9. RETURN TO THE CAPITAL

Jarith’s story

The Soaring Halls, the Upper Circle of the Capital City of Quur

The day of Vol Karoth’s escape, early morning

It wasn’t exactly a homecoming.

They didn’t return home, for one thing. Not to the Milligreest estate in the Upper Circle, nor to their home in Khorvesh. Qoran Milligreest ordered the mages with him to open up a portal straight to the Soaring Halls. The Milligreest estate wasn’t safe.

Jarith stared at the marble surfaces as if he’d never seen them before, which was true after a fashion. He’d never seen them like this, not as complex shapes but as interactions of matter and energy, less energetic, less vital than the souls around him with their fleshy coverings. Only important in that he was pretending to have a fleshy covering of his own and so had to limit himself to the sort of interactions made with muscle, skin, and nerves.

He remembered when that was all he knew, when that reality seemed normal. It was such a long time ago.1

Jarith didn’t react when his father placed a hand on his shoulder. His father knew Jarith’s presence, his survival, was an impossibility, but he was too eager to accept the miracle, pushing any questions aside with the desperation of a miner trying to shovel their way out of a cave-in.

Qoran Milligreest radiated a dozen emotions, all pulsing against each other: worry and relief and dread and love floating over an oddly persistent background haze of frustration and anger. Weakness and discomfort too, but that was fading with every step inside the palace walls.

“I’m going to find the empress and let her know the situation’s been handled,” Qoran said. “Do you want to tell your second that you’re back?”

“Please, no,” Kalindra protested. “Can we wait before we try to set my husband to work again? He needs food and rest. We all do.”

Qoran’s expression cracked. Guilt added itself to the heady mix already swarming around Jarith’s father. “You’re right,” he said. “Of course you’re right. There’s a private banquet hall down that corridor, left-hand side, second door from the end. You should all eat something, and then we’ll find you quarters.”

“Is Eledore all right?” Jarith hoped he’d managed to convey the right amount of sincerity and worry. He was certain he loved his sister. She’d been on the List.²

Qoran nodded. “She’s here too.” His mouth twisted. “It’s no safer down in Khorvesh. Stonegate Pass was overrun.”

Jarith nodded. He was aware, and in ways that would have horrified his father.

“I’d like to see her,” Jarith said.

“Of course.” Qoran stared at his son, searching. It probably all seemed too good to be true.

Which it was, but not for the reasons his father thought. Jarith wasn’t a mimic. He wasn’t someone using an illusion. He was the worst of all possible outcomes: a shape-changed demon, just not one pretending to be Qoran’s son. Unfortunately, his father was unlikely to make that distinction. Demons were evil. They always had been. It was a reliable, predictable truth.

“I have to take care of talking to the empress first. We’ll find your sister when I return.” Qoran Milligreest gave his son one more clap on the shoulder before he left.

Leaving Jarith, Kalindra, and their son, Nikali, standing in the middle of a hallway, near a window overlooking a courtyard.

After the high general left, Kalindra took Jarith’s hand. “Are you going to remain like this?” Her voice was full of dread and hope in equal measure. Her question didn’t refer to his physical position. She was asking if he planned to continue looking human.

He wished he could tell her yes, but that would have been a lie. “It’s not—” Jarith paused and made a second attempt. “This body isn’t real. It’s a shell. I can’t maintain it indefinitely. I’m not that strong yet.” Jarith gently squeezed her hand back. He knew how much this hurt. More than if he hadn’t appeared in a simulation of his old form at all. The aura of grief and pain swirled around her in a heady fume.

She closed her eyes and cradled a wide-eyed Nikali closer to her bosom.

“I won’t be gone forever,” Jarith promised. “I know how to do it now. I’ll come back.”

He knew it was even possible to come back in a more permanent form. Janel had said she knew of ways. He didn’t think he could become mortal again—nothing could return him to that—but he’d be able to pretend.

Jarith wanted to pretend, if only for the sake of his family, for the sake of Kalindra and Nikali.

His musing was interrupted by Kalindra, who was now staring about them with bemusement. “What is going on here, anyway? This can’t all be because of the attack on Devors.”

Jarith followed her gaze. He’d been distracted when they first arrived, but now that she’d drawn his attention to the matter, he saw what he’d missed on first arrival. An encampment of Quuros soldiers sat in the middle of the imperial palace, their numbers so large that they’d spilled out into every available courtyard and all the grounds outside. But that … that wasn’t everything.

Jarith took a step forward. The emotions.

Even before he’d become a demon, Jarith had been well acquainted with the emotional flavor of a military camp—the boredom, the anticipation, the excitement, and the fear that he associated with preparing for a battle. This was different. He felt rage. Fury. Bitter, resentful anger. A desire for revenge strong enough to verge into a lust for cruelty.

And this wasn’t from one person. This was from every person—a seething, shifting, bubbling well of red-hot aggression and hate. Stranger still, the vast majority of it wasn’t directed at each other. That turbulence was firmly pointed outward, toward forces outside the camp. Toward the enemy.

Whomever the enemy happened to be.

“Something’s happened,” Jarith murmured. “Something bad.” This couldn’t possibly have been natural. The emotions were too uniform, too ubiquitous.

His wife gave him a fond look. “Congratulations. You just summarized the last two months.”

“This is different,” he said. Try as he might, however, he couldn’t discern why it was different, why the soldiers were behaving this way. Not without delving deep through memories, which he couldn’t do without being discovered. Something must have happened. Something more than a Hellmarch and political upheaval.

“Food, Papa? I’m hungry,” Nikali said with all the hopeful longing of a toddler who’d been relegated to eating Devors Monastery boiled vegetables and rice porridge for weeks.

“Yes, food. Let’s find you food,” Jarith said. He was every bit as hungry as Nikali, but his banquet was all around him. He needed to leave before all these raw, red emotions proved too much temptation and forced him to give himself away.

“Yay!”

He led Kalindra down the hall as his father had instructed. The room beyond was a private dining room, elegant and luxurious, large enough to feed several hundred people in royal-appropriate style. It had been converted into an officer’s mess, with nothing about it elegant at all. Currently, it was only populated by a few stragglers—people grabbing a bite on the way out the door. It felt like deployment, like the whole army was about to start marching. The emotions here were no less poisonous than the ones Jarith had left behind, but there were fewer people, which made the situation more tolerable.

No sooner had he stepped through the door than a loud crash echoed as someone dropped their tray—plate, food, and all. Jarith recognized the man responsible, someone he’d worked with before. A good man, as he recalled. Gimor? Something like that.

Evidently, he remembered Jarith too.

“You’re alive!” Gimor exclaimed. “By all the gods, Thaena Returned you? I hadn’t heard.” The soldier ignored the food he’d just splattered all over the ground to focus on Jarith.

Kalindra held out a hand. “We just came back. Food first, then questions.”

The man flushed, flinched backward. “You’re right. My apologies. I should know better. It’s just there’s been so few Returned, and we all assumed—” He didn’t finish the sentence, but an angry, determined expression slid in to replace the uncertainty. “Now that you’re back, we’ll really make those bastards pay.” Anger slashed across the man with razor flashes of crimson.

Fortunately, Jarith’s son wasn’t paying attention. Or at least, he wasn’t paying attention to the Quuros officer. “Food!” Nikali leaned out of Kalindra’s grip and made gimme motions to the plates being carried out to tables.

A feeling bubbled up out of Jarith, nameless and foreign until it finally escaped his lips as laughter. He paused, uncertain and surprised.

Kalindra pulled him over to a table, where the people who worked the kitchens brought them breakfast.

No one mobbed them, but Jarith felt how they wanted to. They wanted to find out how he was, to tell him everything that had happened. So much had happened.

Kalindra didn’t have his ability to sense thoughts and emotions, but he knew that she was listening to conversations swirling around them while she fussed over their son and wiped his face and hands. The officers coming and going spoke in low whispers over their meals, like they would be in trouble if the wrong people overheard. They wondered when they would be sent off to Marakor. They wondered what would happen if they caught up with Havar D’Aramarin. They spent a great deal of time cursing all the Royal Houses in general and House D’Aramarin in particular.

They said it was a shame that Empress Tyentso hadn’t managed to kill them all.

That was honestly the oddest thing out of everything. He had to look twice to confirm his suspicions: these weren’t Khorveshan men. The time since his death had been measured in weeks and lifetimes, but it was too soon for the average Quuros soldier to have abandoned the beliefs they’d grown up nursing. The hatred and venom, the conviction that the only ones worthy to serve by their sides were the ones who looked like they did. He should have heard someone complaining about the insult of taking orders from a woman. Then perhaps one of the Khorveshan men would tell that soldier to shut up. Someone would make a puerile joke about where a woman’s real place was. A fight would start, of varying success depending on who was present.

Nothing. No one said a word against Tyentso. They only spoke her praises.

Jarith leaned close to his wife. “These men are under an enchantment.”

She startled and then stared at him, wide-eyed. She didn’t respond except to give him a single, terse nod.

It was the only explanation he could imagine. They had to be under some kind of spell. Something subtle enough to escape immediate notice. Something powerful enough to be able to affect hundreds of soldiers—no, thousands of soldiers—simultaneously and for great lengths of time. Days? Weeks? He had no way to know how long this had been occurring. Presumably not longer than his existence as a demon.

He liked to think he would have noticed. Maybe that was just him being naïve.

His son, Nikali, didn’t see any of this. He babbled cheerfully all through dinner, making delighted comments about the food, the soldiers, the mage-lights, the carvings on the walls. He only paused after he’d eaten his breakfast, as his eyes began to droop and he started to tire.

Finally, Kalindra bundled him up into her arms. “Let’s see if we can track down those quarters your father promised us.”

Jarith was still studying the waves of emotion circulating the room, but he nodded in response. “Yes,” he said. “And then I’ll need to leave for a while.”

Kalindra gave him a heartbroken look.

“I know.” He kissed her on the temple. “It’s only for a while.”

**You know I’m needed elsewhere. Hopefully, I won’t be gone long.**

Her lips pressed together in a thin line. “I just wish I could help,” she murmured, but Kalindra made no other argument. She didn’t try to talk him out of it. They’d all agreed on this before leaving Shadrag Gor.

He pulled her into his arms, her back resting against his chest, while she in turn held an increasingly sleepy Nikali. He let himself sink back against the chair, looking weary, like someone it would be best not to disturb. Jarith glared at anyone who didn’t get the hint until they went away again.

Finally, his father returned.

Such an odd idea: family. How much time, energy, attention, love, did one really owe people whose major contribution to one’s existence was giving one’s souls a temporary container? How much did family matter when their links were the most tenuous, faltering chains in shackles that no longer bound? Jarith had become a stranger to the body of his birth, and he was no more the “son” of Qoran Milligreest’s incorporeal souls than that of any man, pulled at random from a crowd. His “mother,” Jira, had given birth to a physical body Jarith no longer used. In theory, these people meant nothing to him.

And yet …

And yet, as he watched his father—grumpy, exhausted, awash in irritation, anger, and worry—cross the room, all Jarith could think about was how much he loved his father. How much he loved his whole family. How they were not inconsequential at all.

Maybe that was the problem with most demons. They’d convinced themselves that if the physical shells of existence didn’t matter, the emotions engendered by those shells mattered even less. They’d told themselves that such attachments were irrelevant weaknesses, useful only to be exploited and devoured.

But they were wrong. They were all so wrong. The opposite was true.

Qoran Milligreest reached their table and smiled—a tiny, wan candle-flicker of a smile—as he looked down on his daughter-in-law and grandson.

He whispered, “You should wake her. I’ll take you somewhere you all can rest.”

Jarith kissed his wife’s hair and then touched her shoulder. “Kalindra, it’s time to go.”

She rubbed her eyes as she stood, picking up their son as if she hadn’t been asleep a second earlier. “Right. Let’s go.”

“Don’t … don’t worry about anything,” Jarith’s father said. He showed them down a succession of hallways so richly decorated it was a wonder none of the soldiers had tried to go after the embedded filigree and encrusted jewels with a knife. “Just rest for a few days and you can join back up with the army later. Kalindra and Nikali can stay here. It’s the safest place. Everything’s just very … tense … right now.”

Jarith didn’t think his expression changed, but his father must have noticed something. “What is it?”

Jarith said to his father, “Are you taking us to the empress’s private quarters?”

Qoran Milligreest made a face. “I know it’s a bit much, but I have no other place to put you. Eledore’s already there. It’s safe. Tyentso’s only here for a few more hours before she takes the army south to Khorvesh. You might not even see her.”

Jarith huffed. In theory, this was fine—assuming Kihrin had done what he said he would and, more importantly, that Tyentso had believed him.

If Tyentso hadn’t believed him, though, such a reunion might prove unpleasant.

Kalindra stopped walking. “Sir,” she said to Qoran. “I haven’t seen my husband in months. Surely you can find someplace for us that’s reasonably quiet and that we don’t have to share with your daughter? We’ll only too happily drop Nikali off for Eledore to watch, but—”

“Qoran, move away from him.”

Jarith turned his head. A woman stood in the hallway ahead. She was dressed richly, in dark colors, but her eyes betrayed her identity. Solid black, because she had been a D’Lorus before she grabbed the Crown with both hands. Tyentso wasn’t looking at Qoran.

She was staring at Jarith with an unfriendly expression on her face.

Damn.

To Jarith’s senses, she was in the center of a yowling hurricane of tenyé and more. Not just magic but all the emotions he’d been sensing ever since they’d arrived swirled around her, as though she were not just the Empress of Quur but an avatar of war. She wore the Crown of Quur on her head and in her hand held the Scepter—which she pointed in his direction.

He knew in that moment why Thurvishar had insisted he avoid Tyentso until her loyalties were confirmed. Because the woman knew what he truly was. Because if she hadn’t believed Kihrin, then she was a threat. With just a single glance, Tyentso had identified him as a demon.

And the emperor of Quur’s first job—some would argue their only real job—was to kill demons.

**I’m sorry.**

Jarith vanished in a swirl of darkness and smoke a split second before a beam of lethal energy screamed through the space where he had stood.