Will I see him now? In the Waiting Place? Will he welcome me? What folly that he is chained to that place—what folly when this world needs his light.
“You deserved better,” I whisper.
“Shrike!” The scrape of boots has me baring my teeth and brandishing my dagger. But I recognize the black hair and gold skin, and though I’m confused, I’m not really surprised, because he is my best friend, after all, and he’d never let me just die.
“You—you came—”
“Shrike, listen to me, stay awake. Stay with me.” But no—it’s not Elias. The voice doesn’t offer the slow, deep warmth of summer. It’s cool and harsh—all wrong. It’s winter. Like me. Then there’s another voice, also familiar. Dex. “There’s a physician in the Aquilla house—”
“Get him,” the cool voice says. “Help me with her armor first—she’ll be easier to carry. Careful with her stomach.”
I know the first voice now. Avitas Harper. Strange, quiet Harper. Thoughtful and watching and filled with an emptiness that calls to me.
He works quickly to unbuckle my armor, and I stifle a moan when it comes off. Dex’s handsome, dark face, strained in the half-light, clarifies. A good soldier. A true friend. But he’s always in pain. Always alone. Hiding.
“It’s not fair,” I whisper to him. “You should love whom you wish. How the Empire would treat you if they knew, it’s not—”
Dex’s face pales, and he glances quickly at Avitas. “Save your strength, Shrike,” he says. Then he’s gone, and a muscled arm comes around my waist. Harper pulls my hand across his shoulders, and we take a step—another—but I am staggering. I’ve lost too much blood.
“Pick me up, you idiot,” I gasp. A moment later I am weightless, and I sigh.
“You’re going to be fine, Hel—Shrike.” A crack in Harper’s voice. Emotion? Fear?
“Don’t let anyone see me,” I whisper. “This—this is undig—dignified.”
A bark of laughter. “Only you would think that while your guts are leaking out onto the damned pavement. Hold on, Blood Shrike. The barracks aren’t far.”
He makes for the front entrance, and I shake my head emphatically. “Take me through the back. The Plebeians we’re sheltering can’t see me like this—”
“We don’t have a choice. The fastest way to the infirmary is through the front door—”
“No!” I thrash and shove Harper’s chest. He doesn’t so much as twitch. “They cannot see me like this! You know what she’ll do. She’ll use it against me. The Paters already think I’m weak.”
“Captain Avitas Harper.” Harper freezes at the voice, deep and ancient and brooking no argument. “Bring her this way.”
“You get the bleeding hells away from us.” Harper backs away two steps, but the Nightbringer holds out his hands.
“I could kill you both with a thought, child,” he says softly. “If you wish for her to live, bring her.”
Harper hesitates for a moment and then follows. I want to protest, but my mouth is unable to form words. His body is taut as a wire pulled tight, heart thudding swift like a river current. But his masked face is serene. Some part of me relaxes. My sight darkens. Ah, sleep . . .
“Stay with me, Shrike.” Harper speaks sharply, and I groan in protest. “Keep your eyes open. You don’t have to speak. All you have to do is stay awake.”
I force myself to focus on the swirling robes of the Nightbringer. He whispers, but I cannot make out the words. A brick wall that rose before us disappears. Magic! Moments later, the barracks come into view. The guards stationed outside look up, hands on their scims. But the Nightbringer speaks again, and they turn away as if they haven’t seen us.
“Set her down, Captain.” We enter my quarters, and the Nightbringer gestures to my bed. “And then leave.”
Harper settles me onto the bed slowly. Still, I grimace, another wave of pain washing over me at the strain on my wound. When he backs away, I feel cold.
“I will not leave her.” He straightens and looks the Nightbringer in the face without flinching.
The Nightbringer considers. “Very well. Get out of the way.”
The jinn sits beside me on the bed. He throws back my shirt, and I catch a glimpse of his hand beneath the sleeve of his robe. It is shadowy and twisted, with an eerie glow beneath the darkness that makes me think of banked embers. I think of a day long ago in Serra, the first time I met him. I remember how he sang—just one note—and the bruises on my face healed.
“Why are you helping me?”
“I cannot help you,” the Nightbringer says. “You can, however, help yourself.”
“Can’t—can’t heal myself.”
“Your healing power allows you to recover more quickly than a normal human,” he says. Distantly, I realize that Avitas is hearing all of this. That maybe I should have had him leave the room. But I am too weak to care. “How else could you still live, child, after losing so much blood? Consider the wound, and then find your song. Do it. Now.”
The words are not a request but an order.
I hum tunelessly, fighting the pain, searching for my song. I close my eyes, and I am a girl again, comforting Hannah when she came into my bed at night, terrified of monsters. Mother would find us huddling together and sing us to sleep. Sometimes in the deep night at Blackcliff, thinking of her song brought me peace. But when I sing now, nothing happens.
Why would it? My song is not one of peace. It is one of failure and pain. My song is one of battle and blood, death and power. It is not the song of Helene Aquilla. It is the song of the Blood Shrike. And I cannot find it. I cannot wrap my mind around it.
This is it then. Cut down on the street like a drunk civvie who couldn’t tell a blade from a bottle.
The Nightbringer sings two notes. Rage, I think. Love. A raw, cold world lives in that short song—my world. Me.
I sing the two notes back to him. Two notes become four, four become fourteen. Rage for my enemies, I think. Love for my people. This is my song.
But it hurts, bleeding hells, it hurts. The Nightbringer takes my hand. “Pour the pain into me, child,” he says. “Turn it away from yourself.”
His words unleash a flood. Even as the burden of my wound transfers to him, he does not flinch. He does not move at all, his cloaked form a statue as he accepts it. My skin stitches itself back together, burning with an ache that makes me cry out.
A blade hisses as it leaves its sheath. “What the bleeding hells did you do to her?”
The Nightbringer turns to Avitas and gestures. Immediately, Harper drops the scim as if burned.
“Look.” The jinn moves, nodding down to my wound, which is now nothing but a star-shaped scar. It weeps blood, but it will not kill me.
Harper’s low oath tells me that I will soon have a great deal of explaining to do. But I can worry about that later. My body is exhausted, but when the Nightbringer releases me, I make myself sit up.
“Wait,” I whisper. “Will you tell her of this?” He knows of whom I speak.
“Why would I tell her? So that she can attempt to kill you again? I am not her servant, Blood Shrike. She is mine. She attacked you against my orders. I have no patience for defiance, thus I have thwarted her.”
“I don’t understand. Why would you help me? What do you want from me?”
“I am not helping you, Blood Shrike.” He stands and gathers his robes. “I am helping myself.”
* * *
When I wake, night has fallen, and the rafters shudder with reverberations of catapult projectiles. The Barbarians must have recommenced their bombardment of Navium.
I am alone in my room, but my armor is hung neatly from the wall. A curse slips through my lips as I rise. My wound has gone from deadly to irritatingly painful. Stop whinging. Get your armor on. I limp to the wall, every joint as stiff as an old woman’s in deep winter. I hope a few minutes on my feet will warm up my body enough that I can at least ride.
“Off to get yourself killed again so soon?” The familiar rasp is so unexpected that I don’t believe I’m hearing it at first. “Your mother would be appalled.”