A Sky Beyond the Storm

by Sabaa Tahir

  “What is it?” As I jerk my head up, Darin draws his scim, for we are on guard duty. “What do you see?”

  My heart thuds against my chest like a penned bull as Elias approaches. Darin spots him and groans.

  “Can I kick him?” my brother asks. “I’m going to kick him.”

  “He saved your life, Darin.”

  “A small kick,” he argues. “It wouldn’t even hurt him. Look at him, skies. It would probably break my foot.”

  “No.”

  “Fine.” Darin grabs his pack, ignoring the Soul Catcher’s nod of greeting. “I can tell when I’m not wanted.” Once past Elias, my brother turns around and mimes a kick, grinning.

  Skies. Brothers.

  “Any progress with the Tribes?” I ask Elias, for when I came up here, the Zaldars were still arguing over whether to leave for Adisa or try to fight for Aish.

  Elias shakes his head. “Most wish to fight for Aish,” he says. “Few wish to go to Marinn.”

  My fingers tighten around the staff of the scythe. The blade is folded into a slot in the wood, and it appears for all the world like nothing more than a fine walking stick. Which is essentially what it will be if I cannot get to the Nightbringer. And if Mamie cannot find his story.

  None of us have slept for the past few nights, knowing now what the jinn king intends to do with all his soul thieving. I shiver, dread crawling over me like a carpet of spiders.

  Elias clears his throat and nods to the rock. “Do you mind?”

  I shift over quickly, surprised. He always seems like he struggles to even be near me. But I do not ask questions, instead letting myself enjoy the warmth of his body so close to mine.

  “It’s a two-month journey to Adisa from here.” He stretches his long legs in front of him. “If we can get ships to take us across the Duskan Sea. If we survive the Commandant’s blockade. And if the weather holds.”

  “You could order the Tribespeople to follow you,” I say. “The Banu al-Mauth’s word carries great weight. And they have trusted you thus far.”

  “Only to see their cities destroyed—”

  “Only to survive,” I say. “If you had not mobilized them, Nur and its people would be ash.”

  “You said something to me a few weeks ago,” Elias says. His hands are upturned and he runs a thumb across a callous, worrying at it. “You cannot lead them if you do not understand them. Now I understand the Tribes. I understand their fear. They do not wish to die. And if we go to Adisa to fight, we take them to their deaths. Besides which, I wonder if we won’t be playing right into the Nightbringer’s hands by going to Marinn.”

  “You think he’s trying to lure us there?”

  “I think we shouldn’t be reactionary,” Elias says. “We need to consider.”

  “We can’t consider for much longer,” I say. “Spring is only a few weeks away. In flowerfall, the orphan will bow to the scythe. I think—” I shudder. “I think that prophecy speaks of me—”

  I cannot finish the thought. Are there people in the world who still experience happiness? Enjoy it, I want to tell those people. Enjoy it, because soon it might all be gone.

  Elias shifts closer, and his arm comes around me. He might as well have transformed into a talking rabbit, I am so surprised.

  “You did say to be more human—” He quickly lets go. “You looked sad, so . . .”

  “No.” I return his wrist to my shoulder. “It’s fine. Though if you’re going to comfort me, your embrace should be less like a tree branch and more like a—a shawl.”

  “A shawl?”

  Of course, I had to pick a singularly unromantic word. “Like this.” I let my own arm rest naturally about his waist. “We’re not drunken schoolfellows singing chanties about wanton fishwives. We are—you and I—we—”

  I do not know what we are. I search his face, wondering if I’ll ever see the answer there. But he tilts it up to the glittering sweep of the sky, so that I cannot see his expression.

  Still, after a half dozen too-swift thuds of my heart, his arm relaxes, muscle by muscle, until it is draped comfortably across my back. His big hand encircles my hip, and when he pulls me closer, it feels as though all the heat in my body has pooled beneath his fingers.

  For all that he is the Banu al-Mauth, he still smells of spice and rain. I forget the cold and breathe him in. It is not all that I wanted. But it is not nothing either.

  I wait for him to pull away, but he does not. Slowly, the tension eases out of me. With him beside me, I feel more myself. Strong. And less alone.

  “Do you think the jinn know?” I ask him. “What will happen if the Nightbringer releases the Sea?”

  “They must at least suspect.” The rumble of Elias’s baritone hums through my body. “They are not fools.”

  “Then why support him?” I say. “To be imprisoned for a thousand years and then released only to wreak havoc and die—it seems like a terrible waste.”

  “Perhaps imprisonment drove them mad.”

  But that doesn’t feel right. “It’s not madness that grips the Nightbringer,” I say. “It is intent. He wants to destroy everything. I think he’s hiding that fact from his kin.” I shiver. “Yet he claims to love them. He does love them.”

  Footsteps crunch behind us, and we jump away from each other.

  “Banu al-Mauth!” Gibran and Aubarit approach, and the latter bows her head in respect and then smacks Gibran, who quickly does the same.

  “Dinner’s ready, Laia,” Gibran says. “Afya sent us up to take over.”

  When Elias and I reach the canyon floor, he disappears, his eyes far away in that manner that tells me he’s working through a problem. Most of the Tribespeople have bedded down for the night. Those few remaining sit around the fire quietly, any arguing drowned out by the lonely wind wailing down the canyon, trying its best to put out our flames.

  “Bleeding cold.” Afya’s teeth chatter around her spoon. “And there’s little enough wood. We won’t be able to stay here much longer.”

  “Did you change any minds?”

  “My Tribe will stay, as will Mamie’s and Aubarit’s,” Afya says. “The rest plan to leave at first light. They hope to take back Aish.”

  “Aish won’t matter,” Darin says from where he hunches by the fire, “if the Nightbringer sets that maelstrom free and kills everyone.”

  I leave Afya and Darin and turn to Mamie, just a few yards away. Though it is cold enough that the stream has iced over, she sits on the earth of the canyon, staring up at the stars.

  “Can’t sleep?” I ask her.

  “Not when I know that the story is out there, waiting for me.” Mamie turns to me, her dark gaze piercing. “I feel it on you, Laia. Near you. Part of you, almost. Think again on all you know. There must be something you’ve forgotten. Some bit of the story locked away in your mind. When the Augur died—what did he tell Elias again?”

  “He said to go back to the beginning—”

  “What about the book?” Darin comes to sit beside us. “Don’t suppose there’s anything in there?”

  I look at him askance. “What book?”

  “The book I gave you.” He looks offended. “Back in the Empire. Just before you headed south.”

  At my blank stare, he shoves my shoulder. “Well, hells, Laia, it’s nice to know my sister appreciates my thoughtfulness. When we parted ways, I gave you a gift, remember? I found it in Adisa.”

  I run for my rucksack in Mamie’s wagon and bring back an oilcloth-wrapped package. The string is stiff from the floodwaters when I lost my pack, and I have to cut it open. Wrapped tight within is a worn book bound in soft leather.

  Gather in the Dark, it says.

  “Why does this look familiar?”

  “You were reading it,” Darin says. “Before the raid. Before the Mask came—before Nan and Pop—�
� He stops and clears his throat. “Anyway. You were reading it.”

  I think of the Augur’s prophecy, and despite the fire and my cloak, I am suddenly shivering. “Go back to the beginning.” I turn to Mamie. “Could this—”

  She has already taken the book from me. “Yes,” she breathes. “This is what I needed. What I’ve been waiting for.”

  I open my hand, hoping she’ll return it. She ignores me and stands, her frustration replaced by single-minded determination.

  “Shouldn’t I read it—” I call after her. But she waves me off, the book tucked under her arm as she seeks a story in a place I cannot follow.

  XLIX: The Soul Catcher

  Love. I consider the world without sentiment after I leave Laia and retire to my tent, squeezed between two supply wagons on the far side of the Saif encampment. Without thought, I take out Laia’s armlet and begin to carve.

  Love cannot live here. Shaeva told me that, when I became Soul Catcher. Yet it was love that began all this in the first place—the love the Nightbringer had for his people is what drove him to murder and madness and retribution.

  And it is love that drives him still.

  The way he fought for centuries to save the jinn. The way he howled when Khuri died. The way he raged when Laia shot Maro. Bleeding hells, his very name. Beloved. Love is at the heart of what the Nightbringer was. It is his greatest weapon.

  But I can use it as a weapon too.

  * * *

  «««

  The Zaldars do not take kindly to being woken up in the middle of the night. Especially when most were planning on leaving at dawn.

  So I make them an enormous pot of hot, sweetened tea, as Mamie Rila used to do in the deep winter.

  “More honey,” Laia whispers after tasting it, surreptitiously raiding Mamie’s rapidly shrinking stash.

  When the tea has been passed around, and the Zaldars—along with Fakirs and Kehannis—are settled around a large fire, I make my case.

  “We must fight the Nightbringer, for the survival of the world depends on us defeating him.” A low grumble starts up, and I speak over it. “But we cannot go to Adisa. It is a two-month journey, at least, over Martial-infested lands and treacherous seas. And we do not know if the Mariners will still be fighting by then, or if Keris and the jinn will have defeated them.”

  “Get to the point.” The Zaldar of Tribe Shezaad speaks so insolently that his Fakira, a woman Mamie’s age and dressed in black, slaps him on the back of the head. He ducks, gaze as surly as an alley cat’s.

  “We take a shorter journey, to the Sher Jinnaat, the City of the Jinn, deep within the Waiting Place.” I consider my words carefully, for I’ll have this one chance to convince them. “Everything the Nightbringer has ever done has been for his people. He will not allow them to be killed. We can draw him and his army away from Marinn and to a place where we have an advantage.”

  “How do we have an advantage if it’s their city?” another Zaldar asks. “They will tear through our army with their fire.”

  “Most of the jinn in the city are still weak.” Laia speaks up. “They have not recovered from their imprisonment.”

  “An army of four thousand Tribespeople and a thousand efrits is no small thing,” Afya says. “The Nightbringer will know we are coming.”

  “Not if Elias and I are hidden,” Laia cuts in. “Darin too. We can disguise our fighters and supplies. From a distance, the army will just look like a band of refugees.”

  “We like this not, Soul Catcher.” Rowan Goldgale sweeps forward, his fellow efrit lords following. “We will not stand for a massacre. We have witnessed too many.”

  “The goal is not to kill the jinn,” I say. “It’s to draw the Nightbringer away from the Free Lands so that he no longer reaps souls. So the Mariner armies can regroup. The Mariners are our allies. They offered sanctuary to the Scholars when the Tribes could not. It is wrong to abandon them when our foe is the same.”

  “You say our,” the Nasur Kehanni points out. “But you are a Martial.”

  “He is the Banu al-Mauth, Kehanni.” Aubarit’s voice is ice, and she is no longer the scared girl I met one winter ago. “The Chosen of Death. Have a care in how you speak to him, lest I leave your soul to wander.”

  The Kehanni bites back whatever retort she had prepared. “The Mariners did not aid us,” she points out. “Sadh and Aish and Nur burned, and we heard nothing from them.”

  An old emotion rises in me. One of the first I felt, when Cain awoke my memories. Anger—at the stubbornness of nearly everyone here, at their cussed refusal to see.

  But I catch myself. The Zaldars fear they’ll lead those they love to a swift death. They are afraid we’ll fail. The Kehanni of Tribe Nasur fears the same.

  “It is a risk,” I say. “But this way, we force the Nightbringer to act. To come to us. We prepare for his attack, and when he comes, we hold off the army as long as possible so—”

  I look to Laia, standing in the shadows, hand gripped tight around her scythe.

  “So that I can kill him,” she says.

  I say nothing of my plan to speak to the jinn in the Sher Jinnaat, to try to persuade them to serve as Soul Catchers once more. Doing so will only complicate matters.

  “What other choice do we have?” Afya speaks out. “We arrive in Marinn in time to be massacred? We wait here, until either this maelstrom destroys us or the Commandant does? Our suffering begins and ends with the Nightbringer. Let us finish him.”

  “If she can finish him,” the Zaldar of Tribe Shezaad says. “Give the scythe to someone who can wield it. Why not you, Soul Catcher?”

  My ire rises, and I find my fists are clenched, but I keep silent, for Laia steps forward, dark eyes reflecting the flames as she regards the Zaldar.

  “How many times have you faced the Nightbringer and survived, Zaldar?”

  The man fidgets from foot to foot.

  “I have defied him and survived him again and again. He has tried to hurt me. But I will not allow myself to be hurt. He has tried to break me. But I will not allow myself to be broken. And I will not be dictated to by a man so afraid to fight the jinn that he must criticize a woman to make himself feel bigger.”

  “If we bring the fight to the Sher Jinnaat,” I say, “we choose our own destiny, instead of letting the jinn and Keris Veturia choose for us.”

  “I want vengeance on those herrisada for what they did to our cities,” Afya says. “To our people. Tribe Nur is with you, Banu al-Mauth.” Her fighters are arrayed behind her, and as one, they raise their fists and shout one word.

  “NUR!”

  “You are our Banu al-Mauth.” Shan, sitting beside Mamie Rila, looks back at the Saif fighters. “But you are also our brother.” He takes Mamie’s hand. “Tribe Saif is with you.”

  This time, Tribe Saif’s fighters call out. “SAIF!”

  “The Martials are with you.” Jans Aquillus, leader of the Martial legion, steps forward. Seconds later, Rowan Goldgale joins him.

  Tribe Nasur and Tribe Rahim call out their support, then Tribe Ahdieh, Tribe Malikh—even the few fighters of Tribe Zia who survived Sadh’s destruction. The leader of Tribe Shezaad declares himself last, prodded by his fighters and his Fakira.

  I turn finally to Laia. She’s the first person I told my plan to. Still, I want to ask.

  “I am with you too.” She folds her arms and fixes me with her dark stare. “But you have a bad habit of doing everything yourself. Carrying every burden. Fighting every battle alone. Not this time, Soul Catcher. This time, we do it my way.”

  L: The Blood Shrike

  The palace hallways feel strangely empty without Livia. Before, her ladies-in-waiting were out and about, running errands for her, and she was only ever in her room to sleep.

  Now soldiers are everywhere, auxes and legionnaires in their dark fatigues. Masks in their b
loody red capes. I pass Quin Veturius near the training yard, Pater Mettias at his side. They salute, breath clouding in the frigid air, but both have a question in their eyes.

  Why are we still here, Blood Shrike?

  Antium’s army is outfitted, armed, and ready to move south. A hundred barges wait along the River Rei to bear my men to Silas. And onward to Serra, Navium, and victory.

  The scouts have already sent back their reports: the way is clear. The Paters of the advisory council, Quin and Mettias included, grow impatient with me. We finally have the forces to seize Keris’s territory. And though she’s left thousands of soldiers to guard her cities, she herself is away, fighting the Nightbringer’s war in Marinn.

  I should order my troops south. I should take back the Empire for my nephew. But I don’t give the command.

  Because it’s too easy.

  Keris’s plans are always more layered than they first appear. The Commandant wouldn’t just leave the south open to me. She’s up to something.

  As I walk through the freezing palace, I search for a flash of color amid the drear. Musa can always be counted on to wear at least one loud item of clothing—and I need his information now.

  Something flickers near my ear. “Thank the skies,” I say. “Tell your master to stop spying on me and to come see me.” I turn toward my quarters. “I need his—ow!” I hiss at the sight of a welt blooming on my hand. “Did you bite me?”

  It bites me again, but this time flickers into view, iridescent wings fluttering. Its body is vaguely human, but green and covered in soft yellow down.

  But it is the wight’s face that catches my eye before it disappears again. Frantic. Sad.

  “What’s happening?” I reach for my scim. “Is Musa all right?”

  The wight flickers ahead of me, and I hurry after it as it guides me to Musa’s quarters. But once there, no one answers at my knock.

  “Musa,” I call out. “Are you in there?” The wight buzzes around me frantically, and I curse, looking left and right. Of course, the moment I need soldiers, there are none around.