by Sabaa Tahir
“Once we’re in,” Darin says, “the Soul Catcher said there won’t be a need for the invisibility.”
“Because we won’t be able to hide from him,” I say. Rehmat wished to strengthen my magic by joining with me. But exhausted as I am from hiding so many of us for so long, I cannot bear having her inside my mind again. It feels too invasive.
“Don’t worry about hiding from him,” Darin says. “We’ve gotten this far, haven’t we? No sign of those fiery bastards.”
All I can offer is a weak smile. Fear flares in my bones. It is an old enemy, my companion since childhood. Fear of what is to come. Fear of what awaits among those trees. Fear that all the Tribes and the Scholars have suffered was only a precursor to something worse.
“I am with you Laia.” Rehmat has given me space, sensing my distrust. Her sunlight figure floats alongside me, steady despite the wind. “When he comes, I will not leave your side.”
I nod, but I do not trust her yet. For I must kill the Nightbringer, and once, she loved the Nightbringer.
Love. Always, I return to that word. Darin went to prison because of love. Elias gave up his future because of love. The Nightbringer seeks vengeance because of love.
But, I shake myself out of my doldrums, love is why I still live. Why, when I look at Elias, I do not see the Mask or the Soul Catcher, no matter how he wishes me to. Love is why the Blood Shrike agreed to march her army hundreds of miles to support us, instead of stealing the Commandant’s Empire out from under her.
Though love will not help me if I do not have the Nightbringer’s story. With the Waiting Place only a day away, we are out of time. I pull my horse aside to wait for Mamie Rila’s wagon. Shan drives it, and she sits beside him, eyes closed, muttering.
“Not yet, child,” she says when I draw up beside her, somehow sensing my presence.
“We do not have much time.”
When she opens her eyes, the whites are reddened, as if she has not slept in days. A depthless well of night beckons from her gaze, and I am dizzy suddenly, grasping the pommel of my mount so I do not fall. It is not until she looks away that I return to myself.
“Not yet.”
“It must be soon,” I tell her. “The moment we enter that forest, he will know. And he will come for us.”
Mamie observes the trees ahead, as if she has just noticed them.
“Come to me in the darkest hour of night,” she says. “When the stars sleep. Come and hear the Tale.” She emphasizes the last word as if it a singular entity, and closes her eyes again. “Though I do not know what good it will do you.”
* * *
«««
Rehmat wakes me from a deep sleep just after midnight. A fat half-moon tints the dead grass blue, and lights my way to Mamie’s wagon. Despite the fact that I can see the path clearly, my steps are heavy. I have begged Mamie for the story. But now that it is time to hear it, I do not know if I wish to.
On my way, I see Elias on watch, walking the perimeter of the camp. His whole body shifts as I approach, but not with that tension he had when I walked through the Waiting Place with him. This is different. He is not a wounded thing, avoiding my touch. Instead his tautness is that of an oud string, aching to be played.
“The Blood Shrike will be here by dawn.” He keeps his attention fixed on the rolling hills of the Empire. “It won’t take more than four days to get to the jinn grove.”
The woods appear gnarled and impassable, but Elias senses my skepticism. “The forest will open for us,” he says. “And the jinn grove will hold us.”
I shudder when I think of that place. Rehmat hates it the way I hated Kauf, for it is where her kin suffered. But I hate it because of what I learned there. What I saw and what I heard: my mother killing my father and sister to spare them torment at Keris’s hands. Mother’s song, and the sound of her crime. The soft crack of lives sundered, of her heart destroyed.
I still hear that sound in my nightmares. Often enough that I never forget. Often enough that it lurks at the back of my mind.
“Come back,” Elias says, and I emerge from my recollections and look down in surprise, for his hand is twined with mine.
“I’m with you, Laia,” he says. He spoke those words to me as we fled Blackcliff, what feels like eons ago.
“Are you?” I whisper, for though I wanted this, I am scared to trust it. Scared he will pull away again.
He tucks a curl back from my face. A simple gesture that sets me aflame. “I’m trying.”
The space between us is too great, so I step nearer. “Why?”
“Because—” His voice is low and we are close to—something. Skies know what, but I just want to get there. “Because you are—you are my—”
His head jerks up then, and he steps back, a rueful half smile on his face. “Ah—someone is waiting for you.”
I glance around and spot Mamie vanishing behind a nearby wagon. Internally, I curse.
“One day,” I tell Elias, “we won’t be interrupted. And I expect you to finish that sentence.”
When I reach Mamie’s wagon, I put thoughts of Elias aside. For it is not familiar, loving Mamie Rila waiting for me, but the Kehanni of Tribe Saif. She wears eggplant-purple robes with bell sleeves and a severe neck. They are hand-embroidered in a dozen shades of green and silver, and edged in tiny mirrors. Her thick hair is unbound and curls magnificently about her shoulders, a midnight halo.
Without a word, she gestures for me to follow her. I look back at the camp, worried it will be visible from above, but the wind efrits have enticed a thick fog to hide it.
“Go,” Rehmat whispers. “They are safe.”
Mamie Rila and I make our way past the sentries and up a hill shrouded in mist. When we reach the top she bids me sit on the damp grass, and settles herself across from me. I cannot see the camp from here. I cannot see anything but Mamie.
“The Tale lives in me now, Laia of Serra,” she says. “It is unlike any that I have told. I am changed. But do not fear. For I will return.”
Her eyes fade to white, and she grasps my hands. Her voice deepens, transforming from a gentle lilt to a growl from the very heart of the earth.
“I awoke in the glow of a young world,” she says, and I am gripped. “When man knew of hunting but not tilling, of stone but not steel. It smelled of rain and earth and life. It smelled of hope.
“Arise, beloved.”
For the next few hours, I do not sit with Mamie, but with the Nightbringer. I am not in the Empire, but deep in the Waiting Place, and then in lands far beyond. I am not enthralled by the story of a creature I’m only just beginning to understand. I am him.
I learn of his creation, his education, his loneliness. His relationship to humans and his marrow-deep love of his people. I discover Rehmat as she was in life, a fierce wandering poet. When Cain is mentioned—when Mamie speaks of what he and the Scholars did—I burn with hatred. And when I hear of the Nightbringer’s vengeance, of his love for Husani, my heart breaks.
“—I mourned her then. I mourn her still.”
As suddenly as it begun, the Tale is over. Mamie’s eyes darken to their familiar brown, and when she speaks, it is with her own voice.
“It is done,” she says.
“No.” I stop her from rising. “It cannot be done. There must be something else. Something about—about the scythe, or when he is at his weakest. Something more about him.”
Mamie bows her head. “That is all the darkness gave me, my love,” she says. “It will have to be enough.”
But it is not. I already know that it is not.
LIII: The Soul Catcher
The Blood Shrike and her army approach from the north, on the plains that sweep out from the Waiting Place. When the rumble of hooves is deafening and the smell of horse and men overwhelming, the Shrike lifts her fist and slows her forces to a halt.
> Wind howls along the plains, and the two armies stare each other down. Scholars stand with the Blood Shrike’s troops, true. But there are far more Martials, and the Tribes have seen their people destroyed by the Martials.
The Shrike swings off her horse and approaches. My magic, scant as it is, rises, and I sense what is in her. Love. Joy. Sadness. And as she looks at Mamie, a deep well of self-hate.
Mauth’s warning rings through my mind. Your duty is not to the living. Your duty is not to yourself. Your duty is to the dead, even to the breaking of the world.
But when I look at the Blood Shrike’s bare, scarred face, the past overwhelms me. She is not just the Shrike. She is Helene Aquilla. Friend. Warrior. Comrade-in-arms. We did violence together. We survived together. We saved each other from death and madness and loneliness in those long years at Blackcliff.
Not seeing her made it easy to ignore the memories Cain gave me. Now that she stands before me, those recollections hit like one of her scim attacks—swift and painful.
“Hail, Shrike.”
“Hail, Banu al-Mauth.” We regard each other, wary as two eagles meeting over a dead antelope.
Then she quirks an eyebrow at me. “Didn’t want to start without me?” she asks.
“Didn’t want to listen to you whining about it, more like.”
A collective exhale from both sides, and then everyone is dismounting and greeting each other. Laia steps past me and pulls the Shrike into a hug.
“Where’s my favorite tyrant?” Laia asks, but gently, for the wights brought news of Livia’s death. A shadow passes over the Shrike’s face.
“Zacharias is at a safe house,” she says, “with Tas and Uncle Dex and a full complement of Masks. Thought it was wiser than bringing him here.” Pink shadows nest beneath her eyes. “Another war. Will it ever end, Soul Catcher? Or will this be the legacy I leave my nephew?”
I have no answer for her, and she turns to greet Darin. Laia seeks out Musa, putting her hand against the tall Scholar’s face, speaking quietly with that sweet smile of hers. Though I had nothing against the man a moment ago, I suddenly find his face vexing. Laia spots me and grins.
“By the skies, Soul Catcher,” she says as Musa moves away. “Is that jealousy?”
“Do you want it to be?” Stop it, I tell myself. You idiot. But the old me, who appears to be cheekier by the day, shoves that voice into a bin.
“Still flirting at inappropriate times, I see.” Strong hands pull me around. My grandfather, Quin Veturius, regards the rows of Tribespeople behind me. If haughtiness could wither, both armies would collapse into dust. “At least you’re leading an army. Good at it too, I’d wager. Runs in the blood.”
As I meet his gray eyes, a mirror of my own, I consider walking away. We’re about to fight a battle, and even if we win, I’ll have to return to the ghosts and forget all of these faces once more. Even if I can persuade the jinn to return as Soul Catchers, Mauth made it clear that doing so would not mean my freedom.
But Grandfather pulls me into a bear hug, nearly breaking my ribs.
“I missed you, my boy,” he says, and my arms rise, for there is comfort in hugging one of the few people I know who is bigger than me. Stronger than me.
“I missed you too, Grandfather.”
“Right.” The Blood Shrike steps away from Mamie. Her face is stricken from whatever Mamie said to her, but she pulls herself together. “How do you plan to get nearly ten thousand troops, and their horses, wagons, and supplies, through that?” She nods to the gnarled forest.
“Getting through it isn’t the problem,” I say. “It’s what happens once we’re inside.” I look past her toward her massive supply train. “Did you bring the salt?”
“Wasn’t bleeding easy,” she says. “But we have a dozen carts’ worth.”
“Set extra sentries around it,” I tell her. “We’ll need every last bit.”
We reach the Waiting Place an hour later. Wary conversation dwindles to silence as we close in on the wall of trees. Low brush chokes the space between the trunks. I urge my skittish mount forward and bid the trees to open a path. The forest is reluctant, so I push harder. Mauth. This army is essential to my cause.
A shimmer in the wood and then, ever so slowly, it shifts. Where there was naught but a deer trail, there is now an earthen road, wide enough for ten wagons. When I attune myself to the map of the Waiting Place, all is as it usually is, just compressed, as if to make room for us.
For most of the day, we pass through the forest swiftly. I do not need to warn the army to be silent. The trees loom oppressively over the road, vines shifting and twisting just out of sight, as if considering whether they should make a meal of a passing human.
The place has never felt emptier. I fear for Karinna for a time, worried the Nightbringer has taken her too, until I spot her flitting near a stream. She flees when she sees the approaching army. Laia, riding beside me, sees her too.
“Who was that?”
“No one,” I say quickly. But the Blood Shrike, on my other side, snorts in disbelief.
“It’s the ghost of my grandmother,” I relent. “Quin’s wife. He doesn’t know she’s here, and it needs to stay that way. Knowing would only cause him pain. Stay away from her, in any case. She’s very shy and she’s been through enough.”
The Shrike seems taken aback by my vehemence and draws Laia into conversation as Avitas Harper comes up on my right.
“Banu al-Mauth,” he says. “The supply train sergeant has requested that we slow down. Says the horses need a rest.”
I nod and give the order, and as the Mask snaps his reins to move past me, I think of all the questions I quelled when I first met him months ago. The questions Mauth washed from my mind. I call out.
“Do you—” I probably should have thought this through. “I don’t know anything about our father. And I thought if you did—of course, if you don’t wish to—”
“He looked like you,” Avitas says. “I was only four when he died. But I remember his face. Had green eyes, though. Like me. Skin much darker than the both of us. Closer to Musa’s. He had big hands and a laugh that carried through a village. He was good.” Avitas cocks his head and looks me dead in the eye. “Like you.”
Avitas’s words fill a part of me I didn’t know was empty. For years, I did not care to reflect upon my father. Quite suddenly, I want to know everything.
“Do you know why he came to Blackcliff to teach? Usually Centurions are older.”
“According to my mother, it was that or be discharged. He was bad at following orders apparently.”
I smile at that, and the conversation comes easy, after. We talk until evening approaches and the Shrike rides up to us.
“Are we going to stop and camp?” she asks. “Or do you two plan on gossiping all night?”
Later, as everyone beds down on the road, I reflect on the day. On how it felt to see the Shrike and Grandfather, and to talk to my brother. On how it felt to learn about my father.
I have deadened my emotions for so long that it is jarring to feel so much in so short a time. Emotion will not serve you well, Mauth said. But there are no ghosts to pass now. And I am tired—so tired of telling myself not to feel.
So the next day, instead of holding myself aloof or immersing myself in battle preparations, I find Shan. We laugh over the tricks he pulled to avoid getting married. Later I wheedle a story out of Mamie and talk with Grandfather. I seek out the Shrike, and we speak of Faris and Livia, of the Empire, the jinn, and the coming battle. For the first time in ages, the angry voice within is at peace.
And then there’s Laia. There are fewer words between us, yet our conversation never ends. She touches my arms or shoulders as she passes, and smiles when she watches me with my family. If she catches me gazing at her, she stares back, a promise and a question in her dark eyes. At night, she wan
ders through my dreams, and I wake from them aching with need.
Years ago, when I was a Fiver at Blackcliff, I was sent into the Nevennes on a spying mission. It was deep winter, and one morning, I woke to find the fire I’d kindled the night before had gone out. I had no more flint, so I hunched over a lone ember. The deep red glow at its core promised warmth, if I was willing to give it time and air. If I was patient enough to wait until it was ready to burn.
Laia is far more patient with me than I was with that ember. But I struggle to open up to her. Because if we survive all of what is to come, I will return to the Waiting Place. I will forget her.
Or perhaps I won’t. Perhaps the memory of her will haunt me worse than any ghost, even as she returns to the world of the living and builds a life on her own, or with someone else. The thought brings me perilously close to despair.
All I can do is quell it. For three days, as we march through the forest, I focus instead on memorizing the music of her laugh, the poetry of her body. I savor every touch and every look.
Until, on the third night, I’m compelled to seek her out. I must at least try, for a few moments, to set the Soul Catcher aside and let Elias Veturius speak.
When the moon is high, I slip out of my tent and make my way toward Tribe Saif, where Laia usually sleeps. The fires burn low, and other than Mamie Rila, the Tribe is at rest. The Kehanni spots me. She smiles faintly, then nods at her wagon.
A lantern glows within and Laia’s silhouette moves past a window. My heart thuds faster. What will I say to her? I miss you. I’m sorry. I wish—
I do not complete the thought. For suddenly, the hair on the back of my neck rises.
Almost before I register the feeling, I’ve drawn my scims and turned to the forest, where something moves sinuously amid the trees. Ghosts? No—a fog, low and noisome, creeping slowly toward the army.
Above, the wind efrits shriek out a warning, their sudden cries sending a tremor through the slumbering camp.