A Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes #4) - Sabaa Tahir Page 0,21

I want to say, because if Faris or Dex or even Elias told me I was beautiful, I’d stab them in the face. “You’re just saying that because you’re my—my—”

“Friend? Is it so hard to admit it?” Laia glances upward, ostentatiously shading her eyes. “A Scholar rebel and a Martial Blood Shrike are friends and the sky didn’t fall in. Whatever shall we do?”

“Let’s start by getting out of here alive,” I say. “Or I’ll have to make new friends in the afterlife, and we know how that will go.”

Harper reaches us then, stepping into our larger boat gracefully and abandoning his punt. He passes so close that I shut my eyes to better feel his warmth. When I open them, he’s at my side, staring at my mouth. His pale green eyes burn as his gaze travels down my body. I should tell him to look elsewhere. I am the Blood Shrike, for skies’ sake. Laia is sitting only a few feet away. This is inappropriate.

But for just a moment, I let him stare.

“Ah—Shrike.” He shakes himself. “Forgive me—”

“Never mind. Report, Harper,” I bark at him, hating the severity of my voice but knowing it’s necessary.

“Soldiers, Shrike.”

“That’s not a report—”

Harper shoves me out of the way as an arrow smacks into the mast beside me. I did not hear it amid the noise of the market. He grabs an oar as Laia cries out.

“Shrike!” The Scholar girl looks left—then right. I see the legionnaires immediately. They are cleverly disguised as merchants, making their way toward us at speed.

And they have us surrounded.

X: Laia

One moment, I am gaping at the sheer number of Martial soldiers closing in on us.

The next, the legionnaires are leaping to our boat from a dozen different punts. I barely have a chance to shout a warning before a thick, gauntleted arm is wrapped around my neck.

Our vessel pitches violently as Harper and the Shrike battle the soldiers swarming us. I kick back, landing a blow on my captor’s knee. He grunts and quite suddenly, I am weightless.

I only realize he has thrown me off the boat and into the bay when water slams into me like a gelid fist.

A memory rises in my head, Elias speaking to me in Serra when I told him I couldn’t swim. Remind me to remedy that when we have a few days.

I thrash my arms in a panic. I cannot feel my face. My legs slow, and my clothes drag at me, like hands pulling me down to welcome me to the depths of the sea.

Let go, I think. Let go and leave this battle to someone else. You’ll see your family again. You’ll see Elias again.

Let go.

A gold figure appears before me in the water, triggering a burst of memories. The room in Adisa. The Jaduna. The excruciating pain as a thing rose out of my body. The Jaduna had a name for it.

Rehmat—a strange name, I think as the life leaves me. The Jaduna did not say what it meant. I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore.

“Hail, Laia, and listen well.” Rehmat’s words crack like a whip and my body jerks. “You will not let go. Fight, child.”

Whatever Rehmat is, it is used to being obeyed. I windmill my arms and legs toward the glow of the floating market. I wriggle and claw until my head breaks the surface.

A swell smacks me in the mouth, and I choke on seawater.

“There!” a voice calls out, and moments later, a pale hand yanks me onto our punt.

“Ten hells, Scholar,” the Blood Shrike says. “Can’t you swim?”

I do not have a chance to answer. Harper points to the quay where a platoon of Martials is launching longboats.

“More are coming, Shrike,” he says. “We have to get out of here.”

I hear a small shriek and catch a flash of wings as a scroll drops into the Blood Shrike’s lap from midair.

“Musa and Darin are waiting northwest of here,” she says after reading it. “Just beyond the floating market.”

“Hold on.” Avitas angles our vessel toward the thick of the market and we ram into a cluster of merchants, sending baskets, fish, rope, and people flying. Curses and shouts trail us as the Martials rain down flaming arrows, not caring who they hit.

“Come on, Laia!”

With the grace of gazelles, Avitas and the Shrike leap to another boat, and then another, making their way forward as confidently as if they are on solid ground.

But I am slowed by the chill of freezing air hitting wet