I open my hand, hoping she’ll return it. She ignores me and stands, her frustration replaced by single-minded determination.

“Shouldn’t I read it—” I call after her. But she waves me off, the book tucked under her arm as she seeks a story in a place I cannot follow.

XLIX: The Soul Catcher

Love. I consider the world without sentiment after I leave Laia and retire to my tent, squeezed between two supply wagons on the far side of the Saif encampment. Without thought, I take out Laia’s armlet and begin to carve.

Love cannot live here. Shaeva told me that, when I became Soul Catcher. Yet it was love that began all this in the first place—the love the Nightbringer had for his people is what drove him to murder and madness and retribution.

And it is love that drives him still.

The way he fought for centuries to save the jinn. The way he howled when Khuri died. The way he raged when Laia shot Maro. Bleeding hells, his very name. Beloved. Love is at the heart of what the Nightbringer was. It is his greatest weapon.

But I can use it as a weapon too.

* * *

???

The Zaldars do not take kindly to being woken up in the middle of the night. Especially when most were planning on leaving at dawn.

So I make them an enormous pot of hot, sweetened tea, as Mamie Rila used to do in the deep winter.

“More honey,” Laia whispers after tasting it, surreptitiously raiding Mamie’s rapidly shrinking stash.

When the tea has been passed around, and the Zaldars—along with Fakirs and Kehannis—are settled around a large fire, I make my case.

“We must fight the Nightbringer, for the survival of the world depends on us defeating him.” A low grumble starts up, and I speak over it. “But we cannot go to Adisa. It is a two-month journey, at least, over Martial-infested lands and treacherous seas. And we do not know if the Mariners will still be fighting by then, or if Keris and the jinn will have defeated them.”

“Get to the point.” The Zaldar of Tribe Shezaad speaks so insolently that his Fakira, a woman Mamie’s age and dressed in black, slaps him on the back of the head. He ducks, gaze as surly as an alley cat’s.

“We take a shorter journey, to the Sher Jinnaat, the City of the Jinn, deep within the Waiting Place.” I consider my words carefully, for I’ll have this one chance to convince them. “Everything the Nightbringer has ever done has been for his people. He will not allow them to be killed. We can draw him and his army away from Marinn and to a place where we have an advantage.”

“How do we have an advantage if it’s their city?” another Zaldar asks. “They will tear through our army with their fire.”

“Most of the jinn in the city are still weak.” Laia speaks up. “They have not recovered from their imprisonment.”

“An army of four thousand Tribespeople and a thousand efrits is no small thing,” Afya says. “The Nightbringer will know we are coming.”

“Not if Elias and I are hidden,” Laia cuts in. “Darin too. We can disguise our fighters and supplies. From a distance, the army will just look like a band of refugees.”

“We like this not, Soul Catcher.” Rowan Goldgale sweeps forward, his fellow efrit lords following. “We will not stand for a massacre. We have witnessed too many.”

“The goal is not to kill the jinn,” I say. “It’s to draw the Nightbringer away from the Free Lands so that he no longer reaps souls. So the Mariner armies can regroup. The Mariners are our allies. They offered sanctuary to the Scholars when the Tribes could not. It is wrong to abandon them when our foe is the same.”

“You say our,” the Nasur Kehanni points out. “But you are a Martial.”

“He is the Banu al-Mauth, Kehanni.” Aubarit’s voice is ice, and she is no longer the scared girl I met one winter ago. “The Chosen of Death. Have a care in how you speak to him, lest I leave your soul to wander.”

The Kehanni bites back whatever retort she had prepared. “The Mariners did not aid us,” she points out. “Sadh and Aish and Nur burned, and we heard nothing from them.”

An old emotion rises in me. One of the first I felt, when Cain awoke my memories. Anger—at the stubbornness of nearly everyone here, at their cussed refusal to see.

But I catch myself. The Zaldars fear they’ll lead those they love to a swift death. They are afraid we’ll fail. The Kehanni of Tribe Nasur fears the same.

“It is a risk,” I say. “But this way, we force the Nightbringer to act. To come to us. We prepare for his attack, and when he comes, we hold off the army as long as possible so—”

I look to Laia, standing in the shadows, hand gripped tight around her scythe.

“So that I can kill him,” she says.

I say nothing of my plan to speak to the jinn in the Sher Jinnaat, to try to persuade them to serve as Soul Catchers once more. Doing so will only complicate matters.

“What other choice do we have?” Afya speaks out. “We arrive in Marinn in time to be massacred? We wait here, until either this maelstrom destroys us or the Commandant does? Our suffering begins and ends with the Nightbringer. Let us finish him.”

“If she can finish him,” the Zaldar of Tribe Shezaad says. “Give the scythe to someone who can wield it. Why not you, Soul Catcher?”

My ire rises, and I find my fists are clenched, but I keep silent, for Laia steps forward, dark eyes reflecting the flames as she regards the Zaldar.

“How many times have you faced the Nightbringer and survived, Zaldar?”

The man fidgets from foot to foot.

“I have defied him and survived him again and again. He has tried to hurt me. But I will not allow myself to be hurt. He has tried to break me. But I will not allow myself to be broken. And I will not be dictated to by a man so afraid to fight the jinn that he must criticize a woman to make himself feel bigger.”

“If we bring the fight to the Sher Jinnaat,” I say, “we choose our own destiny, instead of letting the jinn and Keris Veturia choose for us.”

“I want vengeance on those herrisada for what they did to our cities,” Afya says. “To our people. Tribe Nur is with you, Banu al-Mauth.” Her fighters are arrayed behind her, and as one, they raise their fists and shout one word.

“NUR!”

“You are our Banu al-Mauth.” Shan, sitting beside Mamie Rila, looks back at the Saif fighters. “But you are also our brother.” He takes Mamie’s hand. “Tribe Saif is with you.”

This time, Tribe Saif’s fighters call out. “SAIF!”

“The Martials are with you.” Jans Aquillus, leader of the Martial legion, steps forward. Seconds later, Rowan Goldgale joins him.

Tribe Nasur and Tribe Rahim call out their support, then Tribe Ahdieh, Tribe Malikh—even the few fighters of Tribe Zia who survived Sadh’s destruction. The leader of Tribe Shezaad declares himself last, prodded by his fighters and his Fakira.

I turn finally to Laia. She’s the first person I told my plan to. Still, I want to ask.

“I am with you too.” She folds her arms and fixes me with her dark stare. “But you have a bad habit of doing everything yourself. Carrying every burden. Fighting every battle alone. Not this time, Soul Catcher. This time, we do it my way.”

L: The Blood Shrike

The palace hallways feel strangely empty without Livia. Before, her ladies-in-waiting were out and about, running errands for her, and she was only ever in her room to sleep.

Now soldiers are everywhere, auxes and legionnaires in their dark fatigues. Masks in their bloody red capes. I pass Quin Veturius near the training yard, Pater Mettias at his side. They salute, breath clouding in the frigid air, but both have a question in their eyes.

Why are we still here, Blood Shrike?

Antium’s army is outfitted, armed, and ready to move south. A hundred barges wait along the River Rei to bear my men to Silas. And onward to Serra, Navium, and victory.

The scouts have already sent back their reports: the way is clear. The Paters of the advisory council, Quin and Mettias included, grow impatient with me. We finally have the forces to seize Keris’s territory. And though she’s left thousands of soldiers to guard her cities, she herself is away, fighting the Nightbringer’s war in Marinn.

I should order my troops south. I should take back the Empire for my nephew. But I don’t give the command.

Because it’s too easy.

Keris’s plans are always more layered than they first appear. The Commandant wouldn’t just leave the south open to me. She’s up to something.

As I walk through the freezing palace, I search for a flash of color amid the drear. Musa can always be counted on to wear at least one loud item of clothing—and I need his information now.

Something flickers near my ear. “Thank the skies,” I say. “Tell your master to stop spying on me and to come see me.” I turn toward my quarters. “I need his—ow!” I hiss at the sight of a welt blooming on my hand. “Did you bite me?”

It bites me again, but this time flickers into view, iridescent wings fluttering. Its body is vaguely human, but green and covered in soft yellow down.