by Sabaa Tahir
“I need to feed her.” The woman’s anger swirls around her, tinged with despair. “I need a fire to keep her warm.”
The ghosts hiss as the forest ripples. The trees reflect Mauth’s moods, and he doesn’t like the intruders any more than the spirits do.
The last time I took a life with Mauth’s magic was months ago. I killed a group of Karkaun warlords with barely a thought. I use that power again now, finding the thread of the woman’s life and pulling. At first, she grips her child more tightly. Then she gasps, reaching for her throat.
“Fozya!” one of the men cries out. “Get back—”
“I won’t!” Fozya spits, even as I squeeze the air from her lungs. “His people are murderers. How many has he killed, lurking here like a spider? How—”
Fozya’s words stick in my head. How many has he killed—
How many—
Screams erupt in my mind: the cries of thousands of men, women, and children who died after I let the walls of the Waiting Place fall last summer. The people I killed as a soldier, friends who died at my hand—they all march through my brain, judging me with dead eyes. It is too much. I cannot bear it—
As suddenly as the feeling is upon me, it fades. Magic floods me: Mauth, soothing my mind, offering me peace. Distance.
Fozya and her kin must go. I drain the woman’s life away again. She nearly drops the child. With each step I take toward her, she stumbles back, finally collapsing on the beach.
“All right, we’ll go,” she gasps. “I’m sorry—”
I release her and she flees north, her companions hurrying behind her. They keep to the coastline, casting frightened glances at the trees until they are out of sight.
“Hail, Soul Catcher.” The scent of salt overwhelms me as the waves foam at my feet and coalesce into a vaguely man-like form. “Your power has grown.”
“Why so far inland, efrit?” I ask the creature. “Does tormenting humans hold such allure?”
“The Nightbringer requested destruction,” the efrit says. “We are . . . eager to please him.”
“You mean you fear displeasing him.”
“He has killed many of my kind,” the efrit says. “I would not see any more suffer.”
“Leave them in peace.” I nod in the direction of the departing humans. “They are in your domain no longer, and they have done nothing to you.”
“Why do you care what happens to them? You are no longer one of them.”
“The fewer the ghosts I deal with,” I say, “the better.”
The efrit surges toward me, wrapping itself around my legs and yanking as if to drag me underwater. But Mauth’s power shields me. When the efrit lets go, I get the distinct feeling that it was testing me.
“A time will come,” the efrit says, “when you will wish you hadn’t spoken those words. When Mauth can no longer magic away the screams in your head. On that day, seek out Siladh, lord of the sea efrits.”
“Is that you?”
The creature doesn’t answer, instead collapsing to the sand, leaving me soaked to the knees.
Once back in the forest, I pass on a dozen ghosts. Doing so means understanding and unraveling their hurt and wrath so they can release it and move on from this dimension. Mauth’s magic suffuses me, allowing me swift, deep insight into the spirits’ suffering.
Most take only a few moments to pass. After I finish, I check for weakness in the border wall, which is invisible to human eyes. The trees open for me as I walk, the path beneath my feet smooth as an Empire road.
It has been like this since I surrendered myself to Mauth. When I built the cabin, wood appeared at regular intervals, hewn and sanded as if by a craftsman. I’ve never been bitten nor suffered illness, nor struggled to find game. This forest is a physical manifestation of Mauth. Though to an outsider, it appears as any other forest would, he alters it to fit my needs.
Only so long as you’re useful to him.
Screams and faces rise in my head again, and this time they do not fade. I windwalk back into the storm to the heart of the Waiting Place: the jinn grove, or what is left of it.
Before I joined with Mauth, I avoided the grove assiduously. But now it is a place where I can forget my troubles. It is a vast plain on a bluff high above the City of the Jinn. Beyond the dark sprawl of that eerily silent place, the River Dusk winds, a serpentine glimmer.
I survey the blackened husks of the grove’s few remaining trees, which stand like sentinels, lonely between drenching sheets of rain. In the five months since the Nightbringer freed the jinn, I have not seen signs of a single one. Not even here, in the place that was once their prison.
“ . . . guide me to Kauf Prison . . . help me break my brother out of there.”
The words trigger a memory of the gold-eyed girl. I grit my teeth and head to the largest of the trees, a dead yew whose branches are blackened by fire. Its trunk is deeply scored on either side. Beside it sits an iron chain with links half the size of my hand, burgled from a Martial village.
I heft the chain and bring it down on one side of the tree trunk, and then the other, deepening the score marks. After only a few minutes, my arms begin to ache.
When your mind does not hear you, train your body. Your mind will follow. Skies know who said those words to me, but I have clung to them these past few months, returning to the jinn grove again and again when my thoughts grow unruly.
After half an hour, I am soaked in sweat. I peel off my shirt, my body screaming, but I have just begun. For as I heave stones and whip the tree and run the escarpment that leads down to the jinn city, the faces and sounds that haunt me fade away.
My body is the only part of me that is still human. It is solid and real and suffers hunger and exhaustion just as it always did. Flogging it means I must breathe a certain way, balance a certain way. Doing so takes all of my focus, leaving nothing for my demons.
Once I’ve exhausted the possibilities of the jinn grove, I trudge to its eastern edge, which slopes down to the River Dusk, swift and treacherous from the storm. I dive in, gasping at the frigid water, and swim the quarter mile across, emptying my mind of everything but the cold and the current.
I return to shore soaked and exhausted, but clearheaded. I am ready to face the ghosts that will be waiting in the trees. For even as I swam, I felt a great sundering of life far to the north. I will be busy this night.
I make for the old yew to collect my clothes. But someone stands beside it.
Mauth put an awareness of the Waiting Place into my mind that is much like a map. I reach for that awareness now, seeking the pulsing glow that indicates the presence of an outsider.
The map is empty.
I squint through the rain—a jinn, perhaps? But no—even the fey creatures leave a mark, their magic trailing them like a comet’s tail.
“You have entered the Waiting Place,” I call out. “These lands are forbidden to the living.”
I hear nothing but the rain and wind. The figure is still, but the air crackles. Magic.
That face flashes in my mind. Black hair. Gold eyes. Sorcery in her bones. But what was her name? Who was she?
“I won’t hurt you.” I speak as I would to the ghosts—with care.
“Won’t you, Elias Veturius?” the figure says. “Even now? Even after everything?”
Elias Veturius. The name conjures many images. A school of stark gray rock and thundering drums. The tiny woman with glacial eyes. Within me, a voice cries out, Yes. Elias Veturius. That is who you are.
“That is not my name,” I say to the figure.
“It is, and you must remember it.” The figure’s voice is pitched so low, I cannot tell if it is a man or woman. Adult or child.
It’s her! My heart beats too swiftly. Thoughts I shouldn’t have crowd my head. Will she tell me her name? Will she forgive me for forgetting it?
>
Then two withered hands appear in the darkness and shove back the hood. The man’s skin is pale as bleached linen and the whites of his eyes are livid and bloody. Though I have forgotten much of who I was, this face is burned into my mind.
“You,” I whisper.
“Indeed, Elias Veturius,” Cain, the Augur, says. “Here to torment you, one last time.”
IV: Laia
Keris Veturia is in Marinn and she is just yards from me. How? I want to scream. Only days ago, Musa’s wights reported that she was in Serra.
But what does that matter when Keris can call on the Nightbringer? He must have ridden the winds and brought her to Adisa.
My pulse pounds in my ears, but I force myself to breathe. The Commandant’s presence complicates matters. But I must still get Nikla out of the throne room and to her apartments. The Scholars and Martials in Delphinium have few weapons, little food, and no allies. If Nikla does not hear what the Blood Shrike has to say, any hope of aid is lost.
Silently, I weave across the floor until Nikla and Keris come into view. The Mariner princess is poker-straight upon her father’s massive driftwood throne, her face in shadow. Her burgundy dress is cinched tight about her waist and pools on the floor like blood. Two guards keep watch behind the throne, with four more on either side.
The Commandant stands before Nikla in her ceremonial armor. She carries no weapons, wears no crown. But she does not need them. Keris’s power has always lain in her cunning and her violence.
Her skin gleams silver at her nape, for she wears the living metal shirt she stole from the Blood Shrike. I marvel at her size—she is a half foot shorter than me. Even after all the misery she’s caused, one could see her from afar and think that she’s a young, harmless girl.
As I inch closer, the shadows on Nikla’s face shift and seethe. Ghuls, feasting on the crown princess’s pain, swirling around her in an unholy halo that she cannot see.
“—cannot make a decision,” Keris says. “Perhaps I should speak with your father.”
“I will not trouble my father while he is ill,” Nikla says.
“Then give in, Princess.” The Commandant holds open her hands, as if someone else is speaking such abhorrent words. “The attacks on your people will stop. The jinn will retreat. The Scholars are a drain on your resources. You know this.”
“Which is why I have encouraged their departure from Adisa,” Nikla says. “However, what you ask is—” The princess shakes her head.
“I am offering to take a troubled populace off your hands.”
“To enslave them.”
Keris smiles. “To offer them a new purpose in life.”
Rage makes my hands shake. My mother, Mirra of Serra, could scale walls with hardly a thought. Would that I had that same mysterious skill. I would use it now to leap upon Keris when she least expected it.
My dagger is in my hand—not the one I was to lay on Nikla’s throne, but an older weapon. Elias gave it to me long ago. It is wicked sharp and coated with poison from cross-guard to tip. I run my gloved finger along the blade and inch closer to the throne.
“What of the thousands of Scholars you killed?” Nikla wags her head, unknowingly shaking off the ghuls, who chitter in vexation. “Did they have no purpose? You perpetrated a genocide, Empress. How do I know you will not do so again?”
“The number of Scholar dead was greatly exaggerated,” Keris says. “Those I did execute were criminals. Rebels and political dissidents. You’ve disavowed your own husband for speaking against the monarchy. My methods were simply more permanent.”
A steward steps out from behind the throne, face solemn as she bends to whisper in Nikla’s ear.
“Forgive me, Empress,” the crown princess says after listening. “I am late for my next engagement. We will speak in the morning. My guards can show you to your quarters.”
“If you wouldn’t mind,” the Commandant says, “I’d like a moment to appreciate your throne room. Its beauty is renowned—even in the Empire.”
Nikla goes very still, her fists tightening on the throne’s intricately carved armrests.
“Certainly,” she finally says. “The guards will wait in the hall.”
The princess sweeps out, her soldiers trailing. I know I should follow her. Find some other way to carry out a threat so that she is taken to her quarters.
But I find myself staring at the Commandant. She is a killer. But no—nothing so simple as that. She is a monster in killer’s clothing. A scrap of the hells masquerading as human.
She stares at the stained-glass dome above, where bright-sailed ships ply Marinn’s turquoise seas. I take a slow step toward her. How much suffering would have been avoided if I’d had the courage to kill her months ago, outside Serra, when she lay unconscious at my feet?
Now I could end her with one strike. She cannot see me. I fix my gaze on her neck, on the vivid blue tattoo crawling up her nape.
Her chest rises and falls gently, a reminder that no matter what she has done, she is human. And she can die just like the rest of us.
“It’s the throat or nothing, Laia of Serra.” The Commandant’s voice is soft. “Unless you cut through my fatigues to the artery in my leg. But I’m faster than you, so you’ll likely fail.”
I lunge, but she’s turned toward the faint whoosh of my cloak as I fly at her. The impact of our bodies jolts my invisibility loose. Before I draw another breath, the Commandant has me flat on the floor, knees clamped around my thighs, one hand pinning my arms while the other holds Elias’s blade to my throat. I did not even feel her take it from me.
I cringe but the high neck of my shirt protects me from the poison on the blade. The silver skin of her chest flashes. She tilts her head, reptilian gaze boring into me.
“How will you die?” she asks. “In battle, like your mother? Or in terror, like mine?” Her hand is grasped tight around the hilt of the dagger. Talk. Keep her talking.
“Don’t you—” I gasp as she presses the weapon against my windpipe. “Don’t you dare talk about my mother like that—you—hag—”
“I don’t know why you bothered, girl,” she says. “I always kn-know—”
The knife slackens against my throat. Keris’s eyes dilate and she coughs. I squirm out from under her, rolling away. She leaps for me, and when she misses, stumbling instead, I allow myself a smile. She’s losing the feeling in her hands. In her legs. I know, because I tested the poison on myself.
Too late, Keris notices my gloves. Too late, she drops Elias’s blade, staring at the hilt, realizing how I got the poison onto her. If she’d ingested it, it would have killed her. But against her skin, it is more of an inconvenience. One just bad enough to give me the edge. The Commandant scrambles back as I yank a dirk from my boot.
But Keris Veturia has been at war nearly her whole life. Her instinct takes control and as I slash at her throat, she doubles me over with a quick hit below my sternum. My weapon falls, and I reach for my last knife. With a blow to my wrist, Keris sends it clattering across the floor.
Voices sound outside. The guards.
I lurch into her while she’s distracted and she throws me off with such force that I smack into the throne, head muzzy as I ooze to the floor. She opens her mouth to shout for the guards—likely the only time she’s called for help in her life. But the poison has stolen her voice and after struggling to stand, she finally collapses, limbs gracelessly akimbo.
Now or never, Laia. Where the skies are my blades? I’d choke the life out of her, but she might wake up in the middle of it. She’ll be out for a minute, at most. I need a weapon.
The hilt of Elias’s dagger pokes out from beneath the throne. Just as I get my hands on it, still gasping for breath, I am flung back like a rag doll.
My body slams into a quartz pillar. The throne room blurs, and then sharpens as a figure who is not the Command
ant, but who certainly was not here a moment ago, makes its way toward me.
Pale skin. A dark cloak. Warm brown eyes. Freckles dancing across a wrenchingly handsome face. And a shock of red hair that’s nothing compared to the fire within him.
I know what he is. I know. But when I see him, I do not think Nightbringer! Jinn! Enemy!
I think Keenan. Friend. Lover.
Traitor.
Run, Laia! My body refuses to cooperate. Blood pours from a gash on the side of my head, salty and hot. My muscles scream, legs aching like they used to after a whipping. The pain is a rope wrapped around me, pulling tighter and tighter.
“Y-you,” I manage. Why would he take this form? Why, when he has avoided it until now?
Because he wants you panicked and off your guard, idiot!
His smell, lemon and woodsmoke, fills my senses, so familiar though I’ve tried to forget.
“Laia of Serra. It is good to see you, my love.” Keenan’s voice is low and warm. But he is not Keenan, I remind myself. He is the Nightbringer. After I fell in love with him, after I gave him my mother’s armlet as a token of that love, he revealed his true form. The armlet was a long-lost piece of the Star—a talisman he needed to free his imprisoned brethren. Once I gave it to him, he had no more use for me.
He puts a hand on my arm to help me stand but I throw him off and drag myself to my feet.
It has been more than a year since I’ve seen the Nightbringer in his human form. I did not realize what a gift that was until now. Such concern in those dark eyes. Such caring. All to mask a vile creature that wants nothing more than to obliterate me.
The Commandant will be conscious soon. And while the Nightbringer cannot kill me—he cannot kill any who touched the Star—Keris Veturia can.
“Damn you.” I look past the Nightbringer to Keris. If I could just get to her—
“I cannot let you harm her, Laia.” The Nightbringer sounds almost sorry. “She serves a purpose.”
“Curse your purpose to the hells!”
The Nightbringer glances at the doors.