A Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes #4) - Sabaa Tahir Page 0,133

at all, but a cloud of glittering sand, roughly man-shaped and clearly in distress.

“Peace, Blood Shrike,” the efrit whispers, and though I feel as though I must heal it, I realize that I cannot sing for it. Sand efrits hate songs.

“I bring a message,” it says. “From Laia of Serra. A message Keris did not wish you to hear.”

“How do I know I can trust you?”

“Laia said you should ask this question of me: What were Marcus Farrar’s last words?”

Laia is the only person with whom I shared that detail, one night a few months ago, when neither of us could sleep.

“Very well,” I say. “What were Marcus Farrar’s last words?”

“‘Please, Shrike.’ Satisfied?” At my nod, the efrit goes on. “The Nightbringer sought to draw the Soul Catcher’s army to Marinn. Instead, the Soul Catcher moves his forces toward the City of the Jinn, in the Waiting Place. There, they hope to lure the Nightbringer and finish him for good. But—but—” The efrit’s breathing grows labored. It has seconds, if that. “They cannot do it alone.”

“I can’t possibly march an army—”

“Laia of Serra said something else.” The efrit’s sand grows dull, its light fading. “Strive even unto your own end, else all is lost—”

The efrit’s words trail off. Between one breath and the next, he is gone, his sand form disappearing in the wind.

Thank the skies Harper tends toward silence, because it gives me a moment to piece it all together. The Commandant left the south open because she wanted me to attack. Because if I’m focused on Silas, I cannot help the one person who can destroy her master.

“Shrike,” Harper finally says. “We need to leave. It’s getting colder. The river will freeze, and we won’t be able to sail south.”

“Let it freeze,” I tell him. “Today, we do not sail. Today, we march.”

Part IV

The Sher Jinnaat

LI: The Nightbringer

For years, I raged. Villages burned. Caravans disappeared. Families murdered. But in the end, there were too many humans. I annihilated thousands, yet when I turned, I would find hundreds more.

Vengeance would take years. Centuries. And I could not do it alone. I needed to prey on humanity’s worst traits. Tribalism. Prejudice. Greed. And while I pitted them against each other, I needed to reconstitute the Star, a far more difficult task. For it had shattered, its pieces scattered to the winds. Each piece had to be hunted down. Each returned to me in love.

The first human I ever loved was a Scholar. Husani of Nava—what would later become Navium. She wore the shard of the Star as a necklace, fashioned by her late husband. Her child died of a fever when she had only just learned to speak. So I came to her as an orphan, red-haired and brown-eyed, grappling with my own pain. She called me her son and named me Roshan.

Light.

My presence filled a hole within her. She loved me instantly.

It took me longer to love her. Though I lived in the body of a human child, my mind was my own, and I could not forget what her kind had done to mine. But she soothed my nightmares and tended my wounds. She attacked my face with kisses, and hugged me so much that I began to crave the comfort of her arms.

Soon after coming to her, I learned to respect her. And in time, I loved her.

She gave me the necklace after I told her I was leaving home to seek my fortune. All my love goes with you, beloved son. Those were her words when she set the necklace around my neck, tears in her eyes.

In that moment, I wanted to transform. To scream at her that I was beloved, once, but that all who loved me were gone. That her kind had not just stolen my people, but my name.

The only parent I had ever had was Mauth, and his love for me was rooted in the duty he laid upon my shoulders. Husani offered me the love of a mother: fierce where Mauth was sober, pure where Mauth was calculated.

And how did I, the one she loved the best, repay her? How did I thank the human who gave me everything, who taught me more of love in a few short years than I had learned in all my millennia?

I abandoned her. After taking her necklace, I left. I did not return.

When she died a few years later, she died nirbara—forsaken. She left this earth with her adopted son’s name on her lips,