I glance at him, alarmed. “Is this what you meant when you said you wanted to work with the king? Have you forgotten that he wants to imprison Darin and me—and you?”

“That’s Nikla’s doing.” Musa shrugs off my protests. “I doubt she told her father she had you and Darin in her clutches. He’s old. Ailing. She’s used his weakness to push the Scholars out of Adisa and into the camps. To strip land and titles from Adisan Scholars. But the princess doesn’t rule yet. While the king lives, there’s hope that he’ll listen to reason. Especially from the daughter of the Lioness, who he considered a friend.”

He catches sight of my face in the dark and chuckles. “Don’t look so worried,” he says. “You won’t go in unprepared. We’ll have one chance to plead our case before the king. The future of our people depends on how successful we are. We need support from the refugees and Adisan Scholars before then. It’s why I’ve had you meet with so many of my friends. If we have enough Scholars at our backs, King Irmand will have to listen to us.”

But gathering so many will take time—time I do not have. Guilt stabs through me. Musa has spent weeks building me up. But the moment I learn how to stop the Nightbringer, I’ll have to depart Adisa. And where does that leave him?

Alive, to fight, I tell myself firmly, instead of dead in a jinn-fueled apocalypse.

Shortly after we reach the horses, a summer storm rolls in from the ocean, drenching us in minutes. Still wary, I insist that we ride through the night.

Musa’s wights report Tribe Sulud’s location, and we finally draw to a halt outside a coastal village just as the fishing trawlers drift out to sea. The sodden fields around the village are thick with farmhands harvesting summer crops. Tribe Sulud’s wagons sit near the docks, a stone’s throw from the village’s only inn, where Musa takes rooms.

I hope the Kehanni knows something about the Nightbringer. The approach of the Grain Moon, seven weeks away, looms over me like an executioner’s ax. Please. I cast my wish to the stars, hoping the universe is listening. Please let me learn something useful.

Musa insists we clean up—She won’t let us in her wagon if we smell of horse and sweat. By the time we emerge from the inn, a group of Tribesmen awaits us. They greet Musa as an old friend and me with a formal politeness. Without fanfare, we are led to the largest of the wagons, painted with purple fish and yellow flowers, white herons and crystalline rivers. Pendants of tarnished silver hang from the wagon’s back, and when the door swings open, they jangle merrily.

The Kehanni wears a simple robe instead of the finery of the other night, but her bearing is no less noble. The bracelets on her arms jingle, hiding the heavy, faded tattoos on her arms.

“Musa of Adisa,” she greets him. “Still getting yourself into trouble you can’t get out of?”

“Always, Kehanni.”

“Ah.” She watches him shrewdly. “So you have finally seen her for what she is.”

An old pain flashes in Musa’s eyes, and I know that they are not speaking of me. “I have hope for her yet.”

“Do not wait for her, child. Sometimes those we love are lost to us, as surely as if Death himself had claimed them. All we can do is mourn the divergence of their path. If you try to walk it, you too will fall into darkness.”

Musa opens his mouth as if to respond, but the Kehanni turns to me. “You bring questions, Laia of Serra. Do you bring payment?”

“I have Serric steel weapons,” I say. “Six blades, freshly forged.”

The Kehanni sniffs and summons one of her kinsmen. Musa catches my eye, and though he says nothing, I find myself fidgeting. I think of what Darin said. You have your own strength. It doesn’t have to be the same as the Lioness’s.

“Wait.” I place my hands on the weapons just as the Kehanni is handing them to the Tribesman. “Please,” I say. “Use them in defense. Use them to fight the soldiers. But not . . . not those who are innocent. Please.”

The Tribesman looks at the Kehanni questioningly. She murmurs something to him in Sadhese, and he steps out.

“Laia of Serra, you would tell a Tribeswoman how to defend herself?”

“No.” I twine my fingers together. “I would ask that these blades, which are a gift, not be used to shed the blood of innocents.”

“Hmph,” the Kehanni says. Then she leans over to the front of her wagon and offers me a small wooden bowl of salt. I breathe a sigh of relief and put a pinch on my tongue, the custom Afya taught me. We are under her Tribe’s protection now. None who belong to it may harm us.

“Your gift is accepted, Laia of Serra. How may I aid you?”

“I heard you spinning the old tales in Adisa. Can you tell me of the jinn? Do they have any weaknesses? Is there a way to . . .” Kill them, I nearly say, but the word is so cold. “Hurt them?”

“During the Fey-Scholar War, your ancestors murdered the jinn with steel and salt and summer rain fresh from the heavens. But you ask the wrong question, Laia of Serra. I know of you. I know you do not seek to destroy the jinn. You seek to destroy the Nightbringer. And he is something else altogether.”

“Can it be done? Can he be killed?”

The Kehanni leans back in a pile of soft pillows and considers. The slide of her fingers against the wagon’s lacquered wood sounds like sand hissing through an hourglass.