But I stop myself. There is a charge in the air between Dex and Silvius that makes me smile, the first time I’ve felt anything other than rage or exhaustion all day.

I head for the courtyard gate without Dex. It’s a short enough walk to the barracks.

My senses are dulled as I walk, my legs growing weaker. A platoon of soldiers patrols nearby, saluting when I pass, and I am barely able to acknowledge them. I wish then that I’d asked Dex to accompany me. I hope to the skies there’s no Karkaun assault. Right now, I couldn’t fight off a fly.

Exhausted as I am, the part of me that raged and screamed at my own impotence in the face of Grímarr’s attacks has quieted. I will sleep tonight. Maybe I’ll even dream.

A step behind me.

Dex? No. The street is empty. I squint, trying to see into the darkness. A furtive scrape ahead of me this time—someone trying to remain unobserved.

My senses prickle. I didn’t spend a decade and a half at Blackcliff only to get accosted by some idiot a few blocks from my own barracks.

I draw my scim and summon my Shrike’s voice. “You’d be a fool to try it,” I say. “But by all means, entertain me.”

When the first dart comes flying out of the dark, I whip it out of the air by force of habit. I spent hundreds of hours deflecting missiles as a Yearling. A knife follows the dart.

“Show yourself!” I snarl. A shadow moves to my right, and I fling a throwing knife at it. The figure thuds to the ground only a dozen yards from me, clutching at his neck.

I make for him, aiming to unhood him. Filthy, traitorous coward—

But my legs will not move. Pain explodes along my side, sudden and white-hot. I look down. There’s blood everywhere.

From the infirmary? No. It’s my blood.

Walk, Shrike. Move. Get out of here.

But I cannot. I have no strength at all. I drop to my knees, able to do nothing more than watch as my life drains out of me.

XXIII: Laia

When Musa and I set out from Adisa, the sun blazes high, burning away the morning mist that has rolled in off the sea. But we do not clear the walls until early evening, as the guards are carefully watching all who leave as well as all who enter.

Musa’s disguise—that of an old man with a piebald donkey—is frighteningly effective, and the guards don’t look at him twice. Still, he waits until it is completely dark before bagging his tattersall cloak and raggedy wig. In a copse of trees, he pulls the Serric steel scims from a high pile of sticks on the donkey’s back and sends the creature off with a slap to the rump.

“My sources tell me Tribe Sulud left late last night, which means we’ll find their camp in one of the coastal villages to the south,” Musa says. I nod a response, peering over my shoulder. The shadows of the night billow and contract. Though summer is in full bloom, I shiver and move swiftly across the marshy grasses.

“Will you stop looking back like that?” Musa says, immune as ever to my magic. “You’re making me nervous.”

“I just wish we could go faster,” I say. “I feel strange. Like there’s something back there.” The Nightbringer disappeared so swiftly last night that I questioned whether he was even in Adisa. But since then, I haven’t been able to shake the sense that something watches me.

“I have mounts hidden down the road. Once we get to them, we can move more quickly.” Musa laughs at my obvious impatience. “What, you don’t want to pass the time in conversation with me?” he says. “I’m hurt.”

“I just want to get to the Kehanni,” I mumble, though this is not the only reason I chafe at the delay. Musa regards me thoughtfully, and I lengthen my stride. He doesn’t believe that I should offer to supply weapons to the Tribes, even if it means gaining information on the Nightbringer. Not when those weapons might be used to kill innocent Martial civilians in the south.

But he doesn’t stop me, though he easily could with that eerie magic of his. Instead, he accompanies me, his distaste palpable.

His disappointment gnaws at me. It is part of the reason I do not speak to him. I do not want his judgment. But there’s more to my silence.

Speaking to him would mean learning about him. Understanding him. Maybe befriending him. I know what it is to travel with someone, to break bread and laugh and grow close to them.

And though perhaps it’s foolish, that frightens me. Because I also know the pain of losing friends. Family. Mother. Father. Lis. Nan. Pop. Izzi. Elias. Too many lost. Too much pain.

I shake off my invisibility. “It’s not as if you’ll actually answer any of my questions. Anyway, I do want to talk to you, it’s just—”

Dizziness sweeps over me. I recognize the feeling. No, not now, not when I need to get to the Kehanni. Though inside I scream with frustration, I cannot stop the vision: the dank room, the shape of a woman. Her hair is light. Her face is in shadow. And that voice again, so familiar.

A star she came

Into my home

And lit it bright with glo-ry

Her laughter like

A gilded song

A raincloud sparrow’s sto-ry.

I want to get closer. I want to see the face. I know the voice—I have heard it before. I search my memories. Who is she? A soft crack sounds. The singing stops.

“Oi!” I wake to Musa smacking my face, and I shove him away.