Instantly, I am shouting orders as Mamie rouses the Tribes, and the Blood Shrike calls for extra guards to protect our precious salt supply. The sentries already have salted arrows nocked, and the army forms up along the perimeter of the camp quickly, weapons at the ready.

But the jinn do not approach with fire. Nor do they descend from the sky. Their weapon of choice appears to be the fog. Exclamations of fear echo through the ranks as the soldiers attempt to bat away the mist. It curls around them, concealing something vicious and cunning.

Laia emerges from the wagon, scythe in hand. “Elias?” she says. “What’s happening?”

“Wraiths,” I say to her, before calling out the warning. “Wraiths! Draw scims. Take off their heads!”

“Finally, something to kill.” Grandfather strides out from the center of the encampment. “I was getting bored. Elias, my boy—”

But I don’t hear the rest. The mist closes in, muffling sound, blurring vision. My heart clenches. Mamie Rila is near, and Shan. The Shrike and Avitas. Afya, Gibran, and so many others. All these people I care for, death lapping at their heels.

Maybe I should rage at myself for allowing emotion to rule me. But there’s no point. I do not regret the time I spent with my family, my friends.

The wraiths attack, and shouts ring out, warped by the mist. I raise my blades. The map in my head tells me where the wraiths are, and I let the battle rage take me, tearing through them. A tornado of sound shrieks around me as I take off their heads, making sure that none gets close to Laia or Grandfather, the Shrike or Avitas, Mamie or Shan.

Then the fog roils and shifts, taking on a flickering orange hue. Fire streaks overhead. I back away from the mist, until I can see and hear more clearly.

“Protect the supply wagons!” I shout, for if we don’t have food, it doesn’t matter if we reach the jinn grove by tomorrow. We’ll starve there.

The Blood Shrike appears beside me. “Soul Catcher. We can’t see the bleeding enemy. How are we supposed to—”

“We can stop them.” I sense a group of jinn moving just beyond the line of wraiths. “Come.”

She follows me into the mist-choked trees south of the encampment, her scims singing through the air when wraiths approach. She sends their heads flying with little enough effort, and I glance back at her, remembering how we fought during the Second Trial.

“You’ve improved.”

“You’ve lost your touch.” Her smile is a welcome flash of mirth in the murk. “Give me a moment. If the jinn are nearby, I should salt the blades.”

Of course. She wants to kill the jinn, or at least hurt them. I’d planned to scare them off—and get them to take their wraiths with them. I cannot allow the Shrike to harm the jinn. Not when I promised Mauth I’d find a way to restore them as Soul Catchers.

“Wait here,” I say. “I’m just going to—”

“No chance.” She puts away her salt. “I didn’t march an army all the way out here only to be the idiot who stands by as its commander is killed.” She goes still. “Listen.”

It takes a few moments to separate out the distant shouts and scim-clashes of battle from the heavy silence around us. The Blood Shrike meets my gaze.

Then she leaps to the left, barely in time to avoid a group of fire-formed jinn streaking out of the mist. The Shrike roars, her scims lashing the air, and one flaming figure goes down, only for another to take its place. But she is more skilled than the jinn with her blades—and her weapons are coated with salt. That alone cannot kill them—but it will wound them.

She darts behind a tree as one of the jinn attacks her with a wave of heat, then steps out and whips her scim at the creature’s neck. As it skitters away, I shove into the Shrike, knocking her back.

“What are you doing, Soul Catcher?” She wheels, baffled, but before I can explain, a jinn I recognize—Talis—strikes out with a spear and knocks the Shrike down. Her head hits the ground hard, and she goes still.

Talis tackles me, but I shove him off. “Wait,” I say. “Please, wait. I’m not here to harm you.”

The jinn rolls to his feet, his spear at my throat. “Do you know what happened the last time an army of men came to the forest?” he asks.

“I just want to talk.” I stand, raising my hands and thinking quickly. “You were right. Suffering isn’t meant to be controlled. And the—the Meherya cannot control what he seeks to release. Mauth himself told me. Once free, the Sea of Suffering will destroy all life. Even you. He will break the world—”

Another jinn steps forward, still in her fire form. “Perhaps the world needs to be broken.”

“There are millions of people who have nothing to do with this,” I say. “Who live thousands of miles away and have no idea what is coming—”

“And yet you are here with your army, your steel, your salt, repeating history.” Talis’s rage is potent, fueled by a sense of betrayal. He trusted me. And I repaid that trust by bringing an army to his home.

“Only to draw the Meherya away from Marinn.” I speak quickly, for the Blood Shrike stirs. “Talis—please persuade him to lay down arms. To stop this endless killing.”

“What would you have me do?” Talis steps so close that though he wears his human form, my skin burns. “Turn against my own?”

“Come back to Mauth,” I say. “Take up your duties as—as Soul Catchers—” Even as I say it, it sounds so deeply unjust. Why should the jinn pass on human ghosts, if it was humans who imprisoned them?

“We cannot come back.” Talis’s gaze is bleak. “There is no return from what was done to us. From what we have done in retaliation. We are tainted now.”

He speaks with such finality that hopelessness envelops me. I know what it is to do terrible things. To never forgive yourself for them. Mauth wants me to restore the balance, but how can I? Too much violence lives between humans and jinn.

“Talis!” Another jinn appears from the trees. “We must retreat—there are too many—”

Talis gives me a last, considering look and then whirls away, the other jinn following. The mist disappears with them. Cries and shouts resound from behind us, where the bulk of the army still fights the remaining wraiths.

Something cold pokes at my throat. I turn to find the Blood Shrike back on her feet, scim in hand and digging into my skin.

“Why in the bleeding hells,” she hisses, “did you just let the enemy walk away?”

LIV: The Blood Shrike

The Soul Catcher puts a hand to my blade, but I growl at him, and he raises his arms.

“You’re in league with them,” I say. He was talking to the bleeding jinn. Pleading with them. He let them go free. “You don’t even want to fight them.”

“What good is war, Blood Shrike?” The sadness etched into his face feels ancient, the sorrow of a Soul Catcher instead of the friend I’ve known since childhood. “How many have died because of a king’s greed or a commander’s pride? How much pain exists in the world because we cannot get past what has been done to us, because we insist on inflicting pain right back?”

“This war isn’t out of greed or pride. It’s because a mad jinn is attempting to destroy the world, and we need to save it. Skies, Soul Catcher, do you even remember his crimes? Laia’s family. Navium. Antium. My sister—”

“What did we do to the jinn first?”

“That was the bleeding Scholars!” I poke him in the chest, then wince, because it’s like poking a stone. “The Martials—”

“Have oppressed Scholars for half a millennium,” the Soul Catcher says. “Crushed them, enslaved them, and murdered them en masse—”

“That was Marcus and the Commandant—”

“You’re right,” he says. “You were too busy trying to catch me. A great threat to the Empire, no? A man alone, running for his life, trying to help a friend.”

I open my mouth. Then close it.

“There’s always a reason that something isn’t our fault.” He pushes my blade away now, and I do not stop him. “I understand why you don’t want to accept responsibility for the Martials’ crimes. Neither do I. It hurts too much. Skies, the things I’ve done.” He looks down at his hands. “I do not think I will ever make my peace with it. But I can be better.”

“How?” I ask. “I talked to Mamie, you know. I—” I did not wish to. I was ashamed. But I made myself go to her. Made myself ask for forgiveness for imprisoning her and her Tribe when I was hunting Elias. And I made myself walk away when she refused to grant it. “How does one move past such huge sins?”

In a strange way, I realize I am asking him a question I’ve been asking myself since that moment in the tunnel that I found myself staring at a dead child.

“Skies if I know,” he says. “I’m as lost as you, Shrike. The Empire trained us. It made us what we are. But at some point, you accepted it. Not everyone does. Do you—do you remember Tavi?”

I jerk my head up. It is an old memory and one that I don’t like. A memory of a friend lost when we were Fivers. Tavi sacrificed himself for Elias and me—and for a group of Scholars who would have died if not for his courage.