by Sabaa Tahir
“Jinn!” they scream. “The jinn have come!”
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 lif
e, 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.
“Tavi was the first person I knew to reject the idea that we had to be what the Empire wanted us to be,” the Soul Catcher says. “I didn’t understand it fully until the Fourth Trial. Sometimes, it is better to die than to live as a monster.”
He takes my hand and I start. I expected his skin to be cold, but he rubs warmth into my fingers.
“We have to fight,” he says. “We have to give Laia a chance to kill the Nightbringer. But we don’t have to be monsters. We don’t have to make the mistakes of those who have gone before. I showed the jinn mercy. Perhaps they, too, might show mercy. Perhaps when they see what the Nightbringer intends, they will remember this moment.”
I think about his words all the way back to camp. The wraiths have withdrawn, and though the troops are in some disarray, order is restored swiftly.
“At least two hundred dead from the Martial forces.” Harper finds me as I return. “Another three hundred from the Tribes. Afya’s cut up, and Laia too.”
Bleeding hells. Five hundred dead out of ten thousand is not a small number. Not when we’ll be facing an army three times our size.
We bury the dead quickly. Laia triages the injured, and after a few hours, we’re on our way again. The Soul Catcher sets a punishing pace, but I glare at my soldiers, daring them to complain. They don’t. No one wants to be caught on the road again.
“We’ll reach the jinn grove by midday,” the Soul Catcher says to me and Quin as we lead the column through the darkness before dawn. “The jinn hate it there. They will not approach. At least, not right away”
“Banu al-Mauth.” A wind efrit appears, and I strain to catch her words. “The Nightbringer’s army is just east of us, across the river. They will reach the grove by dawn tomorrow.”
“Not possible,” Quin growls. “They could not move so quickly.”
“They can with his magic,” the Soul Catcher says. “It’s how they got to Marinn after leaving the Tribal lands. We’ll only have a day to prepare. How quick can the sappers get the trebuchets up, Shrike?”
“A few hours, according to the Ankanese,” I say. “Though”—I raise my eyebrows at him—“I’m surprised you want to use them.”
“We’ll use the war machines to deter.” His words are iron. “Not to kill.”
I bite my lip, trying to mask my frustration. Deterring the jinn won’t be enough. And if that’s the mentality we take into battle, we will lose.
“He’s no fool, Shrike.” Harper, riding on the other side of me, glances at his half brother. “Trust him.”
“It’s the Commandant I don’t bleeding trust,” I say. “That hag will find a way to use this against us. We need something on her. I was thinking”—I turn back to the Soul Catcher—“about how you said we don’t have to repeat the mistakes of those who have gone before.”
He glances at me askance. “And?”
“And the Martials who follow Keris do not do so because they love their empress.” My mouth twists around the word. “They follow her because they fear her. And because she wins.”
“You want to assassinate her.”
“She’ll see it coming,” I say. “Cook knew the Commandant better than anyone. She told Laia to learn Keris’s story. Said if we learned her story, we’d also learn how to stop her. She even told Laia to ask Musa about it—but he didn’t know much. No one knows Keris’s full story. No one living, anyway.”
The Soul Catcher catches my meaning and pulls in his horse, waiting for Quin to move out of earshot. “I’m not summoning Karinna for you to interrogate,” he says. “My duty is to pass the ghosts on. Not torment them.”
“I just want to talk to her,” I say. “And if she doesn’t talk to me, fine.”
The Soul Catcher shifts atop his mount, agitated. “I will not call her for you,” he says. “But—” He glances out at the trees, their tops visible now as dawn approaches. “She is curious about you. I’ve seen her watching you. I think you remind her of her daughter.”
I recoil at the thought of reminding anyone of Keris bleeding Veturia, but the Soul Catcher goes on.
“Her curiosity might be a boon, Shrike. Karinna has not looked at a single other living being here. Not even her own husband, who, presumably, she loved. You’ll need to be gentle. Patient. No quick movement. Let her talk. But offer her something to talk about. Find running water. She likes it. And wait until night. Ghosts prefer the dark. Last—”
He turns his gray eyes on me, and they are icy and stern, the glare of a Soul Catcher offering a warning. “She calls Keris lovey. Remembers her as a child. Knowing what Keris has become would distress her.”
For hours, I ponder what to say to the ghost. By the time I have figured it out, the sun is high and the troops grumble in exhaustion. The road curves upward through a thick patch of trees before flattening out into a broad, scarred plain.
“The jinn grove,” the Soul Catcher informs us.
It stretches for acres, flat as the Great Wastes, with only the occasional burned-out tree breaking the empty sweep. In the center, a great dead yew reaches its charred limbs to the sky, a chain hanging from the lowest branch.
“It feels haunted.” Laia shivers as we urge our reluctant horses out onto the field.
“It is haunted,” the Soul Catcher says. “But it’s big enough for the army. And”—he nods to a valley visible beyond the rim of the grove—“there lies Sher Jinnaat. The City of the Jinn. This is the best, most defensible place from which we can launch an attack.”
I dismount and walk toward the rim. It slopes sharply down a dozen feet.
“We can position our pikemen here.” The Soul Catcher comes up beside me, and we look over the valley. It is massive, hemmed in by the river to the east and south, and forest to the west. “Then archers and catapults.”
“It’s unlike Keris to attack from below,” I say. Despite the sun shining above me, the valley is cloaked in thick mist, similar to what seeped into our camp last night. “It’s unlike her to give us any advantage. Even if her forces outnumber ours.”
“She has jinn,” the Soul Catcher says. “They will bring fire to take out the pikemen and the trebuchets. It will be an ugly battle, Shrike. All we’re doing is buying time for Laia.”
“In all our years at Blackcliff,” I say, “I never imagined this was how you and I would draw swords. Fending off our old teacher while a Scholar hunted a jinn.”
“There is no one I’d rather have at my back, Blood Shrike,” he says, and there is a fierceness to his voice that makes my heart ache, that reminds me of all we have survived. “No one.”
Tents are erected, horses picketed, fires lit, and latrines dug. When it’s clear that everything is well in hand, I disentangle myself from the war preparations and make my way into the trees.
I head north, away from the Sher Jinnaat and the jinn grove. Spring has come to the wood, and the green of unending pines is broken by the pink-wreathed branches of the occasional Tala tree. An hour from the encampment, I reach a small stream. I sit. And then I sing.
It is a quiet song, for I do not want to draw the attention of creatures that will harm me. The song is one of healing. Of mothers and daughters. Of my own mother and her quiet love, which bathed me like the rays of the sun for as long as she lived.
A shiver of air against my neck. I am no longer alone.
Ever so slowly, I turn, and catch my breath. There she is, a wisp of a thing, just like the Soul Catcher said. She watches me and I do not speak.
“My lovey is close,” she whispers. “But I cannot reach her. Do you know how I can reach her?”
Elias’s warning echoes in my mind. “I do know your lovey,” I say. “But—she’s a bit—a bit different.”
“There is only one lovey.” Karinna sounds angry. “My lovey. My little one.”
“Tell me of her,” I say. “Tell me about your lovey.”
Karinna turns away from me, as if to leave, and I think of what the Soul Catcher said. To be patient. To offer her something to talk about.
“I just want to help you get to her,” I say. “My—my mother is gone.” My heart clenches in sorrow, an emotion that has chased me for far too long. An emotion I hate letting myself feel. “My sisters too,” I say. “My father. I know loss. I know pain.”
“Yes.” Karinna turns back, tilting her spectral head. “I feel it in you like I feel it in the other.”
“The other?” I reach for my scim, and the movement startles Karinna. She rears back, and I lift my hands, keeping my voice low. “What—what other? Who else have you been talking to?”
