The Ucaya Inn sits on a higher terrace, with a view of both Fari Bay, on the northwest end of Adisa, and Aftab Bay, on the northeast. There, among mountains of floating ice, whales breach and descend. In the city’s center, the charred spire of the Great Library lances the sky, still standing despite a fire that nearly destroyed it when I was last here.
But it is the people who make me stare. Even with a tempest roaring out of the north, the Mariners dress in their finest. Red and blue and purple wools embroidered with freshwater pearls and mirrors. Sweeping cloaks lined in fur and heavy with gold thread.
Perhaps I can make a home here one day. Most Mariners do not share Nikla’s prejudices. Maybe I, too, could wear beautiful clothes and live in a periwinkle house with a green-shingled roof. Laugh with friends, become a healer. Meet a handsome Mariner and swat at Darin and Musa when they tease me mercilessly about him.
I try to hold that image in my mind. But I do not want Marinn. I want sand and stories and a clear night sky. I want to stare up into pale gray eyes filled with love and that edge of wickedness I ache for. I want to know what he said to me in Sadhese, a year and a half ago, when we danced at the Moon Festival in Serra.
I want Elias Veturius back.
Stop, Laia. The Scholars and Martials in Delphinium are counting on me. Musa suspected Nikla wouldn’t hear the Shrike’s plea—so we plotted a way to make the crown princess listen. But it will not work unless I get through these streets and into the palace.
As I make my way toward the center of Adisa, snatches of conversation float by. The Adisans speak of attacks in far-flung villages. Monsters prowling the countryside.
“Hundreds dead, I heard.”
“My nephew’s regiment left weeks ago and we haven’t had any word.”
“Just a rumor—”
Only it is not a rumor. Musa’s wights reported back this morning. My stomach twists when I think of the border villages that were burned to the ground, their residents slaughtered.
The lanes I traverse grow narrower, and streetlamps more scarce. Behind me, a tinkle of coins echoes and I whirl, but no one is there. I walk more quickly when I catch a glimpse of the palace gate. It is inlaid with onyx and mother of pearl, selenic beneath the snowy pink sky. Stay away from that bleeding gate, Musa warned me. It’s guarded by Jaduna and they’ll see right through your invisibility.
The magic-wielding Jaduna hail from the unknown lands beyond the Great Wastes, thousands of miles to the west. A few serve the Mariner royal family. Running into one would mean jail—or death.
Thankfully, the palace has side entrances for the maids and messengers and groundskeepers who keep the place running. Those guards are not Jaduna, so slipping past them is simple enough.
But once inside, I hear that sound again—one coin sliding against another.
The palace is a massive complex arranged in a U around acres of manicured gardens. The halls are wide as boulevards and so tall that the frescoes painted upon the pale stone above are hardly visible.
There are also mirrors everywhere. As I turn a corner, I glance into one and catch a flash of gold coins and vivid blue clothing. My heartbeat quickens. A Jaduna? The figure is gone too fast to tell.
I backtrack, heading to where the person vanished. But all I find is a hallway patrolled by a pair of guards. I will have to deal with whomever—or whatever—is following me when they reveal themselves. Right now, I need to get to the throne room.
At sixth bell, Musa said, the princess departs the throne room for the dining hall. Go in through the southern antechamber. Place your blade on the throne and get out. The moment her guards see it, Nikla will be evacuated to her chambers.
No one gets hurt and we have Nikla where we want her. The Blood Shrike will be waiting and will make her plea.
The antechamber is small and musty, the faint scent of sweat and perfume mingling, but it is, as Musa predicted, empty. I slip silently through and into the shadows of the throne room.
Where I hear voices.
The first is a woman’s, resonant and angry. I’ve not heard Princess Nikla speak in months and it takes me a moment to recognize her intonations.
The second voice stops me cold, for it is laced with violence and chillingly soft. It is a voice that has no business being in Adisa. A voice I would know anywhere. She calls herself Imperator Invictus—Supreme Commander—of the Empire.
But to me, she will always be the Commandant.
III: The Soul Catcher
The stew tastes like memories. I don’t trust it.
The carrots and potatoes are tender, the grouse falling from the bone. But the moment I take a bite, I want to spit it out. Steam undulates in the cool air of my cabin, conjuring faces. A blonde-crowned warrior standing in a jungle with me, asking if I’m all right. A small, tattooed woman with a whip dripping blood and a gaze cruel enough to match.
A gold-eyed girl, her hands on my face, imploring me not to lie to her.
I blink and the bowl is across the room, smashed into the stone mantel above the fireplace. Dust drifts down from the masterfully crafted scims I hung up months ago.
The faces are gone. I’m on my feet, the splinters of the rough-hewn table I just built digging into my palms.
I don’t recall throwing the bowl or standing. I don’t remember grabbing the table so hard my hands bleed.
Those people—who are they? They are in the scent of winter fruit and the feel of a soft blanket. In the heft of a blade and the slap of a northern wind.
And they are in my nightly visions of war and death. The dreams always begin with a great army hurtling itself against a wave of fire. A roar breaks across the sky, and a maelstrom spins, sentient and hungry, devouring all in its path. The warrior is consumed. The cold woman and the gold-eyed girl disappear. In the distance, the soft pink blooms of Tala fruit trees drift to the earth.
The dreams make me uneasy. Not for myself but for those people.
They matter not, Banu al-Mauth. The voice reverberating in my head is low and ancient. It is Mauth, the magic at the heart of the Waiting Place. Mauth’s power shields me from threats and gives me insight into the emotions of the living and the dead. The magic lets me extend life or end it. All in service of protecting the Waiting Place, and offering solace to the ghosts that linger here.
Much of the past has faded, but Mauth left me some memories. One is what happened when I first became Soul Catcher. My emotions kept me from accessing Mauth’s magic. I could not pass the ghosts quickly enough. They gathered strength and escaped the Waiting Place. Once out in the world, they killed thousands.
Emotion is the enemy, I remind myself. Love, hate, joy, fear. All are forbidden.
What was your vow to me? Mauth speaks.
“I would help the ghosts pass to the other side,” I say. “I would light the way for the weak, the weary, the fallen, and forgotten in the darkness that follows death.”
Yes. For you are my Soul Catcher. Banu al-Mauth. The Chosen of Death.
But once, I was someone else. Who? I wish I knew. I wish—
Outside the cabin walls, the wind wails. Or perhaps it is the ghosts. When Mauth speaks again, his words are followed by a wave of magic that takes the edge off my curiosity.
Wishes only cause pain, Soul Catcher. Your old life is over. Attend to the new. Intruders are afoot.
I breathe through my mouth while I clean up the stew. As I don my cloak, I consider the fire. Last spring, efrits burned down the cabin that was here. It belonged to Shaeva, the jinn who was Soul Catcher until the Nightbringer murdered her.
Rebuilding the cabin took me months. The pale wood floor, my bed, the shelves for plates and spices—they’re all so new they still ooze sap. The house and clearing around it provide protection from the ghosts and the fey, just as they did when they belonged to Shaeva.
This place is my sanctuary. I do not want to see it burn down again.
But the cold outside is fierce. I bank the fire, leaving a few embers burning deep within the ashes. Then I tug on my boots and grab the carved wooden armlet I always find myself working on—though I don’t recall where it came from. At the door, I glance back at my blades. It has been difficult to give them up. They were a gift from someone. Someone I once cared for.
Which is why they don’t matter anymore. I leave them and step into the storm, hoping that with a realm to protect and ghosts to tend to, the faces that haunt me will finally fade away.
* * *
???
The intruders are so far south that when I drop out of my windwalk, the gale that raged around my cottage is little more than a rumor. The Duskan Sea mists my skin with salt, and through the crashing surf, I hear the interlopers. Two men and a woman holding a child, drenched and clambering up the glistening coastal rocks toward the Waiting Place.
They all have the same gold-brown skin and loose curls—a family, perhaps. The remnants of a ship float in the shallows beyond them and they stumble as they run, desperate to escape a band of sea efrits hurling detritus at them.