A Sky Beyond the Storm Page 17

  But she is not here, so I must make sense of this alone.

  To the Nightbringer, Scholars—and their allies, the Tribes and Mariners—are the enemy. Prey. Meant to be destroyed. And yet, despite freeing thousands of his kindred from the jinn grove, he is primarily using a Martial army to carry out all the murder. The only logical conclusion is that the jinn cannot fight humans head-on.

  Perhaps they have been weakened by their imprisonment. Perhaps their magic is limited. All magic comes from Mauth and even I have noticed a dip in Mauth’s strength, a torpidity.

  So what, I argue with myself. The Nightbringer is stealing ghosts to fuel his magic?

  It is as good an idea as any. If Mauth is the source of all magic, and he is Death, then it would follow that ghosts might be linked to that magic.

  If I could get to the Nightbringer himself—I might be able to test the theory further. I reach the garrison’s flat rooftop and drop out of my windwalk, shading my eyes. The buildings all around are engulfed in flame. I won’t be able to see anything from here.

  As I make to leave, something gleams in the air. A figure appears out of the smoke billowing across the roof, cloaked and flame-eyed, with a wickedly curved scythe held loosely in one hand. It is attached to a long handle and its dark shine is familiar.

  The scythe, I realize, used to be a sickle. A sickle that the Nightbringer used to kill Shaeva months ago.

  “Have you come to thank me, Usurper?”

  The Nightbringer speaks softly, but his voice no longer makes my skin crawl. Nor do I feel apprehension when I look at him. He is but a living creature, who loves and hates, desires and mourns. A creature who is interfering with my work in the Waiting Place.

  Mauth’s magic rises, sensing the threat. “You tamper with the spirits, jinn,” I say. “You tamper with Mauth. You must cease.”

  “Then you are not here to thank me.” The feigned surprise in the Nightbringer’s voice grates on my nerves. “I cannot think why. There is so much less work for you, now that you have no ghosts to pass.”

  “What are you doing with the spirits?”

  “Silence, worm!” Umber appears out of the flames beside the Nightbringer. “You dare to speak to the Meherya thus? Faaz! Azul!” Two jinn materialize from the flames. “Khuri! Talis!”

  “Peace, Umber.” The Nightbringer sheathes his scythe and four more jinn appear. The first two—Faaz and Azul—I saw breaking buildings and altering the weather. The third—Khuri—is in her shadow form. The last, whom I assume is Talis, wears his human face, and I recognize his dark eyes and compact body. He accompanied Umber after I killed Cain.

  And he was the jinn who cast thoughts into the minds of Laia and the others. He brought their deepest fears and darkest moments to life.

  The Nightbringer glides closer. Shadows seethe around him, deeper than before and eerily alive. They writhe with some fey devilry that drags on him like a weight. Despite that, his power is unaffected. If anything, he appears stronger.

  The air flickers behind the Nightbringer. Another jinn. One Umber did not call to. I squint—what is he doing? I take a single step toward that jinn, for there is a whiff of ghost about him, a sense of the dead nearby.

  That is as far as I get. The Nightbringer snaps his fingers and Khuri steps into the shadows, reappearing seconds later with a limp human figure.

  “You are Mauth’s creature now, boy. So dedicated to your duty,” the Nightbringer says. “Shall we test that dedication?”

  The figure is bound with chains made of the same sparkling metal as the Nightbringer’s scythe. Her clothing is dark, and her long hair obscures her face. But I know who it is. I know her shape and her grace because the Augur put her in my head and I cannot get her out.

  The Nightbringer grabs Laia’s hair and yanks her head back. “If I slit her throat, Soul Catcher, would you care?”

  “Why are you taking the ghosts?” I force myself to ignore Laia. “To strengthen your jinn? Yourself?”

  “Not a single word for the woman you used to love,” the Nightbringer says. “And your kind think that I am cruel. Do you even remember those you’ve killed, boy? Or are there so many that their faces fade together? The latter, I think. That is how humans go through this life. Murdering and smashing and forgetting. But—” He looks at the city around him.

  “I understand every death caused in service of my purpose. I do not take them lightly. Am I not kinder than you and your ilk, who cannot recall face or form of your foes? Your homes and lives and loves are built upon the graves of those you never even knew existed—”

  Laia, who hangs limply from the Nightbringer’s hand, suddenly comes to life. Her chains go flying toward Umber, who screams when they touch her. I expect Laia to disappear. To escape.

  Instead, she lunges for the Nightbringer.

  For a moment, they tumble back in a tangle of shadow and flesh. But when he rises, he has Laia’s wrists caught in one of his hands.

  “You cannot kill me, girl,” he sneers at her. “Have you not learned?”

  “So everyone keeps saying,” Laia gasps, glaring at him, at the other jinn. “But you are all monsters. And monsters have weaknesses.”

  “Monsters?” He twists her around until she faces me. “There stands a monster. Walking through a city burning, ignoring the screams of his own kind. Without a care for anything but his precious ghosts. He will not mourn you if I kill you slowly.”

  “Can’t kill me,” she gasps. “Star—”

  “Perhaps I’ve overcome that little hiccup,” the Nightbringer says. “What of it, Soul Catcher? Would you like another ghost for your kingdom? Or maybe I will reap her soul too. Would you let her die, knowing her spirit will never cross the river?”

  My attention flicks again to what’s happening behind the Nightbringer. The girl thrashes, clawing at him.

  But she’s not “the girl.” Cain made sure she never would be again.

  If she let herself be cowed, I could look away. Instead she defies the Nightbringer, kicking and fighting even as he squeezes the life out of her.

  A memory surfaces—a day long ago at Blackcliff, the first time we saw each other. Skies, the determination in her, the life. Even then, she was an ember ever burning, no matter how much the world tried to quench her fire.

  Our eyes meet.

  Walk away, Soul Catcher, I tell myself. Look to the jinn behind the Nightbringer. Figure out what he is doing. Save the spirits from whatever skies-awful fate he is inflicting upon them.

  Walk away.

  But for a moment, just a moment, the wrathful, imprisoned part of me, the old me, breaks free.

  And I cannot walk away.

  XXV: The Blood Shrike

  The dark stone tunnels beneath Antium are laid out in a grid, meant to allow ease of movement when the weather is wretched. If you know the tunnels, traversing them is child’s play.

  For me, they are a nightmare, stinking of mold and death, littered with the detritus of our flight from Antium months ago. Clothes and shoes. Blankets and heirlooms. And now my blood, a trail of it that any tracker could follow.

  My ragged breathing is punctuated by the occasional skittering of rodents, their eyes flashing in the dark from afar. Move. Keep moving. I drag myself across the damp rock for hours. Pick my way through an unending reminder of what the Karkauns did to us.

  No, I think. What we did to ourselves.

  When the blood has all drained out of me, when I know that my healing power will not save me, I stop. My torch has burned down to almost nothing. You are a torch against the night—if you dare to let yourself burn. Cain said that to me.

  Only it’s not true any longer. The Augurs are gone. There is no light in this place. Only my pathetic life, finally at its end, and everyone and everything we left behind.

  I wait for pursuit but it does not come. I wish it would. I wi
sh the Karkauns would just kill me quickly.

  My eyes adjust to the darkness, and I realize I am staring into the face of a skeleton. It is picked clean, for there is life in these tunnels even if it isn’t human.

  The skeleton is not large. A child, a wooden horse clutched in his shriveled hands. Injured in the attack and left here, perhaps. Or maybe separated from family and abandoned to fend for himself.

  The horse appears to stare back at me. It reminds me of something. As I am waiting to die, I might as well try to remember. It feels important, suddenly. Where have I seen that horse before?

  I haven’t, I realize. But I saw one like it. Long ago, after Marcus ordered me to hunt Elias, and Cain took me to the ashes of an Illustrian home. He told me a story of a family who lived there. A boy. What the bleeding hells was his name? Remember. He deserves to be remembered.

  But it is the Scholar slave who I remember—Siyyad. He carved the horse for the boy because he loved him like a son. And he went back for the boy, though it cost him his life.

  I cannot remember the child’s name, though. And I won’t ever know this child’s name either. Is it a Scholar child? A Martial? A Mariner or a Tribal child, caught in the chaos?

  It doesn’t matter. The knowledge rolls over me like an ocean wave after an earth tremor, ruthless and unending. It doesn’t matter because it was a life cut down too early. Even if he was a Karkaun child, he would still be worth mourning, because at this age, he would have been tender and soft, not yet molded by the violence of his elders.

  Whoever he was, he did not deserve any of this. Adults brought this upon him. I brought this upon him. The Commandant. All of us striving for power and control, and destroying any who got in the way.

  Laia of Serra knows this. Of course she does, for she has lived it. All her pent-up rage at what was done to her people—and I never understood it until now. I thought I served a great cause: protecting the Empire. But all I did was protect people who were never in any danger.

  Maybe this is what Elias learned from Mamie and her stories. The ones where I never understood who the villain was and who the hero was. Maybe all of us need more stories like hers.

  “S-s-sorry,” I whisper to the skeleton. “I’m so sorry.”

  Skies, I hurt so many. And I only realize it now, at the end, when I am a torch no more, but an ember with no air, the great dark closing in forever.

  Too late to say sorry, Helene. I think my own name for the first time in months. Too late to fix anything.

  At least I saved Harper. At least he did not come with me. I let myself drift in thoughts of our kiss. It was months ago, but I remember every second. How he tasted of cinnamon, and how his eyes fell closed as he pulled me toward him, and how—

  Ping. Ping. Ping.

  The sound jars me from my thoughts, and I stare at the skeleton, listening. Greetings, Death, I think, and strangely, it is a relief. You come to claim me at last.

  But all is silent, until, after a few minutes—

  Ping. Ping. Ping.

  I let myself drift into the dark. I want sleep now. I want to fall away with thoughts of Avitas Harper in my mind.

  Ping. Ping. Ping.

  What the bleeding hells is that noise? I try to turn, but I cannot. And then in the darkness, a voice.

  “Rise, Blood Shrike, for your people have need of you yet. Loyal to the end, remember?”

  “F-father?”

  “Father and mother. Sister and brother and friend. Rise.”

  Hands come under my arms, lift me to my feet, but when I turn to look, there is no one there, and I think perhaps there were no hands. I stagger forward, leaning against the wall, one tiny step at a time.

  Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping.

  That was four. The last few were only three. There’s a rhythm to the sound too, like music. Like something only a human could make.

  It could be the caves. When I came here before the siege on Antium, I heard a sound just like this one. Just the caves singing their stories, Cain had said.

  If that’s a song, what the bleeding skies is it saying? It won’t stop and it keeps changing. I just want to die, but it won’t let me.

  “That’s it,” the voice that spoke before says. “Keep going. Find that sound.”

  Soon, the sound is not a ping but something deeper, like the ringing of a bell. But no—it is too flat and short to be a bell. It is not joyous or gentle like a bell. It is cold and hard. Like me.

  Ahead, I make out light and drag myself toward it, my vision clearing. The light grows brighter until I stumble into a room lit with torches and hot from an unnaturally blue-green fire. It burns in a furnace that creates no smoke.

  PING. PING. PING.

  A man I’ve never seen before looks up from an anvil. His head is shaved, and his dark skin is covered in tattoos. He is perhaps a decade older than me. In one hand, he holds a hammer, and in the other, a helmet that glows with a strange, silvery light.

  “Blood Shrike.” The man appears entirely unsurprised as he walks to me, puts an arm around me, and helps me to a bed in the corner. “I’m Spiro Teluman. I have been waiting for you.”

  XXVI: Laia

  The Nightbringer grabs the back of my head and squeezes. I suppress a scream, for I will not give him the satisfaction. Tears leak from my eyes, and I lash out at him. Fight, Laia, fight! I stole my dagger from Novius, picked the lock on my chains, and feigned weakness and defeat with Khuri—all for this moment. I cannot fail now.

  As he looks at the Nightbringer, Elias cocks his head. He is otherworldly, eldritch as the jinn themselves. There is no empathy in his gaze. No trace of the man he was.

  And though this is part of my plan, though getting captured by the Nightbringer means getting closer to the sickle—now a scythe—I wish I did not feel so desperately alone in my battle against the jinn.

  Unwillingly, I look at Elias, knowing I will only be met with the Soul Catcher’s icy regard.

  Instead, I see vitality in his gaze, and my body jolts in surprise. This is the Elias I met at Blackcliff. The Elias who escaped Serra with me, who exploded out of the depths of Kauf, my brother in tow.

  The Elias I thought Mauth had crushed.

  He blurs into motion, not attacking the Nightbringer, but moving for the jinn with the long spear—Khuri called her Umber. He disarms her with two quick thrusts of his hands, and then knocks her back into Azul.

  Khuri jumps in front of Elias, glaring at him, no doubt trying to manipulate his mind. But he shakes off her magic, whipping the spear toward her too fast to follow. She crumples to the ground, stunned by the blow.

  The Nightbringer flings me to the rooftop and streaks toward Khuri, who is already rising, her flame eyes scarlet. Run, every part of me screams. Escape, Laia!

  I do run. After the Nightbringer, lunging for the scythe just as he reaches his precious kindred. This is it. Either I die or this scythe comes with me. There is no middle ground. I wrap my fingers around the handle and I pull with all my might. Please!

  It does not budge.

  The Nightbringer half turns, but I’ve drawn my dagger and I slice through the leather strap holding the scythe to the jinn’s back. It comes free, and for a moment, I am too stunned to move.

  “Hold on to me.”

  Elias appears beside me and pulls me to his chest, spinning me across the rooftop. We are away and my blood rises with the victory of the moment. I have the scythe. Elias is here with me. Elias, not the Soul Catcher.

  I catch sight of a deep red flame—Umber. We lurch to a sudden halt and Khuri is there, her mouth curled in a snarl as she attempts to wrest the scythe from me. Elias shouts as Umber attacks, snatching back her spear and bringing it down on his shoulders. Though his magic must dull the spine-breaking blow, it does not stop it, for Elias gasps, on his knees.

  “This,” Khuri says with an unnatura
l calm as she slowly pries my fingers from the scythe’s handle, “does not belong to you, human.” I feel her influence, her compulsion.

  “Khuri!” The Nightbringer’s shout is low as a roll of thunder, laced with a terror I’ve never heard from him before. “No!”

  She turns to him, startled, and I level a vicious kick at her knees. The handle of the scythe comes loose from her grip. Her legs buckle as she lurches forward, fingers crooked at me. I thrust her away, the scythe in hand, and the blade cuts through her like she’s flesh and blood instead of fire and vengeance.

  Flames pour down my wrists, and I flinch back, my skin burning. Khuri scrabbles at her throat, but her strength is gone, and she slumps to the ground. She speaks then, her voice layered as if there are dozens of Khuris within her.

  The son of shadow and heir of death

  Will fight and fail with his final breath.

  Sorrow will ride the rays of the day,

  The earth her arena and man her prey.

  In flowerfall, the orphan will bow to the scythe.

  In flowerfall, the daughter will pay a blood tithe.

  Tears spring to my eyes at the sight of the fallen jinn. She bursts into flame, just as Shaeva once did, her ashes caught on the wind. And though she was my enemy, I can take no joy in her passing. For as she dies, the Nightbringer screams.

  “Khuri!” The sorrow in his keen turns my blood to ice, for I have heard such pain before. His cry is my father moaning in his jail cell and my sister’s neck snapping. It is Nan stifling her wails in her fist as she mourned her only child and Izzi telling me she was scared as she breathed her last. It is every death I’ve ever suffered, but so much worse, for he had only just gotten Khuri back. He had fought a thousand years to get her back.

  “I’m sorry.” The scythe falls from my nerveless fingers. “Oh skies, I’m so sorry—”