A Sky Beyond the Storm

by Sabaa Tahir

  The moment I do, I hit a wall, miles high, miles thick, and I drift through it like a ghost. I know instantly that I am not in the Nightbringer’s mind. I am somewhere else. Somewhere real, even if it is a place where I have no corporeal form. The wall is magic, and that magic speaks to my own, for the source is the same. This wall is Mauth’s creation. I am in Mauth’s dimension.

  Behind the wall is an aching Sea of Suffering that is too powerful to understand, too vast for any earthly being, fey or human, to control. I have seen it before, I realize, every time I have visited Mauth in his realm.

  The Sea surges against Mauth’s wall, even as the Nightbringer pours the suffering of the ghosts he has thieved into it, giving the Sea more power than it should have. With every ghost, that raging ocean grows stronger. With every bit of suffering fed to it, it wears away at Mauth’s wall a little more. In time, it will destroy the wall altogether.

  How much time, I wonder? How much more suffering does the Nightbringer need?

  “Where are you?”

  The Nightbringer’s question is heavy with contempt. For the blink of an eye, I think I see him, a thread of fire in the darkness, blazing with hate. Between us, an enormous whirlpool of wailing souls cries out, spinning down endlessly into the Sea. I reach for them, trying to pull them with me, trying to escape this place with them.

  Then I am flung away from the Sea, the wall, the ghosts, and back into my body. I still have an arm around Maro, but he wrenches away from me and runs toward the Nightbringer.

  Bleeding, burning hells. The king of the jinn pushes Maro behind him and strides toward me, murder thrumming in every sinew of his body.

  Then an arrow flies out of the night from the staircase, sinking into Maro with a strange, hollow thump.

  She didn’t run. Of course she didn’t.

  Maro collapses, and the Nightbringer howls as he did in Aish. I am already past him, down the stairs, grabbing Laia and leaping out a window, harnessing the wind so we do not break our necks. Still, I hit the flagstones too hard and spin into a roll. Her head hits the ground with a sickening crack, knocking her out cold. I sweep her over my shoulder and tear through the city away from the jinn, not stopping until I reach the desert beyond the northern gate, empty now that the Tribes have evacuated.

  “Soul Catcher!” Afya appears from over a hill, my brother Shan riding beside her.

  “What the hells happened?” Her face drains of color as she looks at Laia. “Did you fall?”

  “She hit her head on the flagstones.”

  Blood trickles from the corner of Laia’s mouth. As I lay her down on the earth, it feels as if a giant fist is trying to squeeze all the blood out of my heart. Please, please. I don’t know what I’m asking for. Or who I’m asking. I only know that when I feel her pulse at her throat, strong and steady, I can breathe again.

  I glance over my shoulder, but the Nightbringer has not pursued us. I find I am shaking, not in cold or exhaustion, but in dread. I thought the Nightbringer’s intent was to destroy the Scholars. But if he pours enough pain into the Sea of Suffering, he will unleash it. And it will destroy all human life.

  The horror of it is too great, and even through the Mauth-inspired fog in my brain, I can’t bring myself to stand up. Why? Why is he doing this?

  He is lost, Soul Catcher. His grief has taken him.

  The voice of Death is so soft, I nearly miss it. “Mauth?” I whisper.

  Afya and Shan exchange a glance and step away from me.

  You have been away too long, Banu al-Mauth, Mauth says, and I feel the pull I have not felt in months, to return to the Waiting Place.

  I turn to Afya and Shan. “I’ll come back,” I swear to them. “Tell her.”

  The words are barely out of my mouth when I feel myself dragged, inexorably, back to the Forest of Dusk. Mauth speaks again, and this time his words resound in my very core.

  It is time to come home.

  XLIV: The Blood Shrike

  Perhaps the shrieking wind from the north is a portent. Spring is not far, six weeks away at most. And yet the storm out of the Nevennes puts a foot of snow on the ground and howls down the palace chimneys until it sounds as if the place is possessed by ghosts.

  “It’s not a bleeding portent,” I tell myself as I lurk near the kitchens. “It was one night. It never has to happen again.”

  “Pardon me, Blood Shrike?” A passing Martial servant glances at me, alarmed, but I wave him off. I’ve been here for nearly a half hour, contemplating how to ask for the herbs I need without engendering gossip. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that I do not want children. Ever. Watching Livia give birth taught me that much.

  “I was looking for you.” Harper’s voice makes me jump and my cheeks burn.

  “It’s going to be difficult to act like nothing’s happened if you blush every time you see me, Shrike.” He holds a cup in his hand, and the smell is familiar. Mamie Rila taught me to brew it when I needed to slow my moon cycle at Blackcliff. Training while suffering cramps was a special sort of hell. The brew also prevents pregnancy.

  “This might be what you’re looking for.”

  “How did you—”

  “You’ve mentioned you don’t want children,” he says. “Once. Or ten times. And I’ve brewed this concoction before.”

  I nod and keep my expression bland. He’s had lovers—of course he has. Many, I imagine. Though imagining isn’t the wisest idea.

  “The last Blood Shrike didn’t want unexpected heirs,” Avitas says, and the fact that he offers this information with a straight face despite my obvious jealousy makes me want to kiss him.

  Instead, I nod emphatically. “Right. Thank you.” I take the cup from him and make a face, remembering how awful it tastes.

  Harper’s eyes drift over my shoulder. “If you’ll excuse me, Shrike.” He disappears quickly, and a moment later I understand why.

  “Good morning, sister.” Livia comes down the hallway, her guards behind her. And there’s nowhere to throw the damned tea. The only thing to do is drink it as fast as possible, but of course, it’s bleeding hot, and I nearly scald my face trying to get it down.

  “Careful there,” she says. “You’ll burn—”

  She takes a deep sniff. Her eyes follow Harper leaving.

  “You—” she says, a slow smile spreading on her face.

  “It doesn’t mean anything.” Two servers emerge from the kitchen holding trays, a Scholar and a Martial. They giggle together, going silent when they see us, curtsying to Livia before hurrying away. I drag Livia away from her guards. “Shut it—”

  “Your eyes are glowing,” She hooks my arm in hers and starts marching breakneck toward her apartments. “Your skin is glowing. Tell me everything.”

  “There’s nothing to tell!”

  “Lies!” my sister hisses. “You dare deceive the Empress Regent? Tell me, tell me, I need some joy in my life, sister—”

  “We just won back the capital. For your son!”

  “Not joy then, romance.” She digs her fingers into my arm, and I yelp as we step out into the storm. I scald my throat as I drink down the rest of the tea, lest someone else smell it. Not that it’s anyone’s bleeding business. But Paters are more judgmental than a luncheon full of Illustrian grandmothers.

  “Fine,” I say. “I’ll tell you a little, but get your claws out of my arm, this is untoward behavior for a—”

  “Blood Shrike,” Pater Mettias calls out from across the snowy courtyard. “Empress Regent.” His gaze lingers on my sister. “Captain Dex bid me find you. Another food shipment just arrived from Pater Lenidas’s northern estate, along with a messenger. And there are emissaries from Gens Candela and Gens Visselia. They await you in the throne room.”

  “Thank you, Pater Mettias.” Livia glances at me, one eyebrow arched. We’ll talk later.

  As
she departs, I notice how Mettias’s eyes follow her. His normally grim face is softer. He shakes himself and looks back at me quickly.

  Interesting.

  Gens Mettia is powerful. Having its Pater on our side has been invaluable. But having him bonded to us more tightly would give Gens Aquilla unquestionable legitimacy with all of the northern Gens.

  “—another messenger.” I realize too late that Pater Mettias has been speaking for a few seconds. “She’s in your quarters, under guard.”

  “Under guard?”

  “The Mariner, Shrike.” Pater Mettias gives me an odd look, likely because he’s already said this. “She said her message is urgent.”

  As I leave him and return to my quarters inside the palace, I am unsurprised to see Musa approaching. Dex follows him, looking irritated.

  “You didn’t need to lock her up,” the tall Scholar says to me without preamble. “I know her. She’s not dangerous.”

  “It’s just protocol,” I tell him. “We caught another assassin at the gates three days ago. I have to question her. Alone. Don’t go far. If I need you, I’ll call you in.”

  Dex and I enter my quarters, where two legionnaires wait with a third person. She is taller than me and wears the blue-and-silver cloak of the Mariner army. Her dark skin is dirt-smudged, and she has a dozen wounds that are fresh-dressed and seeping blood. Her hair is straight and clipped short against her head. After a moment of staring, I recognize her.

  “Eleiba,” I say. “Guard to Nikla. Did your queen send you?”

  “Blood Shrike.” She bows her head in brief acknowledgment. “Thank you for meeting with me. I am formerly of Princess Nikla’s guard, but have since been disgraced in her eyes. I was released from service for arguing against an alliance with Empress Keris Veturia.”

  To my surprise, the woman drops to one knee. “I come to you now not as a formal ambassador or emissary, but as a Mariner who fears for the survival of our kingdom. We are in desperate need of your aid, Blood Shrike.”

  My stomach sinks, and I think of our spies, gone silent in Marinn, and the storms that have kept the kingdom isolated.

  “Sit down.” I pull out a seat for her. “And tell me everything.”

  * * *

  «««

  Though Livia’s quarters are close to my own, I take my time getting there. For I know what she will say when she hears Eleiba’s request. And I do not yet know how I will answer her.

  Her eyes are shadowed when she opens the door, and she pulls me into the room with a finger over her lips.

  “The baby just fell asleep,” she whispers. “My ears are still ringing. Poor Tas rocked him for an hour.”

  The door between Livia’s chamber and Zak’s is slightly ajar, and Tas emerges.

  “I’ll be back soon,” he whispers. “Just going to get dinner.”

  “Go get some rest after, Tas,” Livia says. “I’ll call Coralia—”

  Tas shakes his head. “She doesn’t know the songs he likes,” he says. “Don’t fret about me, Empress Regent. I’ll be back soon, in case he wakes up.”

  After he leaves, I sit down with my sister, searching for the words to explain what Eleiba told me. But when Livia launches into a long description of her day—a nightmare, from the sound of it—I decide that I will say nothing tonight. Tomorrow will be full of difficult decisions and more difficult conversations. Let tonight be easy.

  “It is all so exhausting,” Livia says. “Is it wrong that I just want it to be over? This is no way to live—”

  “Don’t speak it.” I know what she is going to say. But the more she talks of leaving, the more real the idea will become. “Your son is ruler, sister. And you are his regent.”

  “Ruler of what?” Livia says. “A broken Empire. Some won’t accept him because of his father. Others because they fear Keris. We wish for him to live in the world, but it is such an ugly world.”

  “We are making progress,” I say. “We have a dozen more Gens backing us than we did a week ago—”

  Livia rises and walks to the mirror our father brought me years ago from the south. It is one of the few things we salvaged from the Karkauns’ destruction. As she runs her finger along the gilt edge, I rise and stand beside her. She drops her head against my shoulder.

  Once, I stared into this mirror as Mother tended my wounds. Elias had just escaped his execution and Harper had given me a vicious drubbing on the Commandant’s orders. Hannah was there that morning with Mother and Livia. The four of us reflected in the mirror.

  Now it is just Livia and me, and the space feels too vast. Too empty.

  “I miss them.” The words escape me, and once I say them, more come that I cannot stop. “Sometimes I think I failed them, Livvy—”

  “You did not fail them.” Livia takes my shoulders, and though she is smaller than me, I see my father in the steadiness of her gaze, the strength of her hands. “You held fast against the tide, Blood Shrike,” she says. “None could have stood as you did. Without you, we would all be dead.”

  I dash my hands against my eyes. “Bleeding Avitas has turned me soft,” I mutter, and Livia bursts into laughter.

  “Thank the skies someone has,” she says. “And don’t you go getting mean on him now. Tell him how you feel, sister.”

  I shove her and go back to my tea, putting my feet up on her table because I know it will irritate her. “With candles and oud player?” I say. “Shall I make him a flower crown too? Skies, Livia, next you’ll want me to propose.”

  “That’s not the worst idea you’ve ever had.”

  I nearly spew out my tea. “Harper and I are just—this doesn’t mean anything—”

  Livia rolls her eyes. “And I’m a three-headed Karka vulture.”

  “Well, you are one in the morning.”

  “You try being cheery when you’re being woken up every three hours and yelled at for food.”

  I snort, and my sister smiles, taking years off her face.

  “Ah, Helly,” she says with such sweetness that I cannot even get angry at her for calling me by that old name. “It’s so good to hear you laugh. You don’t laugh enough. Too bad Avitas is as serious as you are.”

  I grin at her. “He has other skills.”

  She giggles, a high-pitched wheeze that sounds like a goat being choked. When I say so, she giggles harder, until we are both laughing far too loudly to not wake a sleeping child.

  In the next room, Zak shrieks.

  “Oh, now you’ve done it.” Livia shoves me and grabs one of the lamps off the table. “You’re rocking him to sleep this time! Poor Tas needs a break, and I need dreams.”

  “I have plans this evening,” I call after her. “I need to make a flower crown, remember—”

  My sister snorts and enters my nephew’s room, her tone softening. “Zakky, my love, Mama is tired, and fed you twice this eve—”

  Her voice chokes off. Instantly I am on my feet, across the room, scims out, screaming for the guards. No one could have gotten in without us seeing. There are no passageways into that bleeding room. The windows are fifty feet off the ground. The gardens below are guarded, day and night.

  I burst through the door. Zacharias’s chamber is small, only a dozen feet across, but right now, it might as well be as wide as the space between stars. For Keris Veturia stands by the window, mask gleaming, a wickedly curved dagger in hand. And Livia is frozen before her, not fighting, not screaming. Just standing there, arms loose at her side, voice low and pleading.

  Don’t stand there, Livia! I want to scream. Move! Run!

  Instead my sister’s begging chokes off as the Commandant steps forward and slides her blade across Livia’s throat. The sound is like cloth tearing, and at first, I cannot believe what I hear. What I see.

  The scream building inside me never emerges, for as my sister drops, as her life pours ou
t of her, all I can think of is getting to Keris.

  But the Commandant holds a squirming Zacharias in her arms—and I understand now why Livia was frozen in fear. When I leap toward the Bitch of Blackcliff, she throws Zacharias at me. My nephew howls as he flies through the air and I drop my scim to catch him, stumbling.

  It is a delay of only seconds. But it’s enough for the Commandant to escape out the window. I am at the sill in three steps, in time to see a swirl of cloak and the glare of two sun eyes.

  Then the Nightbringer and his minion are gone, disappearing on the back of a screaming wind.

  Livvy moans, and I am at her side, her son wailing in my arms as she bleeds out. The guards, including Rallius, burst into the room, going silent when they see the Empress Regent fallen.

  I hold up a hand so they don’t speak. I do not have much time. The desire to heal overwhelms me. I close my eyes and search for her song. It comes to my lips immediately, but as I hum, Livia scrabbles at me with her hand. It is slick with blood, but I hold it tight.

  I keep singing, but Livvy’s face is bone-white. The need to heal fades as it never has before. Zacharias reaches out to her, crying, no doubt wondering why Auntie Shrike holds him so tight.

  “Don’t leave us,” I whisper to her, because I understand now that she’s too far gone. That I cannot heal this. “Livia, please don’t leave us alone.”

  Her blue eyes drop from mine to her son’s. She smiles at him and touches his small fingers with her own. His cries fade into whimpers.

  Then her hand goes slack, and my baby sister, my Livvy, closes her eyes and does not open them again.

  XLV: Laia

  I drift in and out of consciousness for days after stealing the scythe. By the time the Tribes take shelter in a canyon a hundred miles north of Nur, I am able to stay awake for longer stretches. But my recovery is slow. I am like a cat with no whiskers, unable to walk ten yards without lurching.