A Reaper at the Gates_An Ember in the Ashes

by Sabaa Tahir

  The Kehanni has silver hair and a face that has seen a thousand tales. She wears a heavily embroidered, calf-length dress over wide, mirror-hemmed pants that catch the lamplight. Her voice is throaty, and though I should move on, I find an empty spot against a wall to listen.

  “The ghuls surrounded the child, drawn by his sadness.” She speaks Serran, and her accent is heavy. “And though he wished to help his ailing sister, the fey creatures whispered poison into his ears, until his heart became as twisted as the roots of an old jinn tree.”

  As the Kehanni sings her story, I realize there is truth within this tale—a history of sorts. Hadn’t I just witnessed exactly what she described, only with Princess Nikla?

  The Kehannis’ stories, I realize, have as much history in them as any book in the Great Library. More, perhaps, for there is no skepticism in the old tales that might occlude the truth. The more I consider it, the more excited I get. Elias learned to destroy efrits from a song Mamie Rila sang him. What if the stories could help me understand the Nightbringer? What if they could tell me how to stop him? My excitement has me moving away from the wall, toward the Kehanni. Finally, I have a chance to learn something useful about the jinn.

  Laia . . .

  The whisper brushes against my ear and I jump, jostling the man next to me, who yelps, looking about for whoever bumped him.

  Quick as I can, I weave my way through the still-rapt audience and out of the courtyard. Something is watching me. I feel it. And whatever it is, I don’t want it making trouble among those listening to the Kehanni.

  I shove back through the crowded market, looking over my shoulder repeatedly. Black scraps of shadow flit just out of my vision. Ghuls? Or something worse? I speed my gait, exiting the market and entering a quiet side street. I look back once more.

  The past shall burn, and none will slow it.

  I recognize the whisper, the way it grates like rotted claws across my mind. Nightbringer! I am too frightened even to cry out. All I can do is stand there, useless.

  I spin, trying to pick him out of the shadows.

  “Show yourself.” My voice is barely above a whisper. “Show yourself, you monster.”

  You dare to judge me, Laia of Serra? How can you, when you know not the darkness that lives within your own heart?

  “I’m not afraid of you.”

  The words are a lie, and he chuckles in response. I blink—an instant of darkness, nothing at all—and when I open my eyes, I sense I am alone again. The Nightbringer is gone.

  By the time I return to the forge, my body trembles. The place is dark—everyone has turned in. But I don’t drop my invisibility until I’m alone in my room.

  The moment I do, my vision goes black. I am standing in a room—a cell, I realize. I can just make out a woman in the darkness. She is singing.

  A star she came

  Into my home

  And lit it bright with glo-ry

  The song floats all around me, though the words grow muffled. A strange sound splits the song, like the branch of a tree breaking. When I open my eyes, the vision is gone, as is the singing. The house is quiet, other than Darin murmuring in his sleep from next door.

  What in the skies was that?

  Is it the magic affecting me? Or the Nightbringer? Is this him—is he toying with my mind? I sit up quickly, glancing about my darkened room. Elias’s armlet is warm in my hand. I imagine his voice. The shadows are just shadows, Laia. The Nightbringer can’t hurt you.

  But he can. He has. He’ll do so again.

  I retreat to my bed, refusing to release the armlet, trying to keep Elias’s soothing baritone in my mind. But I keep seeing the Nightbringer’s face. Hearing his voice. And sleep does not come.

  XVIII: Elias

  The jinn know I’m coming. The moment I reach their grove, I’m unnerved by an expectant sort of quiet. A waiting. Strange, how silence can speak as loudly as a scream. Yes, they know I’m here. And they know I want something.

  Hail, mortal. My skin crawls at the choral voice of the jinn. Come to beg forgiveness for your existence?

  “I’ve come to ask for help.”

  The jinns’ laughter knifes at my ears. “I do not wish to trouble you.” It irks, but humility might serve me well. I certainly can’t brazen my way through this. “I know you suffer. I know what was done to you long ago is the heart of your suffering. And I’ve been imprisoned too.”

  You think the horrors of your puny human prison can begin to approach our torment?

  Skies, why did I say that? Stupid. “I just . . . I don’t wish pain like that on anyone.”

  A long silence. And then: You are like her.

  “Like Shaeva?” I say. “But the magic bonded with her, and it won’t bond with me—”

  Like your mother. Keris. The jinn sense my dismay and laugh. You think not? Perhaps you do not know her as well as you think you do. Or perhaps, mortal, you do not know yourself.

  “I’m not a heartless, murdering—”

  The magic of the Soul Catcher will never be yours. You are too deeply linked to those you love. Too open to pain. Your kind is weak. Even Keris Veturia could not release her mortal attachments.

  “The only thing my mother is attached to is power.”

  I sense that in their arboreal prison, the jinn are smug. How little you know, boy. Your mother’s story lives in your blood. Her past. Her memory. It is there. We could show you.

  The silk in their voices reminds me of the time a Senior Skull tried to tell fourteen-year-old me to come to his room so he could show me a new blade his father gave him.

  You wish to know her better. Deep in your heart, the jinn say. Do not lie to us, Elias Veturius, for when you are in our grove, your subterfuge is for naught. We see all.

  Something rough slithers past my ankles. Vines rise up out of the earth like giant, bark-encrusted snakes. They twist up around my legs, locking me into place. I try to draw my scims, but the vines bind the weapons to my back and coil around my shoulders, holding me fast.

  “Stop this. Sto—”

  The jinn shove their way into my mind, probing and turning and examining it, bringing their fire to places that were never meant to see the light.

  I push back at them, but to no avail. I am trapped in my own head, in my memories. I see myself as a babe again, looking up into the silver face of a woman whose long blonde hair is darkened with sweat. The Commandant’s hands are bloody, her face flushed. Her body trembles, but when she touches my face, her fingers are gentle.

  “You look like him,” she whispers. She doesn’t look angry, though I always thought she would. Instead, she appears perplexed, almost bewildered.

  Then I’m watching myself as a young boy of four, wandering through Camp Saif, a thick jacket buttoned up to my chin against the chill winter night.

  While the other Tribal children have clustered around Mamie Rila to hear a terrifying tale about the King of No Name, I watch as young Elias walks to the rocky desert beyond the circle of wagons. The galaxy is a pale cloud across the onyx sky, the night bright enough for me to pick my way forward. From the west, a rhythmic thump draws close. A horse materializes on a nearby ridge.

  A woman dismounts, her gleaming armor flashing beneath heavy Tribal robes. A dozen blades glint from her chest and back. The wind whips at the hard, dry earth around her. In the glowing starlight, her blonde hair is the same silver as her face.

  This didn’t happen, I think wildly. I don’t remember it. She left me. She never came back.

  Keris Veturia drops to one knee but remains a few feet away, as if she doesn’t want to scare me. She appears so young—I can scarcely fathom it is her.

  “What is your name?” At last, I recognize something about her—that hard voice, as cold and unfeeling as the land beneath our feet.

  “Ilyaas.”

 
“Ilyaas.” The Commandant draws my name out, as if searching for its meaning. “Go back to the caravan, Ilyaas. Dark creatures walk the desert at night.”

  I don’t hear my response, because I am now in a room outfitted with nothing but a cot, a desk, and a wide fireplace. The arched windows and thick walls, along with the scent of salt, tell me I’m in Navium. Summer has come swiftly to the south, and heavy, warm air pours through the window. Despite that, a fire burns in the grate.

  Keris is older—older than she was when I last saw her months ago, just before she poisoned me. She lifts up her undershirt and examines what looks to be a bruise, though it is difficult to tell, since her skin is silver. I remember then that she stole the Blood Shrike’s shirt of living metal, long ago. It has fused to her body as closely as her mask has fused to her face.

  Her ALWAYS VICTO tattoo is clearly visible beneath the silver of the shirt, except now it says ALWAYS VICTORI.

  As she feels out the bruise, I notice a strange object in the room, all the more unusual against the simplicity of the quarters. It’s a crude clay sculpture of a mother holding a child. The Commandant studiously ignores it.

  She drops her shirt and puts her armor back on. As she stares into the mottled mirror, her gaze shifts to the statue. She watches it in the reflection, wary, as if it might come to life. Then she turns on her heel, snatches it up, and tosses it, almost casually, into the hearth fire. She calls through the closed door. Moments later, a slave enters.

  The Commandant nods at the burning sculpture. “You found it,” she says. “Did you speak to anyone of it?” At the man’s denial, the Commandant nods and beckons him closer.

  Don’t do it, I want to tell him. Flee.

  My mother’s hands blur as she breaks his neck. I wonder if he even felt it.

  “Let’s keep it that way,” she says to his slumped body, “shall we?”

  I blink, and I am back in the jinn grove. No vines drag me down to the Forest floor, and dawn paints the grove red and orange. Hours have passed.

  The jinn still scuttle through my mind. I fight back, shoving them out, pushing into their consciousness. Their surprise is palpable, and their guard drops for a moment. I feel their rage, their shock, a shared, deep pain—and a swiftly suppressed panic. A furtiveness.

  Then I am cast out.

  “You’re hiding something,” I gasp. “You—”

  Look to your borders, Elias Veturius, the jinn snarl. See what we have wrought.

  An attack. I feel it as clearly as I’d feel an attack on my own body. But this assault doesn’t come from outside the Forest. It comes from within.

  Go and see the horror of ghosts who break free of the Waiting Place. See your people ravaged. You cannot change it. You cannot stop it.

  I curse, hearing the Augur’s words from so long ago thrown back in my face. I windwalk to the southern border with a speed that would rival Shaeva’s. When I arrive, thousands of ghosts cluster in one spot, pushing against the border with single-minded violence, almost feral with the desire to escape.

  I reach for Mauth, for the magic, but I might as well be grasping at air. The ghosts part as I make my way through them, their shrieking disappointment reverberating in my bones.

  The border appears whole, but spirits might still have escaped. I run my hands over the glowing gold wall, trying to find any weaknesses.

  Far in the distance, the red and blue of Tribe Nasur’s wagons gleam in the morning light, the smoke of cook fires fading into a stormy sky. To my surprise, the encampment has grown—and moved closer to the Forest. I recognize the green-and-gold-draped wagons curved in a circle not far from the shore of the Duskan Sea. Tribe Nur—Afya’s tribe—has joined Aubarit’s.

  Why is Afya here? With the Martials so belligerent, the Tribes shouldn’t congregate in one place. Afya’s savvy enough to know that.

  “Banu al-Mauth?”

  Aubarit appears from a dip in the land just ahead.

  “Fakira.” I step out of the Forest, my pulse still thundering in warning, though I sense nothing out of the ordinary. “Now isn’t really a good—”

  “Elias bleeding Veturius!” I know the small woman who shoves past Aubarit by the fire in her eyes, for in every other way, she is unrecognizable. Her face is lined, and the kerchief that hides her usually impeccable braids cannot mask their disarray. Purple shadows nest beneath her eyes and I smell the sharp tang of sweat. “What the hells is going on?”

  “Zaldara!” Aubarit looks scandalized. “You will address him as the Banu—”

  “Do not call him that! His name is Elias Veturius. He is a foolish man, just like any other foolish man, and I suspect he is the reason Tribe Nur’s ghosts are stuck—”

  “Afya, slow down,” I say. “What in ten hells—” My voice chokes off as Mauth tugs violently at me, almost pulling me off my feet. I sense the urgency behind the summons and whip around. Floating on the breeze just a few yards away, a face materializes.

  It’s contorted, angry, and moving swiftly toward the Tribal encampments. Another follows it, called to the distant caravan like vultures drawn to carrion.

  Some of the ghosts escaped. Before I arrived, they got out.

  Perhaps they will only drift about, wailing and pining for life. They have no bodies. They can’t actually do anything.

  I’ve barely even formed the thought when, with chilling suddenness, a flock of birds lifts from the trees near the caravans, cawing in alarm.

  “Elias—” Afya speaks, but I jerk my hand up. For a moment, all is quiet.

  And then, the screaming begins.

  XIX: The Blood Shrike

  Blood Shrike,

  Summer is in full bloom in Antium, and it grows difficult to hide from the heat. The Emperor rejoices in the change of seasons, though he is much troubled by the concerns of the crown.

  The seasonal storms are as bad as the heat and no one at court is unaffected. I offer aid where I can, but it is challenging.

  I am thankful every day for the Plebeians. Their support of both the Emperor and myself is a comfort during this trying time.

  Loyal to the end,

  Empress Livia Aquilla Farrar

  Someone opened Livia’s letter long before it got to me. My sister’s attempts to code her thoughts, while clever, are useless. By now, the Commandant will know that she is well into her pregnancy. The Nightbringer will have told her.

  As for the rest of the letter, Keris will have deciphered that as well: that Livia can’t hide the pregnancy for much longer; that the Emperor grows more unstable; that my sister keeps the wolves at bay; that Plebeian support is all that allows Marcus to remain on the throne.

  That I must defeat the Commandant soon, if I want Livia and her child to survive.

  I read the letter while wandering Navium’s southern beach, which is littered with the wreckage of the fleet. Tattered sails, moss-covered masts, weathered scraps of wood. All are proof of my failure to protect the city.

  As I kneel to run my hands over a piece of ocean-smoothed hull, Dex appears behind me.

  “Pater Tatius will not see you, Shrike.”

  “What’s the excuse this time?”

  “He’s visiting a sick aunt.” Dex sighs. He looks as exhausted as I feel. “He’s been talking to Pater Equitius.”

  Indeed. The Pater of Gens Equitia just gave us the same excuse two days ago. And though I suspected Tatius might, like all the other Paters, try to avoid me, I’d hoped for better.

  “There aren’t any Paters left to approach,” Dex says as we turn away from the beach and up to the Black Guard barracks. “Argus and Vissellius are dead, and their heirs blame you. The rest are too angry about the fleet. Tatius lost a quarter of his Gens in the storm.”

  “This isn’t just about the fleet,” I say. “If it were, they would lecture me, demand that I grovel and apologize
.” These are, after all, Martial Paters. They love talking down to women as much as they love their money. “Either they’re afraid of the Commandant or she’s offering them something that I cannot—something they cannot refuse.”

  “Money?” Dex says. “More ships?”

  “She doesn’t have ships,” I say. “Even if we miraculously took over Grímarr’s fleet, we would only just have enough ships to replace the navy. And she’s wealthy, but not wealthy enough to pay off all of those Paters.”

  There’s more to this. But how the hells do I find out what it is if none of the Paters will talk to me?

  As we wind up toward the city, the scarred, still-burning Southwest Quarter comes into view. Grímarr has attacked twice more in the two weeks since I arrived. Without a fleet, we’ve had no choice but to hunker down and hope that the fires from their missiles do not spread.

  During both attacks, the Paters and Keris froze me out of the decision-making, with Keris smoothly and quietly ignoring my orders for the greater good. Only Janus Atrius backs me, and his lone voice is nothing against the unity of Keris’s allies.

  I want to start lopping off heads. But Keris is looking for an excuse to take me down—either by jailing me or killing me. If I start killing Paters, she’ll have it.

  No, I have to be more cunning. I click my horse forward. I can do nothing about Grímarr’s attacks. But I can weaken Keris—if I can get information on her.

  “We’ll have a day or two of quiet while Grímarr figures out the Karkauns’ next move,” I tell Dex. “There are a few files on the Paters in my desk. All their dirty little secrets. Start cornering them discreetly. See if you can get them to talk.”

  Dex leaves me, and when I return to the barracks, I find Avitas waiting, shoulders stiff with disapproval.

  “You should not be traveling the city alone, Shrike,” Avitas says. “Regulation states—”

  “I can’t waste you or Dex on escorting me everywhere,” I say. “Did you find it?”

  He nods me inside my quarters.