Alive, to fight, I tell myself firmly, instead of dead in a jinn-fueled apocalypse.
Shortly after we reach the horses, a summer storm rolls in from the ocean, drenching us in minutes. Still wary, I insist that we ride through the night.
Musa’s wights report Tribe Sulud’s location, and we finally draw to a halt outside a coastal village just as the fishing trawlers drift out to sea. The sodden fields around the village are thick with farmhands harvesting summer crops. Tribe Sulud’s wagons sit near the docks, a stone’s throw from the village’s only inn, where Musa takes rooms.
I hope the Kehanni knows something about the Nightbringer. The approach of the Grain Moon, seven weeks away, looms over me like an executioner’s ax. Please. I cast my wish to the stars, hoping the universe is listening. Please let me learn something useful.
Musa insists we clean up—She won’t let us in her wagon if we smell of horse and sweat. By the time we emerge from the inn, a group of Tribesmen awaits us. They greet Musa as an old friend and me with a formal politeness. Without fanfare, we are led to the largest of the wagons, painted with purple fish and yellow flowers, white herons and crystalline rivers. Pendants of tarnished silver hang from the wagon’s back, and when the door swings open, they jangle merrily.
The Kehanni wears a simple robe instead of the finery of the other night, but her bearing is no less noble. The bracelets on her arms jingle, hiding the heavy, faded tattoos on her arms.
“Musa of Adisa,” she greets him. “Still getting yourself into trouble you can’t get out of?”
“Always, Kehanni.”
“Ah.” She watches him shrewdly. “So you have finally seen her for what she is.”
An old pain flashes in Musa’s eyes, and I know that they are not speaking of me. “I have hope for her yet.”
“Do not wait for her, child. Sometimes those we love are lost to us, as surely as if Death himself had claimed them. All we can do is mourn the divergence of their path. If you try to walk it, you too will fall into darkness.”
Musa opens his mouth as if to respond, but the Kehanni turns to me. “You bring questions, Laia of Serra. Do you bring payment?”
“I have Serric steel weapons,” I say. “Six blades, freshly forged.”
The Kehanni sniffs and summons one of her kinsmen. Musa catches my eye, and though he says nothing, I find myself fidgeting. I think of what Darin said. You have your own strength. It doesn’t have to be the same as the Lioness’s.
“Wait.” I place my hands on the weapons just as the Kehanni is handing them to the Tribesman. “Please,” I say. “Use them in defense. Use them to fight the soldiers. But not . . . not those who are innocent. Please.”
The Tribesman looks at the Kehanni questioningly. She murmurs something to him in Sadhese, and he steps out.
“Laia of Serra, you would tell a Tribeswoman how to defend herself?”
“No.” I twine my fingers together. “I would ask that these blades, which are a gift, not be used to shed the blood of innocents.”
“Hmph,” the Kehanni says. Then she leans over to the front of her wagon and offers me a small wooden bowl of salt. I breathe a sigh of relief and put a pinch on my tongue, the custom Afya taught me. We are under her Tribe’s protection now. None who belong to it may harm us.
“Your gift is accepted, Laia of Serra. How may I aid you?”
“I heard you spinning the old tales in Adisa. Can you tell me of the jinn? Do they have any weaknesses? Is there a way to . . .” Kill them, I nearly say, but the word is so cold. “Hurt them?”
“During the Fey-Scholar War, your ancestors murdered the jinn with steel and salt and summer rain fresh from the heavens. But you ask the wrong question, Laia of Serra. I know of you. I know you do not seek to destroy the jinn. You seek to destroy the Nightbringer. And he is something else altogether.”
“Can it be done? Can he be killed?”
The Kehanni leans back in a pile of soft pillows and considers. The slide of her fingers against the wagon’s lacquered wood sounds like sand hissing through an hourglass.
“He is the first of his kind,” she says. “Rain will turn to steam on his skin, and steel to molten metal. As for salt, he will simply laugh to see it used against him, for he has inured himself to its effects. No, the Nightbringer cannot be killed. Not by a human, anyway. But he can be stopped.”
“How?”
Rain thuds on the wooden roof of the wagon, and I’m reminded suddenly of the drums of the Empire, the way their tattoo echoed down into my bones, leaving me jittery.
“Come back tonight,” the Kehanni says. “When the moon is high. And I will tell you.”
Musa sighs. “Kehanni, with respect—”
“Tonight.”
I shake my head. “But we—”
“Our stories are not bones left on the road for any hungry animal that happens along.” The Kehanni’s voice rises, and I flinch back. “Our stories have purpose. Souls. Our stories breathe, Laia of Serra. The stories we tell have power, of course. But the stories that go untold have just as much power, if not more. I will sing you such a story—a story that was long untold. The story of a name and its meaning. Of how that name matters more than any other single word in existence. But I must prepare myself, for such stories are dragons drawn from a deep well in a dark place. Does one summon a dragon? No. One may only invite it and hope it emerges. So. Tonight.”
The Kehanni refuses to say anything more, and soon Musa and I retreat to the inn, exhausted. He disappears into his room with a half-hearted wave.
The Tribeswoman said the Nightbringer can be stopped. Will she tell me how? I shiver in anticipation. What sort of story will she sing tonight?
A story that was long untold. The story of a name and its meaning. I open the door to my room, still wondering. But at the threshold, I freeze.
Because there is someone inside.
XXIV: Elias
Without the cottage to protect me, my mind is vulnerable to the jinn. But though I try to stay awake, I am, in the end, only human.
Since becoming Soul Catcher I have not dreamed. I only realize it now, when I open my eyes and find myself in a dark alley on an empty street. A flag flaps in the wind—black with crossed hammers. Marcus’s sigil. I taste salt in the summer air, overlaid by something bitter. Blood. Smoke. Burnt stone.
Whispers ride the air, and I recognize the sibilant tones of the jinn. Is this one of their illusions? Is it real?
A whimper breaks the silence. A hooded figure slumps on the ground behind me. I watch for a moment before moving toward the figure. I’m wary as a pale hand emerges from a cloak, clenched tightly around a blade. But when I see the face beneath the hood, my caution disappears.
It’s the Blood Shrike. Blood blooms from her hunched body, staining the cobblestones around her, merciless and inexorable.
“I’m sorry . . .” the Blood Shrike whispers when she sees me. “For what I did to Mamie. The Empire—” She coughs, and I crouch beside her, a hand on her back. She feels warm. Alive.
“Who did this to you?” Some part of me knows this is a dream, but that part fades and I’m simply in it, living it, as if it’s real. The Shrike’s face is drawn and white, her teeth chattering though the night is clear and warm. When I run my hands over her arms, trying to find her injury, she shudders, lifting back her cloak to show a wound in her belly. It looks bad.
Very bad.
It’s a dream. Just a dream. Still, fear stabs through me. I was angry at her when I last met her, but seeing her like this transfers my rage to whoever did this to her. Plans fall into place. Where is the nearest infirmary? Get her there. No—the barracks. Which barracks?
But I can’t do any of that, for this is a dream.
“Are you here to welcome me to—what did she call it—the Waiting Place?”
“You’re not dead,” I say. “And you’re not going to die. Do you hear me?” A powerful memory hits me—the first Trial, Marcus attacking her, the Shrike’s too-light body against mine as I carried her down the mountain.
“You’re going to live. You’re going to find whoever did this to you. You’re going to make them pay. Get up. Get to safety.” Urgency grips me. I must say these words to her. I feel that knowledge in my bones. Her pupils dilate; her body straightens.