“He knows, Shrike,” Heera whispers. “Grímarr. He knows you’ve come to kill him. He wants you. Your blood. Your bones. He’s—he’s waiting—”

If she says more, I don’t hear it. To my right, from behind a closed door, a board creaks.

Then the door bursts open, and an army of Karkauns pours out.

XX: Laia

The jinn is hooded and cloaked, but I can tell it is not the Nightbringer. The air around the creature is not curdled or twisted. The humans who ride with it do not cringe away.

My mind races. Nothing blocks their line of sight and the sun rises from the sea at my back. A shout of alarm confirms that they have seen me. Skies only know how they found me.

Rehmat’s voice sounds from beside me, though the creature does not manifest. “Why do you stand there like a moonstruck doe, child?” it demands. “If they catch you, they will kill you.”

“They are in bow range. If they wanted me dead, they’d shoot me.” I consider the advancing soldiers, and though my courage falters when I spot the silver glitter of a Mask, I remind myself that if I need to disappear, I can. “What if I let them catch me? There’s a jinn with them. I could trick it into giving me information about the Nightbringer.”

“You cannot trick a jinn.” I hear a long sniff. “And I smell devilry in the air.”

“I need to learn about the Nightbringer,” I say. “What better way than from his kin?”

“I cannot help you if you are with the jinn,” Rehmat warns me. “I cannot be discovered.”

Rehmat hasn’t mentioned this before. “What happens if they discover you?”

But the soldiers crest the rise of a nearby hill and thunder toward me. The jinn, cloaked and hooded with her face in shadow, leads.

If I just stand here, she will realize something is amiss. So I run. The Nightbringer has likely told the jinn I cannot use my invisibility around their kind. If she tries to kill me, or if I fail to get information from her, I can simply disappear. The Tribal lands are not far, and there are plenty of gullies and gulches to hide in.

I call on my magic and then let it falter, as if it is beyond me. The jinn surges forward eagerly—my deception worked. As the soldiers close in, I turn west, toward the grassy foothills that slowly flatten into the Tribal desert.

“Spread out!” The jinn’s voice is as crisp as the first breeze of winter, and instantly, the soldiers obey. “Do not let her past.”

I drop low to the ground, do my best to look terrified, and make a run for it. A blast of heat singes my back and a burning hand closes on my arm, tighter than a Martial torture cuff.

The jinn turns me around to face her. Despite the wind, her hood remains low, and all I can make out are the flames burning in her eyes.

“Laia of Serra,” she says. “The Meherya will be pleased to see you, vermin.”

The jinn nods to the Mask, who pulls chains from a pack mule. They are made of some glittering black metal I do not recognize. When the Mask claps them on me, an unpleasant tingle runs up my arms.

I smell devilry in the air.

On a hunch, I try to conjure my invisibility. But despite Rehmat’s assurances that its presence has strengthened my power, the magic does not respond.

“An extra precaution.” The jinn rattles my chains. “One cannot be too careful around humans.” She curls her lip at the last word and turns away.

My plan to mine information from her suddenly seems like the scheming of an idiot child. I do not even know what she can do. The Nightbringer is the first jinn, and thus possesses a panoply of powers: riding the wind; foretelling the future; reading minds; the manipulation of air, water, fire, and weather. This jinn might possess all of those skills—or a type of magic I have never heard of.

Whatever her power, I am now vulnerable to it. Rehmat said the jinn could no longer use their powers to tamper with me. But it said nothing of magic-suppressing chains.

“You were right,” I whisper to Rehmat. “I was wrong. Please help me get the hells away from here!”

But Rehmat does not reappear.

“Where are you taking me?” The jinn remains silent and I wish I had something to throw at her. Ultimately, all I can do is glare. I turn to the Mask. “Where are we going?”

“We’re heading—”

“Silence, Martial,” the jinn says, and her animosity for him is no less than it is for me. To my surprise, the Mask ceases speaking, though his glare is a soliloquy unto itself.

“You too.” She glances over, and though a retort hovered on my lips, I find I cannot say it. Oh skies. This jinn’s power, it appears, is compulsion. And I have no defense against it.

Panic licks at my mind, for if she has stolen my magic and laid me bare to her own, I am lost. I can get no information from her. I can only serve her until she is satisfied.

Fear is only your enemy if you allow it to be. Think, Laia. The jinn’s power must have limits. For instance, can she control the animals we ride? Or only humans?

I watch her from the corner of my eye as we turn southeast toward the Tribal lands. The brown mare she rides moves as if it’s part of her, calm and fluid. When drums thud out a message from the nearby garrison, hers is the only animal that doesn’t even twitch.

I drive my legs into my horse’s flanks, to see if it will react. It jerks, but continues at a steady pace. The jinn glances back.

“Stop it, girl,” she says. “The creature will not obey.”

The Mask rides at my side, stone-faced. He’s a lean, dark-skinned man who looks a bit older than the Commandant. The fine cut of his shirt and intricate plating of his armor indicate that he’s high up in the Martial pecking order. But he grips his reins as if they are his only purchase on this world.

I open my mouth to ask him if he has ever broken free. But when I do, no sound comes out. She has silenced my voice too.

My movement catches the man’s attention and he meets my stare. Beneath the silver mask, his pale blue eyes spark a desperate sort of fury. He hates what is being done to him as much as I do.

Which means that even though he is a Martial and a Mask to boot, he could be an ally.

I nod to my hands and, very slowly, spell out my question. Have you ever broken free?

For nearly a minute, he does not so much as twitch. Then he nods, once.

But the jinn turns, eyes on the Mask as if sensing his internal rebellion. She narrows her eyes and he jerks his head forward like a puppet, lips sealed tight.

We ride for hours without stopping, the only sound the clip-clop of the horse’s hooves and my own ragged breathing. The animals eat away at the miles more swiftly than is natural, aided no doubt by the jinns’ inborn skill with the wind. Every now and then, distant Martial drums beat a message. I try to make sense of them, but despite the Blood Shrike’s attempts to teach me how to understand them, I can only make out a few words. Sadh. Enemy. South.

The jinn cares as little for us as she would for a pack of animals. When we stop, she orders me to relieve myself behind a boulder, as if I am a hound she is walking. But my body obeys her and I burn with shame. And hatred.

That first night, we camp at a tiny oasis. She adjusts my chains and lashes me to a date palm.

“You will not consider escaping, girl.” She turns to the Mask. “Novius, is it? You will keep your men away from her, feed her, and see to any wounds. Rub a salve into her wrists for the chafing. You will not speak to each other. You will not set her free or aid in her escape.” At Novius’s nod, the jinn disappears into the desert.

Mask Novius does as he’s told, and when I try to capture his attention again, he looks furtively out at the dark, before focusing in on my hands.

Where to? I spell out.

Novius shakes his head. Either he cannot respond, or he does not wish to. I try again.

Weaknesses?

The Mask glances over my shoulder. Swiftly, he spells out:

Pride. Anger. Weakest at noon.

That aligns with what Elias said about the jinn being strongest at night. I consider my chains. The jinn wears the key around her neck. But other than its strange luster, the lock appears as any other.

Lock picks? I ask. Elias taught me to pick locks when he, Darin, and I were raiding Martial ghost wagons and freeing Scholars. I haven’t practiced in months, but Elias insisted it was like learning to swim. Once you know how, you never forget. He also said Masks always carry a set of picks.

But Novius only looks away.

At midnight, when the soldiers are sleeping and Novius has taken up a watch, the jinn materializes out of the desert and sits beside me. The moonlight tinges the flames of her eyes blue, and there is an emptiness there that makes me shrink back.

“Tell me of yourself, girl.” She settles herself just out of reach. “I allow you to speak.”

At first, I try to keep my mouth closed. But she presses her lips together and the compulsion to talk is overwhelming. Small truths, Laia, I tell myself. Don’t give anything away.

“My name is Laia of Serra,” I say. “I am nineteen years old. I have a brother—”

The jinn waves my words away. “Tell me about your magic.”

“I can disappear.”