A Sky Beyond the Storm

by Sabaa Tahir

  “Imagine the darkness enveloping the Blood Shrike and Avitas Harper,” Rehmat says. “Quick now!”

  This is more difficult, for I do not understand how to do it. I stretch the darkness that covers me, and try to toss it over the Blood Shrike. She flickers.

  “Again,” Rehmat urges. “Hold it this time!”

  Sweat breaks out on my brow as I try again. And again. Each time, the Shrike flickers, though she does not appear to notice. The Mask she fights gapes at her in bewilderment, and she runs him through.

  “Shrike!”

  A long shabka—a boat with a single mast and two sets of oars—looms out of the darkness. Darin stands at its prow, and relief floods me. He, however, looks like he wants to throttle the Shrike.

  “Where’s Laia? Where’s my sister?”

  The Shrike parries an arrow that nearly pegs her in the heart. “Don’t get your knickers in a bunch,” she shouts. “She’s right—”

  In that moment, I cast the darkness wide enough to cover both her and Avitas. One second, the two of them are fighting. The next, Keris’s men lower their weapons, staring at an empty boat.

  I grab for where I think the Shrike’s shoulder is, hoping to the skies that neither she nor Avitas think to swing a scim into my neck.

  “They can’t see you!” I whisper. “Get into Musa’s boat. Quick!”

  Air rushes past me as the Shrike slides by and pulls herself up to the deck of the shabka. Harper follows, and I reach deep within, until I have cast my invisibility over a wide-eyed Darin and Musa.

  “Stop rowing,” I hiss to the Beekeeper. “No one move!”

  The shabka drifts, even as the Martials search the darkness, all their might and numbers nothing against my magic.

  The soldiers close in on our vessel, but after scanning it for passengers, they navigate around us, making for the dinghy where we were last seen, peering into the water. We remain silent as long minutes go by. When the soldiers are out of sight, Musa and the Shrike take up the oars and row as quickly and quietly as they can, until the lights of the market are a distant glow behind us. Finally, I drop our invisibility. Everyone speaks at once.

  “Thank the skies you’re all—”

  “What the bleeding hells was—”

  “Laia!” One voice pipes over the rest, and a skinny figure emerges from beneath Musa’s seat.

  He is a half foot taller than he was when I last saw him, but the brilliant smile and sparkling eyes I first encountered in Kauf Prison, while trying to free Darin and Elias, are the same.

  “Tas?” I do not believe it is him until he comes flying at me, and I am enfolding his slight figure in my arms. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be safe in Ayo!”

  “Tas was my ‘delivery,’” Darin says. “I was worried he wouldn’t get to me on time or I would have told you.”

  “You’ll have to catch up later,” Musa says. “Right now, I think it’s time for Laia to tell us about her invisible friend.”

  Rehmat. He means Rehmat. “One day”—I stare daggers at him—“your eavesdropping is going to get you into trouble that even your wights can’t get you out of.”

  “Not today, aapan,” he says. “Talk.”

  By the time I am finished telling the tale, dawn is a pale suggestion on the horizon and the snow clouds have given way to a tangerine sky. The bay is calm, the wind is with us, and we move steadily northwest, toward a river that will take us into the Empire. Musa’s stowed the oars and raised the sails, and we sit in a circle near the stern of the shabka.

  “So that’s it,” Darin says. “You’ve just decided it’s you against the Nightbringer?”

  “It feels right.” I do not add that I have no earthly idea how I will destroy the jinn—or even where to begin.

  “That’s not a good reason to go hunting for the most dangerous creature who has ever lived. Why should it be you?”

  My brother’s disapproval is maddening. He knows what I am capable of. And still, I must explain myself.

  I feel a fierce pang of longing for Elias. He saw my strength long before I did. You’ll find a way, he’d said to me in Serra, as we fled the Commandant and her men.

  “I do not trust anyone else to do it, Darin. Other people have too much to lose.”

  “And you don’t have anything to lose?” For an instant, I see how Darin will look as an old man. My brother bears the weight of our dead family stoically, speaking rarely of our parents or sister or grandparents. But I know he is thinking of them now.

  I do not answer his question, and Harper clears his throat. “Setting the Nightbringer aside for a moment . . .” The Mask’s hand rests lightly on the tiller. “This . . . thing. This Rehmat. It was living inside you?”

  “Like a parasite?” Musa says. “Or a demon?”

  “Don’t be so horrified,” I say. “Whatever it is, it’s inside you too. All of you. Or so the Jaduna said.”

  Musa looks down, clearly wondering if some fey beastie will burst unexpectedly from his chest. “So if one of us had lost our temper and yowled at the Nightbringer—”

  “I did not yowl—”

  “Then we’d be stuck fighting him? No offense, aapan, but why not one of them?” Musa nods at Harper and the Shrike. “They might get close enough to stick a knife in that fiery monster’s gut.”

  “I’ve a nephew to protect,” the Shrike says. “And the Empire to reclaim. Even if I wanted to hunt the Nightbringer, I couldn’t.”

  “I’m with her,” Harper says, smiling slightly at the sudden flush in the Shrike’s cheeks, before he turns stone-faced again.

  “It would be better,” I say. “But it is not them. It is me. And Rehmat’s presence does explain my disappearing. Your particular skills, Musa. And perhaps even the fact that you and I”—I look to Darin—“were never as bothered by the ghosts as Afya was.”

  “But if it’s in all of us,” Harper says, “shouldn’t Tas, Darin, and I have magic too?”

  “It will require an army to take the Nightbringer down, Laia,” Darin says. “This might be a ploy to get you alone and vulnerable.”

  “Could be that Rehmat is some devilry from the Karkaun warlocks,” the Shrike offers. “We’ve seen what Grímarr can do.”

  I wait for Musa’s opinion, but his head is tilted as it is when he’s listening to his wights.

  “Maybe Rehmat is good.” Tas speaks up. I almost forgot he was here, he’s been so quiet. “The world’s not only full of bad things, you know. And what about Elias? We should see what he thinks.”

  Silence threatens, but Darin fills it quickly. “Perhaps Musa can send him a message,” my brother says. “In the meantime, Tas, I’ll show you how to trim the sails. We’d best take advantage of this wind while we have it.”

  They move to the stern of the shabka, and the Beekeeper touches my shoulder. “Laia,” he says. “The Martials are amassing forces off the southern coast of the Tribal lands. They’re planning an invasion. The wights just brought word.”

  “Do the Tribes know?” I say. “They must. There have been skirmishes before.”

  Musa shakes his head. “This isn’t a skirmish. And the Tribes don’t know. Some fey magic cloaks the Martials. The wights heard a few of the generals speaking. They plan to attack at the waxing moon.”

  Three weeks from now. “You can warn them,” I say. “That’s time enough to send a message—”

  “I will,” Musa says. “But skies know if they’ll trust it. Keris and the Nightbringer are too strong, Laia. The Tribes will fall. And she’ll move north—”

  To Delphinium. To finish what she began in Antium. Musa moves off to speak to the Shrike. Near the deep purple sail, Darin’s smile flashes as he shows Tas the rigging. The world’s not only full of bad things, you know.

  I wish I believed that.

  * * *

  �
�««

  The days pass quickly, filled with fishing, training with the Shrike, and catching up with Darin, Musa, and Tas. When the sun sets, we marvel at the brilliant sheets of violet and pink and green that light up the northern skies.

  By sunrise on the fifth day, we spot the far side of Fari Bay. The rocky coast is steep, and the towering treetops of an ancient forest appear, blue beneath a clear sky and rolling westward as far as the eye can see.

  The Waiting Place.

  Harper speaks with the Shrike while Musa and I listen to one of Tas’s stories. But we all fall silent at the sight of the wood. Whispers sound on the wind and a shiver ripples through me.

  “You know”—Musa drops his voice so only I can hear—“if you could just get Elias to talk to you, he might let us across—”

  “No.”

  “It would save us nearly three weeks.”

  “We’re not going through the Waiting Place, Musa,” I say. “You of all people understand what it means to have the love of your life turned into someone else. I don’t want to see him again. Ever.”

  “Beekeeper.” The Shrike’s attention is fixed on the empty sea behind us. “Can we make this thing go any faster?”

  I squint—but even in the moonlight, I see only whitecaps. Then an arrow cuts through the air, embedding itself in the wood of the tiller, inches from Musa’s hand. He curses and the Shrike pushes past him, draws her bow, and releases a volley of shots.

  “Commandant’s men!” she says as a cluster of longboats comes into view behind us. “Take cover—aah!”

  I hear the sick thump of steel embedding into flesh, and the Shrike staggers. I am up now, nocking and releasing arrows as fast as I can.

  “Watch your left!” Musa snaps as more longboats appear to the south. And the north.

  “Ideas?” I ask the Beekeeper as the boats close in. “Because I am running out of arrows.”

  “One.” Musa glances at me, and then toward the trees of the Waiting Place. “But you won’t thank me for it.”

  XI: The Soul Catcher

  For a week after I kill Cain, I dream.

  I stand upon a great, blackened field, flanked by familiar faces. Laia of Serra is to my left and Helene Aquilla to my right. Keris Veturia stands apart, her gray eyes fixed on something I cannot see. The Mother watches over them all. The scims in my hands gleam with blood.

  Beyond us, a great, rabid maelstrom. It is a thousand colors, teeth and viscera and dripping claws. The storm reaches out, wraps a putrid hook around Laia.

  Elias! she screams. Help me!

  Helene reaches for Laia, but the maelstrom roars and swallows them both. When I look to Keris, she’s gone, replaced by a gray-eyed, blonde child who takes my hand.

  “Once,” she whispers, “I was thus.”

  Then she, too, is consumed by the maw, while I am dragged down into the earth, into a death that never ends.

  I wake covered in sweat but shivering, like when the Commandant would make us run midnight drills in a Serran winter.

  It’s still dark, but I stagger up, wash, and step outside into a dull drizzle. The mourning doves haven’t yet begun to croon. Dawn is far.

  Passing the spirits is the work of mere hours. When I am done, the storm-dulled light brushes the tops of the trees. The Waiting Place stands oddly silent and my stomach drops at the thought of the day stretching ahead, with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company.

  “Right,” I mutter to myself. “Jinn grove it is.”

  I consider taking my scims. But I think of the dream and leave them. My attachment to the armlet is troubling enough. Yesterday, I thought I’d lost it. I tore the cabin apart looking for it, only to find it in my cloak.

  Laia’s armlet, the voice within shouts. That’s why it matters to you. Because you loved her.

  I streak to the jinn grove and leave the voice behind, making for the dead yew. The drizzle keeps me cool as I bring down the chain—left side, right, left side, right. But the action, while exhausting, offers no comfort.

  Instead, I am reminded of Blackcliff—of laughing maniacally with Helene one winter when the Commandant ordered our cadet class to train in the middle of a thunderstorm.

  Why are we laughing? I’d asked her at the time.

  Because laughing makes it hurt less.

  “Little one.”

  When the Wisp speaks from the edges of the jinn grove, it is a relief. I drop the chain and go to her. There are only a half dozen or so ghosts who refuse to leave the Waiting Place. Most have been here a few weeks, and I know I will pass them on eventually.

  But the ghost of my grandmother—whose name in life was Karinna—has been here for more than thirty years. I’ve searched for her many times since joining with Mauth. Each time, she evaded me, seeking solitude in the deepest reaches of the wood.

  Now she curls around me like smoke, little more than a shiver in the air. “Have you seen my lovey?”

  “I know your lovey,” I say, and her head jerks up. She solidifies completely for the first time since I’ve seen her, so clear that I catch my breath.

  She looks just like my mother. Like Keris.

  “Your lovey still lives, Karinna,” I say. “But in time, she too will die. She will pass easier if you are waiting for her on the other side.”

  Karinna is all movement again, bolting away and back in the blink of an eye. “My lovey does not live,” she says. “My lovey died. But I cannot find her anywhere.”

  “Why do you think she died, Karinna?” I sit on a nearby stump and let her come to me. When she is close enough, I reach out with Mauth’s magic to try to understand what she needs. This is the trickiest part of passing a ghost on. Get too close and they bolt. Not close enough, and they rage at you for misunderstanding them.

  Karinna doesn’t resist the magic. She hardly notices it. I expect that she’ll ache for forgiveness perhaps, or love. But I feel only agitation from her.

  And fear.

  “She’s gone.” Karinna says, and my head spins as I try to follow her ceaseless movement through the trees. “My sweet lovey is gone. If she still existed in this world, I would know. But she wouldn’t leave without me. Never. She would wait. Have you seen her?”

  “Karinna.” I take a different tack. “Will you tell me how you died? Perhaps if I know, I can help you find your lovey.”

  Usually ghosts are still thinking about their deaths—even discussing them. But for as long as I’ve been in the Waiting Place, I’ve never heard Karinna say a word about her passing.

  She turns her face away. “I thought we were safe,” she says. “I’d never have gone, I’d never have taken her if I didn’t think we were safe.”

  “The world of the living is capricious,” I say. “But the other side is not. You’ll be safe there.”

  “No. There is no safe place anymore.” She whirls on me. The air crackles with cold, the rain hardening to sleet. “Not even beyond the river. It’s madness. I will not go.”

  Beyond the river. She means the other side. “The other side is not like our world—”

  “How do you know?” Her fear sharpens and settles around her, a poisonous miasma. “You have not been there. You do not sense what crouches in the beyond.”

  “Other ghosts pass through and find peace.”

  “They do not!” she shrieks. “You send them to the chasm and they do not know what awaits them! A maelstrom, a great hunger—”

  The dream. “Karinna.” Urgency grips me, but I do not let it show. “Tell me of this maelstrom.”

  But my grandmother’s spirit stiffens and spins east, toward the river. Seconds later, I sense what she does—outsiders to the far north.

  “Karinna—wait—” But she is gone. Skies only know when I will find her again.

  My ire at the outsiders is fueled by her departure. If they hadn’t bre
ached the Waiting Place, I could have gotten some answers out of her.

  I windwalk north, considering whether to kill them or simply frighten them. When I reach the River Dusk, I do not slow. To the spirits, the Dusk is a pathway to the other side. To me, it is just a river. But today, as I cross, the midmorning mist rises and brings with it a swirl of memory. The ghosts’ memories, I realize. Joy and contentment, peace and—

  Agony. Not physical, but something deeper. A wound of the soul.

  I have never stumbled when windwalking the Dusk. Stepping across it is like hopping across a rivulet instead of a river wide enough to hold a dozen Mercator barges.

  But the pain shocks me and I plunge into the freezing water. Something grabs me—hands, pulling, pressing so hard that I can feel the skin break on my arms, my legs—

  Jinn! I fight my way to the surface, sputtering, and swim for the far bank. The past few months of training have made me strong and I break free, kicking violently.

  A low trick, ambushing me in the water—but one I should have been prepared for.

  At shore, I look back, steeling myself for another battle with the jinn. But the river is quiet, moving swift and sure. There is no sign of anything that might wish me harm. I inspect my arms, my legs.

  No marks. Though I was sure I felt blood leaking out of me.

  I’m tempted to return to the river, but the intruders await. I streak northeast, frost collecting on my wet clothes, my hair, my eyelashes as I travel. The wind whips against me, fey and angry until, for the second time in a week, I walk the border of the Waiting Place, prepared to drive out whoever is foolish enough to enter it.

  The fools, it turns out, are manifold.

  Nearly a hundred, in fact. There are soldiers in longboats, most of whom sling arrows at a group of people clustered at the water’s edge, on a short spit of beach. Those few are locked in close combat with a dozen more Martial soldiers.

  The beach backs to the cliffs, with a few treacherous paths leading up to my domain.

  “To the woods, Tas, run!”

  The man who speaks is tall and sandy-haired, his brown skin matching that of the young woman next to him. Her armor is piecemeal, her cloak in tatters. She’s hooded so I cannot see her face. But I know her. I know the way she moves, and the color of her skin and the set of her shoulders.