The Conjurer (The Vine Witch #3)(50)

“You have grown careless, jinniyah.” Jamra emerged out of the shadow, his eyes shining with the ungodly lust of a grave robber. “There was a time I could not sneak up on you.”

“You’ve bound me to the village.”

“I would not want you flying off before I get what I want. Is that not what you were about to do?”

“It isn’t morning yet.”

Jamra let his eyes gaze up to the stars, then pointed. “And yet there is Atarsamain, rising to spy on our conversation.”

Sidra didn’t dare move a finger to verify the security of the bottle within her robes. If he detected even the slightest movement at her side, he would know. And she could not—would not—lower her eyes before this jackal. “The morning star is the mother of my tribe,” she said and forced herself to grin, letting the gold scrollwork on her teeth glint in the moonlight. She hoped it unnerved him to know she might have the blessing of the morning star during their meeting. His tribe was of the land of the sunset, and this was not his hour to crow. “Do you wish to continue this fool’s errand beneath her eye?”

Jamra paced to his left. Good. Let him walk on uncertain ground. She held her feet solid on her own patch of earth as he took a turn around her. “They are not worthy, the ones you wish to protect. They are weak. Powerless. Clay-footed mortals. They do not burn bright like us. They do nothing but populate the world with more dull-hearted mortal offspring. Their only grace is that their lives are short and without importance. Playthings to dangle a wisp of hope in front of, only to see how far you can lead them astray before they run themselves off a cliff.”

Jamra laughed, and the hot fire of his disdain scorched the edge of the roof tiles over their heads. “The world is better cleansed of them.” He stopped in front of her, his hot breath steaming in the cool morning air. “The sigil and dagger are the reason powerful families like ours were brought into the world, sister. We were created with a greater purpose in mind. Do you doubt this?”

What Sidra doubted was his sanity. She would not have said there could be too much fire in a person before meeting Jamra, but his heat was all charred earth and blackened cinders and always would be. Yet he was also simmering with fear. It flushed through his veins like gasoline that burned, foul and choking, with the reek of ruin.

“What I doubt is that I will ever see the dagger in your unfit hand.”

“Imagine,” he said, “the shining cities we will build for ourselves, once the mortals and all their mundane possessions are hurled into the crevice of chaos they’ve earned for themselves. Oh, but I forget. The stars say you will not survive to see our visionary future.”

“Perhaps you read the stars backwards. It is a common ailment of those who do not have sound vision.”

“You are trapped and bound. You will deliver the dagger or I swear I will burn this village until it resembles nothing but a charred scar on a southern-facing hillside.”

Her lip twitched of its own volition. “Not in this lifetime.”

“Then I will send you and everyone in this village into the next one by day’s end.” Jamra took a step nearer and exhaled his reeking breath in her face one last time. “I know the dagger is here, jinniyah. The vision was foretold to me in a dream. Discovering where your devious mind has hidden it is the only reason you are still alive.”

Jamra knelt and scooped up a handful of grit from the gutter, sand and sediment that had run off from the roofs and walls. He stirred his finger in the grit, a slow swirling motion, as he whispered a summoning spell.

Sidra knew the magic he called and backed away. “You cannot do this. Not here.” Her eyes searched the sky, and he laughed.

“They are coming,” he said and blew the dirt from his palm, invoking the fury of the fiery riders who drag the great haboob over the desert on their heels.

She’d not believed it possible, not in this land, not this far from the desert, but she felt the wind shift, smelled the sea air rise before the push, and knew he’d grown even more powerful than imagined.

“I warned you not to cross me.”

Jamra shimmered into morning fog and was gone, while Sidra fought the urge to run like a frightened child through the streets, warning the ignorant sleepers in their beds of their impending deaths.





CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX


A breeze rattled the windows of the shop, causing Elena to jump. Every little noise seemed to make her flinch once the clock ticked down to the final hour before dawn. She and Yanis had stayed up all night doing the prep work for their protection spell, and now he was meditating, calling his energy to him so they might speak the incantation at the opportune moment. He was a quiet man. Dedicated to his craft. And yet fear had taken the edge off his skill. Not his knowledge or his acuity with magic, but in the stature of his confidence. She’d very nearly succumbed to the same debilitating anxiety after her confrontation with a demon the year before, and so she understood his desire to center his energy now that the moment was nearly upon them.

She supposed she was busy doing the same thing, though to anyone else it might look like nibbling on pomegranate seeds and running her fingers over the pages of her grimoire. The book had served her all her life, or at least as long as she could remember. Grand-Mère had started it for her before she could write, adding notes and instructions that she would later amend or enhance when she had experience of her own. But as she looked at the subject matter, after having spent the evening scribbling magical symbols in orders she’d never imagined, she noticed gaps where its contents were limited. A mere portion of the world’s magic was represented in the book. Yes, it was the magic she understood and wielded with confidence, but those weren’t the only spells worth knowing in the world.