“The barbarous keen yokes us to the low beasts, to the unutterable violence of the earth,” Elias mutters, and when I look at him askance, he shrugs. “Something the Warden of Kauf Prison said. For once, that evil old bastard was right.”

Indeed, a human scream is unique because of its rawness. A fey cry, however, is round and clean, without edges. A stone instead of a saw.

It is the fey who scream now, the sand efrits who are immune to fire, and who agreed to provide a distraction to cover the evacuation of the Tribespeople.

We make our way to the rooftop of the garrison. It is a broad space, scattered with patchy armor, sandbags, and a few piles of pale brick—whatever the Martials failed to take when the Tribes drove them out.

“Does this remind you of anything?”

Elias looks around, nonplussed. “Should it?”

“Last year,” I say. “When we were breaking out Scholars from Martial ghost wagons. Only difference is that now I can do this—” I raise my hand to his dark hair, pushing it back. “And Mauth won’t give you a splitting headache.”

He catches my hand, gripping it for a moment before the Soul Catcher takes hold again and he releases me.

“I wish you luck, Laia,” he says. “But I have my own mission. If you’re in trouble, I can’t help.”

“I am not expecting you to,” I say. “But if something happens to me—”

“Defeat in the mind is defeat on the—”

“You Blackcliff types and all your sayings.” I kick his boot. “Listen, for skies’ sake. If something happens, be a brother to Darin for me. Swear you will.”

“I don’t—” He takes in my scowl and nods. “I promise,” he says.

“Thank you, Soul Catcher.”

“Elias,” he says after a moment, the slightest bit of warmth entering those cold gray eyes. “From you I prefer Elias.”

Now it is my turn to be stunned. If we were not about to confront the Nightbringer, I would kiss him. Instead, all I can do is stare as he disappears over the side of the building.

Mission, Laia. Focus on the mission.

As I scurry across the rooftop, wind howls out of the south, a spine-chilling preface to the approach of the jinn and their human army.

I look up to find the entire southern horizon obscured by a towering wall of sand. The storm is ten times larger than the one the Nightbringer conjured up in this very same desert the first time Elias and I came through. And it moves fast—too fast.

When I am only halfway across the roof, it hits, propelling me backward with its force. Though I bend my head against it, the sand is so thick and the wind so strong that I can barely see. I am forced back—finding shelter between a pile of sandbags and the wall—which is no shelter at all. I crouch, coughing the sand out of my lungs, frantically pulling a kerchief over my eyes so I do not go sand blind.

My plan was to hide in a weapons shed on the other side of the wall. But I cannot possibly make it now. Not before the Nightbringer arrives.

“I can help.” Rehmat’s glow flickers as thick clouds of sand float through her. “If you let me in.”

“Will he not sense you?”

She hesitates. “Yes. But I am ready for him. And this storm, it is hurting you.” Her form shifts, as if she’s fidgeting, and her voice is so soft I almost can’t hear it. “I would not see you harmed, Laia. Whether you believe it or not, I am bonded to you, the way a fine blade is bonded to its maker.”

Like with Mamie, I feel a sudden flush of warmth at her words. But it is tempered with wariness. Rehmat is so fey. So unknowable. How can I trust her again?

“I’m not ready for you to join with me,” I say, and she recoils in frustration. I do not wish to hurt her. But I will not be betrayed again. She has not met the Nightbringer since the flood. This is an opportunity to see if she truly is my ally instead of his. “Let’s stick to the plan.”

Something thuds atop the tower. A voice speaks, and I clench the hilt of my dagger, fighting back the urge to disappear, and trying desperately not to give myself away by coughing.

“Whip up the winds to spread the fire.” The Nightbringer’s thunderstorm voice rolls across the roof. “And take the storm north. Slow the rats who flee until the Martials can slaughter them.”

“Yes, Meherya,” a voice responds. From what Elias told us, it must be Azul, the jinn who can control the weather.

Azul leaves, and the sandstorm howls past, the thick grit billowing toward where the Tribes evacuate the city. Behind me, the screaming intensifies as the Nightbringer’s kin set houses alight. The sand efrits, it turns out, are excellent actors.

I tense, hoping to the skies that the Nightbringer does not pay close attention to those screams. But he hardly seems to notice them.

Instead, he stares out at Nur. In Aish, Sadh, and most of the villages in Marinn, he always found the tallest building in the city from which to witness the carnage. As despicable as it is, at least it’s predictable. He bows his head, and something flickers behind him.

Maro, Rehmat told me when Elias and I first conjured up this plan. The jinn who steals the souls for him. The two of them will be distracted by the exertion required to perpetrate such a vile theft. And confused when the souls do not appear. When they are deep in their work, I will tell you.

That is all she is supposed to do. Elias will neutralize Maro. And I will take the scythe.

The screams from the city rise in pitch, but the Nightbringer remains immobile. I try not to fidget, waiting for Rehmat to appear. But she does not. Soon, he will realize that we have tricked him. That the screams are not human. What in the skies is taking her so long?

Suddenly, his back goes stiff. He turns toward the sandbags. Toward me.

Oh skies.

“Laia!” Rehmat whispers in my ear. “Let me in—”

I ignore her and stand, dagger high. The last time I saw him, he was not exactly reasonable, but not murderous either. “Hail, Meherya,” I say. “You have something I want.”

Distantly, a building crumbles, and the jinn fire roars closer. Smoke curls through the air, stinging my eyes, my throat.

“Come to watch a city burn, Laia?” he says. “I did not think you had such a taste for blood. Or punishment.”

Though his presence has always twisted the air around him, the Nightbringer’s shadow seems to drag with some new weight. The hatred in his flame eyes is bottomless. He unsheathes the scythe with a flick of his smoky hand and holds it to my throat.

Rehmat manifests beside him.

“Meherya,” she says. “Stop this. This is not who you are—”

“You.” He turns his wrath upon her, but the malice drains out of him, and there is only pain. “Traitor to your own—”

“No—never—”

“Do you remember nothing?” he cries. “Who we were, what we lost, what we suffered—”

Laia. She speaks in my mind. Let me in. Please. He is lost. He will kill you.

But he does not kill me. Instead he lowers the scythe, and I back away, astonished. Waiting for some new cruelty. But he ignores me completely.

“Come back to me,” he says to Rehmat, sheathing the weapon. “Help me remake this world for our kin. You were a warrior, Rehmat. You fought and burned and died for our people. For our—our children—”

“You dare invoke our children?” Rehmat’s voice is raw and terrible. As she speaks, I shift toward the scythe, readying my dagger. “When you murder other children at will? I will never join you, Meherya. I am not who I was. As you are not who you were.”

“Do you not understand why?” he pleads with her. “I do this because I love. Because I—”

I lunge for his back, slicing through the straps of the scythe. As he turns, as his fiery hands rise up to snatch it back, I call out, but not to Rehmat.

“Elias!”

Almost instantly, a voice screams out from behind the Nightbringer.

It is Maro, a Serric steel blade coated in salt at his neck. Behind him, hood pulled low, stands Elias.

The Soul Catcher’s gaze shifts to me briefly. I can’t help, he’d said. And yet when I called, he was there. As if he catches my thought, he shrugs and jerks his head toward the stairwell. Get out of here.

Scythe in hand, I go.

XLIII: The Soul Catcher

Maro does not put up much of a fight. His skill is limited to soul stealing. The Nightbringer would not keep him so close, otherwise. The touch of my salted dagger elicits a cringe.

To my relief, Laia is gone. When she screamed my name, I had not a whisper of hesitation. It doesn’t matter that I said I wouldn’t help. It doesn’t matter that I need to interrogate Maro to figure out what the hells he’s doing with the ghosts. When she called out, all that mattered was her.

But now she’s gone, and the Nightbringer turns toward me. I drag Maro back a few steps. The soul-stealing jinn wears his shadow form, and he is narrow-shouldered and slender, almost emaciated. When he opens his mouth, I dig in my blade, and he gasps, huffing in pain.

“You’ve been stealing ghosts, Maro.” I fix my gaze on the Nightbringer. “Tell me how to get them back.”

“You cannot get them back,” the Nightbringer says. “They are gone.”

“What have you done with them?”