The next few days passed in a flash. After returning from the village, Jasper checked in with Gūla promptly to verify that the mage had survived. But as soon as the poison had been rooted out by one of the army's healer, she and her friend had holed themselves up with the unknown device and had yet to emerge, so there was nothing to do on that front but wait for the mage's analysis.

That was fine, though, as there were plenty of other things to do. He took a quick trip to Nūr-S̆ams̆a where he paid one of the tsussîm merchants to send a message to his uncle about the hidden crypt and then, organizing his troops, Jasper headed back to Ḫengal to work on rebuilding the damaged village and keep an eye out just in case the remaining s̆algu decided to return. At first, there was some grumbling amongst the soldiers, many of whom felt the task beneath them, but when he joined them in the work himself, most of the complaints ceased.

Surprisingly, the MVP of the operation was Erin. His pool of essence was still fairly low, forcing him to take frequent stops, but his ability to manipulate wood allowed him to do more in a few minutes to fix up the damaged homes than the soldiers could do in a few hours.

And by the end of the week, Jasper had heard back from his uncle. Rather than waste time sending letters, a small troop of soldiers had arrived, prepared to guard the entrance to the crypt. He diverted his troops’ efforts then to build a miniature fort above the entrance, with housing for the soldiers and a sturdy gate to prevent access. The fort was nearly completed when he finally received a message from Gūla: “Come see me.”

Leaving the others to continue their labor, Jasper rode back to camp. Gūla’s tents were pitched on the far side of Nūr-S̆ams̆a, so he was forced to ride through the entire breadth of the camp for the first time since the last round of fires. The encampment had rebuilt quickly, swamping out the charred tents for fresh ones bought at extortionary prices in the city and burying the hundreds of dead in consecrated mounds, but the signs of devastation were still there. The fresh white tents stood out starkly against the scorched earth, and Dapplegrim’s hooves thundered against the vitrified earth, where the worst of the fires had raged.

It took him a while to find Gūla’s tent, as he’d never been there before. Set in a minor encampment like Attalû’s, the relatively humble abode matched what she’d told him of her family. It was a bit larger than most of the tents in her encampment, with a smaller tent attached to its side that he guessed belonged to her child.

Gūla must have been watching for his arrival, for she emerged from the tent before he could even dismount. She greeted him with a cheery smile, but he sensed a cold fury emanating from her as he tied Dapplegrim to the hitching post. “What’s wrong?”

She shook her head. “Not out here.”

He followed her inside, and she closed the tent flap carefully behind him.

“I don’t think a bit of a fabric’s going to do much for us,” he started to say, but the Djinn shushed him. She pulled a small charm out of her pocket and dropped it on the ground. A bubble quickly emerged from it, passing through the two of them without issue until it filled up the entire space of the tent. “Oh, you got one of those,” Jasper grunted, recognizing the device he’d seen his uncle use the first time they’d met. “Why the secrecy?”

“Nas̆ru’s crossed a line I didn’t think he would, and if he’ll do that…it’s best to be safe,” she finished.

“I take it Sels̆arrat has figured out how the device worked,” he questioned.

Gūla made a face at the mention of the mage. “She eventually got around to it,” she replied shortly. “After, of course, prattling on about the far more important details of her incoming nuptials for the first days.”

“Upcoming nuptials?” Jasper raised an eyebrow. “In the middle of a campaign?”

“It doesn’t matter. She just…isn’t who I thought she was,” she sighed. “But when I finally got her to focus, she was eventually able to figure out how the device worked.” She led him to the edge of the tent where the red cylinder they’d confiscated from the saboteurs had been carefully suspended above a workbench. One side of the canister had been pried removed, and its contents had been arrayed below it, mostly a menagerie of brightly colored liquids in glass vials that Jasper didn’t recognize.

Something remained in the capsule, and Jasper crouched to get a better look at it. Up close, the object resembled a mid-sized chicken egg, if eggs were made of flesh rather than shell. The smell, though, was enough to make his eyes water. “What the hell is that?”

The cold fury ignited in her eyes again. “That is what’s left of a firebird.”

He lurched backward, pulling his face away from the object. “You mean, like one of you? A person?”

She smiled tightly. “Exactly. When I saw the flames that night, they were so similar to ours that I couldn’t fathom how he’d accomplished it. I thought maybe he’d figured out some alchemical trick to make it look like ours, or, in the worst-case scenario, that he’d paid one of our own to start the fires, but it never even crossed my mind he’d done this.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“And what exactly is this?” As he stared at the egg-shaped object, he noticed its middle seemed to so slightly wavering, almost as if it was breathing. “Is it alive?”

“Sort of,” she replied. “To make this, Nas̆ru’s men would have had to carve a chunk of flesh out of his body, while keeping him alive. You can’t see it from here, but a number of small glyphs have been carved into its bottom, tethering the charm to the prisoner.” She picked up a small metal rod from the table stamped with a glyph on the top and bottom. “This is what the mage was supposed to use to start it. You insert essence into the glyph on the top, and after a few minutes, the essence is transferred from the glyph on the top to the glyph on the bottom, and boom! The accelerants in the vials go up in flames.”

“This canister just had an extra step added. Instead of igniting the vials, the rod was pressed against this flesh charm. Sels̆arrat suspected the prisoner was being held in a vegetative state, so when the charm was pressed into the lump of flesh, his body responded automatically, sending our flames exploding out into the canister. With the added accelerants, the result was, well, what you saw.”

Jasper frowned, struggling to reconcile the image of the man he’d met with the image of the evil experimenter Gūla had just painted. “You really think Nas̆ru did all this?”

She shook her head. “No, Nas̆ru is a mediocre mage. His only real passion in life is horse racing and hunting which, I must admit, he is quite talented at, but there’s no way he came up with this on his own. I’d assumed these ‘Lords of Wēdīnīnu’ was just a fancy name for him and his friends, but this took some skill. Sels̆arrat couldn’t figure out how they managed to keep this flesh charm alive as long as it’s lasted, although you can tell from the smell it’s starting to rot.”

Jasper hummed thoughtfully. “That tells us something though: if the flesh is starting to rot, then whoever made this either can’t be too far away or they flew these canisters out on tsussîm. If they’d sent it any other way, it would take at least two weeks to make it here from the nearest city.”

“You’re right - and ever since the fires began, General Turzu has been having us record all tsussîm that fly in and out of the city,” she added. “If they sent it that way, there should be a paper trail.”

“Might be worth checking then, see if there’s any unusual trips,” he suggested. “And if not, then we know the alchemist is somewhere in the area.”

“I already have a suspect,” Gūla replied.

“That mage Turzu wanted to inspect the canister,” Jasper asked. He snapped his fingers irritably, “I can’t remember his name though.”

“Marḫasis,” she supplied. “But no, based on Sels̆arrat’s examination, I’m no longer sure he’s involved. Marḫasis is one of the most talented fire mages in Nas̆ru’s clan, but he’s never been particularly skilled at magical crafting. I don’t think he could have built this.”

He furrowed his brow. “Then who?”

“Selēmuq - the mage who was late from his trip back home. Another week has passed now and he still hasn’t reported back to camp. Even with the disruptions to travel caused by the eruption of Har Aqullu, it’s starting to look suspicious and unlike Marḫasis, Selēmuq has always had a knack for glyphs.”

“If he’s missing, that doesn’t exactly help us.”

A smug smile spread across her lips. “I said he hasn’t reported - I didn’t say he was missing.”

“You know where he is?”

“A general idea,” she replied. “Turzu may have been able to remove my subordinates, but he couldn’t touch the stipend S̆ars̆adūr is giving me. I bribed Nūr-S̆ams̆a’s guard to keep an eye out for a list of people, and three days ago, Selēmuq entered the city. He promptly headed for the noble district and hasn’t been seen since, but he’s had plenty of time to report in if he wanted to. Given what we know, either he’s a captive or he’s working with them.”

“So what next,” Jasper asked. “Do you want to go track him down?”

“Since we have two leads, it might be best if we split up. I can look over the travel logs for the tsussîm. They’re at headquarters and General Turzu is…”

“Not my biggest fan,” he finished her sentence.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Do you think you could check out the noble district?”

“I guess, but I’m not familiar with the city. Any idea where to start?”

“I’d start with my contact in the guards, Captain S̆ams̆atnu. He can point you in the direction.”

“Alright,” he agreed. “I’ll grab my party and we’ll check it out,” he said and turned to head out of the tent.

“I won’t recommend that,” she quickly called out.

He glanced back. “Why not?”

“Your friends aren’t Djinn.”

“I’ve noticed,” he replied drily. “And?”

“Nūr-S̆ams̆a isn’t like the places you’ve been. Almost every foreigner in the province goes to either S̆addānu or Dūr-Yarha, but there’s not many non-Djinn in the other cities; a few elves, who are always the wives of prominent nobles, and the very, very occasional traveler, but that’s it. If you enter the noble district with two foreigners, an elf and a Corsyth, people are going to notice.”

“Well, I'm not going into the lion's den alone,” he countered. “That’s a fool's errand.”

Her lips twisted in a grimace. “I suppose you’re right,” she agreed. “We’ll just have to progress our investigation more slowly. Wait-“ Her head snapped up. “What about that mage in your scouts you were telling me about? They weren’t a Djinn, weren’t they?”

It took him a second to place who she was referring to, and then he nodded. “Yeah, Erin is a Djinn. I’m not sure he's much of a fighter though, but maybe…” He hesitated a moment longer. “‘What if I just take one of them with me - if I take Ihra along, people will just assume she’s my consort, right?”

Something flickered in her eyes at the word ‘consort’ but the Djinn nodded unhappily. “I suppose if you only took Ihra and this Erin along, most people would just write you off as a minor noble.”

“Great,” he grinned. “Then I’ll track down this S̆ams̆atnu while you check out the logs, and we’ll meet back up. Sound good?”

“Wonderful,” she replied, without a shred of enthusiasm.

“Just wonderful,” she repeated, as she watched him hurry out of the tent.