???

At dawn the next morning, I leave my room and go next door, to Zacharias. He sleeps, Tas on the cot beside him and Rallius standing near the door.

“Shrike,” Rallius murmurs, before stepping outside to give me a private moment.

I stand over my nephew’s crib and stare down at him. His brown curls are fuzzy and soft beneath my hand, just like Livia’s used to be when she was a child.

“I promise I will keep you safe.” I fight back the tears that threaten. I have done my screaming, my weeping. No more. “Whatever the price. I will protect you as I didn’t protect them. This I vow, by blood and by bone.”

And with that I leave, and go to secure my nephew’s empire.

XLVIII: Laia

The moon is high and fat when Elias finds Darin and me sitting atop a boulder on the rim of the canyon. I sense the Soul Catcher before I see him, the way you feel the air quiver when a falcon stoops for prey.

“What is it?” As I jerk my head up, Darin draws his scim, for we are on guard duty. “What do you see?”

My heart thuds against my chest like a penned bull as Elias approaches. Darin spots him and groans.

“Can I kick him?” my brother asks. “I’m going to kick him.”

“He saved your life, Darin.”

“A small kick,” he argues. “It wouldn’t even hurt him. Look at him, skies. It would probably break my foot.”

“No.”

“Fine.” Darin grabs his pack, ignoring the Soul Catcher’s nod of greeting. “I can tell when I’m not wanted.” Once past Elias, my brother turns around and mimes a kick, grinning.

Skies. Brothers.

“Any progress with the Tribes?” I ask Elias, for when I came up here, the Zaldars were still arguing over whether to leave for Adisa or try to fight for Aish.

Elias shakes his head. “Most wish to fight for Aish,” he says. “Few wish to go to Marinn.”

My fingers tighten around the staff of the scythe. The blade is folded into a slot in the wood, and it appears for all the world like nothing more than a fine walking stick. Which is essentially what it will be if I cannot get to the Nightbringer. And if Mamie cannot find his story.

None of us have slept for the past few nights, knowing now what the jinn king intends to do with all his soul thieving. I shiver, dread crawling over me like a carpet of spiders.

Elias clears his throat and nods to the rock. “Do you mind?”

I shift over quickly, surprised. He always seems like he struggles to even be near me. But I do not ask questions, instead letting myself enjoy the warmth of his body so close to mine.

“It’s a two-month journey to Adisa from here.” He stretches his long legs in front of him. “If we can get ships to take us across the Duskan Sea. If we survive the Commandant’s blockade. And if the weather holds.”

“You could order the Tribespeople to follow you,” I say. “The Banu al-Mauth’s word carries great weight. And they have trusted you thus far.”

“Only to see their cities destroyed—”

“Only to survive,” I say. “If you had not mobilized them, Nur and its people would be ash.”

“You said something to me a few weeks ago,” Elias says. His hands are upturned and he runs a thumb across a callous, worrying at it. “You cannot lead them if you do not understand them. Now I understand the Tribes. I understand their fear. They do not wish to die. And if we go to Adisa to fight, we take them to their deaths. Besides which, I wonder if we won’t be playing right into the Nightbringer’s hands by going to Marinn.”

“You think he’s trying to lure us there?”

“I think we shouldn’t be reactionary,” Elias says. “We need to consider.”

“We can’t consider for much longer,” I say. “Spring is only a few weeks away. In flowerfall, the orphan will bow to the scythe. I think—” I shudder. “I think that prophecy speaks of me—”

I cannot finish the thought. Are there people in the world who still experience happiness? Enjoy it, I want to tell those people. Enjoy it, because soon it might all be gone.

Elias shifts closer, and his arm comes around me. He might as well have transformed into a talking rabbit, I am so surprised.

“You did say to be more human—” He quickly lets go. “You looked sad, so . . .”

“No.” I return his wrist to my shoulder. “It’s fine. Though if you’re going to comfort me, your embrace should be less like a tree branch and more like a—a shawl.”

“A shawl?”

Of course, I had to pick a singularly unromantic word. “Like this.” I let my own arm rest naturally about his waist. “We’re not drunken schoolfellows singing chanties about wanton fishwives. We are—you and I—we—”

I do not know what we are. I search his face, wondering if I’ll ever see the answer there. But he tilts it up to the glittering sweep of the sky, so that I cannot see his expression.

Still, after a half dozen too-swift thuds of my heart, his arm relaxes, muscle by muscle, until it is draped comfortably across my back. His big hand encircles my hip, and when he pulls me closer, it feels as though all the heat in my body has pooled beneath his fingers.

For all that he is the Banu al-Mauth, he still smells of spice and rain. I forget the cold and breathe him in. It is not all that I wanted. But it is not nothing either.

I wait for him to pull away, but he does not. Slowly, the tension eases out of me. With him beside me, I feel more myself. Strong. And less alone.

“Do you think the jinn know?” I ask him. “What will happen if the Nightbringer releases the Sea?”

“They must at least suspect.” The rumble of Elias’s baritone hums through my body. “They are not fools.”

“Then why support him?” I say. “To be imprisoned for a thousand years and then released only to wreak havoc and die—it seems like a terrible waste.”

“Perhaps imprisonment drove them mad.”

But that doesn’t feel right. “It’s not madness that grips the Nightbringer,” I say. “It is intent. He wants to destroy everything. I think he’s hiding that fact from his kin.” I shiver. “Yet he claims to love them. He does love them.”

Footsteps crunch behind us, and we jump away from each other.

“Banu al-Mauth!” Gibran and Aubarit approach, and the latter bows her head in respect and then smacks Gibran, who quickly does the same.

“Dinner’s ready, Laia,” Gibran says. “Afya sent us up to take over.”

When Elias and I reach the canyon floor, he disappears, his eyes far away in that manner that tells me he’s working through a problem. Most of the Tribespeople have bedded down for the night. Those few remaining sit around the fire quietly, any arguing drowned out by the lonely wind wailing down the canyon, trying its best to put out our flames.

“Bleeding cold.” Afya’s teeth chatter around her spoon. “And there’s little enough wood. We won’t be able to stay here much longer.”

“Did you change any minds?”

“My Tribe will stay, as will Mamie’s and Aubarit’s,” Afya says. “The rest plan to leave at first light. They hope to take back Aish.”

“Aish won’t matter,” Darin says from where he hunches by the fire, “if the Nightbringer sets that maelstrom free and kills everyone.”

I leave Afya and Darin and turn to Mamie, just a few yards away. Though it is cold enough that the stream has iced over, she sits on the earth of the canyon, staring up at the stars.

“Can’t sleep?” I ask her.

“Not when I know that the story is out there, waiting for me.” Mamie turns to me, her dark gaze piercing. “I feel it on you, Laia. Near you. Part of you, almost. Think again on all you know. There must be something you’ve forgotten. Some bit of the story locked away in your mind. When the Augur died—what did he tell Elias again?”

“He said to go back to the beginning—”

“What about the book?” Darin comes to sit beside us. “Don’t suppose there’s anything in there?”

I look at him askance. “What book?”

“The book I gave you.” He looks offended. “Back in the Empire. Just before you headed south.”

At my blank stare, he shoves my shoulder. “Well, hells, Laia, it’s nice to know my sister appreciates my thoughtfulness. When we parted ways, I gave you a gift, remember? I found it in Adisa.”

I run for my rucksack in Mamie’s wagon and bring back an oilcloth-wrapped package. The string is stiff from the floodwaters when I lost my pack, and I have to cut it open. Wrapped tight within is a worn book bound in soft leather.

Gather in the Dark, it says.

“Why does this look familiar?”

“You were reading it,” Darin says. “Before the raid. Before the Mask came—before Nan and Pop—” He stops and clears his throat. “Anyway. You were reading it.”

I think of the Augur’s prophecy, and despite the fire and my cloak, I am suddenly shivering. “Go back to the beginning.” I turn to Mamie. “Could this—”

She has already taken the book from me. “Yes,” she breathes. “This is what I needed. What I’ve been waiting for.”