Copyright

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Sabaa Tahir 2018

Maps by Jonathan Roberts

Cover design and illustration Micaela Alcaino © HarperCollinsPublishers

Cover illustration © Shutterstock.com (eagle, background)

Sabaa Tahir asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008288754

Ebook Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 9780008288778

Version: 2018-09-21

Dedication

For Renée, who knows my heart.

For Alexandra, who holds my hopes.

And for Ben, who shares the dream.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Maps

Part One: The King of No Name

Chapter One: The Nightbringer

Chapter Two: Laia

Chapter Three: Elias

Chapter Four: The Blood Shrike

Chapter Five: Laia

Chapter Six: Elias

Chapter Seven: The Blood Shrike

Chapter Eight: Laia

Chapter Nine: Elias

Chapter Ten: The Blood Shrike

Part Two: Inferno

Chapter Eleven: Laia

Chapter Twelve: Elias

Chapter Thirteen: The Blood Shrike

Chapter Fourteen: Laia

Chapter Fifteen: Elias

Chapter Sixteen: The Blood Shrike

Chapter Seventeen: Laia

Chapter Eighteen: Elias

Chapter Nineteen: The Blood Shrike

Chapter Twenty: Laia

Chapter Twenty-One: Elias

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Blood Shrike

Chapter Twenty-Three: Laia

Chapter Twenty-Four: Elias

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Blood Shrike

Chapter Twenty-Six: Laia

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Elias

Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Blood Shrike

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Laia

Chapter Thirty: Elias

Part Three: Antium

Chapter Thirty-One: The Blood Shrike

Chapter Thirty-Two: Laia

Chapter Thirty-Three: The Blood Shrike

Chapter Thirty-Four: Elias

Chapter Thirty-Five: The Blood Shrike

Chapter Thirty-Six: Laia

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Elias

Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Blood Shrike

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Laia

Chapter Forty: Elias

Chapter Forty-One: The Blood Shrike

Chapter Forty-Two: Laia

Chapter Forty-Three: The Blood Shrike

Chapter Forty-Four: Laia

Chapter Forty-Five: Elias

Part Four: Siege

Chapter Forty-Six: The Blood Shrike

Chapter Forty-Seven: Laia

Chapter Forty-Eight: The Blood Shrike

Chapter Forty-Nine: Laia

Chapter Fifty: Elias

Chapter Fifty-One: The Blood Shrike

Chapter Fifty-Two: Laia

Chapter Fifty-Three: Elias

Chapter Fifty-Four: Laia

Chapter Fifty-Five: The Blood Shrike

Chapter Fifty-Six: Laia

Part Five: Beloved

Chapter Fifty-Seven: The Blood Shrike

Chapter Fifty-Eight: The Soul Catcher

Chapter Fifty-Nine: The Nightbringer

Acknowledgements

Also by Sabaa Tahir

About the Publisher

Maps

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE
The Nightbringer

You love too much, my king.

My queen spoke the words often across the centuries we spent together. At first, with a smile. But in later years, with a furrowed brow. Her gaze settled on our children as they tore about the palace, their bodies flickering from flame to flesh, tiny cyclones of impossible beauty.

“I fear for you, Meherya.” Her voice trembled. “I fear what you will do if harm comes to those whom you love.”

“No harm shall befall you. I vow it.”

I spoke with the passion and folly of youth, though I was not, of course, young. Even then. That day, the breezes off the river ruffled her midnight hair and sunlight poured like liquid gold through the sheer curtains of the windows. It lit our children umber as they trailed scorch marks and laughter across the stone floor.

Her fears held her captive. I reached for her hands. “I would destroy any who dared hurt you,” I said.

“Meherya, no.” I have wondered in the years since then if she already feared what I would become. “Swear you would never. You are our Meherya. Your heart is made to love. To give. Not to take. That is why you are king of the jinn. Swear it.”

I swore two vows that day: to protect, always. To love, always.

Within a year, I had broken both.

The Star hangs from the wall of the cavern far from human eyes. It is a four-pointed diamond, with a narrow gap at its apex. Thin striations spiderweb across it, a reminder of the day the Scholars shattered it after imprisoning my people. The metal gleams with impatience, potent as the glare of a jungle beast closing in on prey. Such vast power within this weapon—enough to destroy an ancient city, an ancient people. Enough to imprison the jinn for a thousand years.

Enough to set them free.

As if sensing the armlet clinging to my wrist, the Star rattles, yearning toward the missing piece. A wrench shudders through me as I offer the armlet up, and it oozes away like a silver eel to join with the Star. The gap shrinks.

The four points of the Star flare, lighting the far reaches of the speckled granite cavern, eliciting a wave of angry hisses from the creatures around me. Then the glow fades, leaving only pallid moonlight. Ghuls swish at my ankles.

Master. Master.

Beyond them, the Wraith Lord awaits my orders, along with the efrit kings and queens—of wind and sea, sand and cave, air and snow.

As they watch, silent and wary, I consider the parchment in my hands. It is as unobtrusive as sand. The words within are not.

At my summons, the Wraith Lord approaches. He submits reluctantly, cowed by my magic, straining always to be free of me. But I have need of him yet. The wraiths are disparate scraps of lost souls, joined by ancient sorcery and undetectable when they wish to be. Even by the Empire’s famed Masks.

As I offer him the parchment, I hear her. My queen’s voice is a whisper, gentle as a candle on a chill night. Once you do this, you can never come back. All hope for you is lost, Meherya. Consider.

I do as she asks. I consider.

Then I remember she is dead and gone and has been for a millennium. Her presence is a delusion. Her voice is my weakness. I proffer the scroll to the Wraith Lord.

“See that it finds Blood Shrike Helene Aquilla,” I tell him. “And no other.” He bows, and the efrits sail forward. I order the efrits of air away; I have a separate task for them. The rest kneel.

“Long ago, you gave the Scholars knowledge that led to the destruction of my people and the fey world.” A jolt of memory ripples through their ranks. “I offer you redemption. Go to our new allies in the south. Help them understand what they can call forth from the dark places. The Grain Moon will rise six months hence. See it done well before then. And you”—the ghuls press close—“glut yourselves. Do not fail me.”

When they have all left me, I contemplate the Star and think of the treacherous jinn girl who helped bring it into being. Perhaps to a human, the weapon would shine with promise.

I feel only hatred.

A face drifts to the forefront of my mind. Laia of Serra. I recall the heat of her skin beneath my hands, how her wrists crossed behind my neck. The way she closed her eyes and the golden hollow of her throat. She felt like the threshold of my old home when the rushes were fresh-changed. She felt safe.

You loved her, my queen says. And then you hurt her.

My betrayal of the Scholar girl should not linger. I deceived hundreds before her.

Yet unease grips me. Something inexplicable occurred after Laia of Serra gifted me her armlet—after she realized that the boy she called Keenan was naught but a fabrication. Like all humans, she glimpsed in my eyes the darkest moments of her life. But when I looked into her soul, something—someone—peered back: my queen, gazing at me across the centuries.

I saw her horror. Her sadness at what I had become. I saw her pain at what our children and our people suffered at the hands of the Scholars.

I think of my queen with every betrayal. Going back a thousand years, to each human found, manipulated, and loved until they freely gave me their piece of the Star with love in their hearts. Again and again and again.

But never had I seen her in the gaze of another. Never had I felt the sharp blade of her disappointment so keenly.

Once more. Only once more.

My queen speaks. Do not do this. Please.

I crush her voice. I crush her memory. I think I will not hear her again.

CHAPTER TWO
Laia

Everything about this raid feels wrong. Darin and I both know it, even if neither of us is willing to say it.

Though my brother does not speak much these days.

The ghost wagons we track finally roll to a stop outside a Martial village. I rise from the snow-heavy bushes where we’ve taken cover and nod to Darin. He grabs my hand and squeezes. Be safe.

I reach for my invisibility, a power awoken within me recently, and one that I’m still settling into. My breath wreathes up in white clouds, like a snake undulating to some unknowable song. Elsewhere in the Empire, spring has scattered its blossoms. But this close to Antium, the capital, winter still whips its chill fingers across our faces.

Midnight passes, and the few lamps that burn in the village sputter in the rising wind. When I am through the perimeter of the prisoner caravan, I pitch my voice low and hoot like a snowy owl, common enough in this part of the Empire.

As I prowl toward the ghost wagons, my skin prickles. I whirl, my instinct rearing in warning. The nearby ridgeline is empty, and the Martial auxiliary soldiers on guard do not so much as twitch. Nothing appears amiss.

You’re just jumpy, Laia. Like always. From our camp on the outskirts of the Waiting Place, twenty miles from here, Darin and I have planned and carried out six raids on Empire prisoner caravans. My brother has not forged a single scrap of Serric steel. I have not responded to the letters from Araj, the Scholar leader who escaped Kauf Prison with us. But together with Afya Ara-Nur and her men, we have helped to free more than four hundred Scholars and Tribesmen over the past two months.

Still, that does not guarantee success with this caravan. For this caravan is different.

Beyond the perimeter, familiar black-clad figures move in on the camp from the trees. Afya and her men, responding to my signal, preparing to attack. Their presence gives me heart. The Tribeswoman who helped me free Darin from Kauf is the only reason we know of these ghost wagons—and the prisoner they transport.

The lock picks are blades of ice in my hand. Six wagons sit in a half circle, with two supply carts sheltered between them. Most of the soldiers busy themselves with the horses and campfires. Snow gusts down in flurries, stinging my face as I get to the first wagon and begin working the lock. The pins within are enigmas to my freezing, clumsy hands. Faster, Laia.

The wagon is silent, as if empty. But I know better. Soon, the whimper of a child breaks the quiet. It is quickly shushed. The prisoners have learned that silence is the only way to avoid suffering.

“Where the burning hells is everybody?” a voice bellows near my ear. I nearly drop my picks. A legionnaire strides past, and a tendril of panic unfurls down my spine. I do not dare to breathe. What if he sees me? What if my invisibility falters? It has happened before, when I am under attack, or in a large crowd.

“Wake up the innkeeper.” The legionnaire turns to the aux hastening toward him. “Tell him to roll out a keg and prepare rooms.”

“Inn’s empty, sir. Village looks abandoned.”

Martials do not abandon villages, even in the dead of winter. Not unless a plague has come through. But Afya would have heard if that were the case.

Their reasons for leaving are not your concern, Laia. Get the locks open.

The aux and the legionnaire stalk off toward the inn. The moment they are out of sight, I get my picks in the lock. But the metal groans, stiff with rime.

Come on! Without Elias Veturius to get through half the locks, I have to work twice as fast. I have no time to think of my friend, and yet I cannot quell my worry. His presence during the raids has kept us from being caught. He said he would be here.

What in the skies could have happened to Elias? He’s never let me down. Not when it comes to the raids, anyway. Did Shaeva learn that he snuck Darin and me back across the Waiting Place from the cottage in the Free Lands? Is she punishing him?

I know little of the Soul Catcher—she is shy, and I assumed she did not like me. Some days, when Elias emerges from the Waiting Place to visit me and Darin, I feel the jinn woman watching us and I sense no rancor. Only sadness. But skies know, I’m no judge of hidden malice.

If it were any other caravan—any other prisoner we were attempting to break out—I would not have risked Darin, or the Tribespeople, or myself.

But we owe it to Mamie Rila and the rest of the Saif prisoners to try to free them. Elias’s Tribal mother sacrificed her body, freedom, and Tribe so I could save Darin. I cannot fail her.

Elias is not here. You’re alone. Move!

The lock finally springs open, and I make for the next wagon. In the trees just yards away, Afya must be cursing at the delay. The longer I take, the more likely it is that the Martials will catch us.

When I crack the last lock, I croon a signal. Snick. Snick. Snick. Darts hurtle through the air. The Martials at the perimeter drop silently, left insensate by the rare southern poison coating the darts. A half dozen Tribesmen approach the soldiers and slit their throats.

I look away, though I still hear the tear of flesh, the rattle of a final breath. I know it must be done. Without Serric steel, Afya’s people cannot face the Martials head on, lest their blades break. But there is an efficiency to the killing that freezes my blood. I wonder if I will ever get used to it.

A small form appears out of the shadows, weapon glinting. The intricate tattoos that mark her as a Zaldara, the head of her Tribe, are concealed by long, dark sleeves. I hiss at Afya Ara-Nur so she knows where I am.

“Took you long enough.” She glances around, black and red braids swinging. “Where in the ten hells is Elias? Can he disappear now too?”

Elias finally told Afya of the Waiting Place, of his death in Kauf Prison, of his resurrection and his agreement with Shaeva. That day, the Tribeswoman cursed him roundly for a fool before finding me. Forget him now, Laia, she had said. It’s damned stupid to fall for a once-dead ghost-talker, I don’t care how pretty he is.

“Elias didn’t come.”

Afya swears in Sadhese and moves toward the wagons. She explains softly to the prisoners that they must follow her men, that they must make no noise.

Shouts and the high twang of a bow echo from the village, fifty yards from where I stand. I leave Afya behind and sprint toward the houses where, in a darkened alley outside the village inn, Afya’s fighters dance away from a half dozen Empire soldiers, including the legionnaire in command. Tribal arrows and darts fly, deft counters to the Martials’ deadly blades. I dash into the fray, slamming the hilt of my dagger into an aux’s temple. I needn’t have bothered. The soldiers go down quickly.

Too quickly.

There must be more men nearby—a hidden force. Or a Mask lurking, unseen.

“Laia.” I jump at my name. Darin’s golden skin is dark with mud to hide his presence. A hood covers the unruly, honey-colored hair that has finally grown in. Looking at him, no one would ever know he’d survived six months in Kauf Prison. But within his mind, my brother battles demons still. It is those demons that have kept him from making Serric steel.

He’s here now, I tell myself sternly. Fighting. Helping. The weapons will come when he’s ready.

“Mamie isn’t here,” he says, turning when I tap his shoulder, voice haggard with disuse. “I found her foster son, Shan. He said the soldiers took her from her wagon when the caravan stopped for the night.”

“She must be in the village,” I say. “Get the prisoners out of here. I’ll find her.”

“The village shouldn’t be empty,” Darin says. “This doesn’t feel right. You go. I’ll look for Mamie.”

“One of you bleeding needs to find her.” Afya appears behind us. “Because I’m not going to do it, and we have to get the prisoners hidden.”

“If something goes wrong,” I say, “I can use my invisibility to slip away. I’ll meet you back at the camp as soon as I can.”

My brother raises his eyebrows, considering my words in his quiet way. When he chooses to be, he is as immovable as the mountains—just like our mother was.

“I go where you go, sis. Elias would agree. He knows—”

“If you are so chummy with Elias,” I hiss, “then tell him that the next time he commits to helping with a raid, he needs to follow through.”

Darin’s mouth curves in a brief, crooked smile. Mother’s smile. “Laia, I know you’re angry at him, but he—”

“Skies save me from the men in my life and all the things they think they know. Get out of here. Afya needs you. The prisoners need you. Go.”

Before he protests, I dart into the village. It is no more than a hundred cottages with thatched roofs that sag beneath the snow, and narrow, dim streets. The wind wails through neatly tended gardens, and I nearly trip over a broom abandoned in a lane. The villagers left this place recently, I sense, and with haste.

I tread carefully, wary of what might lurk in the shadows. The stories whispered in taverns and around Tribal campfires haunt me: wraiths tearing out the throats of Mariner sailors. Scholar families found in burned-out encampments in the Free Lands. Wights—tiny winged menaces—destroying wagons and tormenting livestock.

All of it, I’m certain, is the foul handiwork of the creature that called itself Keenan.

The Nightbringer.

I pause to peek through the front window of a darkened cottage. In the stygian night, I can see nothing. As I move to the next house, my guilt circles in the ocean of my mind, scenting my weakness. You gave the Nightbringer the armlet, it hisses. You fell prey to his manipulation. He is a step closer to destroying the Scholars. When he finds the rest of the Star, he’ll set the jinn free. Then what, Laia?

But it could take the Nightbringer years to find the next piece of the Star, I reason to myself. And there might be more than one piece left. There might be dozens.

A flicker of light ahead. I tear my thoughts from the Nightbringer and move toward a cottage along the north edge of the village. Its door stands ajar. A lamp burns within. The door is propped wide enough that I can slip through without disturbing it. Anyone planning an ambush would see nothing.

Once inside, it takes a moment for my vision to adjust. When it does, I stifle a cry. Mamie Rila sits tied to a chair, a gaunt shadow of her former self. Her dark skin hangs loosely on her frame, and her thick, curly hair has been shaved off.

I almost go to her. But some old instinct stops me, crying out from deep within my mind.

A boot thumps behind me. Startled, I whirl, and a floorboard creaks beneath my feet. I catch a telltale flash of liquid silver—Mask!—just as a hand locks around my mouth and my arms are wrenched behind my back.

CHAPTER THREE
Elias

No matter how often I sneak out of the Waiting Place, it never gets easier. As I approach the western tree line, a flash of white nearby causes my stomach to plunge. A spirit. I bite back a curse and hold still. If it spies me lurking so far from where I’m supposed to be, the entire bleeding Forest of Dusk will know what I’m up to. Ghosts, it turns out, love to gossip.

The delay chafes. I’m already late—Laia was expecting me more than an hour ago, and this isn’t a raid she’ll skip just because I’m not around.

Almost there. I lope through a fresh layer of snow to the border of the Waiting Place, which glimmers ahead. To a layperson, it’s invisible. But to me and Shaeva, the glowing wall is as obvious as if it were made of stone. Though I can pass through it easily, it keeps the spirits in and curious humans out. Shaeva has spent months lecturing me about the importance of that wall.

She will be vexed with me. This isn’t the first time I’ve disappeared on her when I’m supposed to be training as Soul Catcher. Though she is a jinn, Shaeva has little skill in dealing with dissembling students. I, on the other hand, spent fourteen years concocting ways to skip out on Blackcliff’s Centurions. Getting caught at Blackcliff meant a whipping from my mother, the Commandant. Shaeva usually just glowers at me.

“Perhaps I too should institute whippings.” Shaeva’s voice cuts through the air like a scim, and I nearly jump out of my skin. “Would you then appear when you are supposed to, Elias, instead of shirking your responsibilities to play hero?”

“Shaeva! I was just … ah, are you … steaming?” Vapor rises in thick plumes from the jinn woman.

“Someone”—she glares at me—“forgot to hang up the washing. I was out of shirts.”

And since she is a jinn, her unnaturally high body heat will dry her washed laundry … after an hour or two of unpleasant dampness, I’m sure. No wonder she looks like she wants to kick me in the face.

Shaeva tugs at my arm, her ever-present jinn warmth driving away the cold that has seeped into my bones. Moments later, we are miles from the border. My head spins from the magic she uses to move us so swiftly through the Forest.

At the sight of the glowing red jinn grove, I groan. I hate this place. The jinn might be locked in the trees, but they still have power within this small space, and they use it to get into my head whenever I enter.

Shaeva rolls her eyes, as if dealing with a particularly irritating younger sibling. The Soul Catcher flicks her hand, and when I pull my arm away, I find I cannot walk more than a few feet. She’s put up some sort of ward. She must finally be losing her patience with me if she’s resorting to imprisonment.

I try to keep my temper—and fail. “That’s a nasty trick.”

“And one you could disarm easily if you stayed still long enough for me to teach you how.” She nods to the jinn grove, where spirits wind through the trees. “The ghost of a child needs soothing, Elias. Go. Let me see what you have learned these past weeks.”

“I shouldn’t be here.” I give the ward a violent if ineffectual shove. “Laia and Darin and Mamie need me.”

Shaeva leans into the hollow of a tree and glances up at the snippets of star and sky visible through the bare branches. “An hour until midnight. The raid must be under way. Laia will be in danger. Darin and Afya too. Enter the grove and help this ghost move on. If you do, I will drop the ward and you can leave. Or your friends can keep waiting.”

“You’re grumpier than usual,” I say. “Did you skip breakfast?”

“Stop stalling.”

I mutter a curse and mentally arm myself against the jinn, imagining a barrier around my mind that they cannot penetrate with their evil whispers. With each step into the grove, I sense them watching. Listening.

A moment later, laughter echoes in my head. It is layered—voice upon voice, mockery upon mockery. The jinn.

You cannot help the ghosts, fool mortal. And you cannot help Laia of Serra. She shall die a slow, painful death.

The jinns’ malice spears through my carefully constructed defenses. The creatures plumb my darkest thoughts, parading images of a dead, broken Laia before me until I cannot tell where the jinn grove ends and their twisted visions begin.

I close my eyes. Not real. I open them to find Helene slain at the base of the nearest tree. Darin lies beside her. Beyond him, Mamie Rila. Shan, my foster brother. I am reminded of the battlefield of death from the First Trial so long ago—and yet this is worse because I thought I left violence and suffering behind me.

I recall Shaeva’s lessons. In the grove, the jinn have the power to control your mind. To exploit your weaknesses. I try to shake the jinn away, but they hold fast, their whispers snaking into me. At my side, Shaeva stiffens.

Hail, traitor. They slip into formal speech when they speak to the Soul Catcher. Thy doom is upon thee. The air reeks of it.

Shaeva’s jaw tightens, and immediately I wish for a weapon to shut them up. She has enough on her mind without them taunting her.

But the Soul Catcher simply lifts a hand to the nearest jinn tree. Though I cannot see her deploy the magic of the Waiting Place, she must have, because the jinn fall silent.

“You need to try harder.” She turns on me. “The jinn want you to dwell on petty concerns.”

“The fates of Laia and Darin and Mamie aren’t petty.”

“Their lives are nothing against the sweep of time,” Shaeva says. “I will not be here forever, Elias. You must learn to pass the ghosts through more swiftly. There are too many.” At my mulish expression, she sighs. “Tell me, what do you do when a ghost refuses to leave the Waiting Place until their loved ones die?”

“Ah … well …”

Shaeva groans, the look on her face reminding me of Helene’s expression when I didn’t show up to class on time.

“What about when you have hundreds of ghosts screaming to be heard all at once?” Shaeva says. “What do you do with a spirit who did horrific things in life but who feels no remorse? Do you know why there are so few ghosts from the Tribes? Do you know what will happen if you do not move the ghosts fast enough?”

“Now that you mention it,” I say, my curiosity piqued, “what will happen if—”

“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. Hope to the skies that you never see that day.”

She sits down heavily, sinking her head into her hands, and after a moment, I drop beside her, my chest lurching unpleasantly at her distress. This is not like when the Centurions were angry with me. I didn’t bleeding care what they thought. But I want to do well for Shaeva. We have spent months together, she and I—carrying out the duties of Soul Catcher mostly, but also debating Martial military history, bickering good-naturedly about chores, and sharing notes on hunting and combat. I think of her as a wiser, much older sister. I don’t want to disappoint her.

“Let go of the human world, Elias. Until you do, you cannot draw upon the magic of the Waiting Place.”

“I windwalk all the time.” Shaeva has taught me the trick of speeding through the trees in the blink of an eye, though she is faster than I.

“Windwalking is physical magic, simple to master.” Shaeva sighs. “When you took your vow, the magic of the Waiting Place entered your blood. Mauth entered your blood.”

Mauth. I suppress a shudder. The name is still strange on my lips. I did not know that the magic even had a name when it first spoke to me through Shaeva, months ago, demanding my vow as Soul Catcher.

“Mauth is the source of all the world’s fey power, Elias. The jinn, the efrits, the ghuls. Even your friend Helene’s healing. He is the source of your power as Soul Catcher.”

He. As if the magic is alive.

“He will aid you in passing on the ghosts if you let him. Mauth’s true power is here”—the Soul Catcher gently taps my heart, then my temple— “and here. But until you forge a soul-deep bond with the magic, you cannot be a true Soul Catcher.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re jinn. The magic is part of you. It doesn’t come easily to me. Instead it yanks at me if I stray too far from the trees, like I’m a wayward hound. And if I touch Laia, bleeding hells—” The pain is excruciating enough that thinking of it makes me grimace.

See, traitor, how foolish it was to trust this mortal bit of flesh with the souls of the dead?

At the intrusion of her jinn kin, Shaeva slams a shock wave of magic into their grove that is so powerful even I feel it.

“Hundreds of ghosts wait to pass, and more come every day.” Sweat rolls down Shaeva’s temple, as if she’s fighting a battle I cannot see. “I am much disturbed.” She speaks softly and glances into the trees behind her. “I fear the Nightbringer works against us, stealthily and with malice. But I cannot fathom his plan, and it worries me.”

“Of course he works against us. He wants to set the trapped jinn free.”

“No. I sense a dark intent,” Shaeva says. “If harm should befall me before your training is complete …” She takes a deep breath and collects herself.

“I can do this, Shaeva,” I say to her. “I swear it to you. But I told Laia I’d help her tonight. Mamie might be dead. Laia might be dead. I don’t know, because I’m not there.”

Skies, how to explain it to her? She’s been away from humanity for so long that she can’t possibly understand. Does she comprehend love? On the days when she teases me about talking in my sleep, or tells strange, funny tales because she knows I ache for Laia, it seems as if she does. But now …

“Mamie Rila gave up her life for mine, and by some miracle she still lives,” I say. “Don’t make me welcome her here. Don’t make me welcome Laia.”

“Loving them will only hurt you,” Shaeva says. “In the end, they will fade. You will endure. Every time you bid farewell to yet another part of your old life, a piece of you will die.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Every moment stolen with Laia is the infuriating evidence of that fact. The few kisses we’ve had, cut short because of Mauth’s oppressive disapproval. The chasm opening between us as the truth of my vow sinks in. Every time I see her she seems further away, as if I peer at her through a spyglass.

“Fool boy.” Shaeva’s voice is soft with empathy. Her black eyes lose focus, and I feel the ward drop. “I will find the ghost and pass him on. Go. And do not be careless with your life. Full-grown jinn are nearly impossible to kill, except by other jinn. When you join with Mauth, you too will become resilient to attack, and time will cease to affect you. But until then, be wary. If you die again, I cannot bring you back. And”—she kicks at the ground self-consciously—“I’ve grown used to you.”

“I won’t die.” I grip her shoulder. “And I promise I’ll do the dishes for the next month.”

She snorts her disbelief, but by then, I am moving, windwalking through the trees so rapidly I can feel the branches cutting my face. A half hour later, I hurtle past Shaeva’s and my cottage, through the borders of the Waiting Place, and into the Empire. The moment I’m clear of the trees, storm winds buffet me and my windwalking slows, the magic weakening as I leave the Forest behind.

I feel a pull at my core tugging me back. Mauth, demanding my return. The pull is almost painful, but I grit my teeth and continue on. Pain is a choice. Succumb to it and fail. Or defy it and triumph. Keris Veturia’s training, drilled into my very bones.

By the time I arrive outside the village where I was to meet Laia, midnight is long past and moonlight pushes meekly through the snow clouds. Please let the raid have gone smoothly. Please let Mamie be all right.

But the instant I enter the village, I know something is off. The caravan is empty, the wagon doors creaking in the storm. A thin layer of snow has already settled on the bodies of the soldiers guarding the caravans. Among them, I find no Mask. No Tribal casualties. The village is silent when it should be in an uproar.

Trap.

I know it instantly, as sure as I’d know my own mother’s face. Is this Keris’s work? Did she learn about Laia’s raids?

I pull my hood up, draw on a scarf, and drop into a crouch, observing the tracks in the snow. They are faint—brushed away. But I catch sight of a familiar boot print: Laia’s.

These tracks aren’t here out of carelessness. I was meant to know that Laia went into the village. And that she didn’t come out. Which means the trap wasn’t set for her.

It was set for me.

CHAPTER FOUR
The Blood Shrike

“Curse you!” I keep an iron grip around Laia of Serra, but she resists me with all her strength. She refuses to drop her invisibility, and I feel as if I’m grappling with an angry, camouflaged fish. I curse myself for not knocking her out the moment I grabbed her.

She lands a nasty kick to my ankle before elbowing me in the gut. My hold on her weakens, and she’s out of my hands. I lunge toward the sound of her boot scraping the floor, savagely satisfied at the huff of her breath leaving her lungs as I tackle her. Finally, she flickers into being, and before she can play her little disappearing trick again, I twist her hands back and truss her tighter than a festival-day goat. Still panting, I shove her into a chair.

She looks at the other occupant of the cabin—Mamie Rila, bound and barely conscious—and snarls through her gag. She kicks out like a mule, her boot connecting beneath my knee. I grimace at the pain. Don’t backhand her, Shrike.

Even as she fights, a fey part of my mind trills at the life within her. She has healed. She is strong. The fact should irk me.

But the magic I used on Laia binds us together, a tie that runs deeper than I’d like. I feel relief at her vigor, as if I’d learned that my little sister Livia is healthy.

Which she won’t be for much longer, if this plan doesn’t work. Fear lances through me, followed by a harsh stab of memory. The throne room. Emperor Marcus. My mother’s throat: cut. My sister Hannah’s throat: cut. My father’s throat: cut. All because of me.

I will not see Livia die too. I need to carry out Marcus’s orders and bring down Commandant Keris Veturia. If I don’t return to Antium from this mission with something I can use against her, Marcus will take his rage out on his empress—Livia. He has done so before.

But the Commandant appears unassailable. The low-class Plebeians and Mercator traders support her because she quelled the Scholar revolution. The most powerful families in the Empire, the Illustrians, fear her and Gens Veturia. She’s too wily to allow an assassin close, and even if I did take her out, her allies would rise up in revolt.

Which means I must first weaken her status among the Gens. I must show them that she is still human.

And to do that, I need Elias Veturius. The son who is supposed to be dead, who Keris claimed was dead, but who is, I recently learned, very much alive. Presenting him as evidence of Keris’s failure is the first step toward convincing her allies that she’s not as strong as she appears.

“The more you fight me,” I say to Laia, “the tighter your bonds will get.” I yank on the ropes. When she winces, I feel an unpleasant twinge deep within. A side effect of healing her?

It will destroy you if you’re not careful. The Nightbringer’s words about my healing magic echo in my mind. Is this what he meant? That the ties to those I healed are unbreakable?

I cannot dwell on it now. Captain Avitas Harper and Captain Dex Atrius enter the cottage we’ve requisitioned. Harper gives me a nod, but Dex’s attention flits to Mamie, his jaw tight.

“Dex,” I say. “It’s time.”

He doesn’t look away from Mamie. Unsurprising. Months ago, when we were hunting down Elias, Dex interrogated Mamie and other members of Tribe Saif on my orders. His guilt has plagued him since.

“Atrius!” I snap. Dex’s head jerks up. “Get into position.”

He shakes himself and disappears. Harper waits patiently for orders, unruffled by Laia’s muffled curses and Mamie’s moans of pain.

“Check the perimeter,” I tell him. “Make sure none of the villagers wandered back.” I didn’t spend weeks setting up this ambush so a curious Plebe could ruin it.

As Laia of Serra follows Harper’s progress out the door, I pull out a dirk and pare my nails. The girl’s dark clothes fit her closely, hugging those irritating curves in a way that makes me conscious of every awkwardly jutting bone in my body. I’ve taken her pack, along with a well-worn dagger I recognize with a jolt. It’s Elias’s. His grandfather Quin gave it to him as a sixteenth year-fall gift.

And Elias, apparently, gave it to Laia.

She hisses against the gag as her gaze darts between me and Mamie. Her defiance reminds me of Hannah. I wonder briefly if, in another life, the Scholar and I could have been friends.

“If you promise not to scream,” I tell her, “I’ll take off your gag.”

She considers before nodding once. The moment I pull off the gag, she lashes out.

“What have you done to her?” Her seat thumps as she strains toward a now unconscious Mamie Rila. “She needs medicine. What kind of monster—”

The crack that echoes through the cottage when I slap her into silence surprises even me. As does the nausea that almost doubles me over. What the skies? I grab the table for support but straighten before Laia can see.

She juts out her chin as she lifts her head. Blood drips from her nose. Surprise fills those golden, catlike eyes, followed by a healthy dose of fear. About time.

“Watch your tone.” I keep my voice low and flat. “Or the gag goes back in.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Just your company.”

Her eyes narrow, and she finally notices the manacles attached to a chair in the corner.

“I’m working alone,” she says. “Do with me what you wish.”

“You’re a gnat.” I go back to paring my nails, stifling a smile when I see how the words irritate her. “At best, a mosquito. Don’t presume to tell me what to do. The only reason you haven’t been crushed by the Empire is that I haven’t allowed it.”

Lies, of course. She’s raided six caravans in two months, freeing hundreds of prisoners in the process. Skies know how long she’d have continued if I hadn’t received the note.

It arrived two weeks ago. I didn’t recognize the handwriting, and whoever—or whatever—delivered it avoided detection by an entire bleeding garrison of Masks.

THE RAIDS. IT IS THE GIRL.

I’ve kept the raids quiet. We already have trouble with the Tribes, who are enraged at the Martial legions deployed in their desert. In the west, the Karkaun Barbarians have conquered the Wildmen clans and now heckle our outposts near Tiborum. Meanwhile, a Karkaun warlock by the name of Grímarr has rallied his clans, and they lurk in the south, raiding our port cities.

Marcus has only recently secured the loyalty of the Illustrian Gens. If they learn that a Scholar rebel roams the countryside wreaking havoc, they’ll grow restive. If they learn it’s the same girl Marcus was supposed to have killed in the Fourth Trial, they’ll smell blood in the water.

Another Illustrian coup is the last thing I need. Especially now that Livia’s fate is tied to Marcus’s.

Once I got the note, connecting Laia to the raids was easy enough. The reports out of Kauf Prison matched the reports about the raids. A girl who appears one moment, disappears the next. A Scholar risen from the dead, wreaking vengeance on the Empire.

It was not a ghost, but a girl. A girl and one uniquely talented accomplice.

We stare at each other, she and I. Laia of Serra is all passion. Feeling. Everything she thinks is written on her face. I wonder if she understands what duty even is.

“If I’m a gnat,” she says, “then why—” Understanding flashes across her face. “You’re not here for me. But if you’re using me as bait—”

“Then it will work effectively. I know my quarry well, Laia of Serra. He’ll be here in less than a quarter hour. If I’m wrong …” I twirl my dirk on my fingertip. Laia pales.

“He died.” She seems to believe her own lie. “In Kauf Prison. He’s not coming.”

“Oh, he’ll come.” Skies, I hate her as I say it. He will come for her. He always will. As he never will for me.

I banish the thought—weakness, Shrike—and kneel in front of her, knife in hand, running it along the K the Commandant carved into her. The scar is old now. She might see it as a flaw against that glowing skin. But it makes her look stronger. Resilient. And I hate her for that too.

But not for much longer. For I cannot let Laia of Serra walk free. Not when bringing Marcus her head could buy his favor—and thus more life for my little sister.

I think briefly of the Cook and her interest in Laia. The Commandant’s former slave will be angry when she learns the girl is dead. But the old woman disappeared months ago. She might be dead herself.

Laia must see murder in my eyes, because her face goes ashen and she shies back. Nausea lashes through me again. My vision flashes white, and I lean into the wooden armrest of her chair, the knife tipping forward, into the skin over her heart—

“Enough, Helene.”

His voice is as harsh as one of the Commandant’s lashes. He’s come in through the back door, as I suspected he would. Helene. Of course he’d use my name.

I think of my father. You are all that holds back the darkness. I think of Livia, covering up the bruises on her throat with layer upon layer of powder so the court does not think her weak. I turn.

“Elias Veturius.” My blood goes cold when I see that, despite the fact that I set the ambush, he has managed to surprise me. For instead of coming alone, Elias has taken Dex prisoner, binding his arms and holding a knife to his throat. Dex’s masked face is frozen in a grimace of rage. Dex, you idiot. I glare at him in silent rebuke. I wonder if he even tried to fight back.

“Kill Dex if you wish,” I say. “If he was fool enough to get caught, I won’t miss him.”

The torchlight reflects briefly in Elias’s face. He looks at Mamie—at her broken body and sagging form—and his eyes sharpen in rage. My throat goes dry at the depth of his emotion as he shifts his attention back to me. I see a hundred thoughts written in the set of his jaw, in his shoulders, in the way he holds his weapon. I know his language—I’ve spoken it since the age of six. Stand firm, Shrike.

“Dex is your ally,” he says. “You’re short on those these days, I hear. I think you’ll miss him very much. Release Laia.”

I am reminded of the Third Trial. Of Demetrius’s death by his hand. Leander’s. Elias has changed. There’s a darkness to him, one that wasn’t there before.

You and me both, old friend.

I haul Laia up from the chair and slam her against the wall, putting my knife to her throat. This time, I am prepared for the wave of sick, and I grit my teeth as it washes over me.

“The difference between us, Veturius,” I say, “is that I don’t care if my ally dies. Drop your weapons. You’ll see manacles in the corner. Put them on. Sit down. Shut up. If you do, Mamie lives and I agree not to pursue your band of caravan-raiding criminals or the prisoners they freed. Refuse, and I will hunt them down and kill them myself.”

“I—I thought you were decent,” Laia whispers. “Not good but …” She glances down at my blade and then at Mamie. “But not this.”

That’s because you’re a fool. Elias wavers, and I dig the knife in deeper.

The door opens behind me. Harper, daggers drawn, brings a wave of cold with him. Elias ignores him, his attention fixed on me.

“Let Laia go too,” he says. “And you have a deal.”

“Elias,” Laia gasps. “No—the Waiting—” I hiss at her, and she falls silent. I don’t have time for this. The longer I waver, the more likely Elias is to think of a way to escape. I made sure he’d know Laia entered the village; I should have expected him to catch Dex. You idiot, Shrike. You underestimated him.

Laia tries to speak, but I dig my blade into her throat, purposefully drawing blood. She trembles, her breaths shallow. My head pounds. The pain stokes my rage, and the part of me born from the blood of my dead parents roars, claws unsheathed.

“I know her song, Veturius,” I say. Dex and Avitas won’t understand my meaning. But Elias will. “I can stay here all night. All day. As long as it takes. I can make her hurt.”

And heal her. I do not say it, but he sees my vicious intent. And hurt her again, and heal her. Until you are driven mad by it.

“Helene.” Elias’s rage fades, replaced by surprise. Disappointment. But he has no right to be disappointed in me. “You won’t kill us.”

He doesn’t sound quite sure. You used to know me, I think. But you don’t know me anymore. I don’t know me anymore.

“There are worse things than death,” I say. “Shall we learn about them together?”

His temper rises. Tread carefully, Blood Shrike. The Mask still lives within Elias Veturius, beneath whatever else he’s become. I can push him. But I can only push him so far.

“I’ll release Mamie.” I offer the carrot before I brandish the stick. “A gesture of good faith. Avitas will leave her someplace your Tribal friends will find her.”

It is only when Elias looks at Harper that I remember he does not know Avitas is his half brother. I consider whether the knowledge can be used against Elias but decide to hold my tongue. The secret is Harper’s, not mine. I nod to him, and my second carries Mamie from the cabin.

“Let Laia go too,” Elias says. “And I’ll do as you ask.”

“She comes with us,” I say. “I know your tricks, Veturius. They won’t work. You can’t win this if you want her to live. Drop your weapons. Get those manacles on. I won’t ask again.”

Elias shoves Dex away, cutting his bonds as he does so, and then levels a punch that drops him to his knees. Dex doesn’t hit back. Fool!

“That’s for interrogating my family,” Elias says. “Don’t think I didn’t know about it.”

“Bring the horses round,” I bark at Dex. He rises, dignified and straight-backed, as if there isn’t blood drenching his armor. After he leaves the cottage, Elias drops his scims.

“You will let Laia down,” he says. “You will not gag me. And you’ll keep your bleeding distance, Blood Shrike.”

It shouldn’t hurt, him calling me by my title. After all, I am not Helene Aquilla anymore.

But when I saw him last, I was still Helene. Minutes ago, when he first saw me, he said my name.

I drop Laia, and she takes great gulps of air, color returning to her face. My hand is wet—a trickle of blood from her neck. A droplet, really. Nothing compared to the torrents that poured out of my mother, my sister, my father, as they died.

You are all that holds back the darkness.

I say the words in my mind. I remind myself why I am here. And whatever little feeling was left in me, I set to flame.

CHAPTER FIVE
Laia

“Check Veturius,” the Blood Shrike says to Avitas Harper when he returns without Mamie. “Make sure those manacles are secure.”

The Shrike drags me to the door of the cabin, as far from Elias as she can get. The three of us in this room together feels strange and full of portent. But that feeling fades when the Shrike pushes her blade deeper into my skin.

We need to get the hells out of here. I would rather not wait around to see if the Shrike will make good on her threat to torture me. By now, Afya and Darin must be out of their minds with worry.

Dex appears at the back door. “The horses are gone, Shrike.”

Enraged, the Blood Shrike looks at Elias, who shrugs. “You didn’t think I’d just leave them be, did you?”

“Go find more,” the Shrike says to Dex. “And bring a ghost wagon round. Harper, how long could it possibly take to make sure those bleeding chains are intact?”

Experimentally, I test my bonds, but the Shrike feels it and twists my arms savagely.

Elias sits sprawled in his chair with practiced ease, observing his former best friend. I’m not fooled by the boredom on his face. His gold-brown skin grows paler with every moment that passes, until he looks ill. The Waiting Place pulls at him—and its pull grows more insistent. I’ve seen it before. If he stays away too long, he will suffer.

“You’re using me to get to my mother,” Elias says. “She’ll see it coming a mile away.”

“Don’t make me rethink that gag.” The Shrike flushes beneath her mask. “Harper, go with Dex. I want that wagon now.”

“What do you think Keris Veturia is doing right now?” Elias says as Harper disappears.

“You don’t even live in the bleeding Empire anymore.” The Blood Shrike tightens her hold on me. “So shut it.”

“I don’t have to live in the Empire to know how the Commandant thinks. You want her dead, right? She must know it. Which means she also knows that if you kill her, you risk civil war with her allies. So while you’re out here wasting your time with me, she’s back in the capital, plotting skies know what.”

The Shrike frowns. She has listened to Elias’s advice—and offered her own to him—her whole life. What if he’s right? I can practically hear her thinking it. Elias catches my eye—he’s looking for an opening just like I am.

“Find my grandfather,” Elias says. “If you want to take her down, you need to understand how she thinks. Quin knows Keris better than anyone else alive.”

“Quin’s left the Empire,” the Shrike says.

“If my grandfather has left the Empire,” Elias says, “then cats can fly. Wherever Keris is, he’ll be close by, waiting for her to make a mistake. He’s not stupid enough to use one of his own estates. And he won’t be alone. He has many men still loyal—”

“It doesn’t matter.” The Blood Shrike waves away Elias’s advice. “Keris and that creature she keeps around—”

My stomach plunges. The Nightbringer. She means the Nightbringer.

“—are up to something,” the Shrike says. “I need to destroy her before she destroys the Empire. I spent weeks hunting Quin Veturius. I don’t have the time to do it again.”

Elias shifts in his seat—he is preparing to make his move. The Shrike’s loosened her grip on me, and I squeeze my hands together, bending, pulling, doing anything I can to wriggle out of the binding without giving it away. My slick palms grease the rope. It is not enough.

“You want to destroy her.” Elias’s manacles clink. Something flashes near his hands. Lock picks? How the hells did he sneak them past Avitas? “Just remember that she’ll do things you’re not willing to. She will find your weakness and exploit it. It’s what she does best.”

When Elias shifts his arm, the Shrike whips her head toward him, eyes narrowing. At that moment, Harper enters.

“Wagon’s ready, Shrike,” he says.

“Take her.” She shoves me at Avitas. “Keep a knife at her throat.” Harper pulls me close, and I ease back from his blade. If I could just distract the Shrike and Avitas for a moment, enough for Elias to attack …

I use a trick Elias taught me when we traveled together. I kick Avitas in the soft place between his foot and leg and then drop like a hammer from a roof.

Avitas curses, the Shrike turns, and Elias shoots from his seat, free of his manacles. He dives for his blades in less time than it takes to blink. A knife whooshes through the air above my head, and Harper ducks, dragging me with him. The Blood Shrike roars, but Elias is on her, using his bulk to bowl her over. He’s got her pinned, a knife at her throat, but something glimmers at her wrist. She has a blade. Skies, she’s going to stab him.

“Elias!” I shout a warning when suddenly, his body goes rigid.

A gasp bursts from his throat. The knife falls from his hand, and in a second, the Shrike has wriggled out from beneath him, lips curled in a sneer.

“Laia.” Elias’s eyes communicate his rage. His helplessness. And then darkness fills the room. I see the swing of long dark hair, a flash of brown skin. Depthless black eyes bore into me. Shaeva.

Then she—and Elias—disappear. The earth rumbles beneath us and the wind outside rises, sounding, for a second, like the wailing of ghosts.

The Blood Shrike leaps toward where Elias stood. She finds nothing, and a moment later, her hand is around my throat, her knifepoint at my heart. She shoves me back into a seat.

“Who the hells,” she whispers, “was that woman?”

The door bursts open and Dex enters, scim drawn. Before he can speak, the Shrike is bellowing at him.

“Scour the village! Veturius disappeared like a bleeding wraith!”

“He’s not in the village,” I say. “She took him.”

“Who took him?” I cannot speak—the knife is too close—but she doesn’t let me move a muscle. “Tell me!”

“Ease up on the knife, Shrike,” Avitas says. The dark-haired Mask scans the room carefully, as if Elias might reappear at any moment. “And perhaps she will.”

The Blood Shrike pulls the knife back by no more than a hair. Her hand is steady, but her face beneath her mask is flushed. “Talk or die.”

My words stumble over each other as I try to explain—as vaguely as I can—who Shaeva is and what Elias has become. Even as I speak the words, I realize how far-fetched they sound. The Blood Shrike says nothing, but incredulity is written in every line of her body.

When I finish, she stands, her knife loose in her hand, looking out into the night. Only a few hours until dawn. “Can you get Elias back here?” she asks quietly.

I shake my head, and she kneels before me. Her face is suddenly serene, her body relaxed. When I meet her eyes, they are distant, as if her thoughts have moved on from me.

“If the Emperor knew you lived, he’d want to interrogate you himself,” she says. “Unless you’re a fool, you’ll agree that death would be preferable. I will make it swift.”

Oh skies. My feet are free, but my hands are bound. I could wriggle my right hand free if I pulled hard enough …

Avitas sheathes his scim and bends behind me. I feel the brush of warm skin against my wrists and wait for them to tighten as he rebinds me.

But they do not.

Instead, the rope binding my wrists falls away. Harper breathes one word, so softly that I question whether I truly heard it.

“Go.”

I cannot move. I meet the Blood Shrike’s stare head on. I will look death in the eyes. Grief ripples across her silver features. She seems older, suddenly, than her twenty years, with the implacability of a five-body blade. All the weakness has been hammered out of her. She has seen too much blood. Too much death.

I remember when Elias told me what Marcus did to the Shrike’s family. He learned it from the ghost of Hannah Aquilla, who plagued him for months before finally moving on.

As I’d listened to what happened, I’d felt sicker and sicker. I remembered another dark morning years ago. I woke up with a start that day, scared by the low, choking cries echoing through the house. I thought Pop must have brought home an animal. Some wounded creature, dying slowly and in agony.

But when I entered the main room of the house, there was Nan, rocking back and forth, Pop frantically shushing her wails, for no one could hear her mourn her daughter—my mother. No one could know. The Empire wished to crush all that the Lioness was, all that she stood for. That meant any and all connected to her.

We all went to market that day to sell Nan’s jams—Pop, Darin, Nan, and I. Nan shed no tears. I only ever heard her in the dead of night, her quiet keening breaking me more than any scream could.

The Blood Shrike was also denied the right to mourn publicly. How could she? She is second-in-command of the Empire, and her family was condemned because she failed to carry out the Emperor’s orders.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper as she raises her dagger. I whip my fingers out—not to stop her blade, but to take her free hand. She stiffens in shock. The skin of her palm is cool, calloused. Less than a second has passed, but her surprise has kindled into anger.

The cruelest anger comes from the deepest pain. Nan used to say that. Speak, Laia.

“My parents were murdered too,” I say. “My sister. In Kauf. I was younger, and I did not witness it. I could never mourn them. I wasn’t allowed to. And no one ever spoke of them. But I think of them every day. I am sorry for you and what you lost. Truly.”

For a moment, I see the girl who healed me. The girl who let Elias and me escape from Blackcliff. The girl who told me how to get into Kauf Prison.

And before that girl fades—as I know she will—I draw on my own power and disappear, rolling out of the chair, racing past Avitas and toward the door. Two steps and the Shrike is shouting, three and her dagger slices through the air after me, and then her scim.

Too late. By the time the scim drops, I am through the open door, past an unsuspecting Dex, and running for all I am worth, nothing but another shadow in the night.

CHAPTER SIX
Elias

Shaeva plunges me into a darkness so complete that I wonder if I’m in one of the hells. She holds fast to me, though I cannot see her. We are not windwalking—it feels like we are not moving at all. And yet her body thrums with the tang of magic, and when it spills over to me, my skin burns as if I’ve been set alight.

Gradually, my vision brightens until I find myself hovering over an ocean. The sky above rages, thick with sallow yellow clouds. I feel Shaeva beside me, but I cannot tear my gaze from the water below, which seethes with huge forms rippling just below the surface. Evil emanates from those forms, a malevolence that I feel in the deepest parts of my soul. Terror fills me like I’ve never felt in all my life, not even as a child in Blackcliff.

Then the fear lifts, replaced by the weight of an ancient gaze. A voice speaks in my mind:

Night draws close, Elias Veturius. Beware.

The voice is so soft that I must strain to hear every syllable. But before I can make sense of it, the ocean is gone, the dark returns, and the voice and images fade from my memory.

The knotted wood joists above my head and feather pillow below it tell me instantly where I am when I wake. Shaeva’s cabin—my home. A log pops in the fire, and the scent of spiced korma fills the air. For a long moment, I relax into my bunk, secure in the peace one feels only when they are safe and warm beneath their own roof.

Laia! When I remember what happened, I sit up too quickly; my head aches something vicious. Bleeding hells.

I need to get back to the village—to Laia. I drag myself to my feet, find my scims tucked haphazardly beneath my bed, and stagger to the cottage door. Outside, a freezing wind tears through the clearing, stirring the packed snow into wild, waist-high tornadoes. The ghosts wail and cluster at the sight of me, their anguish palpable.

“Hello, little one.” One of the shades drifts close, so faded I get only the barest impression of her face. “Have you seen my lovey?”

I know her. The Wisp. One of the first ghosts I met here. My voice when I speak is a rusty growl.

“I—I’m sorry—”

“Elias.” Shaeva appears at the edge of the clearing, a basket of winter herbs on her wrist. The Wisp, ever shy, vanishes. “You shouldn’t be up and about.”

“What’s wrong with me?” I demand of the Soul Catcher. “What happened?”

“You’ve been unconscious for a day.” Shaeva ignores my obvious ire. “I reeled us here instead of windwalking. It is swifter, but more detrimental to a mortal body.”

“Laia—Mamie—”

“Stop, Elias.” Shaeva sits at the base of a yew tree, settling into its exposed roots and taking a deep breath. The tree almost appears to curve around her, fitting itself to her body. She pulls a handful of greens from the basket and tears the leaves violently from their stems. “You nearly got yourself killed. Is that not enough?”

“You shouldn’t have grabbed me like that.” I cannot hold back my anger, and she glares at me, her own temper rising. “I would have been fine. I need to get back to that village.”

“You imbecile!” She casts her basket down. “The Blood Shrike had a dagger in her gauntlet. It was an inch away from your vitals. Mauth tried to pull you back, but you did not heed him. If I had not arrived, I would be shouting at your ghost right now.” Her scowl is fierce. “I let you aid your friends despite my misgivings. And you squandered it.”

“You can’t expect me to remain in the Waiting Place and never have any human contact,” I say. “I’ll go mad. And Laia—I care for her, Shaeva. I can’t just—”

“Ah, Elias.” She rises and reaches for my hands. Though my skin is numb from the cold, I take no comfort from her warmth. She sighs, and her voice is heavy with shame. “Do you think I have never loved? I did. Once. He was beautiful. Brilliant. That love blinded me to my duties, sacred though they were. The world suffered for my love. It suffers still.” She draws breath raggedly, and around us, the wails of the ghosts intensify, as if in response to her distress.

“I understand your pain. Truly. But for us, Elias, duty must reign over all else: desire, sadness, loneliness. Love cannot live here. You chose the Waiting Place, and the Waiting Place chose you. Now you must give yourself to it wholly, body and soul.”

Body and soul. A chill runs up my spine as I recall something Cain said to me long ago—that one day, I’d have a chance at freedom. True freedom—of body and of soul. Did he envision this, I wonder? Did he set me on the path to freedom knowing that one day it would be wrenched from me? Was this always my destiny?

“I need some time. A day,” I say. If I’m to be chained to this place for eternity, then I at least owe Laia and Mamie a goodbye—though I’ve no idea what I’ll say.

Shaeva pauses. “I’ll give you a few hours,” she finally says. “After that, no more distractions. You have much to learn, Elias. And I do not know how much time I have to teach you. The moment you took the vow to become Soul Catcher, my power began to fade.”

“I know.” I nudge her with my boot, smiling in an attempt to dispel the tension between us. “Every time you don’t feel like doing the dishes, you remind me.” I mimic her sober voice. “Elias, my power fades … so make sure you sweep the front steps, and bring in firewood, and—”

She chuckles. “As if you even know how to swee—sweep—”

Her smile vanishes. Frantic lines form around her mouth, and her hands clench and unclench, like she’s desperate for weapons she doesn’t possess.

The snow around us slows its swirling. The wind goes soft, as if cowed, and then ceases completely. The shadows in the trees deepen, so black they seem like a portal to another world.

“Shaeva? What the hells is happening?”

The Soul Catcher shudders, riven with dread. “Go inside the cabin, Elias.”

“Whatever’s going on, we face it tog—”

She digs her fingers into my shoulders. “There is so much you do not yet know, and if you fail, the world will fall. This is but the beginning. Remember: Sleep in the cottage. They cannot hurt you there. And seek the Tribes, Elias. Long have they been my allies. Ask about the stories of the dea—” Her voice chokes off as her back arches.

“Bleeding hells! Shaeva—”

“The moon sets on the archer and the shield maiden!” Her voice changes, multiplies. It is a child’s voice and an old woman’s layered over her own, as if all the versions that Shaeva was and ever could be are speaking at once.

“The executioner has arisen. The traitor walks free. Beware! The Reaper approaches, flames in his wake, and he shall set this world alight. And so shall the great wrong be set right.”

She flings her hand up to the sky, to constellations hidden behind thick snow clouds.

“Shaeva.” I shake her shoulders insistently. Get her inside! The cottage always soothes her. It’s her only sanctuary in this skies-forsaken place. But when I try to pick her up, she throws me off. “Shaeva, don’t be so damned stubborn—”

“Remember all that I say before the end,” she whispers. “That is why he has come. That is what he wants from me. Swear it.”

“I—I swear—”

She lifts her hands to my face. For once, her fingers are cold. “Soon you will learn the cost of your vow, my brother. I hope you do not think too ill of me.”

She falls to her knees, knocking over the basket of herbs. The green and yellow leaves spill out, the bright color incongruous against the ashen snow. The clearing is quiet. Even the ghosts have gone silent.

That can’t be right. The thickest concentration of ghosts is always around the cabin. But the spirits are gone. Every last one.

In the Forest to the west, where moments ago the shadows were only shadows, something stirs. The darkness moves, twisting as if in agony, until it writhes into a hooded figure cloaked in robes of purest night. From beneath the cowl, two tiny suns stare out at me.

I have never seen him before. I have only heard him described. But I know him. Bleeding, burning hells, I know him.

The Nightbringer.

CHAPTER SEVEN
The Blood Shrike

A row of severed heads greets Dex, Avitas, and me as we pass beneath Antium’s iron-studded main gate. Scholars, mostly, but I spot Martials too. The streets are lined with dirty piles of slush, and a blanket of clouds lies thick over the city, depositing more snow.

I ride past the grisly display, and Harper follows, but Dex stares at the heads, hands tight on his reins. His silence is unnerving. The interrogation of Tribe Saif still haunts him.

“Get to the barracks, Dex,” I say. “I want reports on all active missions on my desk by midnight.” My attention falls on two women loitering outside a nearby guard post. Courtesans. “And go distract yourself after. Get your mind off the raid.”

“I do not frequent brothels,” Dex says quietly as he follows my gaze to the women. “Even if I did, it’s not that easy for me, Shrike. And you know it.”

I shoot Avitas Harper a glare. Go away. When he’s out of earshot I turn to Dex. “Madam Heera’s in Mandias Square. The House of Forgetting. Heera is discreet. She treats her women—and men—well.” At Dex’s hesitation, I lose my patience. “You’re letting your guilt eat at you, and it cost us in the village,” I say. That raid was meant to get us something to use against Keris. We failed. Marcus won’t be pleased. And it’s my sister who will suffer that displeasure.

“When I am dispirited,” I go on, “I visit Heera’s. It helps. Go or don’t. Doesn’t matter to me. But stop being woeful and useless. I don’t have the patience for it.”

Dex leaves, and Harper nudges his horse over. “You frequent Heera’s?” There’s something more than mere curiosity in his voice.

“Reading lips again?”

“Only yours, Shrike.” Harper’s green eyes drop to my mouth so quickly I almost miss it. “Forgive my question. I assumed you had volunteers to meet your … needs. The previous Shrike’s second-in-command did sometimes procure courtesans for him, if you need me to—”

My cheeks grow warm at the image that conveys. “Stop talking, Harper,” I say. “While you’re behind.”

We gallop ahead toward the palace, its pearlescent sheen a bare-faced lie that hides the oppressiveness within. The outer gates are bustling at this hour, Illustrian courtiers and Mercator hangers-on all jockeying to get into the throne room to obtain the Emperor’s favor.

“An attack on Marinn would go a long way in—”

“—fleet is already engaged—”

“—Veturia will crush them—”

I suppress a sigh at the never-ending machinations of the Paters. It drove my father to distraction, the way they schemed. When they see me, they fall silent. I take grim pleasure in their discomfort.

Harper and I cut through the courtiers quickly. The men in their long, fur-edged cloaks back away from the slush kicked up by my mount. The women, sparkling in court finery, watch surreptitiously. No one meets my gaze.

Swine. Not one of them offered a word of remembrance in honor of my family after Marcus executed them. Not even privately.

My mother, father, and sister died as traitors, and nothing can change that. Marcus wanted me to feel shame, but I do not. My father gave his life trying to save the Empire, and one day that fact will be known. But now it is as if my family never existed. As if their lives were mere hallucinations.

The only people who have dared to mention my parents to me are Livia, a Scholar hag I haven’t seen in weeks, and a Scholar girl whose head should be in a sack at my waist right now.

I hear the buzz of voices in the throne room long before I see its double doors. As I enter, every soldier salutes. They’ve learned, by now, what happens to those who don’t.

Marcus sits rigid on his throne, big hands fisted on the armrests, masked face emotionless. His blood-red cape pools onto the floor, reflecting luridly off his silver-and-copper armor. The weapons at his side are razor-sharp, to the chagrin of the older Illustrian Paters, who appear soft beside their emperor.

The Commandant is not here. But Livia is, her face as impassive as a Mask’s as she perches on her own throne beside Marcus. I hate that she is forced to sit here, but still, relief rushes through me; at least she’s alive. She is resplendent in a lavender gown heavy with gold embroidery.

My sister’s back is straight, her face powdered to hide the bruise on her cheek. Her ladies-in-waiting—yellow-eyed cousins of Marcus—cluster a few feet away. They are Plebeians, plucked from their village by my sister as a gesture of goodwill toward Marcus and his family. And I suspect that, like me, they find court insufferable.

Marcus fixes his attention on me, despite the obviously distressed Mariner ambassador standing before him. As I approach, the Emperor’s shoulders twitch.

“You don’t need to warn me, damn you,” he mutters. The ambassador furrows his brow, and I realize that Marcus isn’t responding to the man. He’s talking to himself. At the Mariner’s confusion, the Emperor beckons him near.

“Tell your doddering king that he needn’t cower,” Marcus says. “The Empire is not interested in a war with Marinn. If he needs a token of our goodwill, have him provide me a list of his enemies. I’ll send him their heads as a gift.” The ambassador pales and backs away, and Marcus gestures me forward.

I do not acknowledge Livia. Let the court think we are not close. She has enough to deal with without half of these vultures trying to take advantage of her relationship with me.

“Emperor.” I kneel and bow my head. Though I’ve been doing so for months now, it hasn’t gotten any easier. Beside me, Harper does the same.

“Clear the room,” Marcus growls. When the Illustrians do not move quickly enough, he flings a dagger at the nearest one.

Guards usher the Illustrians away, and the lot of them are unable to get out fast enough. Marcus smiles at the sight, his harsh chuckle jarring against the fear that pervades the room.

Livia rises and gathers the folds of her dress gracefully. Faster, sister, I think to myself. Get out of here. But before she steps down from her throne, Marcus grabs her wrist. “You stay.” He forces her into her seat. My sister’s gaze meets mine for an infinitesimal moment. I sense no fear, only warning. Avitas steps back, a silent witness.

Marcus pulls a roll of parchment from his armor and flings it at me. The crest flashes in the air as it flies to my hand, and I recognize the K with crossed swords beneath it. The Commandant’s seal.

“Go on,” he says. “Read it.” Beside him, Livia watches, wariness in her body, though she’s learned to train it from her face.

My Lord Emperor,

The Karkaun warlock Grímarr has intensified the raids on Navium. We need more men. The Paters of Navium are in agreement; their seals are below. A half legion should be sufficient.

Duty first, unto death,

General Keris Veturia

“She has an entire legion down there,” I say. “She should be able to put down a paltry Barbarian rebellion with five thousand men.”

“And yet”—Marcus yanks another parchment from within his armor, and another, flinging them all at me—“from Paters Equitius, Tatius, Argus, Modius, Vissellius—the list goes on,” he says. “All requesting aid. Their proxies here in Antium have been hounding me since Keris’s message came in. Three hundred civilians are dead, and those Barbarian dogs have a fleet approaching the port. Whoever this Grímarr is, he’s trying to take the damn city.”

“But surely Keris can—”

“She’s up to something, you dim bitch.” Marcus’s roar echoes through the room, and in two steps, his face is inches from mine. Harper tenses behind me, and Livia half rises from her throne. I give my head the slightest shake. I can handle him, little sister.

Marcus stabs his fingers into my skull. “Get it through your thick head. If you’d taken care of her like I ordered, this wouldn’t be happening. Shut it, damn you.”

He whirls, but Livia hasn’t spoken. His gaze is fixed on the middle distance between himself and my sister, and I recall, uneasily, Livia’s suspicion that Marcus sees the ghost of his twin, Zak, murdered months ago during the Trials.

Before I can think on it, Marcus steps so close my mask ripples. His eyes look as though they might pop from his head.

“You didn’t ask for assassination, my lord.” I ease away very slowly. “You asked for destruction, and destruction takes time.”

“I asked”—he leashes his rage, his sudden calm more chilling than his anger—“for competence. You’ve had three months. She should have worms crawling out of her eye sockets by now. Instead, she’s stronger than ever, while the Empire grows weaker. So tell me, Blood Shrike: What are you going to do about her?”

“I have information.” I put every bit of conviction I possess into my voice, my body. I am certain. I will bring her down. “Enough to destroy her.”

“What information?”

I can’t tell him what Elias revealed about Quin. It’s not useful enough, and even if it was, Marcus would question me further. If he learns I had Laia and Elias in my grasp and lost them, he’ll break my sister in half. “The walls have ears, my lord,” I say. “Not all are friendly.”

Marcus considers me. Then he turns, drags my sister to her feet, and shoves her into the side of her own throne, wrenching her arm behind her back.

Her stillness is that of a woman who has quickly grown used to violence and who will do what she must to survive it. I clench my hands around my weapons, and Livvy catches my eyes. Her terror—not for herself, but for me—checks my temper. Remember that the more anger you show, the more he’ll make her suffer.

Even as I force myself to be logical, I hate that I am. I hate myself for not lopping off those hands that have hurt her, not cutting out that tongue that has called her foul names. I hate that I cannot hand her a blade so she can do it herself.

Marcus tilts his head. “Your sister plays oud so well,” he says. “She’s entertained many of my guests, charmed them even, with the beauty of her musicianship. But I’m sure she can find other ways to entertain them.” He leans close to Livia’s ear, and her gaze drifts faraway, her mouth hard. “Do you sing, my love? I’m certain you have a beautiful voice.” Slowly, deliberately, he draws back one of her fingers. Further, further, further … This cannot be borne. I step forward and feel a viselike grip on my arm.

“You’ll make it worse,” Avitas murmurs in my ear.

Livia’s finger cracks. She gasps but makes no other sound.

“That,” Marcus says, “is for your failure.” He grabs another of Livia’s fingers, bending it back so carefully that I know he is taking joy from each second of it. Sweat beads on her forehead, and her face is white as bone.

When her finger finally breaks, she whimpers and bites her lip.

“My brave bird.” Marcus smiles at her, and I want to rip his throat out. “You know I like it better when you scream.” When he turns back to me, his smile is gone. “And that is a reminder of what’s to come if you fail me again.”

Marcus flings my sister onto her throne. Her head knocks against the rough stone. She shudders and cradles one hand, but her hatred blazes out at Marcus before she tamps it down, her face composed once more.

“You will go to Navium, Shrike,” Marcus says. “You will learn what the Bitch of Blackcliff is planning. You will destroy her, piece by piece. And you will do it quickly. I want her head on a spear by the Grain Moon, and I want the Empire begging for it to happen. Five months. That’s enough time even for you, is it not? You will update me through the drums every three days. And”—he glances at Livia—“if I’m not satisfied with your progress, I’ll keep breaking your little sister’s bones until she’s nothing but jagged edges.”

CHAPTER EIGHT
Laia

For hours, I run, cloaking myself from a maddening number of Martial patrols, holding my invisibility until my head throbs and my legs tremble from cold and exhaustion. My mind spins with worry for Elias, for Darin, for Afya. Even if they are safe, what in the skies will we do now that the Empire has caught on to the raids? The Martials will flood the countryside with soldiers. We cannot continue. The risk is too great.

Never mind. Just get to the camp. And hope to the skies that Darin got there too.

At midnight a day after the raid, I finally spot the tall, naked oak that shelters our tent, its branches grousing in the wind. Horses nicker, and a familiar figure paces beneath the tree. Darin! I nearly sob in relief. My strength has left me, and I find I cannot call out. I simply drop into visibility.

When I do, darkness flashes across my vision. I see a shadowy room, a hunched figure. A moment later, the vision is gone, and I stumble toward the camp. Darin spies me and runs, pulling me into a hug. Afya bursts from the round fur tent my brother and I use as shelter, anger and relief mingling on her face.

“You’re a bleeding idiot, girl!”

“Laia, what happened?”

“Did you find Mamie? Are the prisoners safe? Did Elias—”

Afya holds up a hand. “Mamie’s with a healer from Tribe Nur,” the Zaldara says. “My people will get the prisoners to the Tribal lands. I meant to join them, but …”

She glances at Darin, and I understand. She did not wish to leave him alone. She did not know if I’d return. I tell them swiftly of the Blood Shrike’s ambush and Elias’s disappearance.

“Did you see Elias?” Please let him be all right. “Did he come out of the Forest?”

Afya shudders as she looks over her shoulder to the towering wall of trees that marks the western border of the Waiting Place. Darin only shakes his head.

I glower at the trees, wishing I had the power to burn a path through to the jinn’s cabin. Why did you snatch him away, Shaeva? Why do you torment him so?

“Come inside.” Darin tugs me into the tent and tucks a woolen blanket from his sleeping roll around my shoulders. “You’ll catch your death.”

Afya pulls away the fur covering the hole at the top of the tent and stirs the ashes of our small cook fire until her brown face is lit bronze. Long minutes later, I’m shoveling down the potato-and-squash stew Darin has made. It’s overcooked, with so much red pepper in it that I nearly choke—Darin was always hopeless in the kitchen.

“Our raiding days are over,” Afya says. “But if you wish to keep fighting the Empire, then come with me. Join Tribe Nur.” The Tribeswoman pauses, considering. “Permanently.”

My brother and I exchange a glance. Tribespeople only accept new family members through marriage or the adoption of children. To be invited to join a Tribe is no small thing—and by the Zaldara, no less.

I reach for Afya’s hand, stunned at her generosity, but she waves me off.

“You’re practically family anyway,” Afya says. “And you know me, girl. I want something in return.” She turns to my brother. “Many died to save you, Darin of Serra. The time has come for you to begin forging Serric steel. I can procure you materials. Skies know the Tribes need as much help as we can get.”

My brother flexes his hand as he always does when the phantom pains of his missing fingers plague him. His face goes pale, his lips thin. The demons within awaken.

I want so desperately for Darin to speak, to accept Afya’s offer. It might be the only chance we have to continue fighting the Empire. But when I turn to him, he is leaving the tent, muttering about needing air.

“What news from your spies?” I say quickly to Afya, hoping to shift her attention from my brother. “The Martials have not drawn down their forces?”

“They sent another legion into the Tribal desert from Atella’s Gap,” Afya says. “They’ve arrested hundreds around Nur on false charges: graft and transporting contraband and skies know what else. Rumor is that they’re planning to send the prisoners to Empire cities to be sold as slaves.”

“The Tribes are protected,” I say. “The treaty with Emperor Taius has held for five centuries.”

“Emperor Marcus doesn’t care a fig about that treaty.” Afya frowns. “That’s not the worst of it. In Sadh, a legionnaire killed the Kehanni of Tribe Alli.”

I cannot hide my slack-jawed shock. Kehannis are the keepers of Tribal stories and history, second in rank only to the Zaldars. Killing one is a declaration of war.

“Tribe Alli attacked the closest Martial garrison in retaliation,” Afya says. “It’s what the Empire wanted. The commanding Mask came down like a hammer out of the hells, and now all of Tribe Alli is either dead or in prison. Tribe Siyyad and Tribe Fozi have sworn vengeance on the Empire. Their Zaldars ordered attacks on Empire villages—nearly a hundred Martials dead at last count, and not just soldiers.”

She gives me a significant look. If the Tribes turn on Martial innocents—children, civilians, the elderly—the Empire will hit back hard.

“They’re provoking us.” Afya peers out at the sky to gauge the time. “Weakening us. We need that steel, Laia. Think on my offer.” She pulls on her cloak to leave, pausing at the flap of the tent. “But think quickly. A strangeness taints the air. I can feel it in my bones. It’s not just the Martials I fear.”

Afya’s warning plagues me all night. Not long before dawn, I give up on sleep and slip outside the tent to where my brother sits watch.

The ghosts of the Waiting Place are restive—angered, no doubt, by our presence. Their anguished cries join with the howling wind out of the north, an icy, hair-raising chorus. I pull my blanket close as I drop next to my brother.

We sit in silence, watching the treetops of the Waiting Place brighten from black to blue as the eastern sky pales. After a time, Darin speaks.

“You want to know why I won’t make the weapons.”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t wish to.”

My brother bunches his fists and opens them, a habit he’s had since we were little. The middle and ring fingers of his left, dominant hand are sheared off.

“The materials are easy enough to get,” he says. The wails of the ghosts intensify, and he raises his voice.

“It’s the making that’s complicated. The mixture of the metals, the heat of the flame, how the steel is folded, when the edge is cooled, the way the blade is polished. I remember most of it, but …” He squints, as if trying to see something just out of sight. “I’ve forgotten so much. In Kauf Prison, in the death cells, whole weeks disappeared. I can’t remember Father’s face anymore, or Nan’s.” I can barely hear him over the ghosts. “And what if your friend Izzi died for nothing? What if Afya’s family died for nothing? What if Elias swore himself to an eternity as Soul Catcher for nothing? What if I make the steel and it breaks?”

I could tell him that would never happen. But Darin always knows when I’m lying. I take my brother’s left hand. It is calloused. Strong.

“There’s only one way we can find out, Darin,” I say. “But we won’t do it until—”

I’m interrupted by a particularly shrill cry from the Forest. The tops of the trees ripple, and the earth groans. Slips of white gather amid the trunks closest to us, their cries peaking.

“What’s gotten into them?” Darin winces at the sound. Usually, ignoring the ghosts is easy enough for us. But right now, even I want to clap my hands over my ears.

Which is when I realize that the ghosts’ cries are not without meaning. There are words buried beneath their pain. One word, specifically.

Laia. Laia. Laia.

My brother hears it too. He reaches for his scim, but his voice is calm, like it used to be before Kauf. “Remember what Elias said. You can’t trust them. They’re howling to rattle us.”

“Listen to them,” I whisper. “Listen, Darin.”

Your fault, Laia. The ghosts press up against the unseen border of the Waiting Place, their forms blending into one another to form a thick, choking mist. He’s close now.

“Who?” I move toward the trees, ignoring my brother’s protests. I’ve never entered the Forest without Elias by my side. I do not know if I can. “Do you speak of Elias? Is he all right?”

Death approaches. Because of you.

My dagger is suddenly slippery in my grasp. “Explain yourselves!” I call out.

My feet carry me close enough to the tree line that I can see the path Elias takes when he meets us here. I’ve never been to Elias and Shaeva’s cabin, but he’s told me that it sits at the end of this trail, no more than a league beyond the tree line. Our camp is here because of that path—it’s the fastest way for Elias to reach us.

“There’s something wrong in there,” I say to Darin. “Something’s happened—”

“It’s just ghosts being ghosts, Laia,” Darin says. “They want to lure you in and drive you crazy.”

“But you and I have never been driven mad by the ghosts, have we?” At that, my brother falls silent. Neither of us knows why the Waiting Place doesn’t set us on edge as badly as it does others, like the Tribes or Martials, all of whom give it a wide berth.

“Have you ever seen so many spirits this close to the border, Darin?” The ghosts appear to multiply by the second. “It cannot be just to torment me. Something has happened to Elias. Something is wrong.” I feel a pull that I cannot explain, a compulsion to move toward the Forest of Dusk.

I hurry to the tent and gather my things. “You don’t have to come with me.”

Darin’s already grabbing his pack. “Where you go, I go,” he says. “But that’s a big forest. He could be anywhere in there.”

“He’s not far.” That strange instinct pulls at me, a hook in my belly. “I am certain of it.” When we reach the trees, I expect resistance. But all I find are ghosts packed so densely that I can barely see through them.

He’s here. He’s come. Because of you. Because of what you did.

I force myself to ignore the spirits and follow the scanty trail. After a time, the ghosts thin out. When I look back, a palpable fear ripples through their ranks.

Darin and I exchange a glance. What in the skies would a ghost fear?

With every step, it is harder to breathe. This is not my first time in the Waiting Place. When Darin and I began the caravan raids a few months ago, Elias windwalked us across from Marinn. The Forest was never welcoming—but nor was it so oppressive.

Fear lashes at me, and I move faster. The trees are smaller here, and through the open patches, a clearing appears, along with the sloped gray roof of a cottage.

Darin grabs my arm, his finger on his lips, and pulls me to the ground. We inch forward with painstaking care. Ahead of us, a woman pleads. Another voice curses in a familiar baritone. Relief pours through me. Elias.

The relief is short-lived. The woman’s voice goes quiet. The trees shudder violently, and a blur of dark hair and brown skin shoots into view. Shaeva. She locks her fingers into my shoulder and drags me to my feet.

“Your answers lie in Adisa.” I wince and try to squirm away, but she holds me with a jinn’s strength. “With the Beekeeper. But beware, for he is cloaked in lies and shadow, like you. Find him at your peril, child, for you will lose much, even as you save us all—”

Her body is jerked away, dragged as if by an invisible hand back to the clearing. My heart thunders. Oh no, skies no—

“Laia of Serra.” I would recognize that ophidian hiss anywhere. It is the sea awakening and the earth shuddering away from itself. “Always appearing where you are not wanted.”

Darin cries a warning, but I stride forward into the clearing, caution overcome by rage. Elias’s armored form is pinned against a tree, every muscle straining against invisible bonds. He thrashes, an animal in a trap, fists clenched as the whole of his body leans toward the center of the clearing.

Shaeva kneels, black hair brushing the ground, skin waxy. Her face is unlined, but the devastation emanating from her feels ancient.

The Nightbringer, cloaked in darkness, stands above her. The sickle blade in his shadow hand glows, as if made of poison-dipped diamonds. He holds it with light fingers, but his body tenses—he means to use it.

A snarl erupts from my throat. I must do something. I must stop him. But I find I can no longer move. The magic that ensnares Elias has gripped Darin and me too.

“Nightbringer,” Shaeva whispers. “Forgive my wrong. I was young, I—”

Her voice fades to a choke. The Nightbringer, silent, brushes his fingers across Shaeva’s forehead like a father giving his benediction.

Then he stabs her through the heart.

Shaeva’s body seizes once, her arms windmilling, her body jerking up, as if yearning toward the blade, and her mouth opens. I expect a shriek, a scream. Instead, words pour out.

One piece remains, and beware the Reaper at the Gates!

The sparrows will drown, and none will know it.

The past shall burn, and none will slow it.

The Dead will rise, and none can survive.

The Child will be bathed in blood but alive.

The Pearl will crack, the cold will enter.

The Butcher will break, and none will hold her.

The Ghost will fall, her flesh will wither.

By the Grain Moon, the King will have his answer.

By the Grain Moon, the forgotten will find their master.

Shaeva’s chin falls. Her lashes flutter like a butterfly’s wings, and the blade embedded in her chest drips blood that is as red as mine. Her face goes slack.

Then her body bursts into flame, a flash of blinding fire that fizzles into ashes after only seconds.

“No!” Elias shouts, two streaks of wet on either side of his face.

Do not make the Nightbringer angry, Elias, I want to scream. Do not get yourself killed.

A cloud of cinders swirls about the Nightbringer—all that is left of Shaeva. He looks up for the first time at Elias, cocks his head, and advances, dripping sickle in hand.

Distantly, I remember Elias telling me what he learned from the Soul Catcher: that the Star protects those who have touched it. The Nightbringer cannot kill Elias. But he can hurt him, and by the skies, I will not have anyone else I care about hurt.

I hurl myself forward—and bounce back. The Nightbringer ignores me, comfortable in his power. You will not hurt Elias. You will not. Some feral darkness rises within me and takes control of my body. I felt it once before, months ago when I fought the Nightbringer outside Kauf Prison. An animal cry explodes from my lips. This time when I push ahead, I get through. Darin is a half step behind, and the Nightbringer flicks his wrist. My brother freezes. But the jinn’s magic has no effect on me. I leap between the Nightbringer and Elias, dagger out.

“Don’t you dare touch him,” I say.

The Nightbringer’s sun eyes flare as he looks first at me, then at Elias, reading what is between us. I think of how he betrayed me. Monster! How close is he to setting the jinn free? Shaeva’s prophecy answered the question moments ago: one piece of the Star left. Does the Nightbringer know where it is? What did Shaeva’s death gain him?

But as he observes me, I remember the love that roiled within him, and the hate as well. I remember the vicious war waged between the two and the desolation left in their wake.

The Nightbringer’s shoulder ripples as if he is unsettled. Can he read my thoughts? He shifts his attention over my shoulder to Elias.

“Elias Veturius.” The jinn leans over me, and I cringe back, pressing against Elias’s chest, caught between the two of them: my friend’s pounding heart and despair at Shaeva’s death, and the Nightbringer’s eldritch wrath, fueled by a millennium of cruelty and suffering.

The jinn doesn’t bother looking at me before he speaks. “She tasted sweet, boy,” he says. “Like dew and a clear dawn.”

Behind me, Elias stills and takes a steadying breath. He meets the Nightbringer’s fiery stare, his face paling in shock at what he sees there. Then he growls, a sound that seems to rise out of the very earth. Shadows twist up like vines of ink beneath his skin. Every muscle in his shoulders, his chest, his arms strains until he is tearing free of his invisible bonds. He raises his hands, a shock wave bursting from his skin, knocking me on my back.

The Nightbringer sways before righting himself. “Ah,” he observes. “The pup has a bite. All the better.” I cannot see his face within that hood. But I hear the smile in his voice. He rises up as wind floods the clearing. “There is no joy in destroying a weak foe.”

He turns his attention east, toward something far out of sight. Whispers hiss on the air, as if he’s communicating with someone. Then the wind snatches at him and, as in the forest outside Kauf, he disappears. But this time, instead of silence to mark his passing, the ghosts who fled to the borders of the Waiting Place pour into the clearing, swarming me.

You, Laia, this is because of you!

Shaeva is dead—

Elias is condemned—

The jinn a breath from victory—

Because of me.

There are so many. The truth of their words breaks over me like a net of chains. I try to stand against it, but I cannot, for the spirits do not lie.

One piece remains. The Nightbringer must find only one more piece of the Star before he is able to free his kin. He is close now. Close enough that I can no longer deny it. Close enough that I must act.

The ghosts tornado around me, so angry I fear they will tear off my skin. But Elias cuts through them and lifts me to my feet.

Darin is beside me, grabbing my pack from where it has fallen, glaring at the ghosts as they ease back into the trees, barely restrained.

Before I even say the words, my brother nods. He heard what Shaeva said. He knows what we must do.

“We’re going to Adisa.” I say it anyway. “To stop him. To finish this.”

CHAPTER NINE
Elias

The full burden of the Waiting Place descends like a boulder dropping onto my back. The Forest is part of me, and I can feel the borders, the ghosts, the trees. It’s as if a living map of the place has been imprinted on my mind.

Shaeva’s absence is at the heart of that burden. I gaze at the fallen basket of herbs that she’ll never add to the korma that she’ll never eat in the house she’ll never step foot in again.

“Elias—the ghosts—” Laia draws close. The usually mournful spirits have transformed into violent shades. I need Mauth’s magic to silence them. I need to bond with him, the way Shaeva wanted me to.

But when I grasp at Mauth with my will, I feel only a trace of the magic before it fades.

“Elias?” Despite the shrieking ghosts, Laia takes my hand, her lips drawn down in concern. “I’m so sorry about Shaeva. Is she really—”

I nod. She’s gone.

“It was so fast.” Somehow, I am comforted by the fact that someone is as stunned as I am. “Are you—will you be—” She shakes her head. “Of course you’re not all right—skies, how could you be?”

A groan from Darin pulls our attention away from each other. The ghosts circle him, darting close and whispering skies know what. Bleeding hells. I need to get Laia and Darin out of here.

“If you want to get to Adisa,” I say, “the fastest way is through the Forest. You’ll lose months going around.”

“Right.” Laia pauses and furrows her brow. “But, Elias—”

If we speak more of Shaeva, I think something inside me will break. She was here, and now she’s gone, and nothing can change that. The permanence of death will always feel like a betrayal. But raging against it when my friends are in danger is the act of a fool. I must move. I must make sure Shaeva didn’t die for nothing.

Laia is still speaking when I take Darin’s hand and begin to windwalk. She goes quiet as the Forest fades past us. She squeezes my hand, and I know that she understands my silence.

I cannot travel with Shaeva’s swiftness, but we reach one of the bridges over the River Dusk after only a quarter hour, and seconds later, we’re beyond it. I angle northeast, and as we move through the trees, Laia peeks at me from beneath the wing of hair that has fallen over her eye. I want to speak to her. Damn the Nightbringer, I want to say. I don’t care what he said. I only care that you are all right.

“We’ll be there soon,” I begin, before another voice speaks, a hateful chorus that is instantly recognizable.

You will fail, usurper.

The jinn. But their grove is miles away. How are they projecting their voices this far?

Filth. Your world will fall. Our king has already thwarted you. This is just the beginning.

“Piss off,” I snarl. I think of the whispers I heard just before the Nightbringer disappeared. He was giving these fiery monsters orders, no doubt. The jinn laugh.

Our kind are powerful, mortal. You cannot replace a jinn. You cannot hope to succeed as Soul Catcher.

I ignore them, hoping they’ll shut the hells up. Did they ever do this to Shaeva? Were they always bellowing in her head, and she just never told me?

My chest aches when I think of the Soul Catcher—and of so many others. Tristas. Demetrius. Leander. The Blood Shrike. My grandfather. Are all those who get close to me fated to suffer?

Darin shivers, gritting his teeth against the onslaught of the ghosts. Laia’s skin is gray, though she walks on without a word of complaint.

In the end, they will fade. You will endure. Love cannot live here.

Laia’s hand is cool and small in mine. Her pulse flutters against my fingers, a tenuous reminder of her mortality. Even if she survives to be an old woman, her years are nothing against the life of a Soul Catcher. She will die and I will abide, becoming less and less human as time passes.

“There.” Laia points ahead. The trees thin, and through them I spot the cottage where Darin recovered from his injuries at Kauf, months ago now.

When we reach the tree line, I release the siblings. Darin grabs me and pulls me into a rough hug. “I don’t know how to thank you—” he begins, but I stop him.

“Stay alive,” I say. “That’ll be thanks enough. I’ll have enough problems here without your ghost showing up.” Darin offers a flash of a smile before glancing at his sister and prudently heading for the cottage.

Laia twists her hands together, not looking at me. Her hair has come free from its braid as it always does, in fat, unruly curls. I reach for one, unable to help myself.

“I … have something for you.” I rummage around in a pocket and pull out a piece of wood. It is unfinished, the carvings on it rough. “You reach for your old armlet sometimes.” I feel ridiculous all of a sudden. Why would I give her this hideous thing? It looks like a six-year-old made it. “It’s not finished. But … ah … I thought—”

“It’s perfect.” Her fingers brush mine as she takes it. That touch. Ten hells. I steady my breath and crush the desire that thrums in my veins. She slides the armlet on, and seeing her in that familiar pose, one hand resting on the cuff—it feels right. “Thank you.”

“Watch your back in Adisa.” I turn to practicalities. They are easier to speak of than this feeling in my chest, like my heart is being carved out of me and lit on fire. “The Mariners will know your face, and if they know what Darin can do—”

I catch her smile and realize that, like a fool, I’m telling her things she already knows.

“I thought we would have more time,” she says. “I thought we’d find a way out for you. That Shaeva would release you from your vow or …”

She looks like I feel: broken. I need to let her go. Fight the Nightbringer, I should say. Win. Find joy. Remember me. For why should she come back here? Her future is in the world of the living.

Say it, Elias, my logic screams. Make it easier for both of you. Don’t be pathetic.

“Laia, you should—”

“I don’t want to let you go. Not yet.” She traces my jaw with a light hand, her fingers lingering on my mouth. She wants me—I can see it, feel it—and it makes me desire her even more desperately. “Not so soon.”

“Neither do I.” I pull her into my arms, reveling in the warmth of her body against mine, the curve of her hip beneath my hand. She tucks her head beneath my chin and I breathe her in.

Mauth tugs at me, harsh and sudden. Against my will, I sway back toward the Forest.

No. No. Ghosts be damned. Mauth be damned. Waiting Place be damned.

I grab her hand and pull her toward me, and as if she was waiting for it, she closes her eyes and rises up on her toes. Her hands tangle in my hair, drawing me tightly toward her. Her lips are soft and lush, and when she presses every curve into me, I nearly lose my feet. I hear nothing but Laia, see nothing but Laia, feel nothing but Laia.

My mind races forward to me laying her down on the Forest floor, spending hours exploring every inch of her body. For a moment I see what we could have had: Laia and her books and patients, and me and a school that taught more than death and duty. A little one with gold eyes and glowing brown skin. The white in Laia’s hair one day, and the way her eyes will mellow and deepen and grow wiser.

“You are cruel, Elias,” she whispers against my mouth. “To give a girl all she desires only to tear it away.”

“This isn’t the end for us, Laia of Serra.” I cannot give up what we could have. I don’t care what bleeding vow I made. “Do you hear me? This is not our end.”

“You’ve never been a liar.” She dashes her hands against the wetness in her eyes. “Don’t start now.”

Her back is straight as she walks away, and when she reaches the cottage, Darin, waiting outside, rises. She goes past him quickly, and he follows.

I watch her until she is just a shadow on the horizon. Turn around, I think. Just once. Turn around.

She doesn’t. And perhaps it’s just as well.

CHAPTER TEN
The Blood Shrike

I spend the rest of the day in the Black Guard barracks, reading through spy reports. Most are mundane: a prisoner transfer that could guarantee the loyalty of a Mercator house; an investigation into the death of two Illustrian Paters.

I pay closest attention to the reports out of Tiborum. With the approach of spring, the Karkaun clans are expected to come pouring out of the mountains, raiding and reaving.

But my spies say the Karkauns are quiet. Perhaps their leader, this Grímarr, committed too many forces to the attack on Navium. Perhaps Tiborum is uncommonly lucky.

Or perhaps those blue-faced bastards are up to something.

I request reports from all the northern garrisons. By the time the midnight bells ring, I am exhausted and my desk is only half-clear. But I stop anyway, forgoing a meal despite the rumbling in my belly, and pulling on my boots and a cloak. Sleep will not come. Not when the crack of Livia’s bones still rings through my head. Not when I’m wondering what ambush the Commandant will have waiting for me in Navium.

The hallway outside my quarters is silent and dark. Most of the Black Guard should be asleep, but there’s always at least a half dozen men on watch. I don’t want to be followed—I suspect the Commandant has spies among my men. I head for the armory, where a hidden passage leads into the heart of the city.

“Shrike.” The whisper is soft, but I jump anyway, cursing at the sight of the green eyes shining like a cat’s from across the hall.

“Avitas,” I hiss. “Why are you lurking out here?”

“Don’t take the armory tunnel,” he says. “Pater Sissellius has a man watching the route. I’ll have him taken care of, but there wasn’t time tonight.”

“Are you spying on me?”

“You’re predictable, Shrike. Any time Marcus hurts her, you take a walk. Captain Dex reminded me that it’s against regulations for the Shrike to be unaccompanied, so here I am.”

I know Harper is simply carrying out his duties. I have been irresponsible, wandering the city at night without any guards. Still, I’m vexed. Harper serenely ignores my discontent and nods to the laundry closet. There must be another passageway there.

Once we’re inside the narrow space, my armor clanks against his, and I grimace, hoping no one hears us. Skies know what they would say at finding us pressed together in a dark closet.

My face heats thinking of it. Thank the skies for my mask. “Where’s the bleeding entrance?”

“It’s just—” He reaches around me and up, rummaging through uniforms. I lean back, catching a V-shaped glimpse of the smooth brown skin at his throat. His scent is light—barely there—but warm, like cinnamon and cedar. I take a deeper sniff, glancing up at him as I do.

To find him staring at me, eyebrows raised.

“You smell … not unpleasant,” I say stiffly. “I was simply noticing.”

“Of course, Shrike.” His mouth quirks a little. Is that a bleeding smile?

“Shall we?” As if sensing my annoyance, Harper pushes open a section of the closet behind me and moves through quickly. We do not speak again as we wend our way through the secret passageways of the Black Guard barracks and out into the chill spring night.

Harper drops back when we are aboveground, and I soon forget he is near. Hood pulled low, I ghost through Antium’s lower level, through the crowded Scholar sector, past inns and bustling taprooms, barracks and Plebeian-heavy neighborhoods. The guards at the upper gate do not see me as I pass into the city’s second tier—a trick I play to keep my edge.

I find myself toying with my father’s ring as I walk, the ring of Gens Aquilla. Sometimes, when I look at it, I still see the blood that coated it, the blood that spattered my face and armor when Marcus cut Father’s throat.

Don’t think about that. I spin it round, trying to take comfort from its presence. Give me the wisdom of all the Aquillas, I find myself thinking. Help me defeat my foe.

I soon reach my destination, a wooded park outside the Hall of Records. At this hour, I expected the hall to be dark, but a dozen lamps are lit, and the archivists are still hard at work. The long, pillared building is spectacular for its size and simplicity, but I take comfort from it because of what is within: records of lineages, births, deaths, dispatches, treaties, trade agreements, and laws.

If the Emperor is the heart of the Empire and the people are its lifeblood, then the Hall of Records is its memory. No matter how hopeless I feel, coming here reminds me of all the Martials have built in the five hundred years since the Empire was founded.

“All Empires fall, Blood Shrike.”

When Cain steps from the shadows, I reach for my blade. I have thought many times about what I would do if I saw the Augur again. Always, I saw myself remaining calm. Silent. I would hold myself aloof from him. I would give him nothing of my mind.

My intentions vanish at the sight of his accursed face. The passion with which I want to break his frail neck astounds me. I didn’t know I could have this much hate in me. Hannah’s pleading fills my ears—Helly, I’m sorry—and my mother’s calm words as she knelt for her death. Strength, my girl. My father’s ring cuts into my palm.

But as I draw the blade, my arm freezes—and drops, forced to my side by the Augur. The lack of control is enraging and unsettling.

“Such anger,” he murmurs.

“You destroyed my life. You could have saved them. You—you monster.”

“What of you, Blood Shrike? Are you not a monster?” Cain’s hood is low, but I can still make out the inquisitive gleam of his gaze.

“You’re different,” I spit. “You’re like them. The Commandant, or Marcus, or the Nightbringer—”

“Ah, but the Nightbringer is no monster, child, though he may do monstrous things. He is cloven by sorrow and thus locked in a righteous battle to amend a grievous wrong. Much like you. I think you are more similar than you know. You could learn much from the Nightbringer, if he deigned to teach you.”

“I don’t bleeding want anything to do with any of you,” I hiss. “You are a monster, even if you—”

“But you are a paragon of perfection?” Cain tilts his head, appearing genuinely curious. “You live and breathe and eat and sleep on the backs of those less fortunate. Your entire existence is due to the oppression of those you view to be lesser. But why you, Blood Shrike? Why did fate see fit to make you the oppressor instead of the oppressed? What is the meaning of your life?”

“The Empire.” I shouldn’t answer. I should ignore him. But a lifetime of reverence dies hard. “That is the meaning of my life.”

“Perhaps.” Cain shrugs, a strangely human gesture. “I did not, in truth, come here to argue philosophy with you. I came with a message.”

He pulls an envelope from his robes. At the sight of the seal—a bird winging over a shining city—I snatch it from him. Livia.

As I open it, I keep one eye on the Augur.

Come to me, sister. I need you.

Yours always,

Livia

“When did she send this?” I scan the message quickly. “And why did she send it with you? She could have—”

“She asked, and I acquiesced. Anyone else would have been followed. And that would not have aligned with my interests. Or hers.” Cain touches my masked brow gently. “Fare thee well, Blood Shrike. I will see you once more, before your end.”

He steps back and vanishes, and Harper appears out of the dark, jaw clenched. Apparently, he likes the Augurs as much as I do.

“You can keep them out of your head,” he says. “The Nightbringer too. I can show you how, if you like.”

“Fine,” I say, already making for the palace. “On the way to Navium.”

We soon reach the balcony of Livvy’s apartments, and I do not spot a single soldier. Avitas is stationed below, and I’m reminding myself to yell at Faris, who captains Livvy’s personal guard, when the air shifts. I’m not alone.

“Peace, Shrike.” Faris Candelan steps out of the arched doorway that leads into Livvy’s quarters, his hands up, short blond hair a mess. “She’s waiting for you.”

“You should have bleeding told her it was stupid to summon me.”

“I don’t tell the Empress what to do,” Faris says. “I just try to make sure no one hurts her while she’s doing it.” Something about how he says it makes the hair on my neck rise, and in two steps, I have a dagger at his throat.

“Watch it with her, Faris,” I say. “You flirt like your life depends on it, but if Marcus suspects she is disloyal he will kill her, and the Illustrian Paters will believe he had every right to do it.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Faris says. “I’ve got a lovely Mercator girl waiting for me in the Weaver’s district. Most spectacular hips I’ve ever seen. Would have been there by now”—he glares at me until I release him—“but someone needed to be on duty.”

“Two people,” I say. “Who’s your backup?”

A figure steps into the light from the shadows beside the door: a thrice-broken nose, deep brown skin, and blue eyes that always sparkle, even beneath the silver mask.

“Rallius? Ten hells, is that you?”

Silvio Rallius salutes before flashing a grin that made knees weak at Illustrian parties across Serra for nearly all of my teenage years—including my knees, before I learned better. Elias and I hero-worshipped him, though he is only two years older. He was one of the few upperclassman who wasn’t a monster to the younger students.

“Blood Shrike.” He salutes. “My scim is yours.”

“Words as pretty as that smile.” I don’t return his, and he realizes then that he’s dealing with the Blood Shrike and not a young cadet from Blackcliff. “Make them true. Protect her, or your life is forfeit.”

I slip past them both and into Livvy’s bedroom. As my eyes adjust, the floorboards near a tapestry creak. Cloth whispers as the contours of the room come into focus. Livia’s bed is empty; on her side table, a cup of tea—wildwood, from the scent of it—sits untouched.

Livia pokes her head out from behind the tapestry and motions me forward. I can barely make her out, which means any spies within the walls can’t see her either.

“You should have drunk the tea.” I am careful of her wounded hand. “It must hurt.”

Her clothes rustle, and a soft click sounds. Stale air and the smell of wet stone wash over me. A hallway stretches before us. We step in, and she closes the door, finally speaking.

“An empress who bears her pain with fortitude is an empress who gains respect,” she says. “My women have spread the rumor that I scorned the tea. That I bear the pain without fear. But bleeding hells, it hurts.”

The moment she says it, a familiar compulsion comes over me: the need to heal her, to sing her better.

“I can—I can help you,” I say. Bleeding skies, how will I explain it to her? “I—”

“We don’t have time, sister,” she whispers. “Come. This passage connects my rooms to his. I’ve used it before. But be silent. He cannot catch us.”

We pad down the hallway toward a tiny crack of light. The muttering begins when we’re halfway down. The light is a spy hole, big enough to admit sound but too small to see through very clearly. I glimpse Marcus, bare of armor, stalking back and forth across his cavernous quarters.

“You have to stop doing this when I’m in the throne room.” He digs his hands into his hair. “Do you want to have died just so I can get hurled off the throne for being insane?”

Silence. Then: “I won’t bleeding touch her! I can’t help that her sister’s gagging for it—”

I nearly choke, and Livvy grips me. “I had my reasons,” she whispers.

“I will do what I must to keep this empire,” Marcus growls, and for the first time I see … something. A pale shadow, like a face glimpsed in a mirror underwater. A second later, it’s gone, and I shake myself. A trick of the light, perhaps. “If that means breaking a few fingers to keep your precious Blood Shrike in line, so be it. I wanted to break her arm—”

“Ten hells,” I breathe to Livia. “He’s barking. He’s gone mad.”

“He thinks what he’s seeing is real.” Livia shakes her head. “Maybe it is. It doesn’t matter. He cannot remain on the throne. At best, he’s taking orders from a ghost. At worst, he’s hallucinating.”

“We have to support him,” I say. “The Augurs named him Emperor. If he’s deposed or killed, we risk civil war. Or the Commandant swooping in and naming herself Empress.”

“Do we?” Livvy takes my hand with her good one and places it on her stomach. She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t have to.

“Oh. You—that’s why you and he—oh—” Blackcliff prepared me for many things. It did not prepare me for my sister’s pregnancy by the man who slit the throats of our parents and sister.

“This is our answer, Shrike.”

“His heir,” I whisper.

“A regency.”

Bleeding skies. If Marcus disappears after the child is born, Livia and Gens Aquilla would run the Empire until the child came of age. We could train the boy up to be a true and just statesman. The Illustrian Gens would accept it because the heir would be from a highborn house. The Plebeians would accept it because he is Marcus’s son and thus represents them too. But …

“How do you know it’s a boy?”

She turns her eyes—my eyes—our mother’s eyes—to me, and I have never seen anyone look so sure of anything in my life. “It’s a boy, Blood Shrike,” she says. “You must trust me. He already quickens. By the Grain Moon, if all is well, he will be here.”

I shiver. The Grain Moon again.

“When the Commandant finds out, she’ll come after you. I have to—”

“Kill her.” Livia takes the words from my mouth. “Before she finds out.”

When I ask Livia if Marcus knows of the pregnancy, she shakes her head. “I confirmed it only today. And I wanted to tell you first.”

“Tell him, Livvy.” I forget her title. “He wants an heir. Perhaps he won’t—” I gesture to her hand. “But no one else. Hide it as best you can—”

She puts a finger to my lips. Marcus’s muttering has stopped.

“Go, Shrike,” Livvy breathes.

Mother! Father! Hannah! Suddenly I cannot breathe. He won’t take Livvy too. I’ll die before I let it happen. “I’ll fight him—”

My sister digs her fingers into my shoulder. The pain focuses me. “You’ll fight him.” She shoves me toward her room. “He’ll die because he’s no match for your anger. And in the frenzy to replace him, our enemies will have us both killed because we would have made it easy for them to do so. We must live. For him.” She touches her stomach. “For Father and Mother and Hannah. For the Empire. Go.”

She shoves me out the door, just as light floods the passageway. I race through her room, past Faris and Rallius, flipping over the balcony to the rope tied below, cursing myself as Marcus shouts, as he lands the first blow, as the crack of another of my sister’s bones echoes in my ears.

PART TWO

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Laia
FOUR WEEKS LATER

Darin and I jostle through the sea of Scholar refugees on the rutted dirt road into Adisa, two more tired bodies and dirty faces amid the hundreds seeking sanctuary in Marinn’s shining capital city.

Silence hangs like a fog over the refugees as they plod onward. Most of these Scholars were turned away from the other Mariner cities. All have seen homes lost, family and friends tortured or murdered, raped or imprisoned.

The Martials wield their weapons of war with merciless efficiency. They want to break the Scholars. And if I don’t stop the Nightbringer—if I don’t find this “Beekeeper” in Adisa—they will.

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 themselves 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.”

CHAPTER TWELVE
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.”

Aubarit blanches, and her knuckles pale as she clasps her hands together. “This—this cannot be, Banu al-Mauth. You must pass them on. If you do not—”

“What happens?” I lean forward. “You spoke of Mysteries—how did you learn them? Are they written down? Scrolls? Books?”

The Fakira taps her head. “To write down the Mysteries is to rob them of their power. Only the Fakirs and Fakiras learn them, for we are with the dead as they leave the world of the living. We wash them and commune with their spirits so they move easily through the Jaga al-Mauth and to the other side. The Soul Catcher does not see them—she—you—are not meant to.”

Have you ever wondered why there are so few ghosts from the Tribes? Shaeva’s words.

“Do your Mysteries say anything of the Waiting Place’s magic?”

“No, Banu al-Mauth,” Aubarit says. “Though …” Her voice drops and takes on the cadence of a long-memorized chant. “If thou seekest the truth in the trees, the Forest will show thee its sly memory.”

“A memory?” I frown—Shaeva said nothing of this. “The trees have seen much, no doubt. But the magic I have doesn’t allow me to speak with them.”

Aubarit shakes her head. “The Mysteries are rarely literal. Forest could mean the trees—or it could be referring to something else entirely.”

Metaphorical talking trees won’t help me. “What of the Bani al-Mauth?” I ask. “Did you ever meet her? Did she speak to you of the magic or how she did her work?”

“I met her once, when Grandfather chose me as his apprentice. She gave me her benediction. I thought … I thought she sent you to help us.”

“Help you?” I say sharply. “With the Martials?”

“No, with—” She swallows back the words. “Do not concern yourself with such trifles, Banu al-Mauth. You must move the spirits, and to do that you must remove yourself from the world, not waste your time helping strangers.”

“Tell me what’s going on,” I say. “I can decide whether it concerns me or not.”

Aubarit wrings her hands in indecision, but when I chuff expectantly, she speaks, her voice low. “Our Fakirs and Fakiras,” she says, “they’re dying. A few were killed in Martial attacks. But others …” She shakes her head. “My grandfather was found in a pond just a few feet deep. His lungs were filled with water—but he knew how to swim.”

“His heart might have failed.”

“He was strong as a bull and not yet in his sixth decade. That’s only part of it, Banu al-Mauth. I struggled to reach his spirit. You must understand, I have been training as a Fakira since I could speak. I have never fought to commune with a spirit. This time, it felt as if something was blocking me. When I succeeded, Grandfather’s ghost was deeply troubled—it would not speak to me. Something is wrong. I’ve not heard from the other Fakirs—everyone is so concerned with the Martials. But this—this is bigger than that. And I do not know what to do.”

A sharp tug nearly pulls me to my feet. I sense impatience on the other end. Perhaps Mauth doesn’t wish me to learn this information. Perhaps the magic wants me to remain ignorant.

“Get word out to your Fakirs,” I say. “Their wagons should no longer be set apart from the rest of the caravan, by order of the Banu al-Mauth, who has expressed concern for their safety. And tell them to have their wagons repainted to match the others in the Tribe. It will make it more difficult for your enemies to find you—” I stop short. The pull at my core is strong enough that I feel like I might be sick. But I press on, because no one else is going to help Aubarit or the Fakirs.

“Ask the other Fakirs if they are also finding it hard to commune with the spirits,” I say. “And find out if it’s ever happened before.”

“The other Fakirs don’t listen to me.”

“You are new to your power.” I need to go, but I cannot just leave her here, doubting herself, doubting her worth. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t have it. Think of the way your Kehanni wears her strength, like it’s her own skin. That’s who you must be. For your people.”

Mauth pulls me yet again, forcefully enough that, against my will, I stand. “I have to return to the Waiting Place,” I say. “If you need me, come to the border of the Forest. I’ll know you’re there. But do not try to enter.”

Moments later, I’m back out in the heavy rain. Lightning cracks over the Waiting Place, and I feel it hit within my domain: north, near the cabin, and closer, near the river. The awareness feels innate, like knowing I’ve gotten a cut or bite.

As I windwalk home, I turn Aubarit’s words over in my head. Shaeva never told me the Fakirs were so deeply connected to her work. She never mentioned that they knew of her existence, let alone that they had built an entire mythology around her. All I knew about the Fakirs was what most Tribespeople know about them—that they handle the dead and that they are to be revered, albeit with more fear than one would revere a Zaldar or a Kehanni.

Maybe if I’d bleeding paid attention, I’d have noticed a connection. The Tribes have always been deeply wary of the Forest. Afya hates being near it, and Tribe Saif never came within fifty leagues of it when I was a child.

As I near the Waiting Place, Mauth’s pull, which by now should have weakened, gets stronger. Does he simply want me to come back? Does he want something more?

The border is finally before me, and the moment I pass through, I am blasted by the howls of the ghosts. Their rage has peaked—transformed into something violent and deranged. How in the ten hells did they get so riled up in the hour that I was gone?

They press close to the border with a strange, single-minded focus. At first, I think that they are all pushing at something close to the wall. A dead animal? A dead body?

But as I shove past them, shuddering at the chills rippling through my body, I realize that they aren’t pressing at something near the wall. They are pushing at the wall itself.

They are trying to get out.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Blood Shrike

The southern sky is stained black with smoke when the riverboat finally begins the approach to Navium. The rain that has drenched us for the past two weeks lingers on the horizon, taunting us, refusing to provide any relief. The Empire’s greatest port city burns, and my people burn with it.

Avitas joins me on the wide prow while Dex barks orders at the captain to move faster. Thunder echoes—Navium’s drums issuing coded orders with a frenzy one only ever hears during an attack.

Harper’s silver face is tight, his mouth drawn down in what is almost a frown. He’s spent hours on the road teaching me to close my mind against intrusion, which meant a great deal of time staring into each other’s faces. I’ve gotten to know his well. Whatever news he’s about to deliver, it’s bad.

“Grímarr and his forces attacked at dawn three weeks ago,” he says. “Our spies say the Karkauns have been hit by a famine in the south. Tens of thousands dead. They’ve been raiding the southern coast for months now, but we had outdated information on the fleet they’d amassed. They showed up with more than three hundred ships and struck the merchant harbor first. Of the two hundred fifty merchant vessels at port, two hundred forty-three were destroyed.”

That’s a blow the Mercator Gens won’t soon forget. “Countermeasures?”

“Admiral Lenidas took the fleet out twice. The first time, we took down three Barbarian craft before a squall forced us back to port. The second time, Grímarr pressed the attack and drove us back.”

“Grímarr drove back Admiral Lenidas?” Whoever this skies-forsaken Karkaun is, he’s no fool. Lenidas has commanded the Empire’s navy for the past thirty years. He designed Navium’s military port, the Island: a watchtower with an enormous body of water surrounding it, and a circular, protected port beyond, which houses men, ships, and supplies. He has fought the Barbarians for decades from the Island.

“According to the report, Grímarr countered every trick Lenidas threw at him. After that, the Karkauns choked off the port. The city is effectively under siege. And the death toll is up to a thousand in the Southwest Quarter. That’s where Grímarr is hitting the hardest.”

The Southwest Quarter is almost entirely Plebeian—dockworkers, sailors, fishermen, coopers, blacksmiths, and their families.

“Keris Veturia is orchestrating an operation to rout the next Barbarian attack.”

“Keris shouldn’t be orchestrating anything without Lenidas to temper her,” I say. “Where is he?”

“After his second failure, she executed him,” Avitas says, and from his long pause, I know he’s as disturbed at the news as I am. “For gross dereliction of duty. Two days ago.”

“That old man lived and breathed duty.” I am numb. Lenidas trained me personally for six months when I was a Fiver, just before I got my mask. He was one of the few southern Paters my father trusted. “He fought the Karkauns for fifty years. Knew more about them than anyone alive.”

“Officially, the Commandant felt that he had lost too many men in the attacks and ignored too many of her warnings.”

“And unofficially she wanted to take control.” Damn her to the hells. “Why did the Illustrian Paters allow it? She’s not a deity. They could have stopped her.”

“You know how Lenidas was, Shrike,” Avitas says. “He didn’t take bribes, and he didn’t let the Paters tell him what to do. He treated Illustrians and Mercators and Plebeians alike. The way they saw it, he let the merchant harbor burn.”

“And now Keris is in command of Navium.”

“She’s summoned us,” Avitas says. “We’ve been informed that an escort will bring us to her. She is at the Island.”

Hag. She is already attempting to wrest control from me before I’ve even entered the city. I meant to go to the Island first. But now if I do, I will appear the supplicant, seeking approval from my betters.

“Curse her summons.”

A commotion at the docks catches my attention. The chuffing screams of horses split the air, and I spot the black-and-red armor of a Black Guard. The soldier curses as he attempts to keep hold of the beasts, but they buck and jerk away from him.

Then, as suddenly as they began to panic, the beasts calm, dropping their heads, as if drugged. Every man on the dock steps back.

A figure in black comes into view.

“Bleeding hells,” Avitas murmurs from beside me.

The Nightbringer’s eerie, bright eyes fix on me. But I am not surprised. I expected Keris to keep that jinn monster close. She knows I’m trying to kill her. She knows that if she can use her supernatural pet to get into my head, I’ll never succeed.

I think back to the hours spent with Avitas, learning to shield my mind. Hours listening to his calm voice explain how to imagine my innermost thoughts as gems locked in a chest, hidden in a shipwreck at the bottom of a forgotten sea. Harper doesn’t know about Livia’s pregnancy. I spoke of it to no one. But he knows the Empire’s future depends on destroying the Commandant. He was an exacting instructor.

But he could not test my skill. I hope to the skies that my preparation was enough. If Keris learns Livvy is pregnant, she’ll have assassins descending within days.

But as we dock, my thoughts are scattered. Pull yourself together, Shrike. Livvy’s life depends on it. The Empire depends on it.

When I step onto the gangplank, I do not look into the Nightbringer’s eyes. I made that mistake once before, months ago, when I met him back in Serra. Now I know that his eyes showed my future. I saw the deaths of my family that day. I didn’t understand it at the time—I assumed my own fear had gotten the best of me.

“Welcome, Blood Shrike.” I cannot hide my shudder at the way the Nightbringer’s voice scrapes against my ear. He beckons me closer. I am Mater of Gens Aquilla. I am a Mask. I am a Black Guard. I am the Blood Shrike, right hand to the Emperor of the Martials. I order my body to remain still while I stare him down with all the power of my rank.

My body betrays me.

The sounds of the river docks fade. No water slapping against the hulls of ships. No stevedores calling out to each other. No masts creaking, and no distant boom of sails or roar of the sea. The silence that cloaks the jinn is complete, an aura that nothing can penetrate. Everything falls away as I close the distance between us.

Maintain control, Shrike. Give him nothing.

“Ah,” the Nightbringer says quietly, when I stand before him. “Felicitations, Blood Shrike. I see you are to be an aunt.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Laia

The Mariner prison is spare, cold, and eerily silent. As I pace my poorly lit cell, I place a hand against the stone wall. It is so thick that I could scream and scream and Darin, across the hall from me, might never know.

He must be going mad. I imagine him clenching and unclenching his fists, boots scraping against the floor, wondering when we will escape. If we will escape. This place might not be Kauf, but it is still a prison. And my brother’s demons will not let him forget it.

Which means I must stay levelheaded for the both of us and find a way out of here.

The night creeps by, dawn breaks, and it’s not until the late afternoon that the lock on my door clanks and three figures backlit by lamplight step into my cell. I recognize one as the captain who arrested us and a second as one of her soldiers. But it is the third woman, tall and heavily cloaked, who catches my attention.

Because she is surrounded by ghuls.

They gather like hungry crows at her feet, hissing and pawing at her. I know, instantly, that she cannot see them.

“Bring in the brother, Captain Eleiba.” The woman’s Serran is husky and musical. She could be a Kehanni with a voice like that. She looks to be around Afya’s age or perhaps a bit older, with light brown skin and thick, straight black hair pulled up in a knot. Her back is poker straight, and she walks gracefully, as if balancing a book on her head. “Sit, child,” she says, and though her voice is pleasant enough, an underlying malice raises my hackles. Are the ghuls influencing her? I did not know they had such power. They feed off sorrow and sadness and the stink of blood. Spiro Teluman spoke those words to me long ago. What sorrow plagues this woman?

Darin soon joins me, slowing when he enters, eyes wide. He sees the ghuls too. When he takes a seat on my cot beside me, I reach for his hand and squeeze. They cannot hold us. I will not let them.

The woman observes me for a long moment before smiling. “You,” she says to me, “look nothing like the Lioness. And you”—she glances at Darin—“are her spitting image. Clever of her to keep you hidden. I expect it’s why you’re still alive.”

The ghuls slither up the woman’s cloak, hissing into her ear. Her lips curve into a sneer. “But then, my father tells me that Mirra always enjoyed her little secrets. I wonder, are you like her in other ways? Looking always to fight instead of fix, to break instead of build, to—”

“You shut it about my mother.” My face grows hot. “How dare you—”

“You will please address Crown Princess Nikla of Marinn as Princess or Your Highness,” Eleiba says. “And you will speak with respect for one of her station.”

This woman, infested with ghuls who are influencing her mind, will one day rule Marinn? I want to frighten the fey creatures away from her, but I cannot manage it without looking as if I’m attacking her. Mariners are less skeptical than Scholars when it comes to the fey, but something tells me she still won’t believe me if I tell her what I see.

“Don’t bother, Eleiba.” Nikla snorts. “I should have known she’d have the same lack of subtlety the Lioness did. Now, girl, let us discuss why you are here.”

“Please.” I speak through gritted teeth, knowing that my life is in Nikla’s hands. “My brother and I are here to—”

“Make Serric steel weaponry,” Nikla says. “Supply the Scholar refugees flooding the city. Instigate an uprising. Challenge the Mariners, despite all we have done for your people since the Empire uprooted them hundreds of years ago.”

I am so flabbergasted that I almost cannot speak. “No,” I sputter. “No, Princess, you have it wrong. We’re not here to make weaponry, we—”

Do I tell her of the Nightbringer? Of Shaeva? I think of the stories of fey violence whispered along the road, stories I’ve been hearing for months. The ghuls may tell her that I lie. But I must warn her. “A threat approaches, Princess. A great threat. You have no doubt heard the tales of Mariner ships sinking in calm seas, of children disappearing in the dead of night.”

Beside Nikla, Eleiba stiffens, her eyes jerking toward mine, filled with recognition. She knows! But Nikla holds up a hand. The ghuls chuckle nastily, slitted red eyes fixed on me.

“You sent your allies ahead of you to spread such lies among the Scholar population,” she says. “Tales of monsters out of legend. Yes, your little friends did your work well.”

Araj. The Skiritae. I sigh. Elias warned me that the Skiritae leader would spread word of my exploits far and wide. I hadn’t given it much thought.

“They seeded your reputation among the newly arrived Scholars, a downtrodden and easily manipulated population. And then you arrived with your brother, your mother’s legacy, and promises of Serric steel, safety, and security. All insurgents tell the same tale, girl. It just changes a bit with the telling.”

“We don’t want trouble.” My trepidation rises, but I channel my grandfather, Pop, thinking of the time he delivered twins and I panicked. It was my first delivery, and with a few words, his serenity soothed me until my hands no longer shook. “We just want to—”

“Don’t patronize me. My people have done everything for yours.” Nikla paces the small cell, the ghuls following her like a pack of loyal dogs. “We have taken them into our city and integrated them into the fabric of Mariner culture. But our generosity is not without limits. Here in Marinn, we are not sadists, like the Martials. But we do not take kindly to rabble-rousers. Know that if you do not cooperate with me, I will have Captain Eleiba put you both on the next ship down to the Tribal lands—as we did your friends.”

Oh hells. So that’s what happened to Araj and Tas and the rest of the Skiritae. Skies, I hope they are all right.

“The Tribal lands are crawling with Martials.” I try to temper my anger, but the more this woman talks, the more I want to scream. “If you send us there, we’ll be killed or enslaved.”

“Indeed.” Nikla tilts her head, and the lamplight makes her eyes as red as the ghuls’. Did the Nightbringer set the ghuls on her? Is she another of his human allies, like the Warden or the Commandant?

“I have an offer for you, Darin of Serra,” Nikla goes on. “If you’ve any sense, you’ll see that it’s more than fair. You wish to make Serric steel. Very well. Make Serric steel—for the Mariner army. We will provide you what you need, as well as accommodations for you and your sister—”

“No.” Darin’s gaze is fixed to the floor, and he shakes his head. “I won’t do it.”

Won’t, I note. Not can’t. A spark of hope flares within. Does my brother remember how to make the steel after all? Did something on the road from the Forest of Dusk to Adisa shake loose, allowing him to recall that which Spiro had taught him?

“Consider—”

“I won’t do it.” Darin stands, towering over Nikla by half a foot. Eleiba steps in front of the princess, but Darin speaks quietly, hands open at his sides. “I won’t arm another group of people so that my own can live at their mercy.”

“Please let us go.” I kick out at the ghuls, scattering them for a moment before they congeal around Nikla again. “We don’t mean you any harm, and you have greater things to worry about than two Scholars who want to stay out of trouble. The Empire has turned on the Tribes, and it might turn on Marinn too.”

“The Martials have a treaty with Marinn.”

“They had a treaty with the Tribes too,” I say. “And yet hundreds have been killed or captured in the Tribal desert. This new emperor—you do not know him, Princess. He’s … different. He’s not someone you can work with. He’s—”

“Don’t talk politics to me, little girl.” She doesn’t see the ghul that clings to the side of her face, its mouth split in an odious smile. The sight of it nauseates me. “I was a force to be reckoned with in my father’s court well before you were born.” She turns to Darin. “My offer stands. Make weapons for my army, or take your chances in the Tribal lands. You have until dawn tomorrow to decide.”

Darin and I don’t bother discussing Nikla’s offer. I know there is no chance in the hells that he would accept. The ghuls have their hooks in her—which likely means the Nightbringer has a hand in Mariner politics. The last thing the Scholars need is another group lording it over us because we do not have the weapons for a fair fight.

“You said won’t.” I considered long and hard before bringing up Darin’s seemingly offhand comment. My brother paces the cell, antsy as a penned horse. “When Nikla asked you to make the weapons, you didn’t say you can’t do it. You said you won’t.”

“Slip of the tongue.” Darin stops his pacing, his back to me, and though it stings to admit it, he’s lying. Do I push him or let it go?

You’ve been letting it go, Laia. Letting it go means Izzi died for nothing. It means Elias was imprisoned for nothing. It means Afya’s cousin died for nothing.

I try a different tack. “Do you think Spiro—”

“Could we not talk about Spiro, or weaponry, or forging?” Darin sits down beside me, shoulders slumped, as if the walls of the cell are making him smaller. He clenches and unclenches his fists. “How the hells are we going to get out of here?”

“An excellent question,” a soft voice says from the door. I jump—seconds ago, it was sealed shut. “One that I might have a solution to, if you care to hear it.”

A young, dark-skinned Scholar man leans against the doorframe, in full view of the guards. Except, I realize, there are no guards to see him. They have disappeared.

The man is handsome, with black hair that’s half pulled up and the rangy body of a swordsman. His forearms are tattooed, though in the darkness, I cannot make out the symbols. He tosses a key up and down like a ball. There is an insouciance to him that irritates me. The glint of his eyes and his wily smile are instantly familiar.

“I know you.” I take a step back, wishing I had my dagger with me. “You’re our shadow.”

The man drops into a mocking bow, and I am immediately distrustful. Darin bristles.

“I am Musa of Adisa,” the man says. “Son of Ziad and Azmath of Adisa. Grandson of Mehr and Saira of Adisa. I am also the only friend you have in this city.”

“You said you have a solution to our problem.” Trusting this man would be stupid, but Darin and I need to get the hells out of here. All Nikla’s talk about putting us on a ship sounded like rubbish. She will not let a man who knows the secret of Serric steel simply walk away.

“I’ll get you two out of here—for a price.”

Naturally. “What price?”

“You”—he looks at Darin—“will make weapons for the Scholars. And you”—he turns to me—“will help me resurrect the northern Scholar’s Resistance.”

In the long silence that follows his proclamation, I want to laugh. If our circumstances were less dire, I would have. “No thank you. I’ve had enough of the bleeding Resistance—and those who support it.”

“I expected you to say as much,” Musa says. “After the way Mazen and Keenan betrayed you.” He offers a grim smile as my fists curl, and I stare at him in shock. How does he know?

“Apologies,” he says. “Not Keenan. The Nightbringer. In any case, your mistrust is understandable. But you need to stop the jinn lord, no? Which means you need out of here.”

Darin and I gape at him. I get my voice back first. “How do you know about the—”

“I watch. I listen.” Musa taps his foot and glances down the hall. His shoulders stiffen. Voices rise and fall from beyond the door to the cellblock, sharp and hurried. “Decide,” he says. “We’re nearly out of time.”

“No.” Darin speaks for us both, and I frown. It’s unlike him. “You should leave. Unless you want to get thrown in here with us.”

“I’d heard you were stubborn.” Musa sighs. “Listen to logic, at least. Even if you do find your way out of here, how will you find the Beekeeper while the Mariners hunt you? Especially if he doesn’t want to be found?”

“How did—” I stop myself from asking. He’s already told me. He watches. He listens. “You know the Beekeeper.”

“I swear I’ll take you to him.” Musa cuts his hand, blood dripping on the floor, and I raise my eyebrows. A blood oath is no small thing. “After I get you out of here. If you agree to my terms. But we need to move. Now.”

“Darin.” I grab my brother’s arm and drag him to a corner of the cell. “If he can take us to the Beekeeper, we’ll save weeks of time.”

“I don’t trust him,” Darin says. “You know I want to get out of here as much as you do. More. But I won’t make a promise I can’t keep, and neither should you. Why does he want you to help him with the Resistance? What’s in it for him? Why not do it himself?”

“I don’t trust him either,” I say. “But he’s offering us a way out.” I consider my brother. I consider his lie earlier. And though I don’t want to hurt him, I know that if we ever want to get out of here, I have to.

“Pardon me,” Musa says. “But we really need to—”

“Shut it,” I snap at him before turning back to Darin. “You lied to me,” I say. “About the weapons. No”—I raise my hand at his protest—“I’m not angry. But I don’t think you understand what you’re doing. You’re choosing not to make the weapons. It’s a selfish choice. Our people need you, Darin. And that should matter more than your desires or your pain. You saw what’s happening out there to the Scholars,” I say. “It’s not going to stop. Even if I defeat the Nightbringer, we’ll always be lesser unless we can stand up for ourselves. We need

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