“You answer my questions,” I say, “and I’ll answer yours. An honest conversation, just like you wanted.”

“Ah, a human bargain with a fey, like in the stories your Kehannis tell.” Talis laughs. To my surprise, the sound is not menacing but warm, and a little sad. “Very well, Soul Catcher. One for one. You first. Why are you here?”

The Commandant’s interrogation training kicks in. If you must, offer the shortest answers you can while maintaining the illusion of cooperation.

“Reconnaissance,” I say.

“What did you learn, Banu al-Mauth?” he asks. “That we aren’t as great a threat as you feared? That your precious humans are safe?”

“As for your second and third questions,” I clarify, lest he think I’ve lost count, “I learned that you struggle with your powers, but that you are still a threat. Regarding the fourth, humans are not precious to me. Not anymore. Only the Waiting Place matters. Only the ghosts.”

“Lies.” The jinn motions me to walk with him toward the escarpment. “What of Laia of Serra?”

A fifth question. Yet none of my answers have given him any real information. This is too easy. Either he will go back on his word and refuse my questions, or there is something else afoot.

“Some names are etched into the stars,” Talis goes on. “Melody and countermelody, a harmony that echoes in the blood. I hear such harmony in your names—Laia-Elias.” He speaks them so they sound like one word, so they sound like a song. “You might seek to deny her, but you cannot. Fate will always lead you back to her, for good or for ill.”

“I am not Elias anymore. And Laia is my past,” I say. “The Waiting Place is my present and my future.”

“No, Soul Catcher,” Talis says. “War is your past. War is your present. War is your future. The Augurs knew it—they sensed it when you were but a child. Why else would they choose you for Blackcliff?”

My nightmare rears its head. The army behind me, the bloody scims in my hands. The maelstrom, churning and insatiable.

Talis slows, his gaze fixed on my face. “What did you see, just then?” There is a strange undercurrent of urgency in his tone. “The Augur’s foretelling?”

I am surprised, but I hide it. Now I understand why he wasted his other questions. This was the one he wanted to ask from the beginning.

But Cain was desperate to keep the prophecy a secret from the jinn. If the Nightbringer hears what I have to say, it will be the end of all things. The Augur was cryptic and manipulative, but he never lied. Not outright. If he was afraid, perhaps there was a reason.

“You’ve asked enough questions for now. My turn,” I say, and though Talis glowers, jaw tight with impatience, he nods.

“Why is the Nightbringer stealing the ghosts that should be going to the Waiting Place?”

Talis is silent for long enough that I wonder if he’s going to answer the question.

“Revenge,” he says.

I think of my own answer earlier. Reconnaissance. The more questions he gets out of me, the more likely it is that he can ask about the foretelling.

Think, Soul Catcher. Think. The Nightbringer isn’t using ghosts to gather magic. He’s using them for revenge. What flavor of revenge? My nightmarish visions come to mind, and I cast another guess.

“What does the Nightbringer’s theft of the ghosts have to do with the maelstrom I’ve seen in my nightmares?”

Talis swings his head toward me, unable to mask his shock. “What nightmares?”

I do not answer, and he looks ahead, frustrated. “He seeks to create a gateway of sorts, between Mauth’s dimension and your own. He wishes to return all the suffering that has been cleansed from the world back into it.”

And though the Sea of Suffering churns, ever restless, verily does Mauth preside, a bulwark against its hunger. Aubarit spoke those words to me. And now it appears the Nightbringer seeks to pierce that bulwark. To what end, I don’t yet know.

“Suffering is a state of mind, a feeling,” I say. “It can’t do anything.”

Talis shrugs. “That sounds like a question.”

Damn you. “How is the Nightbringer planning to weaponize this suffering?”

“Suffering is a monster, waiting to be released from a cage. You have only to look at your own mother to know the truth of that.”

“What the bleeding hells is that supposed to mean?” The question is out of my mouth before I can stop myself.

“Keris Veturia’s suffering runs deep, Soul Catcher. My brethren mistakenly believe that she is but a human stooge, a servant to carry out the Meherya’s plan. But her suffering is why he sees himself in her. Why she sees herself in him. Suffering is the cup from which they both drink. It is the language they both speak. And it is the weapon they both wield.”

The Mother watches over them all. So Keris is more essential to the Nightbringer’s plan than I realized. The rest of the foretelling makes little sense, but that part, at least, must refer to her.

And though “watches over” sounds benevolent enough, when it comes to Keris, it isn’t. Likely she’s dispatched spies to surveil the Blood Shrike and Laia.

And me.

I regard Talis with new suspicion. This little game has gone on long enough. Time to end it.

“What is the Nightbringer’s intent in releasing this suffering?”

“To cleanse the land of his enemy swiftly,” Talis says softly, “that the fey might live in peace.”

Bleeding, burning hells. He wants to kill all the Scholars at once. And he’ll use this maelstrom to do it.

“Do you see now why war is your fate? I know well the Oath of the Soul Catcher. To light the way for the weak, the weary, the fallen, and the forgotten in the darkness that follows death. There is no one to light the way for them now, Elias. No one to protect the spirits. Unless you take up the torch.”

“I will not return to that life.” I have waged enough war. Brought enough pain into existence. For all that I long for in the world of the living, war is one thing I will never miss. “Besides, if I fight for the Tribespeople or the Scholars, I will only end up killing Martials. Either way, the Nightbringer wins. I will not do it.”

We have reached the escarpment, and here Talis stops. “And that is why it must be you,” he says. “A commander who has tasted the bitter fruit of war is the only one worthy of waging it. For he understands the cost. Now—to my question.”

“No more questions,” I say. “For I have none for you. I will not tell you what the Augur said. Do not bother asking.”

“Ah.” Talis observes my face, and I feel like he’s seeing more than I want him to. “That alone gives me the answer I seek. Will you fight, Soul Catcher?”

“I do not know,” I say. “But since you asked a question, I find I have one more, after all. Why let me live? You got nothing out of this conversation.”

Talis glances up at the escarpment, at the exposed, blackened roots of the jinn grove. “I love the Meherya,” he says. “He is our king, our guide, our savior. Without him, I would still be locked away in that damnable grove, leeched on by the Augurs.” He shudders. “But I fear for the Meherya. And I fear for my kin. I fear that which he calls forth from the Sea. Suffering cannot be tamed, Soul Catcher. It is a wild and hungry thing. Perhaps Mauth protects us against it for a reason.”

The clouds above shift, and the sun peeks through for a moment. Talis lifts his face to the light. “We were creatures of the sun once,” he says. “Long ago.”

The hollows of his cheeks, the angle of his chin are strangely familiar. “I know you.” I remember then, where I saw him. “I saw you with Shaeva, in the palace walls—in the images there. You were the other guard to the Nightbringer—to his family.”

Talis inclines his head. “Shaeva was a friend for long years,” he says. “I mourn her still. There must be some good in you if she saw fit to name you a Soul Catcher.”

After he leaves, I go to the clearing outside my cabin. The soft grass is nothing but snow-dusted yellow scrub now. Shaeva’s summer garden is a squarish lump beneath a fresh layer of powder. The cabin is dim, though as ever, I left a few embers burning in the hearth.

All is silent, and the silence is obscene, for this forest is the one place where ghosts are meant to find succor. And now they cannot. Because the Nightbringer is taking them all.

Inside the cabin, I do not light the lamp. Instead I stand before the two scims gathering dust above the fireplace. They gleam dully, their beauty an affront when one considers what they were created for.

I think of the Augur, that odious, cawing wretch. Not just of his foretelling, which made no sense, but the last two words he spoke. Words that stirred my blood, that made the battle rage rise in me. My vow to Mauth rings in my mind, clear as a bell.

To rule the Waiting Place is to light the way for the weak, the weary, the fallen, and the forgotten in the darkness that follows death. You will be bound to me until another is worthy enough to release you. To leave is to forsake your duty—and I will punish you for it. Do you submit?