by Sabaa Tahir
His shoulders sag, and when I whip my scim across to take off his head, he cannot stop me. Blood geysers over me as I kick his twitching body off the cliff, dig my fingers into his hair, and hold up his severed head.
“This is your leader?” I turn to his men. “This is the man you called king?”
For a seemingly unending moment, the Karkauns are silent. The city is filled with the sounds of battle, and in the distance, the lockstep thud of boots echoes. Quin!
Come on, Harper, I think. If ever there was a clearer signal than this . . .
A cry of victory goes up from the Martial prisoners still being marched through the Karkaun crowd, and all the hells break loose. It begins at the back of the Karkaun throng, but my men move quickly. Fights break out, and the Karkauns shout, grasping for their weapons, realizing that the enemy is among them.
I tear another knife from my belt and plunge into the fray. All of my hate, all of my frustration, every sleepless night during which I raged against my own inaction pours out of me.
When the Martial prisoners realize what is happening, they fight too, chains and all. Without Grímarr to lead them and without the ghosts to lend them strength, the Karkauns panic, stabbing and slashing indiscriminately. As they die at the edge of my blades, I hear the phrase Grímarr uttered. Ik tachk mort fid iniqant fi.
Within the crowd of Karkauns, a squad of my men fight their way toward me, Musa among them. I try to join them, but the Karkauns surround us. Musa disappears, his scims flying, and I remind myself to ask him who the hells trained him before I am inundated by the enemy again.
Soon enough, the sheer number of Karkauns grows overwhelming. Even with the prisoners fighting, we are heavily outnumbered.
I spot raven-black hair and brown skin. Harper appears beside me, blood-spattered and snarling, tearing into the Karkauns with a savagery that matches my own. Kill by kill, we press the barbarians back.
Until a knot of them comes between us. One of Harper’s scims goes flying. I hear the crunch of fist against bone. A Karkaun dagger flashes high and blood geysers in the air.
One second, Harper is there. The next he is not. As I fight, I wait to see him, wait for him to stand up. But he doesn’t.
My mind goes horribly blank. I scream and battle through the Karkauns closest to me, heart thundering in terror. It wasn’t his blood. He’d have blocked that attack easily. No. No. No. I should have ordered him to stay in Delphinium. I should have had him accompany Quin. I shouldn’t have tried to take back Antium, not if this was the cost.
And now—now—
Dead. This cannot be. Harper cannot be dead. For I did not say any of what I should have. I did not touch him or kiss him or tell him that without him, I never would have survived this long. Dead like Father and Mother and Hannah and Faris and all those who you love—
Suddenly, he is charging through the Karkauns and beside me once more, limping but alive. I grab his arm, ensuring that he’s real, and he glances up in surprise.
“You—” Bleeding hells, I think I am crying. No. It’s sweat. It must be. “You’re—”
His eyes shift to whatever is behind me. He shoves me aside and impales a Karkaun on the end of his scim. From the south, the drums thunder again.
Enemy retreat, southern quadrant. The news gives my fighters and the prisoners new heart. A group of Karkauns, those closest to the palace, breaks away, running for their lives.
Harper grins and turns to me as more and more flee from Cardium Rock. “They’re running!”
I nod, but I can hardly muster a smile back. My chest is still tight from seeing him go under, from the fear that grabbed hold of me like a mailed fist, when I thought he was gone.
The rhythmic march of Martial soldiers grows louder, and even as we follow the fleeing Karkauns, I spot white hair and the sigil of Gens Veturia. I move toward Quin quickly—anything to get away from the thoughts in my head.
“Ten hells, old man.” I clap him on the back. “It took you long enough.”
He surveys the Karkauns. “Seems like you have it well in hand. Shall we send them crawling back to their holes?”
The night is bloody, but the Karkauns are nothing without their alpha. Those who fight are quickly destroyed. The rest simply run, escaping the city like rats from a ship on fire.
“Get a message to the southern Paters,” I tell Harper. “Tell them those loyal to Emperor Zacharias liberated Antium this day.”
Dawn brightens the eastern horizon, and my men gather on a staircase in Cartus Square. Quin hoists Zacharias’s hawk-and-hammer flag atop the palace.
As he does, Antium’s survivors emerge into the streets. Emaciated Martial and Scholar men, chained but unbroken. Women clutching weapons in one hand and children in the other. Fighters all.
The square fills up, and then the streets. I spot Neera in the crowd, and a chant starts up, one that is spoken and whispered at first. Then shouted by all of those who fought for Antium, by all who survived.
“Imperator Invictus! Imperator Invictus!”
My blood surges when I hear it. First in pride. Then in dawning unease.
For they are not chanting for Zacharias.
They are chanting for me.
“They should be chanting the Emperor’s name,” I hiss at Quin, who has descended and stands beside me on the stairs. “Not—this.”
“The Emperor is a child, Shrike. A symbol. You are the general who fought for them. You understood the strength of their spirit. And you were fearless. Let them call you whatever they please.”
My mind snags on one word: Fearless. For I am not fearless. To be fearless means to have a heart of steel. But my heart betrayed itself. It is soft and hopeful.
And I know now that it belongs entirely to Avitas Harper. No matter how I wish to deny it, my reaction when I thought him dead tells me I am fully, foolishly in love with him. He is the weak spot in my armor, the flaw in my defense.
Damn my traitorous heart to the hells.
Part III
The Jinn Queen
XXXV: The Nightbringer
One evening on my way home from visiting the Ankanese, I stopped to rest and eat south of the Waiting Place, along the shores of the Duskan Sea. As I let the stars and waves lull me to sleep, a flicker caught my eye. A fire burning bright and solitary, the lamp of a wanderer on a great, dark plain.
It drew closer, and I flowed into my flame form, for this jinn carried weapons in either hand, and though I did not enjoy battle, I was more than prepared for it.
“Hail, kindred.” She brought with her the scent of citrus and juniper, her voice husky and accented strangely. “Will you share your meal? For I have traveled long, with nary a bite. For your kindness, I will offer you a tale. This, I vow.”
I confess my bewilderment, for I knew all of the jinn in the Waiting Place, and yet I had never met her.
“I am called Rehmat and am a creature of flame, like you, my king,” she said. “But born elsewhere, that I might live among the humans for a time and understand them. I have bled with them and battled with them, but Mauth bid me join you, for my destiny lies now with our people.”
Rehmat. A strange name. One with a meaning that unsettled me.
She told her tale, as she promised, and then traveled to the Sher Jinnaat with me. But ever after, she was never content to remain in the wood. A strange mood would overcome her, she would strap her blades across her back and wander, a warrior-poet who found a home wherever she laid her head.
The first time she disappeared from the Waiting Place, I searched and searched until I found her draped in the branches of a Gandifur tree in the far west, trading poetry with the Jadna tribe—the forebears of the Jaduna.
She drifted thousands of miles south, to the Ankanese, and taught them the language of the stars. Then she sang stories with the first Kehannis of the Tribes, teachi
ng them to draw magic from words. She found those Tribespeople who saw the dead and instructed them on the Mysteries they would later use to pass ghosts.
“Why,” I asked her, exasperated, “do you always wander so far? Why can you not remain in the Sher Jinnaat?”
Her smile pulled at my heart, for there was a deep sadness to it. “You have found your purpose, my king. You have much magic in you. I still seek mine. When I find my power, I will return. This, I vow.”
It had not occurred to me that she lacked magic, for to me, she burned with life and wit, humor and beauty.
One day, weeks after she’d disappeared again, I woke from sleep. Her anguished voice called to me across hundreds of miles. I made for an island empty of human life, but teeming with every other kind. The ocean was peaceful, a brilliant azure, the winds sweet as summer cherries.
I found Rehmat along the northern coast of the island. She wore her human form, brown-skinned and brown-eyed, with black hair woven into a plait. She rocked back and forth, her arms clasped tight about her legs.
“Rehmat?” I cradled her to me, and she dropped her head against my heart.
“This is an island of death, Meherya,” she whispered. “Many ghosts will pass from here. It will not be you who passes them, but another who has not yet come. And you will call her traitor, though she meant no harm.”
She screamed, her dark eyes burning into mine. “The Ember will walk these sands, and here the seeds of his defiance will flower, but for naught, for the forest will call him and suffering will sunder him.”
Thus did we learn Rehmat’s power, one far more treacherous than anything we had yet encountered. She foresaw the future. My own ability to scry was limited to impressions, brief images. Rehmat saw possibility after possibility.
She returned to the Sher Jinnaat, as she promised. But the price was high. She locked herself away in her home and spoke to no one but me. I begged Mauth to free her from the torment of her magic. But he spoke less and less. We were created to pass the ghosts. Our powers had their uses—and though we might not like it, hers had a purpose too.
“If only I could master it,” she whispered to me once after a particularly difficult episode. “I would teach others. This, I vow.”
I cared for her during those difficult months, and something kindled between us, a soul-deep fire that others had found but that had, until then, eluded me. My heart was hers, and I knew that if she did not wish to become my queen, I would never have one.
In time, she learned to understand and control her magic. As she promised, when other flames kindled and discovered they were haunted by the curse of foresight, it was Rehmat who taught them to see it as a gift.
After she made peace with her visions, she found her poetry again. But now she shared it with me alone, whispering it into the deepest chambers of my heart.
When she consented to be my queen, the Sher Jinnaat celebrated for a month. And when we brought our own little flames to the world, the entire city turned out to sing the song of welcome. All was well.
Until the Scholars came.
After they murdered our children, Rehmat donned her blades once more. She spoke strength into the jinn who yet lived. She used centuries of experience to outwit the Scholars in battle.
But it was not enough. Even as Cain’s accursed coven plotted to chain the jinn, Rehmat fell in combat near the Duskan Sea, where I first beheld her. I pulled her to me as her flame flickered into darkness, and she fixed her liquid-fire eyes on my face.
“You are strong,” I said. “You will survive this.”
“Remember your name.” There was such urgency to her whisper. “You are the Beloved. Remember, or you will be lost.”
“Do not leave this world,” I begged her. “Do not leave me alone, my love.”
“I will see you again.” She squeezed my hands. “This, I vow.”
Then her flame faded. But I left her ashen body, for far to the north, a great evil was unfolding. The imprisoning of my kind.
I tried to stop it. But just like with Rehmat, I was too late.
“I forsake thee.” I forced my way to Mauth’s domain, to that vast, wretched sea into which I had cast so much human suffering. “I forsake thee, and I am thy creature no longer.”
“Thou wilt always be mine. For thou art the Meherya.”
“No,” I said to him. “Never again.”
I returned to a desolate world. For my Rehmat was gone. My kin were gone, all but Shaeva.
She died slowly—I made sure of it before bringing her back to be Soul Catcher, before chaining her to the Waiting Place to pass ghosts.
And I wept over Rehmat’s final words to me, for she took such pride in keeping her vows, and this was one she had broken.
What a fool I was. All those years I knew her, she never once broke an oath. Not even the smallest, simplest promise.
Why would her last and greatest vow be any different?
XXXVI: Laia
It takes me an hour to find my fallen pack, and three more to discover a path that will take me to Afya and Mamie. My clothes have finally dried, though they are stiff with mud and scrape painfully against the bruises and cuts from the flash flood. I feel as if every bone in my body has been broken.
The storm has fled with the Nightbringer, leaving the brilliant blue spill of the galaxy in its wake. The light makes it easy to see, but the rain-churned desert floor is sludge now, perilous and sticky. My pace is maddeningly slow. My body shakes, and not just from the cold.
Despair takes hold. At this pace, I will not reach the guard tower before I collapse from pain. I think of calling out to Darin, but I will only worry him. And I do not want to draw the attention of any fey creatures right now. If I am attacked, I cannot fight.
“Laia.”
Rehmat’s luminous form casts a glow across the starlit desert, sending night creatures scurrying into their burrows. Beside it—her—I am but a smudge in the darkness.
I have a thousand questions. But now that she is here, it takes me long minutes to find any words that do not drip with rancor.
“You’re his wife,” I finally say. “His queen.”
“I was his wife. No longer. I have not been his wife for a millennium.” Only days ago, I wondered if Rehmat was male because of how irritatingly stubborn she was. But now there is a shift in her voice, her form. She no longer hides who she is.
“I did not tell you,” she says, “because I thought the truth would anger you. I worried you would not trust me if you knew I was a jinn—”
“Are a jinn!”
“Was a jinn.” She greets my outburst with infuriating aplomb. “The Jaduna’s blood magic did not allow me to keep my corporeal body, my fire. But jinn souls are linked to our magic. If the magic lives, so do our souls.”
“So they . . . extracted you?” I ask. “He did not know you had died. Did you trick him too?”
“It was necessary.”
“Necessary.” I laugh. “And the deaths of tens of thousands of my people? Was that necessary too?”
“My gift as a jinn was foretelling.” Rehmat keeps pace with me easily, lighting the way, though I wish she wouldn’t. Darkness is what I want right now. Darkness in which to nurse my pain.
“I saw one path forward, Laia. Before our war with the Scholars, I befriended the Jaduna. We shared much lore over the centuries. When I learned that the Meherya would turn, I went to them, hoping their magic could help me stop it.”
She opens her hands and looks down at her form. “All they could offer was this. They said that upon my death, they would draw out my soul and nest me within their own people. A hundred men and women volunteered. It was a testament to our years of friendship that they would do such a thing, not knowing the effect it would have on their progeny. They found my broken body after the battle and took me to their home, far to the west.”
“So you lived in them,” I say. “Like a disease.”
“Like gold eyes.” She is as quiet as a breeze. “Or brown skin. They traveled to Martial lands and Scholar lands and Tribal lands. The bloodlines spread. And with each generation, I grew more removed from wakefulness and watchfulness. Until all that was left was the spark of magic. In some, like you and the Blood Shrike and Musa of Adisa, the magic was awoken under duress. And in others, like Tas of the North, or Darin or Avitas Harper, the magic sleeps. But all of you have kedim jadu in you.”
“Ancient magic,” I mutter. “All that time you were lurking? Did you try to influence us?”
“Never,” she swears. “Blood magic has conditions. For my rebirth, I had to agree to three sacrifices. The first: that my life as a jinn remain in the past—I may never speak of my time with the Nightbringer, my deeds as queen, or even—even my children.”
The misery in her voice at the last is clear. I think of Mother, who struggled to speak of my father or Lis, so deep were her wounds.
“The second,” Rehmat continues, “that I remain dormant until one of the kedim jadu directly defied the Nightbringer. And the third: that I have no corporeal body, unless one of the kedim jadu allowed me to use them as a conduit.”
Skies know, I’ll never make that mistake again. “Why did you want to stay away from the jinn? Can they hurt you?”
“Not exactly—”
“You still feel for them.” I cast the accusation too swiftly for her to refute it. “That’s why you disappeared in the Waiting Place and when I was with Khuri. You’re not afraid of them. You’re afraid of yourself around them.”
“That’s not—”
“Please don’t lie,” I say. “The jinn were your family. You loved them. I felt that within you. That sense of—of yearning. Is that why you do not want me to get the scythe? Why you always say defeat instead of kill? Because you love him and don’t want him dead?”