A Reaper at the Gates_An Ember in the Ashes

by Sabaa Tahir

  The words are whispered on the air, but I am not sure who spoke them. Skies, what have I gotten myself into? Help me, I shout in my mind, though to whom, I don’t know. My father, perhaps. My mother. I don’t know what to do.

  “Stop.”

  The word is a command, not a request, and even Marcus turns at the sound. For this is a voice that cannot be ignored, not even by the overlord of the Martial Empire.

  The Nightbringer stands in the middle of the room. The windows are not open. Neither is the door. From the terrified look on Livia’s face, I can tell that she too is spooked by the jinn’s sudden appearance.

  “She cannot heal you, Emperor,” the Nightbringer says in his deep, unsettling voice. “You suffer no ailment. Your brother’s ghost is real. Until you submit to its will, it will give you no peace.”

  “You . . .” For the first time in what feels like years, Marcus’s face holds something other than malice or hatred. He looks haunted. “You knew. Zak said he saw the future in your eyes. Look at me—look at me—and tell me my end.”

  “I do not show you your end,” the Nightbringer says. “I show you the darkest moment your future holds. Your brother saw his. You will soon face yours, Emperor. Leave the Shrike. Leave your empress. Tend to your empire, lest your brother’s death be for naught.”

  Marcus staggers away from the Nightbringer, toward the door. He cuts me a look—enough hate in that glance that I know he isn’t yet done with me—and stumbles out.

  I whirl on the Nightbringer, still shaking from what I saw in Marcus’s mind. The same question I asked before is on my lips: What game are you playing? But I do not have to speak it.

  “No game, Blood Shrike,” the jinn says. “The very opposite. You will see.”

  XXXIV: Elias

  We have twelve hours until the Martials arrive. Twelve hours to prepare a few thousand Tribesmen who are in the worst fighting shape they’ve ever been in. Twelve hours to get the children and injured to safety.

  If there were any place to run, I would ask the Tribes to get the hells away from here. But the sea lies to the east and the Forest to the north. The Martials approach from the south and west.

  Mauth pulls at me, the tug getting more painful by the minute. I know I must go back to the Forest. But if I don’t do something, thousands of Tribespeople will be massacred. The Waiting Place will be filled with even more ghosts. And where will that leave me?

  The Tribes, it’s clear, plan to stand and fight. Already, the Zaldars who still have their wits are readying horses and weaponry and armor. But it won’t be enough. Though we outnumber the Martials, they are a superior fighting force. Ambushes in the dead of night with poisoned darts are one thing. But facing an army on a field when your men haven’t slept or eaten properly in days?

  “Banu al-Mauth.” Afya’s voice is stronger than it was even an hour ago. “The salt works. We still have many dead to attend to, but the ruh have been released. The spirits no longer plague their families.”

  “But there are too many dead now.” Mamie appears behind Afya, pallid and exhausted. “And they must be given burial rites.”

  “I spoke to the other Zaldars,” Afya says. “We can muster a force of a thousand horse—”

  “You don’t need to do that,” I say. “I’m going to take care of it.”

  The Zaldara looks dubious. “Using . . . your magic?”

  “Not exactly.” I consider. I have most of what I need, but there is one thing that will make what I must do a bit easier. “Afya, do you have any of those darts you used during the raids?”

  Mamie and Afya exchange a glance, and my mother steps close enough that only I can hear her. She takes my hands.

  “What are you planning, my son?”

  Perhaps I should tell her. She would try to talk me out of it, I know she would. She loves me, and that love blinds her.

  I extricate myself, unable to meet her eyes. “You don’t want to know.”

  As I leave the camp, Mauth summons me with enough force that I think he will pull me to the Forest the way he did after the jinn took me to Laia.

  But this is the only way.

  The first time I killed, I was eleven. I saw my enemy’s face for days after he was gone. I heard his voice. And then I killed again. And again. And again. Too soon, I stopped seeing their faces. I stopped wondering what their names were, or who they left behind. I killed because I was ordered to, and then, once free of Blackcliff, I killed because I had to, to stay alive.

  Once, I knew exactly how many lives I had taken. Now I no longer remember. Somewhere along the way, a part of me learned how to stop caring. And that’s the part of me that I must draw upon now.

  As soon as I reason through it in my head, the connection between Mauth and me slackens. He offers no magic, but I am able to continue my journey without pain.

  The Martial army stops to camp along the crest of a low plateau. Their tents are a dark stain against the pale desert, their cook fires like stars in the warm night. It takes a half hour of patient observation to figure out where the camp commander is and another fifteen minutes to plan my entrance—and exit. My face is known, but most of these people believe I’m dead. They will not expect to see me, and there lies my advantage.

  The shadows hang thick between the tents, and I let them cradle me as I make my way through the periphery of the camp. The commander’s tent is in the center, but the soldiers have erected it hastily, for instead of a clear area around it, other dwellings are staked close by. Access won’t be simple—but it won’t be impossible, either.

  As I approach the tent, darts ready, a great part of me screams against this.

  You will know victory, or you will know death. I hear the Commandant whisper in my ear, an old memory. There is nothing else. It’s always this way before I kill. Even when I was hunting Masks so Laia could free prisoners from ghost wagons—even then I struggled. Even then it took its toll. My foes will die, and they will take a bit of me with them.

  The field of battle is my temple.

  I draw close to the tent and find a fold that is hidden from anyone inside. Ever so slowly, I cut a slit. Five Masks, including the commander, sit around a table within, eating their meal and arguing about the coming battle.

  They will not expect me, but they are still Masks. I will need to move swiftly, before they raise the alarm. Which means first taking them out with the darts Afya gave me.

  The swordpoint is my priest.

  I must do this. I must cut off the head of this army. Doing so will give the Tribes a chance to run. These Masks would have killed my people, my family. They would have enslaved them and beaten them and destroyed them.

  The dance of death is my prayer.

  But even knowing what the Masks would have done, I do not wish to kill. I do not wish to belong to this world of blood and violence and vengeance. I do not wish to be a Mask.

  The killing blow is my release.

  My wishes do not matter. These men must die. The Tribes must be protected. And my humanity must be left behind. I step into the tent.

  And I unleash the Mask lurking within.

  XXXV: The Blood Shrike

  A week after Marcus’s attack on Livvy, Harper finally emerges from the Hall of Records, where he has spent every waking moment since I gave him his mission.

  “The record archivists were preparing for a move,” he says. “Bloodline certificates and birth records and family trees all over the place. Scholar slaves were trying to clean it up, but they can’t read, so it was all a jumble.”

  He places a stack of death certificates on my desk before collapsing into a chair across from me. “You were right. In the past twenty years, ten tattooists have died unnaturally in and around the cities where the Commandant was posted. One just recently, not far from Antium. The others lived everywhere from the Tribal lands to Delphini
um. And I found something else.”

  He hands me a list of names. There are thirteen, all Illustrian, all from well-known Gens. I recognize two—they were found dead just recently, here in Antium. I remember reading about them weeks ago, the day Marcus ordered me to Navium. Another name also stands out.

  “Daemon Cassius,” I say. “Why do I know that name?”

  “He was murdered last year in Serra by Scholar’s Resistance fighters. It happened a few weeks before the murder of a Serran tattooist. Every one of these Illustrians was murdered shortly before the local tattooists were. Different cities. Different methods. All within the last twenty years. All Masks.”

  “I remember now,” I say. “Cassius was at home when he was murdered. His wife found him in a locked room. Elias and I were in the middle of the Trials when it happened. I wondered how the hells a group of Scholar rebels could kill a Mask.”

  “Titus Rufius,” Harper reads. “Killed in a hunting accident at the age of thirty-two, nine years ago. Iustin Sergius, poisoned at twenty-five, apparently by a Scholar slave who confessed to the crime sixteen years ago. Caius Sissellius was thirty-eight. He drowned on his family’s own grounds, in a river he’d been swimming in since before he could walk. That was three years ago.”

  “Avitas, look at their ages.” I examine the names carefully. “And they were Masks. Which means every one of these men graduated with her. She knew them.”

  “They all died before they should have, many in unnatural ways. So why? Why did she kill them?”

  “They got in her way somehow,” I say. “She was always ambitious. Maybe they were given postings she wanted, or they thwarted her somehow, or . . . oh . . . oh.”

  I remember what Quin told me of Arius Harper: He was murdered by a group of Masks the day after they graduated—Keris’s fellow Senior Skulls. A vicious killing—more than a dozen of them beat him to death. Illustrian, all of them.

  “It wasn’t because they got in her way.” I relate what Quin said. “It was vengeance. They beat Arius Harper to death.” I look up from the scrolls. I wonder if his father had green eyes too. “Your father.”

  Avitas is quiet for a long moment. “I . . . didn’t know how he died.”

  Bleeding hells. “I’m sorry,” I say quickly. “I thought—oh skies, Avitas.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” He seems to find the window of my office suddenly very interesting. “He’s been gone a long time now. Why would it matter if they killed my father? The Commandant isn’t the sentimental type.”

  I am startled by how quickly he moves on, and I consider apologizing again or telling him that if he doesn’t want the nature of his father’s death made public, I understand. But then I realize that what he needs is for me to move on. To be the Blood Shrike. To let it go.

  “It’s not sentiment,” I say briskly, though I have my doubts. The Commandant did, after all, take Avitas under her wing—inasmuch as someone like her could. “It’s power. She loved him. They killed him. They took her power. By murdering them, she’s taking it back.”

  “How do we use this against her?”

  “We get this information out to the Paters,” I say. “They learn about the tattoo, the dead tattooists, Arius Harper, the murdered Illustrians—all of it.”

  “We need proof.”

  “We have it.” I nod to the death certificates. “For anyone who cares to look. If we can get these certificates into the hands of just a few trusted Paters, the rest won’t need to see them. Think of how she’s handled what happened in Navium. It didn’t matter that she lied. All that mattered is that people believed it.”

  “We should start with Pater Sissellius and Pater Rufius,” Harper says. “They’re her closest allies. The other Paters trust them.”

  For three days, Harper and I seed the rumors. And then, when I am in court listening to Marcus arguing with a Tribal envoy—

  “—Illustrians from her own year! Over a Plebeian! Can you imagine—”

  “But there’s no proof—”

  “Not enough to jail her, but Sissellius saw the death certificates. The link is obvious. You know how that man loathes idle gossip. Besides, the proof is on her body—that vile tattoo—”

  After a few more days, I sense the change in the air. I feel the Paters distancing themselves from Keris. Some are even outright opposed to her. When she does return to Antium, she will find it a far less welcoming city than she expects.

  * * *

  Captain Alistar sends me a message letting me know he has information on the same day Dex returns to Antium, and I call them both to me in the training yard.

  “Keris will be here within the week.” Dex is fresh from the road, splattered with mud, exhausted. But he spars with me anyway, keeping his helm low so that his lips cannot be read. It’s nearly impossible to hear him over the clash of weapons and grunts of men training.

  “She knows you’ve spread the truth about the tattoo and the murders. She sent two assassins; I dispatched them before they could get here, but skies know what she’ll do when she arrives. You’d best start cooking your food yourself. Farming your own grain too.”

  “Did she ride straight for Antium?”

  “She stopped at the Roost,” Dex says. “I followed her in, but her men nearly caught me. By then I thought it best to get back here. I’ll check in with my spies—” Dex’s gaze shifts over my shoulder, and he frowns.

  At the entrance to the barracks, across the training field, a group of Black Guards crowds together. I think at first that a fight has broken out. I hurry toward them, war hammer still in hand.

  One of the men calls out: “Get the bleeding physician!”

  “No point, that’s karka snake venom—”

  They are clustered around a fellow guard who bucks as he vomits black bile onto the ground. I recognize him instantly: Captain Alistar.

  “Bleeding hells.” I crouch down next to him. “Get the barracks physician. Get him now!”

  But the man could already be here and it would be too late. The black bile, the red mottling around Alistar’s nose and ears. It is karka snake venom. He’s done for.

  Harper pushes through the crowd and kneels beside me. “Shrike, what—”

  “Nothing—” Alistar grabs the front of my fatigues with one hand and pulls me close. His voice is little more than a death rattle. “Nothing—no attacks—nothing—Shrike—they’re nowhere—”

  His grip goes slack, and he slumps to the ground, dead.

  Burning skies. “As you were,” I say to the men. “Go on.” The men scatter, except for Dex and Harper, who stare down in horror at the dead soldier.

  I lean down and wrest a pile of papers from Alistar’s stiff hand. I expect it to be information on Corporal Favrus. Instead I find reports from the garrisons across the north—straight from the garrison commanders.

  “The Karkauns have disappeared.” Harper, reading over my shoulder, sounds as mystified as I feel. “Not a single attack near Tiborum. Nothing in the deep north, not for months. Corporal Favrus lied. The Karkauns were quiet.”

  “The Karkauns are never quiet,” I say. “This time last year, they were conquering the Wildmen clans. We stopped them in Tiborum. We stopped them in Navium. They lost their fleet. There’s a bleeding famine in their southern territories, and a warlock priest whipping them into righteous fury. They should be harassing every village from here to the sea.”

  “Look at this, Shrike.” Harper has searched Alistar’s body, and he pulls out another scroll. “He must have found it in Favrus’s things,” Harper says. “It’s in code.”

  “Break the code,” I snap. Something is wrong—very wrong. “Find me Favrus. Alistar’s death can’t be a coincidence. The corporal is involved. Get messages to the northwestern garrisons. Have them send scouts to check in on the closest Karkaun clans. Find out where they are, what they are doing. I want
answers by nightfall, Harper. If those bastards are planning an assault on Tiborum, the city may fall. It might already be too late. Dex . . .”

  My old friend sighs, already knowing that he’s about to head back on the road.

  “Head north,” I say. “Check the passes around the Nevennes. They might be pushing for Delphinium. They won’t have enough men to hold it, but that doesn’t mean they’re not stupid enough to try.”

  “I’ll send a message through the drums as soon as I know anything, Shrike.”

  By nightfall, we’ve had word from even the most far-flung of the western garrisons. The Karkauns have completely abandoned their camps in the west. Their caves are empty, their grazing animals gone, their few fields and gardens are fallow. They can’t possibly be planning an attack on Tiborum.

  Which means they are gathering elsewhere. But where? And to what end?

  XXXVI: Laia

  Musa offers no explanation as we leave the palace, the only sign of his frustration the swift clip of his stride.

  “Excuse me.” I poke him in the ribs as he winds through streets unfamiliar to me. “Your Highness—”

  “Not now,” he grinds out. As much as I want to question him, we have a bigger problem, which is how the hells we’re going to get rid of Captain Eleiba. The Mariner spoke briefly to the king before escorting us from the throne room and hasn’t been more than a foot away from us since. When Musa enters a neighborhood where the houses are densely packed, I prepare to pull on my invisibility, expecting him to attack our chaperone. But instead, he just stops in an alley. “Well?” he says.

  Eleiba clears her throat and turns to me. “His Royal Highness King Irmand thanks you for your warning, Laia, and wishes to assure you that he does not take lightly the interference of the fey creatures in his domain. He accepts Darin of Serra’s offer for weapons and vows that he will provide shelter for the Scholars in the city until more permanent accommodations can be made. And he wishes you to have this.” Eleiba places in my hand a silver signet ring emblazoned with a trident. “Show it to any Mariner, and they are honor bound to aid you.”