a canopy of skeletal trees, and for a moment, my hand looked like a different one. A hand much more manicured, a little weaker. Niphran’s hands. Hands that could wield an axe alongside the burliest woodcutter, weave a storm of curls into delicate braids, drive spears into the maws of monsters. For the first few years of my life, before grief over my father’s assassination spread through Niphran like rot, before her sanity collapsed on itself, there wasn’t anything my mother’s hands could not do.
Oh, if she could see me now. Covered in filth and outwitted by croaking river roaches.
Hirun exhaled its opaque mist, breathing life into the winter bones of Essam Woods. I cleaned my hands in the river and firmly cast aside thoughts of the dead.
A frenzied croak sounded behind a tree root. I darted forward, scooping up the kicking watch guard. Ah, but it was never the brave who escaped. I brought him close to my face. “Your friends are chasing crickets, and you’re here. Were they worth it?”
I dropped the limp frog into the bucket and sighed. Ten more to go, which meant another round of running in circles and hoping mud wouldn’t spill through the hole in my right boot. The fact that Rory was a renowned chemist didn’t impress me, nor did this coveted apprenticeship. What kept me from tossing the bucket and going to Raya’s keep, where a warm meal and a comfortable bed awaited me, was a debt of convenience.
Rory didn’t ask questions. When I appeared on his doorstep five years ago, drenched in blood and shaking, Rory had tended to my wounds and taken me to Raya’s. He rescued a fifteen-year-old orphan with no history or background from a life of vagrancy.
The sudden snap of a branch drew my muscles tight. I reached into my pocket and wrapped my fingers around the hilt of my dagger. Given the Nizahl soldiers’ predilection for randomly searching us, I usually carried my blade strapped in my boot, but I’d used it to cut my foot out of a family of tangled ferns and left it in my pocket.
A quick scan of the shivering branches revealed nothing. I tried not to let my eyes linger in the empty pockets of black between the trees. I had seen too much horror manifest out of the dark to ever trust its stillness.
My gaze moved to the place it dreaded most—the row of trees behind me, each scored with identical, chillingly precise black marks. The symbol of a raven spreading its wings had been carved into the trees circling Mahair’s border. In the muck of the woods, these ravens remained pristine. Crossing the raven-marked trees without permission was an offense punishable by imprisonment or worse. In the lower villages, where the kingdom’s leaders were already primed to turn a blind eye to the liberties taken by Nizahl soldiers, worse was usually just the beginning.
I tucked my dagger into my pocket and walked right to the edge of the perimeter. I traced one raven’s outstretched wing with my thumbnail. I would have traded all the frogs in my bucket to be brave enough to scrape my nails over the symbol, to gouge it off. Maybe that same burst of bravery would see my dagger cutting a line in the bark, disfiguring the symbols of Nizahl’s power. It wasn’t walls or swords keeping us penned in like animals, but a simple carving. Another kingdom’s power billowing over us like poisoned air, controlling everything it touched.
I glanced at the watch guard in my bucket and lowered my hand. Bravery wasn’t worth the cost. Or the splinters.
A thick layer of frost coated the road leading back to Mahair. I pulled my hood nearly to my nose as soon as I crossed the wall separating Mahair from Essam Woods. I veered into an alley, winding my way to Rory’s shop instead of risking the exposed—and regularly patrolled—main road. Darkness cloaked me as soon as I stepped into the alley. I placed a stabilizing hand on the wall and let the pungent odor of manure guide my feet forward. A cat hissed from beneath a stack of crates, hunching protectively over the half-eaten carcass of a rat.
“I already had supper, but thank you for the offer,” I whispered, leaping out of reach of her claws.
Twenty minutes later, I clunked the full bucket at Rory’s feet. “I demand a renegotiation of my wages.”
Rory didn’t look up from his list. “Demand away. I’ll be over there.”
He disappeared into the back room. I scowled, contemplating following him past the curtain and maiming him with frog corpses. The smell of mud and mildew had permanently seeped into my skin. The least he could do was pay extra for the soap I needed to mask it.
I arranged the poultices, sealing each jar carefully before placing it inside the basket. One of the rare times I’d found myself on the wrong side of Rory’s temper was after I had forgotten to seal the ointments before sending them off with Yuli’s boy. I learned as much about the spread of disease that day as I did about Rory’s staunch ethics.
Rory returned. “Off with you already. Get some sleep. I do not want the sight of your face to scare off my patrons tomorrow.” He prodded in the bucket, turning over a few of the frogs. Age weathered Rory’s narrow brown face. His long fingers were constantly stained in the color of his latest tonic, and a permanent groove sat between his bushy brows. I called it his “rage stage,” because I could always gauge his level of fury by the number of furrows forming above his nose. Despite an old injury to his hip, his slenderness was not a sign of fragility. On the rare occasions when Rory smiled, it was clear he had been handsome in his youth. “If I find that you’ve layered the bottom with dirt again, I’m poisoning your tea.”
He pushed a haphazardly wrapped bundle into my arms. “Here.”
Bewildered, I turned the package over. “For me?”