“She’s tightened her defenses.”

Know your enemy. In Blackcliff, it was the first rule the Commandant taught us about war.

“If our strikes were hurting her,” I say, “she would have done more than tighten her defenses.”

“We’ve decimated her supplies and livestock, Elias,” Laia says. “Slowed them down by days. Our attacks are hurting her. She’ll arrive in Taib with a far weaker army than she expected.”

But why should she care about Taib? It hits me then, and I feel like a fool for not seeing it before. Keris is herding us. Distracting us.

“She split her forces.” I say. “She doesn’t give two figs about Taib, Laia. She wants Nur.”

Capturing the crown jewel of the Tribal desert will net the Nightbringer three times as many souls as Taib. I slow my horse and dismount, throwing my canteen and some provisions into a pack. “I have to go. I have to see if it’s true. I’ll return.”

“Send out scouts,” Laia says. “Or at least tell the fighters you’re going. Even if you don’t . . . care about them—”

“Mohsin An-Saif. Sule An-Nasur. Omair An-Saif. Isha Ara-Nur. Kasib An-Rahim.” I tighten my scim straps and swing my pack on. “Those are the five fighters who died last night. They leave behind four mothers, three fathers, eight siblings, and two children.”

Horses move around us, and some of the fighters stare at me surreptitiously. While a few call out greetings to Laia, most look away from me.

“I do not speak to them because I’m not their savior, Laia,” I say. “I can’t tell them everything will be all right. Or that I can make them safe. Instead, I tell them they can flee their enemies or fight, knowing that they will fight. Knowing that as a result, many will die. And I’m doing all of it so the ghosts find peace in the Waiting Place. I do it to save the dead, not the living.”

“Fine,” she says. “But no one wants to fight for nothing, Elias. You need to give them a reason. Let them know and understand you. Let them care for you. Otherwise you might return and find you have no army left.”

“The fate of their dead is their reason,” I say. “And it will have to be enough.” I hand her the reins of my mount. “I shouldn’t be gone more than a few hours.”

“Elias—”

“Soul Catcher,” I tell her, before windwalking out into the desert, scouring for any sign of Keris’s army. I consider what Laia said as I travel. No one wants to fight for nothing. My grandfather, Quin Veturius, is a legendary leader of men. His soldiers follow him because they trust his battle acumen. They trust that he cares about them and their families and their lives.

Keris leads through fear. Through threats that are reinforced by a fierce and uncanny understanding of human weakness.

Tribe Saif followed Uncle Akbi because they loved him. The same reason Tribe Nur follows Afya. The Tribal fighters do not entirely trust me. Nor do they fear me. They certainly do not love me. Because I am their Banu al-Mauth, they respect me. I have no right to ask for more.

Windwalking lends me speed, but it does not make it easy to find Keris’s army. I check every canyon, every depression in which they might be lurking, zigzagging over the Tribal lands. But I find nothing.

That night, I take shelter in a ravine. As I build up a fire, I step back into the memories Cain gave me of Blackcliff, of training, of her.

The Commandant taught me that to defeat your enemy, you had to know her better than you knew yourself. Her wants. Her weaknesses. Her allies. Her strengths.

The next day, I do not make for ravines or canyons. Because I know now that I will not find her army there. Instead, I head for the open desert and put my hand to the chill, cracked ground.

Keris has jinn who can magic away the sights and sounds of the army. She cannot, however, erase their passage from the earth itself. Midway through the day, I feel a distant rumble. Thousands of boots marching. Horses. Wagons. War machines.

I make for that thunderous drone until suddenly, I’m among the army. I windwalk amid the neat rows of infantrymen, their heads bent against the sharp desert wind.

A scream cracks the air. “Breach!” an unearthly voice shouts. “Breach! Find the intruder!”

It’s Umber who cries the warning, and she streaks through the skies toward me, kneading the wind to lend her speed. Though I bolt away before the soldiers notice my presence, fiery hands swipe at my back. She’s caught my scent.

“Ah, the humans’ savior!” Umber pursues me in full flame, glaive in hand. She swings it down through my armor and into the flesh of my back. “How does it feel to fail?”

Mauth’s magic surges weakly. But it is not enough to block Umber’s next attack, or to keep me from spinning out of my windwalk like a wounded bird.

The ground rises up at me far too swiftly, and I fall with a bone-numbing crash. Pain rolls through me in relentless waves, and blood pours from the wound in my back, but Umber is not done. As I lurch away from her, frantic to escape, she swings the blade across my stomach, slicing into my side.

“I will find you, little Soul Catcher,” she grinds out. “You cannot run from me.”

But I can bleeding try. I just need to get away long enough that she can’t track me. Her fire does not burn as bright as it did in Aish. She is still recovering. If I’m clever, I can outwit her. Come on, Soul Catcher, I snarl at myself. You’ve dealt with worse.

I force the pain into one corner of my mind and windwalk, spinning sharply around Umber, striking at her with my scims. They dig deep into her hip, and she screams—perhaps from the wound, perhaps from the salt coating I applied to the blade. She tumbles to the earth in an explosion of dust and fire, and I am away.

Though not for long. After only seconds, she is behind me again. My head aches, and my vision doubles. Soul Catcher or not, I’m in danger. My scims feel like anvils in my hands—it is all I can do to hold on to them.

“Where is Mauth now?” Umber follows me turn for turn, hacking at me with her glaive, crowing as it tears through my shoulder. “Where is the magic, little Soul Catcher?”

The sun-blasted earth blurs beneath my feet as I turn and turn and turn again. Anything to shake her loose, slow her down.

Magic surges around me—not mine, but not Umber’s either. She disappears, her vitriol abruptly silenced. I don’t know what happened to her and I don’t care. I keep running, until finally, I can go no farther. Slowing down could mean death; skies know what else is out here. But I must. My heart pumps too frantically. I’ve lost too much blood.

The moment I stop, I retch, and if Umber appeared now, I’d be a dead man. Mauth’s magic slows the damage, but I can’t stand.

My canteen is still in my pack—thank the skies Umber didn’t tear it from me—and I drink the entire contents down as I try to comprehend what I just saw. Keris’s army was vast. Twice the size of the army we’ve been bedeviling. It will crush Nur like a Mask crushing a flea.

Nur must be warned. Laia, Afya, Shan—all the Tribespeople who fought with me—still have time to protect the city. But I have to get to them.

As I mull, my neck prickles.

I am on my feet, if unsteady, but there is no one here. Hallucinations. Excellent. The last time I hallucinated in a desert, I nearly died of poisoning.

Not today. The wind rises, nudging me northwest, so I follow it. Instinct is instinct. Sometimes it’s a shout in your head, and sometimes it’s your mind telling you the wind wants you to move in a particular direction.

Whenever I stop—which is often—I get that same feeling, as if I’m being watched. But it is not hostile. Nor is it kindly. It feels wary. One animal observing another.

By sunset, I spot the lights of the Tribal caravan. It has stopped for the night, and though all I want is to find a quiet corner of the camp to nurse my wounds alone, the wind appears to shove me to the center of it. I teeter to a stop beside Mamie Rila’s wagon.

“Elias!” Laia drops the bowl in her hands and runs toward me. “Where have you—you’re bleeding!”

“S-Soul Catcher,” I correct her, and she shoots me a glare, wedging herself under my arm. My legs give out the moment she does.

“I’m sorry,” I mumble. “Too—too heavy—”

“I dragged you on and off a horse for a week when you were poisoned,” she says. “In armor heavier than this. Shan!”

My foster brother appears with two other Saif Tribesmen. A few minutes later, we are in Mamie’s wagon, Afya, Mamie, and Shan bent over me.

Laia disappears, returning a moment later with a black rucksack. She shoos everyone else away and snips off my leathers, wincing at the sight of my wounds.

A joke teeters on the tip of my tongue. Something about her trying to get my shirt off. I bite it back, my body jerking as she applies bloodroot to Umber’s slashes.

“Who did this?” Her jaw is clenched, and if Umber were to fight Laia right now, I’d bet my marks on the latter. “And why didn’t Mauth’s magic protect you?”