A Reaper at the Gates_An Ember in the Ashes

by Sabaa Tahir

  “The Waiting Place sings to you. It knows you, Laia of Serra.”

  “Wh—why?”

  The Nightbringer laughs, and it is echoed by the jinn in the grove until it feels like it is coming from all sides. “It is the source of all magic in this world. We are connected to it—through it—to each other.”

  There is a lie here somewhere. I can sense it. But there is truth too, and I cannot parse the fine lines between them.

  “Tell me, love.” The word sounds obscene in his mouth. “Have you had visions after using your magic?”

  My blood goes cold. The woman. The cell. “You sent those visions? And you—you’ve been watching me.”

  “In truth, you shall find freedom. Let me free you, Laia of Serra.”

  “I don’t need your truth.” I want him out of my head, but he is as devious and slippery as an eel. Together with his brethren, he twists around my mind, squeezing tighter and tighter. Why did I let myself sleep? Why did I let the jinn take me? Get up, Laia! Escape!

  “You cannot escape the truth, Laia. You deserve to know, child. It has been kept from you for far too long. Where to begin? Perhaps where you began: with your mother.”

  “No!”

  The air before me wavers, and I do not know if the vision is real or in my head. My mother stands before me, big with child. Me, I realize. She paces back and forth outside a cottage as Father speaks to her. The thickly forested mountains of Marinn rise in the distance.

  “We must go back, Jahan,” she says. “As soon as the child is born—”

  “And bring him or her with us?” My father digs his hand into the thick, unruly hair that I inherited. Laughter rings out behind him: Darin, fat-cheeked and blissfully unaware, sits with a seven-year-old Lis. My heart twists at the sight of my sister. I have not seen her face in so long. Unlike Darin, she watches everything with careful eyes, her gaze flicking back and forth between Mother and Father. She is a child whose happiness is gauged by the strange weather between her parents, sometimes sunny but more often a gale.

  “We can’t expose them to that kind of danger. Mirra—”

  Darkness. Smell comes to me before light. Apricot orchards and hot sands. I am in Serra. My mother appears again, in leathers this time, a bow and quiver slung across her back. Her light hair is pulled back into a topknot, her stare fierce as she knocks upon a familiar weathered door. My father kneels behind her, holding me against one shoulder and Darin against the other. I am four years old. Darin is six. Father kisses our faces over and over and whispers to us, though I cannot hear his words.

  When the door opens, Nan stands there, hands on her hips, so angry that I want to cry. Don’t be angry, I want to tell her. You will miss her later. You will regret your anger. You will wish you had welcomed her with open arms. Nan catches sight of my father, of Darin, of me. She takes a step toward us.

  Darkness. And then an eerily familiar place. A dank room. A light-haired woman within—a woman I finally recognize: my mother. And the room is not a room. It is a prison cell.

  “The truth will free you from your illusions, Laia of Serra,” the Nightbringer whispers. “It will free you from the burden of hope.”

  “I don’t want it.” The image of my mother won’t go away. “I don’t want to be free. Just tell me where Elias is,” I beg, a prisoner in my own mind. “Let me go.”

  The Nightbringer is silent. Torchlight bobs distantly, and the door to my mother’s cell opens. Mother’s bruises, her wounds, her hacked hair and emaciation, are suddenly illuminated.

  “Are you ready to cooperate?” The winter in that voice is unmistakable.

  “I will never cooperate with you.” My mother spits at the feet of Keris Veturia. The Commandant is younger but just as monstrous. A high-pitched scream stabs into my ears. The scream of a child. I know who it is. Skies, I know. Lis. My sister.

  I writhe and scream myself to try to drown her out. I cannot see this. I cannot hear it. But the Nightbringer and his brethren hold me fast.

  “She doesn’t have your strength,” Keris says to Mother. “Nor does your husband. He broke down. Begged for death. Begged for your death. No loyalty. He told me everything.”

  “He—he would never.”

  Keris enters the cell. “How little we know of people until we watch them break. Until we strip them down to their smallest, weakest selves. I learned that lesson long ago, Mirra of Serra. And so I will teach you. I will lay you bare. And I don’t even have to touch you to do it.”

  Another scream, this one deeper—a man’s voice.

  “They ask about you,” the Commandant says. “They wonder why you let them suffer. One way or another, Mirra, you will give me the names of your supporters in Serra.” There is an unholy joy in Keris’s eyes. “I will bleed your family until you do.”

  As she walks away, my mother roars at her, throwing herself against the door of her cell. Shadows move across the floor. A day passes, another. All the while, my mother listens to the sounds of Lis and Father suffering. I listen. She grows more crazed. She tries to break out. She tries to trick the guards. She tries to murder them. Nothing works.

  The cell door opens, and the Kauf guards drag my father in. I scarcely recognize him. He is unconscious as they toss him in a corner. Lis is next, and I cannot look at what Keris has done to her. She was just a child, only twelve. Skies, Mother, how did you stand it? How did you not go utterly mad?

  My sister shivers and curls up in the corner. Her silence, the slackness of her jaw, the emptiness in her blue eyes—they will haunt me until the day I die.

  Mother takes Lis in her arms. Lis doesn’t react. Their bodies sway together as Mother rocks her.

  A star she came

  Into my home

  And lit it bright with glo-ry

  Lis closes her eyes. My mother curls around her, her hands moving toward my sister’s face, caressing it. There are no tears in Mother’s eyes. There is nothing at all.

  Her laughter like

  A gilded song

  A raincloud sparrow’s sto-ry

  My mother puts one of her hands on top of Lis’s head, shorn now, and another on her chin.

  And when she sleeps

  It’s like the sun

  Has faded, gone so cold, see.

  A crack sounds, softer than in my visions. It is a small noise, like the breaking of a bird’s wing. Lis slips lifeless to the floor, her neck broken by our mother’s hand.

  I think I scream. I think that sound, that shriek, is me. In this world? In some other? I cannot get out. I cannot escape this place. I cannot escape what I see.

  “Mirra?” my father whispers. “Lis . . . where is . . .”

  “Sleeping, my love.” Mother’s voice is calm, distant. She crawls to my father, pulling his head into her lap. “She’s sleeping now.”

  “I—I tried, but I don’t know how much longer—”

  “Do not fear, my love. Neither of you will suffer anymore.”

  When she breaks my father’s neck, it is louder. The quiet that follows sinks into my bones. It is the death of hope, sudden and unheralded.

  Still, the Lioness does not cry.

  The Commandant enters, looks between the bodies. “You’re strong, Mirra,” she says, and there is something like admiration in her pale eyes. “Stronger than my mother was. I would have let your child live, you know.”

  My mother’s head jerks up. Despair suffuses every inch of her. “It wouldn’t have been a life,” she whispers.

  “Perhaps,” Keris says. “But can you be sure?”

  Time shifts again. The Commandant holds coals in a gloved hand as she approaches my mother, who is tied to a table.

  Far back in my mind, a memory surfaces. Ever been tied to a table while hot coals burned into your throat? Cook said those words to me long ago, in a kitchen at Blackcliff. Why did Co
ok say those words to me?

  Time speeds. Mother’s hair goes from blonde to pure snow white. The Commandant carves scars into her face—horrible, disfiguring scars—until it is no longer the face of my mother, no longer the face of the Lioness but instead the face of—

  Ever had your face carved up with a dull knife while a Mask poured salt water into your wounds?

  No. I do not believe it. Cook must have experienced the same thing as my mother. Perhaps it was the Commandant’s particular way of getting rebel fighters to talk. Cook is an old woman, and my mother wouldn’t be—she would still be relatively young.

  But Cook never acted like an old woman, did she? She was strong. The scars are the same. The hair.

  And her eyes. I never looked closely at Cook’s eyes. But I remember them now: deep set and dark blue—darker still for the shadows that lurked within.

  But it cannot be. It cannot.

  “It is true, Laia,” the Nightbringer says, and my very soul shudders, for I know he tells no lies. “Your mother lives. You know her. And now, you are free.”

  XL: Elias

  How did someone get all the way to the jinn grove without me knowing?

  The border walls should have kept outsiders away. But not, I realize, if they’re thin and weak. Ghosts push against one spot, far to the east, and I slow down. Do I shore up the wall? Move the ghosts? Their agitation is like nothing I’ve seen before, almost feral in its intensity.

  But if there is a human in the grove, skies only know what they might be suffering at the hands of the jinn.

  I head for the interloper, and Mauth pulls at me, his weight like an anvil chained to my legs. Ahead of me, ghosts attempt to block my path, a thick cloud that I can’t see through.

  We have her, Elias. The jinn speak, and the ghosts stop their wailing. The sudden silence is unnerving. It’s as if all the Forest listens.

  We have her, Elias, and we have torn her mind to shreds.

  “Who?” I drag myself away from the ghosts, ignoring their cries and Mauth’s pull. “Who do you have?”

  Come and see, usurper.

  Did they somehow capture Mamie? Or Afya? Dread grows in me like a weed, speeding my windwalking. Their machinations have already led to the suffering of Aubarit’s Tribe. To Afya and Gibran being possessed by ghosts. To Mamie losing her brother, and hundreds of Tribespeople dying. The Blood Shrike is too far away for them to hurt. Of all those I love, only the Shrike and one other have been spared their predations.

  But they cannot possibly have Laia. She is in Adisa, hunting for a way to stop the Nightbringer. Faster, Elias, faster. I battle Mauth’s draw, tearing through the increasingly frenzied ghosts until I reach the jinn grove.

  At first, it looks as it always does. Then I see her, crumpled on the earth. I recognize the patchy gray cloak. I gave it to her long ago, on a night when I never could have imagined how much she’d one day mean to me.

  In the trees to the north, a shadow watches. Nightbringer! I leap for him, but he disappears, gone so fast that if not for his laugh on the wind, I’d have thought I’d imagined him.

  I am at Laia’s side in two steps, hardly believing she is real. The earth shudders more violently than it ever has before. Mauth is angry. But it does not matter to me. What in ten bleeding hells have the jinn done to her?

  “Laia,” I call to her, but when I look into her face, her gold eyes are faraway, her lips parted dully. “Laia?” I tip her head toward me. “Listen to me. Whatever the Nightbringer said to you, whatever he and his ilk are trying to convince you of, it’s a trick. A lie—”

  We do not lie. We told her the truth, and the truth has freed her. She will never hope again.

  I need to get her mind out of their clutches.

  How can you, usurper, when you cannot lay your hands on the magic?

  “You tell me what the hells you’ve done to her!”

  As you wish. Seconds later, my body is as rooted to the grove as Laia’s is, and the jinn show me her purpose in coming through the Waiting Place. She must get to Antium, to the Blood Shrike, to the ring. She must stop the Nightbringer.

  But her mission is forgotten as a fire rages in her mind, leaving her lost, wandering in a prison, forced to watch what happened to her family over and over.

  We show you her story so that you can suffer with her, Elias, the jinn say. Cry out your rage, won’t you? Cry out your uselessness. The sound is so sweet.

  My scims will do nothing against this. Threats will do nothing. The jinn are in her head.

  A powerful yank from Mauth nearly knocks me to my knees, so sharp that I gasp from the pain. Something is happening out in the Waiting Place. I can feel it. Something is happening to the border.

  Leave her, then, Elias. Go and attend to your duty.

  “I will not leave her!”

  You have no choice—not if you wish the world of the living to survive.

  “I will not!” My voice is raw with rage and failure. “I will not let you torment her to death, even if stopping you tears my own body to shreds. All the world can burn, but I will not simply leave her to suffer.”

  All things have a price, Elias Veturius. The price of saving her will haunt you for all your days. Will you pay it?

  “Just let her go. Please. I—I’m sorry for your pain, your hurt. But she did not cause it. It’s not her fault. Mauth, help me.” Why am I begging? Why, when I know it will do no good? Only mercilessness can help me. Only abandoning my humanity. Abandoning Laia.

  But I can’t do it. I can’t pretend that I don’t love her.

  “Come back to me, Laia.” Her body is heavy in my arms, hair tangled, and I push it back from her face. “Forget them and their lies. That’s all they are. Come back.”

  Yes, Elias, the jinn purr. Pour your love into her. Pour your heart into her.

  I wish they would shut the hells up. “Come back to the world. Wherever they have taken you, whatever memory they have locked you in doesn’t matter as much as you coming back. Your people need you. Your brother needs you. I need you.”

  As I speak, it’s as if I can see into her thoughts. I can see the jinn clawing at her mind. They are strange, warped beings of smokeless flame that are nothing like the beautiful, graceful creatures I saw in the city. Laia tries to fight them, but she weakens.

  “You are strong, Laia. And you are needed here.” Her cheek feels like ice. “You have much yet to do.”

  Laia’s eyes are glazed over, and I shudder. I hold her now. I call to her. But she will grow old and die, while I will live on. She is the blink of an eye. And I am an age.

  But I can accept that. I can survive long years without her if I know that at least she had a chance at life. I’d give up my time with her—I would—if only she would wake.

  Please. Please come back.

  Her body jerks once, and for one heart-stopping moment, I think she is dead.

  Then she opens her eyes, staring at me with bewilderment. Thank the bleeding skies. “They’re gone, Laia,” I say. “But we have to get you out of here.” Her mind will be fragile after what the jinn just put her through. Any more pushing from the ghosts or the jinn would feel torturous.

  “I can’t—can’t walk. Could you—”

  “Put your arms around my neck,” I say, and I windwalk out of the grove with Laia held close. Mauth yanks at me futilely, and the earth of the Waiting Place shakes and cracks. I reach out to the borders; the pressure is immense. The strain on them makes me break into a sweat. I need to get Laia out of here so I can corral the ghosts—get them away from the edges of the Waiting Place, lest they break free.

  “Elias,” Laia whispers. “Are . . . are you real? Are you a trick too?”

  “No.” I touch my forehead to hers. “No, love. I’m real. You’re real.”

  “What’s wrong with this place?” She shivers. “
It’s so full, as if it’s about to burst. I can feel it.”

  “Just the ghosts,” I say. “Nothing I can’t handle.” I hope. Flat patches of rolling grassland appear through the trees ahead: the Empire.

  The border feels even weaker now than it did when I first passed through it. Many of the ghosts have followed me, and they press against the glowing barrier, their cries rising eagerly as if they sense its weakness.

  I go well beyond the tree line and set Laia down. The trees sway back and forth behind me, a frantic dance. I must return. But for just this one moment, I let myself look at her. The messy cloud of her hair, her worn boots, the tiny cuts on her face from the Forest, the way her hands grip the dagger I gave her.

  “The jinn,” she whispers. “They—they told me the truth. But the truth is . . .” She shakes her head.

  “The truth is ugly,” I say. “The truth of our parents uglier still. But we are not them, Laia.”

  “She’s out there, Elias,” Laia says, and I know she speaks of her mother. Of Cook. “Somewhere. I can’t—I—” She slips back into the memory again, and though the Forest seethes behind me, it will have done me no good to get Laia out of there if she ends up in the grasp of the jinn again. I take her shoulders, stroke her face. I make her look at me.

  “Forgive her, if you can,” I say. “Remember that fate is never what we think it will be. Your mother—my mother—we can never understand their torments. Their hurts. We may suffer the consequences of their mistakes and their sins, but we should not carry them on our hearts. We don’t deserve that.”

  “Will it always be chaos for us, Elias? Will things never be normal?”

  Her eyes clear as she looks at me, and she is released, for a moment, from what she saw in the Forest. “Will we ever take a walk by the moonlight, or spend an afternoon making jam or making . . .”

  Love. My body turns to fire just thinking about it.

  “I had dreams about you,” she whispers. “We were together—”