Ruban marvelled at how completely the atmosphere at the office had changed overnight. Whereas yesterday they had been harried and overworked, bogged down by too many cases and too little time, today everything seemed to be moving almost effortlessly, as though someone had breathed new life into the very air of the stuffy old red-brick structure.

They had won an important battle, and consequently, it seemed, felt that much closer to winning the war. Ruban felt it too. For the first time in a long time, he wasn’t beating impotently against an impenetrable wall, or waging a doomed campaign against an invincible foe. Finally, he thought he was beginning to achieve some sense of direction in this case, some much-needed clarity about the path ahead. He had barely had a wink of sleep last night, after watching all the various news broadcasts screaming themselves hoarse about the leaked video and everything that it brought with it, but somehow he felt oddly refreshed this morning; lighter too, as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

He still wasn’t entirely sure how he was meant to deal with random strangers coming up to him and asking to take a selfie with him, or with the half dozen women who had waylaid him and insisted on weeping at him on his way over to the office that morning. Vikram had been right: it was like it had been just after the Parliament attack last year, only worse. Way worse. Still, he figured that if it meant he could keep the SifCo case and see it through to the end, he would find a way to deal with the rest.

Faiz and Dai had volunteered to go deal with the latest attack on a government warehouse in the NCR along with some of the local Hunters, so that the rest of the team could stay back at the office and research the new developments in the SifCo case. Which was exactly what they were doing now, assisted by generous amounts of strong coffee and takeaway Zainian noodles.

Putting an enormous pile of old files down on his desk with a thump and waving away the resultant dust clouds, Rinku huffed. “These are all the records I could find about Tauheen’s activities during the last century. I wouldn’t put too much stock by them, though. Most of it’s just rumours and speculation, from some of the more…imaginative channels and publications. More like UFO sightings than proper investigative reporting. And even when there’s solid proof – like pictures and stuff – nobody really seemed to know what she was up to or why. Again, it’s just more wild speculation.”

Simani groaned. “You shouldn’t have killed that Aeriel, Ruban. The one that took the disk before Tauheen. Do we even know its name yet? It must be somewhere in the system.” She turned to look expectantly at Rinku. “If it’d been alive we could’ve interrogated it about Tauheen’s location. Not to mention her endgame. I still can’t figure out what the fuck Aeriels could want with sif and sifblade formulas. It’d be one thing to simply destroy it; that I could understand. But to go through all this trouble to steal the thing. It just doesn’t make any goddamned sense.”

Ruban scowled. “It’s not like I had a lot of time to think about it. I hadn’t gone there prepared for a Hunt, you know. It was more instinct than forethought, everything that happened after that first blast in the west wing.”

“It’s a good thing he killed him too,” Ashwin piped up from the back where he was pouring himself more coffee, inundating the liquid with spoonfuls of sugar. The sight made Ruban want to gag. Hema’s cat purred in agreement, rubbing herself against the Zainian’s leg with languorous satisfaction. “Tauheen herself was bad enough. It would’ve been worse if she’d had help. Besides, he wouldn’t have told you anything even if you had managed to capture him. After all, if anything they say about the Aeriel Queen is true, I’d be more scared of her than anything they could do to me in Jahagrad, don’t you think?”

“Not that your unique ability to identify the proper pronoun for every Aeriel isn’t overwhelmingly helpful, but at the moment you have more important things to answer for, wouldn’t you say?” drawled Ruban, his eyes fixed on one of the files Rinku had just dumped on his desk. “Like why you felt the irresistible need to bare your soul to Casia Washi on national TV last night without consulting any of us first.”

Ashwin marched over to the main gallery indignantly, putting his cup down on Faiz’s desk and plopping down into his chair in a flurry of loose hair and flowing coat. The cat gave an incensed squawk at being thus ignored and planted herself huffily upon Hema’s desk, thumping her tail at Ashwin. In a way, Ruban understood her feelings. The man could be a veritable pain in the ass when he wanted to be.

He hadn’t come back to the flat last night, so Ruban supposed he had stayed over with friends at WNN after the interview, probably Casia Washi herself, though he had never thought they were quite that close. At any event, he hadn’t asked. A side-effect of the sleepover, though, seemed to be that wherever he had been, Ashwin hadn’t managed to procure a ribbon to tie up his hair in its usual braid. Consequently, it now covered his back almost like a dark curtain, falling right down to his hips. Ruban imagined it would make moving around mighty awkward, with your hair getting under your butt every time you tried to sit down. Well, nobody had ever accused Zainian nobility of pragmatism.

“It wasn’t like I went up to her asking to be interviewed, you know,” Ashwin said, scowling at Ruban. “She asked me to appear on the show, so I did. Especially since she already had the video, they all did. So I figured, what harm can it really do to explain it all properly? Better than all of them jumping to their own conclusions and raising another shitstorm around the case. Besides, Miss Casia had helped me a lot when I first came to this country, y’know. She’s a friend. I couldn’t just refuse her request out of hand. Anyway,” he paused mid-rant to look at Ruban through narrowed eyes. “I don’t see what you’ve got to complain about, all things considered.”

“Well, even if we don’t yet know the identity of the dead Aeriel, we still have the live one to think about,” Hema said, interrupting the argument, probably sensing that it was not one that was likely to end anytime soon without external intervention.

“What, you mean Tauheen?” asked Rinku. “I’d say that’s all we’ve been thinking about lately.”

Hema shook her head, running her fingers absently through Kitty’s lush grey fur. The cat rolled over promptly, an unspoken command for a belly-rub. “No. I mean the one that attacked the west wing. The one that created the distraction to get Ruban away from the disk in the first place.”

Rinku frowned. “I think that was Tauheen too, though. She could have created the distraction while the other one sneaked in and stole the disk. She probably hadn’t counted on Ruban to realise that it was a ploy and return as fast as he did. When her minion died, she came in to finish the job herself.”

“No. Hema’s right,” Ruban said, flipping through one of the files on his desk with some interest. “It couldn’t have been her. Tauheen I mean. Her attack on the east wing was strong enough to blow a large chunk of the wall clean off, reduce it to nothing more than rubble and dust. That would have cost her a ton of energy. She couldn’t have done that less than ten minutes after the west wing blast, which wasn’t anything to scoff at either. It would have drained her completely, to the point of utter exhaustion. Which obviously wasn’t the case, since she fought us both and got away with barely a scratch to show for it.”

“Well, that’s not entirely true. Besides, this is Tauheen, remember?” insisted Rinku. “She’s not an ordinary Aeriel. She’s stronger than normal Aeriels, faster too. Maybe she can do things they can’t.”

“Any one of those two attacks would’ve drained any Aeriel other than an X-class,” Hema said contemplatively, pausing to type something into her computer before bringing her focus back to the conversation. “They were both very powerful blasts. Two of them simultaneously wouldn’t have been physiologically possible for most Aeriels, even the X-class. Tauheen may be a powerful Aeriel, perhaps even the most powerful. But she’s still a living breathing creature with quantifiable abilities. There are limits to what she can do, what any Aeriel can do. There had to have been a third Aeriel who attacked the west wing.”

“It might have been the Aeriel known as Swaheer,” Ruban said, pointing at one of the documents spread out in front of him. “It says here that it was captured some sixty years ago from Ibanta during an Aeriel attack on one of their seasonal festivals. That wasn’t anything major from what I can tell, but looks like it was in Tauheen’s inner circle before she pulled a Houdini on her own crew and fucked off. It was also one of the Aeriels who escaped Jahagrad during the riots over the Justifiable Homicide Bill last year. I’m beginning to think all that was just a ploy for Tauheen to gather troops for whatever the hell she’s doing now.”

“It couldn’t have been Swaheer,” Ashwin said unexpectedly with a distracted shake of his head. “She was little more than Tauheen’s handmaid before the Rebellion, insofar as the Aeriel monarchy had adopted human hierarchal structures. She’s nowhere near powerful enough to have caused a flare blast.”

“What?” said Simani, looking at Ashwin as if he had lost his mind. Personally, Ruban was of the opinion that the boy had never had it in the first place.

Clearly caught off guard, Ashwin shook his head as if to clear it. “I mean, from what I’ve heard about this Swaheer back home – she was involved in some attacks in Zaini before being captured in your country – she is not a powerful enough Aeriel to have caused a flare blast. There’s mention of her in most of the accounts of the Rebellion; apparently she was close to the Queen, part of her inner circle as you said. But not powerful enough to do something like this. From what the books say, she was more of a messenger than a fighter during the Rebellion anyway.”

“Umm…what’s a flare blast?” Rinku asked, sounding profoundly confused.

Ruban snorted. “Some fancy Zainian term for a fire-shell, I suppose.”

“There are different kinds of energy attacks, Rinku,” Hema explained, taking pity on the baffled young woman. “There’s the simple kind that you see during Hunts – it causes a powerful explosion. Then there are the fire-shells. Or as Ashwin said flare blasts.” Turning to Ruban, she continued calmly. “And no, flare blast isn’t a Zainian word at all. It’s old-Vandran, in fact. It’s what fire-shells were called back during the time of the Rebellion or even before. Weren’t you paying attention in Dawad’s History and Culture classes?”

“But what’s the difference?” asked Rinku plaintively.

“Ordinary energy-shells cause an explosion. Then they’re gone,” Ashwin began hurriedly before anyone else could continue the explanation. To Ruban, he looked rather flustered, like he had inadvertently said something he hadn’t meant to and was now trying to cover up for it. “There are no after-effects to the explosion. Flare blasts also cause an explosion, of course, hence the ‘blast’. But the difference is that the shell is so powerful it retains heat and some residual energy even after the explosion is over. It heats the surroundings, often causing a fire in the vicinity of the original explosion.”

“And there was a fire in the west wing,” whispered Rinku, comprehension dawning on her face. “I saw it on TV. They kept playing that clip – the burning SifCo building.”

“Exactly,” said Ashwin. “Well, it takes a lot more energy to use a fire-shell than a normal energy-shell. There aren’t many Aeriels powerful enough to do that anyway. Of those that could, most left for Vaan with the other Aeriels after the Rebellion. On earth there couldn’t be more than five or six that have the ability, including Tauheen.”

“Really?” asked Rinku, her eyes wide. “Why would such powerful Aeriels run away when –”

Interrupting whatever Rinku had been about to say, Hema repeated: “Only five or six on earth? How can you possibly know that? How would you even know whether or not an Aeriel is capable of producing a fire-shell unless it actually does so?”

Ashwin shrugged, nonchalant. “My grandma – on my father’s side – was very interested in Aeriels, their history, biology and so forth. Did a fair bit of research on those sorts of things too. Though personally, I could never see the appeal. She taught me quite a lot about these things back when I was a small child and couldn’t run away fast enough,” he sighed sadly.

“The tragedy of it,” agreed Simani, her tone sardonic.

Ruban could barely hear anything they were saying anymore. Their voices seemed distant, tinny – as if heard through echoes. All he could see was fire; he could feel the flames licking at his boots. The ear-splitting sound of the explosion. Being thrown back against the garden wall; shattered, jagged debris crashing all around him. And then, his vision swimming, his legs shaking as he tried to half-run, half-crawl back towards the gutted house: the fire.

His home burning down before his eyes, engulfed in horrific, unnatural flames. Miki’s terrified screams fading into the cackling, gluttonous inferno as the flames rose higher and higher. Burning, searing pain in the soles of his feet as he tried to push through the fiery debris into whatever was left of his house, his family. Then, the darkness…

“Only five or six Aeriels on earth that can cause a flare blast?” he heard himself say. His voice sounded distant and disconnected even to his own ears, like a stranger speaking through his mouth.

Ashwin frowned, squinting at him doubtfully. “Umm, yeah. Approximately. There weren’t that many to begin with and most of them left earth centuries ago. As far as I know, anyway,” he added, as if in an afterthought.

“Who are they?” Ruban asked. Some tiny part of his brain was surprised by how guttural his voice sounded.

Ashwin looked increasingly unsure with every passing second, glancing at Simani for guidance. Ruban saw that his partner had her lips pressed in a thin, unhappy line, but at the moment he couldn’t bring himself to care.

“Who are they?” he snarled, taking a threatening step towards the boy. It was only then that he realised that he had, at some point during the conversation, left his chair and was now advancing slowly but steadily towards Ashwin, who looked rather like a deer caught in the headlights.

“Ruban,” he heard Simani say, her voice stern but with a hint of fear in it. Hema was on her feet, looking warily between him and Ashwin. Her fingers wavered uncertainly over her holster as Kitty growled softly beside her, all her fur standing on end.

Ruban forced himself to stop moving. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath. “Please,” he said finally. He opened his eyes and forced himself to look at the Zainian. He could see Ashwin’s eyes go wide, but the boy stayed still, apparently drawing on some heretofore hidden reserve of courage to keep himself from making a run for it. “Can you tell me the names of the Aeriels who can conjure these…flare blasts? We knew not all the Aeriels could do it, but we didn’t…we had no idea that the number was so small. It’s important that we know; for the safety of the people, for the safety of this country.” He could feel himself getting closer, to finally finding the creature that had murdered his father, his Miki. He could almost feel the sifblade in his hand, being driven deep into the flesh of the monster that had taken everything from him. Driven deep and twisted. Anticipatory adrenaline rushed through his veins.

“I-I don’t know the names, exactly,” Ashwin stammered at last, keeping a wary eye on him. “My grandmother may have left records. But-but I’ll have to check, of course. Call the household, ask the staff to look through our libraries.”

After a moment, Ruban nodded. He had waited eight years. He could wait a few more days. “How long will you need?”

***

Biting into the luscious kebab dripping with sauce, Vikram moaned happily. “You should come stay with us, Ashwin,” he said, beaming up at the grinning young man who was currently passing him his coffee. “You’re wasted on Ruban.”

“I agree,” Shwaan sighed, shaking his head. “Your friend does not recognise the value of true talent.”

“I think I’d recognise it more if you didn’t see fit to destroy my kitchen in the process of demonstrating it,” Ruban drawled, taking a sip of his coffee before returning his attention to the kebab.

“Can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, my friend,” Vikram retorted, stealing an onion from his wife’s plate, who made to stab his hand with her fork.

“And this is why you’re a bad influence on Sri,” she declared, stealing her onion back and popping it into her mouth.

“Speaking of Sri, don’t his mid-term holidays start this week?” asked Ruban, glancing at his partner. “What’s the plan this year?”

“None for this month,” Vikram replied around a mouthful of kebab when his wife proved too focused on her food to indulge in small-talk. “None for us, at least. He’s off to some coding camp to learn how to be the Jack Sparrow of computers or something like that. Next month we’re thinking of paying a visit to my mother in Alari. See how she’s getting on with the new neighbours and all that. Plus it’ll be cooler there. Less wet too, if luck’s on our side.”

“Well it’s just as well, I suppose,” Simani said before shoving a forkful of baked vegetables into her mouth. “It’s not like we’re getting a leave anytime soon, what with the SifCo case and everything. Good thing Sri has something to keep him occupied this year.”

Ruban hummed. “Any headway on the names Ashwin gave?” he asked at length, draining his coffee cup and rising to carry the dishes to the sink.

“Yes,” said Simani grimly, her tone suggesting there was more to that statement than she was willing to divulge at the moment.

“Lots,” said her husband enthusiastically, seemingly sharing none of his wife’s reservations. “More than you’d ever believe possible. Dear lord, but these things have some serious blood on their hands. I’m surprised nobody made the connection before now. Everywhere any of them has gone in the past six centuries, it’s been nothing but bloodshed and hellfire. Kudos to your grandma for noticing the pattern, Ashwin. She certainly did more than all of the IAW put together.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” demanded Ruban.

“Raqaa, Reivaa, Kafeen, Saekaa and Sakeen,” Simani listed calmly, rattling off the names Shwaan had given her and Ruban the day after their conversation at the Hunter Quarters.

Shwaan hadn’t been lying, exactly, when he had said that he would have to call home to find out the names of the Aeriels still on earth who could cause flare blasts. He had been little more than a child when they’d been driven off the Mortal Realm, and he did not much remember who had fought on which side of the conflict. So after work that day he had left the flat to go meet ‘friends in the city’ – earning a death-glare from Ruban in the process; he supposed the man was still hung up on the Casia Washi incident – and winged it to Vaan. A short chat with his sister and a pleasant reunion with General Shehzaa and Minister Qwaan later, he had a list of names for the Hunters and a rather satisfying twinge in his woefully neglected wings.

He could’ve given them more, of course. Safaa could have given them the entire history of each one of those five Aeriels reaching back over millennia. But Shwaan didn’t want to raise any more suspicion than was absolutely necessary, particularly since these days he could almost feel Ruban glaring a hole into his skull whenever he thought that Ashwin wasn’t looking. It was as if he thought he could read Shwaan’s mind if only he stared hard enough.

He supposed it was natural for the Hunter to be a little suspicious after everything that had happened; he wouldn’t be very good at his job if he wasn’t. Still, it put Shwaan on edge, the constant scrutiny, and he preferred to avoid that feeling when nobody was at an immediate risk of decapitation. And if the Hunters had to work a little harder for the information, well, he did feed them kebabs to make up for it. Shwaan considered his debt more than repaid.

Starting out of this pleasant reverie, Shwaan noticed that Simani was still talking. “They were all part of Tauheen’s inner circle during the Rebellion, apparently. After it was over, they went underground for a few decades along with the Queen, when all the other Aeriels were fleeing to Vaan. At the time, many thought they had gone with the rest. Ashwin was right in that most of the more powerful Aeriels in Tauheen’s court left earth after the Rebellion, so there were only a few left that could use fire-shells. They resurfaced again about three to four decades after the main exodus, but not together. Not at the same time and not in the same place.”

Vikram was nodding vigorously. “I did some research on the five of them after Sim told me about your findings. Apparently, after the Rebellion, they spread out all over the planet, moving from one place to another and leaving a trail of blood wherever they went. Near as I can tell, they were sort of the generals of what remained of Tauheen’s army, which wasn’t much after the exodus. But still, their power was significant. And for the first few years they seemed to operate mostly as the Queen’s assassins more than anything else, picking off the leaders or main actors of the Rebellion when they could, attacking the newly formed human governments. It was more petty revenge than any coherent plan of action, from what I could see of the records. The Aeriel named Raqaa was apparently the one who killed Founding Father Allahar Yan. Some of the records say she was Hunted down and killed by his bodyguards after the assassination but it isn’t certain if that’s true or not. She might still be alive.”

Seeing Ruban’s expression, Vikram laughed. “And I know it’s a ‘she’ because apparently, people of the late Middle Ages were better at guessing the gender of Aeriels than modern society. All the records refer to her as female.”

“As time went on though, they became more ambitious,” Simani said, continuing from where her husband had left off. “At different points in time, they were each involved in large scale terrorist attacks in almost every part of the world. Mass murders, assassinations, hostage situations, guerrilla attacks in Kanbar during the Tribal Mutiny – there doesn’t seem to be much they haven’t done by way of mayhem creation. Of course, the records aren’t perfect; they could easily have been involved in other things that we will never know about. All we really have to go on is the documented use of flare blasts in any given incident, which is sketchy at best. But still, the point is, these five collectively probably have a larger body count to their names than half the rest of the Aeriel population combined.”

“So which one of them attacked SifCo, then?” Ruban asked, pressing two fingers to his forehead with a grimace.

“Now here’s the thing,” began Vikram, clapping his hands together eagerly. “Based on a detailed study of the available data on all five of the Aeriels and the average intensity and style of their attacks, statistically examined, compared with the intensity of the attack at SifCo, I have arrived at the conclusion that the latter could have been perpetrated by two of the five–”

“Reivaa and Sakeen,” said Simani, cutting Vikram off with a wave of her hand. “What he’s saying is that the style of attack we saw at SifCo matches theirs, insofar as we have samples to match with. It’s not perfect, but it’s as close as we can get.”

“It couldn’t have been Sakeen,” Shwaan said, cursing himself for not having thought of this earlier. It had slipped his mind completely. But of course, Sakeen was dead. One of Shehzaa’s patrol units had intercepted him trying to sneak into Vaan a couple of decades ago, leading to a minor skirmish on the dimensional border. It was sorted once Shehzaa reached the troubled area and summarily gutted the trespasser.

Still, it had been something of a scandal. Apparently, Safaa had wanted an interrogation and Shehzaa had wanted a day off and it had all gotten rather interesting before Safaa – with her usual finesse – had put a dampener on the whole thing and banned summary executions in all cases other than open warfare.

Still, tiresome sisters aside, he should have connected the name on the list to the incident at the border before handing it to the Hunters. He kicked himself mentally even as Vikram piped up in all his scholarly enthusiasm, “Why not?”

“Ah, um that’s because,” Shwaan stammered, trying to think of a good excuse. “Umm, well actually, I shouldn’t be telling you this. It’s top secret information you see, not something I should know myself, strictly speaking.” He tried his best to look nervous and out of his depth. At the moment, it wasn’t particularly hard.

“What is it?” Ruban prompted impatiently.

“Ah well actually, Sakeen couldn’t have attacked SifCo ’cause he’s…currently in the custody of the Zainian government. He has been in Zaini for almost twenty years now.”

“If he’s in a prison in Zaini, why would that be a secret?” Simani asked, frowning.

Shwaan sighed. He could have simply told them, of course, that Sakeen was dead. But the killing of an Aeriel, by Zaini or any other country, would be a matter of public knowledge. There was nothing to be secretive about there. And if a human government did not kill an Aeriel, who else did? Unfortunately, though, this also held true for the imprisonment of Aeriels. Countries competed – if unofficially – to see who could kill or imprison more Aeriels at the end of every year. A powerful Aeriel lodged in a Zainian prison would be a matter of national pride, something they would be eager to show off, not hide. Shwaan coughed. “Not in prison. Not officially, at least. He’s being held at…uh…the Royal Laboratory.”

“They’re experimenting on him,” Vikram breathed, his eyes widening with comprehension. “Of course, of course. I see now. Obviously, they wouldn’t want to publicise that, I suppose. No more than the IAW wanted to publicise the reinforced sifblade formula. That makes sense. Don’t worry, Ashwin, your secret’s safe with us. We understand the kind of risk you’re taking, trusting us with such sensitive information. But are you sure that Sakeen is out of the picture? No way he could have been involved with this?”

“Positive,” said Shwaan, breathing a sigh of relief.

“Then that just leaves Reivaa. Tauheen’s second-in-command,” Vikram smiled.

“What?” Ruban demanded, leaning forward in his chair to get a closer look at his friend.

Simani nodded. “It’s true. All the pre-Rebellion texts call her that, the Queen’s second-in-command. Apparently, Reivaa was Tauheen’s right hand during her rule, the commander of her army and…one of her most ruthless enforcers. After Tauheen lost the throne, Reivaa went underground with the others. Of the five, she’s been the most active over the years, from what we can tell.”

“And also the most murderous,” Vikram added from the kitchen, where he was helping Shwaan put the dishes away.

“Yes. Apart from Tauheen, she’s the most powerful Aeriel in existence. It wouldn’t be easy to take her down, if we ever manage to find her in the first place,” sighed Simani. “The SifCo attack matches her documented style, although it was perhaps a little less intense than her usual fare. Less destructive. But that may have been because it was only meant as a distraction.”

“I’ll have to tell uncle to put together a taskforce and begin the search as soon as possible,” Ruban murmured, his eyes distant. Turning to his partner, he asked: “What more do we have to go on?”

“Very little, really. Any images of her from the pre-Rebellion era have either been lost or deliberately destroyed, though it’s hard to tell which at this point,” Vikram said, dropping into the couch beside Ruban and stretching his legs. “Goddamn self-righteous Rebels. What purpose does it serve to destroy artwork anyway? The point is, all we know of her are generic descriptions by historians, most of whom had never actually laid eyes on her, and a couple of survivors’ reports from some of her more recent attacks. Not that she’s in the habit of leaving very many survivors.”

“She’s never been captured before?”

Simani shook her head. “Never. She’d have been killed if they’d caught her. Too much of a flight risk. Not the most secure prison on earth could have held her for long.”

“What do they say then, these descriptions?”

Vikram gave a noncommittal little shrug. “She’s beautiful, apparently. But then, which Aeriel isn’t? That ain’t saying much. There was one thing though…” At Ruban’s raised eyebrow, he continued. “She has the red makings of a normal X-class, of course. Only, according to some accounts she’s got two of them.”

“What?”

Simani nodded. “Of course there’s no way to confirm this one way or the other until we actually run her down and see for ourselves. But it’s turned up in quite a lot of the source material about her. Like, you know how the Aeriel Queen has three markings on her wings? And of course the normal X-classes have one. Apparently, the Queen’s second-in-command, whoever they are, will have two. It’s umm…like a badge of some kind, as far as we could tell.”

Ruban leaned back into the couch and groaned. “So, a beautiful Aeriel with an extra mark on its wing. That’s what we’re looking for? It’ll be a joy handing out that description to a taskforce.”

He had been careful for long enough, Shwaan decided. He couldn’t withhold all information from the Hunters if he ever wanted to get this over with. Given enough time, he could have found Reivaa on his own. And if it had been a simple matter of him against her, he would have taken his chances on a direct confrontation. But nothing was ever simple when it came to this mess.

Reivaa would have backup on earth, and he had none. The last thing he wanted was to get his sister’s troops involved in earthly conflicts. Bringing Vaan’s army down into the Mortal Realm would be a recipe for disaster, he knew that.

And if Reivaa somehow managed to kill him, Safaa would not rest until she had her head on a pike and all her accomplices wiped out. An all-out war between Vaan and the Exiles was not something the universe could afford, and certainly not something Shwaan was willing to risk. No, the Hunters were his only hope for now.

“Uh, there’s one more thing,” he said, trying to make his voice sound hesitant and unsure. The humans turned to look at him questioningly. “Umm, I found out something else about this…ah…Reivaa from my grandma’s old notes.”

“Yes?” said Vikram encouragingly.

“Umm, according to my grandma, Reivaa had the power to control lightning. It’s a rare gift, apparently, even among Aeriels. But according to the notes she left, one of the hallmarks of Reivaa’s involvement in a battle during the Rebellion was…well, a thunderstorm. It made her more dangerous than almost all the other Aeriels, simply because she was perhaps the only one of them who could use the monsoon to her advantage.”

“The power to control lightning?” repeated Simani doubtfully. “I have never heard anything like it.”

“Aeriels have been known to have elemental gifts before,” said Vikram thoughtfully. “Zeifaa, the first Aeriel Queen could apparently control the tides, though I always thought that was just a fairy-tale. Although I have to say, this is the first time I’m hearing about an actual, living Aeriel with elemental abilities.”

Shwaan nodded. It was true that Zeifaa had had the power to control the tides, and had impressed many a mortal in her time turning the direction of the sea for kicks. It was rare to find an Aeriel monarch who was completely sane, now that he thought about it. None of the three he had known in his lifetime possessed anything resembling sanity, though their psychoses were of vastly different types. His grandmother had been flighty, his mother was murderous and his sister anal-retentive. Talk about a proud and consistent family tradition.

Still, elemental powers were a rare enough gift that he wasn’t surprised the humans no longer remembered it. To his knowledge, Reivaa was the only one of the Exiles to have elemental abilities, and he supposed she wasn’t exactly in a hurry to enlighten them.

“Well, it was raining cats and dogs on the day of the SifCo attack,” Simani was saying, biting her lower lip as she stared contemplatively at the far wall. “Even if what you’re saying is true, I suppose a stray bolt of lightning wouldn’t have been particularly noticeable, under the circumstances.”

“There was lightning that day,” Ruban said suddenly, and something in his voice made Shwaan turn to look at him. The man was leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees as he stared fixedly down at his feet. Shwaan couldn’t see his eyes but he could make out the pinched expression the Hunter wore, as if remembering an old nightmare.

“Ruban…” Simani whispered, something like pain in her voice.

“I’d forgotten it, after everything that happened,” Ruban continued. He didn’t seem to have heard his partner. “But-but I’d seen a flash of lightning…when I went out for the flowers. Miki…she asked to come with me, but I’d wanted to surprise her,” his face contorted with what could have been either rage or sorrow, or some unfathomable combination of both. “I saw lightning, there was a thunderclap somewhere in the distance and I remember…I remember being surprised ’cause it was March and…and it wasn’t even properly spring yet. And then…” Ruban closed his eyes, as if he couldn’t bring himself to say any more. He looked broken, like a man who had to struggle for every breath.

Simani left her seat and walked over to her partner, placing a hand gently on his shoulder. “We’ll find her, Ruban,” she whispered, her voice tender as she ran her fingers through his untidy hair, although her eyes looked like they had been set in stone. “We’re closer than we have ever been before, you know that. Wherever she is, we’ll find her. We’ll find the creature that did this. And when we do…when we do, with her last breath she will be begging us to kill her.”

***