A Reaper at the Gates Page 8

  Shaeva’s prophecy haunts me. Darin and I discuss it obsessively, trying to make sense of each line. Bits of it—the sparrows, the Butcher—dredge up old memories, scraps of thoughts that I cannot quite grasp hold of.

  “We’ll figure it out.” Darin glances over, reading the furrow in my brow. “We have bigger problems.”

  Our shadow. The man appeared three days ago, trailing us as we left a small village. Or at least, that is when we first noticed him. Since then, he’s remained far enough away that we cannot get a good look at him, but close enough that my blade feels fused to my palm. Every time I don my invisibility in the hopes of getting closer to him, he disappears.

  “Still there.” Darin chances a look behind us. “Lurking like a bleeding wraith.”

  The circles beneath my brother’s eyes make his irises look almost black. His cheekbones jut out, as they did when I first rescued him from Kauf. Since our shadow appeared, Darin has slept little. But even before that, nightmares of Kauf and the Warden plagued him. Sometimes I wish the Warden back to life, just so I could kill him myself. Strange how monsters can reach from beyond the grave, as potent in death as they were in life.

  “We’ll lose him at the city gates.” I try to sound convincing. “And lie low when we get in. Find a cheap inn to stay at where no one will look at us twice. And then,” I add, “we can ask around for the Beekeeper.”

  Under the guise of adjusting my hood, I glance back quickly at our shadow. He’s close now, and beneath the scarf that hides his face, his red, sickle mouth curves into a smile. A weapon flashes in his hand.

  I spin back around. We wind down from the foothills, and Adisa’s gold-flecked wall comes into view, a marvel of white granite that glows orange under the fading, blood-streaked sky. Along the eastern wall, a mass of gray tents blooms out for nearly a mile: the Scholar refugee camp. In the bay to the north, sea ice floats in fat chunks, its briny smell slicing through the dirt and grime of the road.

  Clouds sit low on the horizon, and an estival wind blows in from the south, scattering them. As they part, a near-collective gasp ripples through the travelers. For in the center of Adisa, a spire of stone and glass soars into the sky, pinioning the heavens. It twists like the horn of some mythical creature, impossibly balanced and glowing white. I have only ever heard it described, but the descriptions do it no justice. The Great Library of Adisa.

  An unwelcome memory surfaces. Red hair, brown eyes, and a mouth that lied, lied, lied. Keenan—the Nightbringer—telling me that he too wanted to see the Great Library.

  She tasted sweet, boy. Like dew and a clear dawn. My skin crawls thinking of the filth he spat in the Waiting Place.

  “Look.” I nod to the throngs gathered outside the city gates, pushing to enter before they close at nightfall. “We can lose him there. Especially if I disappear.”

  When we are closer to the city, I drop in front of Darin, as if adjusting a bootlace. Then I pull on my invisibility.

  “I’m right next to you,” I whisper when I stand, and Darin nods, weaving quickly now through the crowd, using his sharp elbows to muscle forward. The closer we get to the gate, the slower it goes. Finally, as the sun dips into the west, we stand before the massive wooden entrance, carved with whales and eels, octopuses and mermaids. Beyond, a cobbled street curves up and disappears into a warren of brightly painted buildings, lamps winking in their windows. I think of my mother, who came to Adisa when she was only a few years older than me. Did it look the same? Did she share the awe I feel now?

  “Your guarantor, sir?”

  One of the dozens of Mariner guards fixes his attention on Darin, and despite the seething crowds, he is coolly polite. Darin shakes his head in confusion. “My guarantor?”

  “Who are you staying with in the city? What family or guild?”

  “We’re staying at an inn,” Darin says. “We can pay—”

  “Gold can be stolen. I require names: the inn where you plan to procure rooms and your guarantor, who can vouch for your quality. Once you provide names, you will wait in a holding area while your information is verified, after which you may enter Adisa.”

  Darin looks uncertain. We do not know anyone in Adisa. Since leaving Elias, we have tried several times to get in touch with Araj, the Skiritae leader who escaped Kauf with us, but have heard nothing back from him.

  Darin nods at the soldier’s explanation, as if we have any idea what we will do instead. “And if I don’t have a guarantor?”

  “You’ll find the entrance to the Scholar refugee camp east of here.” The soldier, who until now had kept his attention on the pressing crowd behind us, finally looks at Darin. The man’s eyes narrow.

  “Say—”

  “Time to go,” I hiss to my brother, and he mumbles something to the soldier before quickly shoving back into the crowd.

  “He can’t have known my face,” Darin says. “I’ve never met him before.”

  “Maybe all Scholars look alike to him,” I say, but the explanation rings hollow to me. More than once, we turn to see if the soldier follows. I slow down only when I spot him at the gate, speaking with another group of Scholars. Our shadow also appears to have lost us, and we head east, making our way to one of a dozen long lines that lead into the refugee camp.

  Nan told me stories of what Mother did when she led the northern Resistance here in Adisa, more than twenty-five years ago. The Mariner King Irmand worked with her to protect the Scholars. To give them work and homes and a permanent place in Mariner society.

  Things have clearly gone to pot since then.

  Even from outside the boundaries of the camp, its gloom is pervasive. Bands of children wander through the tents ahead, most far too young to be left unaccompanied. A few dogs slink through the muddy roadways, occasionally sniffing at the open sewers.

  Why is it always us? All of these people—so many children—hunted and abused and tormented. Families stolen, lives shattered. They come all this way to be rejected yet again, sent outside the city walls to sleep in flimsy tents, to fight over paltry scraps of food, to starve and freeze and suffer more.

  And we are expected to be thankful. To be happy. So many are—I know it. Happy to be safe. To be alive. But it’s not enough—not to me.

  As we get closer to the entrance, the camp comes into clearer view. White parchment flutters from the cloth walls. I squint at it, but it’s not until we’re nearing the front of the line that I finally make out what’s on it.

  My own face. Darin’s. Staring out sullenly beneath damning words:

  BY PERSONAL DECREE OF KING IRMAND OF MARINN

  WANTED:

  LAIA AND DARIN OF SERRA

  FOR: INCITEMENT OF REBELLION, AGITATION, AND CONSPIRING AGAINST THE CROWN

  REWARD: 10,000 MARKS

  It looks like the posters from the Commandant’s office at Blackcliff. Like the one from Nur, when the Blood Shrike was hunting Elias and me and offering a massive reward.

  “What in the skies,” I whisper, “did we do to King Irmand to offend him so? Could the Martials be behind it?”

  “They don’t bleeding know we’re here!”

  “They have spies, just like everyone else,” I say. “Look back, like you see someone you recognize, and then walk—”

  A commotion at the back of the line ripples toward us as a squad of Mariner troops marches toward the camp from Adisa. Darin hunches down, taking refuge deeper in his hood. Shouts ring out ahead of us, and light flares sharply, followed quickly by a plume of black smoke. Fire. The shouts quickly turn to cries of rage and fear.

  My mind seizes; my thoughts go to Serra, to the night the soldiers took Darin. The pounding at our door and the silver of the Mask’s face. Nan’s and Pop’s blood on the floor and Darin screaming at me. Laia! Run!

  Voices around me rise in terror. Scholars in the camp flee. Groups of children cluster, making the
mselves small, hoping they are not noticed. Blue-and-gold-clad Mariner soldiers weave through the tents, tearing them apart as they search for something.

  No—someone.

  The Scholars around us scatter, running every which way, driven by a fear that’s been hammered into our bones. Always us! Our dignity shredded, our families annihilated, our children torn from their parents. Our blood soaking the dirt. What sin was so great that Scholars must pay, with every generation, with the only thing we have left: our lives?

  Darin, calm just a moment ago, is motionless beside me, looking as terror-stricken as I feel. I grab his hand. I cannot fall apart now—not when he needs me to hold it together.

  “Let’s go.” I pull him away, but there are soldiers herding those in the lines back toward the camp. Close by, I spy a dark space between two refugee tents. “Quick, Darin—”

  A voice cries out behind us. “They’re not here!” A Scholar woman who is naught but skin and bones tries to shake off a Mariner soldier. “I’ve told you—”

  “We know you’re sheltering them.” The Mariner who speaks is taller than me by a few inches, her scaled silver armor tight against the powerful muscles of her shoulders. Her chiseled brown face lacks the cruelty of a Mask, but she is nearly as intimidating. She tears a poster off the side of one of the tents where it’s been pinned. “Turn over Laia and Darin of Serra, and we will leave you be. Otherwise we will raze this camp and scatter its refugees to the four winds. We are generous, true. That does not make us fools.”

  Beyond the soldier, dozens of Scholar children are being herded toward a makeshift holding pen. A cloud of embers explodes into the sky as, behind them, two more tents go up in flames. I shudder at the way the fire growls and vaunts, as if it is celebrating the screams rising from my people.

  “It’s the prophecy,” Darin whispers. “Do you remember? The sparrows will drown, and none will know it. The Scholars must be the sparrows, Laia. The Mariners have always been called the sea people. They are the flood.”

  “We cannot let it happen.” I make myself say the words. “They’re suffering because of us. This is the only home they have. And we’re taking it away from them.”

  Darin immediately understands my intent. He shakes his head, taking a step back, movements jerky and panicked. “No,” he says. “We can’t. How are we supposed to find the Beekeeper if we’re in prison? Or dead? How are we supposed to—” His voice chokes off, and he shakes his head again and again.

  “I know they will lock us up.” I grab him, shake him. I need to break through his terror. I need him to believe me. “But I swear to the skies that I will get us out. We cannot let the camp burn, Darin. It’s wrong. The Mariners want us. And we’re right here.”

  A scream erupts from behind us. A Scholar man claws at a Mariner guard, howling as she removes a child from his grasp.

  “Don’t hurt her,” he begs. “Please—please—”

  Darin watches, shuddering. “You’re—you’re right.” He fights to get the words out, and I am relieved and proud and broken-hearted because I feel sick at the thought of watching my brother dragged back to a prison. “I’ll have no one else die for me. Especially not you. I’ll turn myself in. You’ll be safe—”

  “Not a chance,” I say. “Never again. Where you go, I go.”

  I drop my invisibility, and vertigo nearly levels me. My sight darkens to a dank room with a light-haired woman within. I cannot see her face. Who is she?

  When my vision clears, only a few seconds have passed. I shake the strange images away and leave the shelter of the tents.

  The Mariner soldier’s instinct is excellent. For though we are a good thirty feet from her, the moment we step into the light, her head swivels toward us. The plume and angled eye holes of her helmet make her look like an angry hawk, but her hand is light on her scim as she watches our approach.

  “Laia and Darin of Serra.” She doesn’t sound surprised, and I know then that she expected to find us here—that she knew we had arrived in Adisa. “You are under arrest for conspiracy to commit crimes against the kingdom of Marinn. You will come with me.”

  XII: Elias

  Though the sun hasn’t yet set, the Tribal encampment is quiet when I approach. The cook fires are doused, the horses sheltered beneath a canvas tarp. The red-and-yellow-painted wagons are sealed tight against the driving late spring rain. Wan lamplight flickers within.

  I move slowly, though not out of wariness. Mauth tugs at me, and it requires all my strength to ignore that summons.

  A few hundred yards west of the caravan, the Duskan Sea breaks against the rocky shore, its roar nearly drowning out the mournful cries of white-headed gulls above. But my Mask’s instincts are as sharp as ever, and I sense the approach of the Kehanni of Tribe Nasur long before she appears—along with the six Nasur Tribesmen guarding her.

  “Elias Veturius.” The Kehanni’s silver dreadlocks hang to her waist, and I can clearly make out the elaborate storyteller’s tattoos on her dark brown skin. “You are late.”

  “I am sorry, Kehanni.” I don’t bother giving her an excuse. Kehannis are as skilled at trapping lies as they are at telling stories. “I beg your forgiveness.”

  “Bah.” She sniffs. “You begged to meet with me too. I do not know why I consented. Martials took my brother’s son a week ago, after they raided our grain stores. My respect for Mamie Rila is all that keeps me from gutting you like a pig, boy.”

  I’d like to see you try. “Have you heard from Mamie?”

  “She is well-hidden and recovering from the horrors your ilk inflicted upon her. If you think I will tell you where she is, you are a bigger fool than I suspected. Come.”

  She jerks her head toward the caravan, and I follow. I understand her rage. The Martials’ war on the Tribes is evident in every burned-out wagon littering the countryside, every ululating wail rising from Tribal villages as families mourn those taken.

  The Kehanni moves quickly, and as I trail her, Mauth’s pull grows stronger, a physical wrench that makes me want to sprint back to the Waiting Place, three leagues distant. A sense of wrongness steals over me, as if I’ve forgotten something important. But I can’t tell if it is my own instinct prickling or if Mauth is manipulating my mind. More than once in the past few weeks, I’ve felt someone—or something—flitting at the edges of the Waiting Place, entering and then leaving, as if trying to gauge a reaction. Every time I’ve felt it, I’ve windwalked to the border. And every time, I’ve found nothing.

  The rain has, at least, silenced the jinn. Those fiery bastards hate it. But the ghosts are troubled, forced to remain in the Waiting Place longer than they should because I cannot pass them through fast enough. Shaeva’s warning haunts me.

  If you do not pass the ghosts through, it will mean your failure as Soul Catcher and the end of the human world as you understand it.

  Mauth pulls at me again, but I make myself ignore it. The Kehanni and I weave our way through the wagons of the caravan until we reach one that sits apart from the rest, its black draping in sharp contrast to the elaborate decorations of the other wagons.

  It is the home of a Fakir—the Tribesperson who prepares bodies for burial.

  I wipe the rain from my face as the Kehanni knocks on the wooden back door. “With respect,” I say, “I need to speak to you—”

  “I keep the stories of the living. The Fakira keeps the stories of the dead.”

  The back door of the wagon opens almost immediately to reveal a girl of perhaps sixteen. At the sight of me, her eyes widen and she pulls at her halo of red-brown curls. She chews on her lip, freckles stark against skin that is lighter than Mamie’s but darker than mine. Deep blue tattoos wind up her arms, geometric patterns that make me think of skulls.

  Something about the uncertainty of her posture reminds me of Laia, and a pang of longing flashes through me. I realize that I’ve frozen
at the door, and the Kehanni shoves me into the wagon, which is lit brightly by multicolored Tribal lamps. A shelf along the back is filled with jars of fluid, and there is a faint smell of something astringent.

  “This,” the Kehanni says from the door once I’m inside, “is Aubarit, our new Fakira. She is . . . learning.” The Kehanni curls her lip slightly. No wonder the Kehanni agreed to help me. She’s simply foisting me onto a girl who will likely be no help at all. “She will deal with you.”

  The door slams, leaving Aubarit and me staring at each other for an awkward moment.

  “You’re young,” I blurt out as I sit. “Our Saif Fakir was older than the hills.”

  “Fear not, bhai.” Aubarit uses the honorific for brother, and her shaking voice reflects her anxiety. I immediately feel guilty for bringing up her age. “I have been trained in the Mysteries. You come from the Forest, Elias Veturius. From the domain of the Bani al-Mauth. Does she send you to aid us?”

  Did she just say Mauth? “How do you know that name, Mauth? Do you mean Shaeva?”

  “Astagha!” Aubarit squeaks the oath against the evil eye. “We do not use her name, bhai! The Bani al-Mauth is holy. The Chosen of Death. The Soul Catcher. The Guardian at the Gates. The sacred Mystery of her existence is known only to the Fakirs and their apprentices. I would not have even spoken of it, only you came from the Jaga al-Mauth.” Place of Mauth.

  “Shaev . . . ah, the Bani al-Mauth.” I suddenly find it hard to speak. “She’s . . . dead. I’m her replacement. She was training me when—”

  Aubarit drops so fast, I think her heart has failed.

  “Banu al-Mauth, forgive me.” I note the alteration of the title to reflect a male instead of a female—which is when I realize that she has not had some sort of fainting fit. She is kneeling. “I did not know.”

  “No need for that.” I pull her to her feet, embarrassed at her awe. “I’m struggling to pass the ghosts on,” I say. “I need to use the magic at the heart of the Waiting Place, but I don’t know how. The ghosts are building up. Every day there are more.”