A Sky Beyond the Storm

by Sabaa Tahir

  “Em-emifal F-F-Firdaant—” he whispers, and his hand, gripping mine only a moment before, drops to the mud.

  I will sing him back to me. I will. But I do not, for something tears again into my left side. I cannot help the scream that explodes from my throat. It feels unending, the sum of all my pain, all my defeat and sorrow.

  Keris watches me. Dagger in hand, she approaches, relishing my suffering, basking in it.

  I try to rise. I cannot. Loyal. Loyal to the end.

  But the end is here. And I am not ready.

  LXI: Laia

  Beware, Laia. Rehmat’s voice is sharp in my mind. Something isn’t right.

  I do not speak as the Nightbringer thuds onto the plateau. Fear will not claim my mind. I will defeat him. I will destroy him.

  “Can you feel it, my love?” the Nightbringer says, and I do not know if he speaks to me or Rehmat. When he steps toward me, Rehmat pushes me back, even as I hold my ground. I stumble.

  Stay with me, I say to her in my head. I know this is difficult. I know you loved him. But we cannot win if we do not move as one.

  “We will stop you.” Rehmat and I speak together, and though my voice trembles, I steel myself. “You will not crack open this world to the Sea of Suffering. I will not allow it.”

  “Won’t you?” he says, and as he closes in, he lifts his hands to my face.

  Stay with me, I say again to Rehmat. This time, we hold steady even as within my mind, she flinches at his touch.

  “It does not have to be this way,” we say. “You are the Meherya. Meant to love.” I gesture to the battlefield below. “This is not your way.”

  “All that I do is driven by love,” he says, and his flame eyes meet mine. My heart—or Rehmat’s—lurches. “Love of all that was taken from us. Love of what is left.”

  He’s so close that if my scythe was in hand, I could kill him. Ever so slowly, I edge my arm back. But Rehmat holds me fast. My limbs do not cooperate.

  We have to kill him, I remind her. You promised you would not take over. You swore it.

  Something is not right, she whispers.

  “This is not the way forward.” Rehmat speaks now, though I try to stop her. “You do not honor our love by letting vengeance consume you. You do not honor our people. Or our—children—” The last word is choked off, for the blood magic will not allow her to speak of her life with him. “Show remorse,” she urges him. “Repentance. Dedicate your life to the task Mauth gave you. Restore the balance.”

  What are you doing? Now I am furious, for this was not the plan. There is no forgiveness for what he has done.

  Rehmat does not bend. Stay your anger, Laia, she says. For something is wrong, and I must draw it out of him.

  She does not sound weak, or unlike herself. She seems as stern and alert as ever. And yet she will not move. She will not let me reach for the scythe. I grit my teeth and fight her, scrabbling at it. The Nightbringer grabs my wrist.

  “You would kill me, my love?” he says. “Your own Meherya?”

  Laia, you must escape here. Rehmat’s voice rises in pitch, frantic. I do not know what he has planned, but you must escape quickly.

  I try to back away from him, to reach for the scythe. But I cannot. My body is frozen.

  Let me go, Rehmat.

  It’s not me! Rehmat shouts. Fight him, Laia! Break free!

  But the Nightbringer holds me still, and though I strive against him, I cannot even blink. Through Rehmat’s increasingly frantic exhortations, I hear a voice that has gotten me through so much.

  “Laia! I’m here—”

  Darin.

  He bursts from the woods, but my heart drops, for he hurtles toward the Nightbringer too swiftly. He is yards away, then just a few feet. His scim sparkles with salt, and he raises it high, hoping, no doubt, that an attack will give me a few moments to escape the Nightbringer’s grasp.

  “Darin!” I shriek. “Stop!”

  The Nightbringer does not even turn his head. He simply releases me, reaches back without looking, and breaks Darin’s neck.

  The sound.

  It has stalked my nightmares for months. This is how my father died. How Lis died. How my mother’s hope died.

  Darin slumps to the ground, dark blue eyes open, but defiant no longer. He is—

  My brother is—

  He will never forge another scim or draw whole worlds with a few strokes of charcoal.

  No.

  He will never laugh until he snorts, or hunt down rare books I read, or shoot Elias dirty looks, or tell me that I am strong.

  No.

  I will never hold his children. He will never hold mine. He will never offer advice or eat moon cakes or tell stories of Mother and Father and Lis with me.

  Because he is dead.

  My brother is dead.

  Laia, Rehmat cries out in my mind. Do not kill the Nightbringer. It is what he wants. What he needs. It is the last—

  Her voice fades, for all I can hear is that hellish crack. As I look down at Darin’s broken body, I see my mother and my father. I see my sister, Nan, Pop, Izzi. I see the endless Scholar dead, all of us brutalized children of war who have had everything torn from us. Homes. Names. Families. Freedom. Power. Pride. Hope.

  Laia, Rehmat whispers. Heed me. Please. Listen.

  But I am done listening.

  LXII: The Nightbringer

  Laia’s face contorts with a horror I know well. She trembles, consumed by her suffering. A sound halfway between a snarl and a keen shreds her throat, and seconds later, she flings Rehmat out of her mind. My queen’s glowing form sprawls onto the ground behind me.

  Laia’s hands tighten on the scythe. Rehmat scrambles toward her. Whether her foresight has told her what is to come or she simply knows me best, I do not know. It does not matter.

  “Please, Laia,” she pleads with the girl. “It’s what he wants.”

  Laia ignores my queen, as do I. Rehmat does not exist. Nor does the battle below. This moment is between me and the girl I loved. The girl who helped to save my people without realizing it. The girl I betrayed and spurned.

  For a moment, as she raises the scythe and surges toward me, I am moved by pity. I want to hold her. To tell her that soon, all of our pain will disappear. The world will be consumed by suffering incarnate, and there will be no survivors, not even my own kin.

  All will be well, for all will be darkness, I wish to say.

  For I did love her, this brave, wild-haired, gold-eyed girl, terrified yet defiant, hesitant yet determined. I loved her for all that she was and all that she would become.

  The scythe whistles through the air and slices into my throat. Once. Twice. Three times.

  Laia is not careful. The training the Blood Shrike gave her has been forgotten, robbing the grace from this murder. She does not kill me. She kills all of her suffering. All that has been done to her, her family, her people.

  But as Keris said, there are some things that do not die.

  Pain lances through me, ice penetrating the fire that burns at my core. My legs give way, and I am on my knees, staring up at her, weeping in gratefulness.

  Tears streak down her face as she comprehends what she has done. For Laia’s soul is intrinsically good. She drops the scythe, her body shuddering. But she does not understand fully. Not yet.

  Though it takes great effort, I shift from flame to flesh, to the human form she knew, red-haired and brown-eyed, bleeding, fading away at the edges. Perhaps this, at the end, will bring her some comfort.

  “Laia. Laia, my sweet love.” Though she will not believe I loved her, it is the truest thing I have ever said.

  For though Rehmat lived within her, it is Laia of Serra who walked beside me on the last leg of this long journey. Laia of Serra who defied me and ensured the doom of her people and her world when s
he swore to defeat me.

  The Sea will come for me now. It will punch a hole into this world. It will consume me. After months of hunting and killing and hoarding suffering, I realized that the despair of humans would never equal mine. That the only way to release the maelstrom, to bore a hole between this world and Mauth’s, was to pour a thousand years of my own pain into the Sea of Suffering.

  “Do not weep, love,” I whisper to her. “This world was a cage. Thank you for setting me free.”

  My body goes rigid, and the Sea is within me now, bursting out from Mauth’s dimension and through me into this accursed one. For a moment that feels like an eternity, I stare up at the sky, pale blue, with wisps of cloud ambling across it.

  My memory takes me to the River Dusk. Rehmat sits beside me, warm skin pressed to mine, her dark hair piled high on her head. Our children are but babies, and they dance between flame and shadow, tumbling over me, giggling as Rehmat and I point out stories in the clouds.

  Such a beautiful day.

  And then all that I am, all that I was ruptures and splits. The Sea pours through me, compressing into something minuscule and impossibly heavy. Not darkness but emptiness, the whitest white, the absence of hope and the fullness of suffering—trenchant, tentacled suffering.

  On the battleground below and in the Sher Jinnaat, my kind stop and pivot toward me. They feel it, the breach between worlds. They streak up, perhaps hoping to stop it. The Soul Catcher erupts out of the forest, moving beyond the strength of any human, grabbing a stunned Laia, tearing her away from the monstrous thing taking form within me.

  My corporeal body disintegrates, but I still exist. The Sea wraps itself around me, consumes me. Every last scrap of my essence is suffering. Not the Meherya anymore, nor the King of No Name, nor the Nightbringer.

  But something else entirely.

  Part V

  The Mothers

  LXIII: The Soul Catcher

  I do not know what makes Laia scream so, not until I am nearly to the plateau and see Darin slumped on the ground, his neck broken. Her cry is endless, sorrow upon sorrow, as if it is not just her screaming but a thousand sisters and daughters and mothers who have lost their loved ones to the madness of war.

  She whips her scythe across the Nightbringer’s throat, hacking at him again and again. But something is wrong, for though his body jerks, his arms are relaxed. He uses no magic to stop her.

  Because he has been waiting for this moment. Because if he wants enough suffering to release the Sea, then he is the only creature alive who can provide lifetimes and lifetimes of it, all at once.

  His body shifts into his old human form. The air, already leaden, goes still. Far away, in a place beyond the ken of any human, a barrier tears open. Mauth’s power, deeply drained, fades entirely as the Sea of Suffering bursts through his wall.

  I windwalk to Laia, snatching her away from the Nightbringer as he dissolves, transforming into a viscous gray smoke. A figure kneels within the pall, head tilted back, staring up at the sky. The Nightbringer’s spirit, flame eyes dim, seemingly at peace.

  Then the Sea of Suffering breaks through him, and he explodes into a vast, spinning cyclone. Darin’s body disappears into the maelstrom, then two of the jinn who flitted too close, trees, rocks—

  “Rehmat!” My feet slip, and though I windwalk, the pull of the storm is too powerful. A glowing figure appears and, without my having to explain, she merges with Laia. With all my strength, I shove them at the woods, at the trees that bend toward the maelstrom but have not yet broken.

  The maelstrom drags my body back, away from Laia. I fight the pull, trying desperately to dig my heels into the ground, but the plateau is smooth, gray rock, and I find no grip. The Sea of Suffering rumbles. Hungry. So hungry.

  My will is not weak. I will not die now, not like this. The maelstrom will not steal my life from me. It will not consume me. For I am the Banu al-Mauth, Chosen of Death. I am the Soul Catcher, the Guardian at the Gates.

  But all my willpower is nothing against the force of the Sea of Suffering. It wants me and it will have me, for I am mere bones, blood, and pain, held together by skin and sinew. Laia. Laia, run. I see her, battling Rehmat as she tries to get back to me, as the jinn queen forces her away.

  Our eyes meet for one frantic moment. Then the Sea of Suffering drags me into darkness and claims me, body and soul.

  LXIV: Laia

  Darin’s body disappears into the cyclone. But I have no time to mourn the loss, because I am suddenly aware that Elias is far too close to the storm. I reach for him, screaming when Rehmat holds me back.

  You cannot save him, Laia. Her voice is anguished, for she, of all creatures, understands what this means to me. He gave his life for yours. Do not let it be for nothing.

  I shout his name. Gray eyes meet gold.

  He disappears between one moment and the next, as if he never existed. I lose the feeling in my body, and it is only Rehmat, infusing me with strength and forcing me to hold on to a tree branch, who keeps me from being pulled in after Elias.

  “Let me go,” I cry, for the Nightbringer has won. Our battle is over. What have I done? What have I unleashed into this world?

  My voice is lost—I can only reel at the knowledge that the Nightbringer is not dead, but transformed into the very suffering he sought to release into the world.

  A collective scream from below as the maelstrom sweeps down from the plateau, a ravening gray funnel. Within minutes, it tears through Keris’s army, sucking up hundreds, then thousands of soldiers. With each life it claims, it grows larger, feeding off the suffering. A deep, eerie roar sounds from within it, the rage and pain of eons.

  We cannot stop it. It will consume all because of me. Because I killed the Nightbringer and gave him what he wanted.

  I thought I knew what it was to be alone. All those nights as a child in the great quiet of the Scholar’s Quarter, wishing for my parents and my sister. The silence of Blackcliff, when I thought I’d never see Darin again.

  But this loneliness is different. Devouring. The loneliness of a girl responsible for the breaking of the world.

  The world must be broken before it can be remade, or else the balance will never be restored.

  Elias spoke so to me, months ago, outside this very forest. The world must be broken before it can be remade.

  Before it can be remade.

  “Rehmat,” I say. “You said you were his chains.”

  It is what I saw, long ago in my visions. But he is gone now, Laia. Lost in the Sea of Suffering. I failed you. Forgive me, but I failed you. I did not see his intent until it was too late.

  “I should have trusted you, Rehmat.” I walk to the edge of the plateau. “Because you’ve been with me my whole life. Because you’re a part of me. I trust you now. But you must trust me as well. It was a jinn and a human who began this madness a thousand years ago. A jinn and a human must stop it. I must go to him.”

  Let me go with you.

  “When I am ready,” I tell her as she steps out of me, “I will call you. Will you come, Rehmat of the Sher Jinnaat?”

  “I will, Laia of Serra.”

  I turn toward the raging cyclone and summon it with a word.

  “Meherya.”

  It shifts toward me, enraged and hungry, lured by my pain. I wait until it has reached the promontory, until it is close enough to touch.

  Then I cast myself into the dark.

  LXV: The Soul Catcher

  The Martial man who walks beside me through Blackcliff’s halls is familiar, though I’ve never met him. He has deep brown skin and black hair that falls in waves down his shoulders. It is held back by a dozen thin braids, wrapped in the way of the northern Gens.

  His eyes are the color of spring’s first shoots, and despite his height, which nears my own, and the imposing breadth of his shoulders, there is a kindness in h
is face that makes me feel immediately at ease. Though in life he was a Mask, he does not wear one now.

  “Hail, my son,” he says softly. “It is good to see your face.” His eyes travel over me. “You’re tall like your grandfather. You have his cheekbones too. My hair, though. My face. A bit of my skin. And . . .” He meets my gaze.

  “Her eyes,” I say. “You’re Arius Harper.” My father, I do not add.

  He inclines his head.

  I’m wary of him. All I know about my father is what Avitas told me: Arius Harper loved the snow and never got used to the warm Serran summers. His smile made you feel like the sun had just come out after a long, cold winter. His hands were big and gentle when teaching a young boy to hold a slingshot.

  Yet months ago in a dungeon beneath Blackcliff, Keris Veturia spoke one line that has stayed with me.

  I wasn’t about to let the son kill me after the father had failed.

  “You were married when you met my mother.”

  He nods, and we pass from one of Blackcliff’s dim halls into another. “Renatia and I married young,” he says. “Too young, like most Martials. The marriage was arranged, as is common with the northern Gens. We . . . understood each other. When she fell in love with another, I told her to follow her heart. And she did the same for me.”

  “But you and Keris—did you—” Bleeding hells. How do you ask your father if he forced himself on your mother?

  “Keris was not always as she is now,” my father says. “She was a Skull when I met her. Nineteen. I was a combat Centurion here.” He glances at the oppressive brick walls around us. “She fell in love with me. And I with her.”

  “The Commandant—” Is not capable of love, I want to say. But clearly, that was not always true.

  “The Illustrians who killed me made her watch.” My father says the words as if he speaks of someone else. “They told her that as a Plebeian, I was not worthy of her. She tried to stop them, but there were too many. It destroyed her. She gave in to her pain.”