A Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes #4) - Sabaa Tahir Page 0,22

clothing. I lurch forward like a drunken bear, barely clearing each deck.

The Blood Shrike turns back. With one stroke of her blade she relieves me of my cloak, a sodden, woolen weight. And thank the skies I’m wearing a chemise, because with two more cuts, my short jacket gapes open and the Shrike yanks it off.

Though my teeth slam into each other, I move more lightly. The Martials are behind us for now, but that will not last. Already I see a group of them circumventing the market, cutting off our escape.

“We can’t break their cordon.” Avitas comes to a halt on a dinghy piloted by a terrified Mariner boy. He dives into the water to escape us. The people of the floating market pole away swiftly, buyers and sellers alike trying to avoid the melee. We have nowhere to run.

“Shrike, you’ll have to swim beneath the cordon,” Avitas says. “Laia—if you can use your invisibility, I’ll distract them—”

The Shrike’s face blanches. “Absolutely not!”

As they argue, I reach for my power. But my magic evades me. The Nightbringer. That monster still lurks in the city, blocking me.

“Not so, Laia of Serra.” The glow manifests at my side this time, and it is so real that I’m stunned my companions cannot see it.

“Go away,” I hiss, feeling insane for talking to something invisible to everyone else.

“The Nightbringer weakened your powers early on,” Rehmat says. “That was before you woke me. You are stronger now. You can disappear. You can even hide those with you.”

The Blood Shrike whips out her bow and picks off our pursuers one by one. But there are too many.

Beside me, Rehmat’s glow pulses. “Is this where you wish to die, daughter of Mirra and Jahan?” it asks. “Imagine your power as a cloak of darkness. Take shelter there. Then pull the Blood Shrike and the Mask within.”

“How do I know you aren’t tricking me? That you aren’t some perversion of the Nightbringer?”

“Trust me or die, child,” Rehmat growls.

A longboat looms out of the dark. There is a Mask aboard and I freeze, my fear taking hold. Then the Shrike is past me, leaping onto the Mask’s boat as our own dinghy lurches. The Mask bares his teeth and draws scims, meeting the Shrike’s attack stroke for stroke.

Another boat of soldiers bashes into ours and now Avitas is at the Shrike’s back, swift and otherworldly. They are a four-armed monster, destroying, deflecting, defying Keris’s men to come closer.

“They cannot fight forever, Laia,” Rehmat says. “Reach for the magic. Save them. Save yourself.”

“I tried—”

“Try harder.” Rehmat’s voice, stern before, is steel now. “You are a child of kedim jadu, girl. Old magic. For centuries, I have waited for one of the kedim jadu to defy the Nightbringer. You did so, glorious and fearless, and now you quake, child? Now you quiver?”

There is an irrefutability in Rehmat’s tone that rings a bell at the core of my being. It is as if the creature is simply uncovering something that has long been carved into the arc of my life. Perhaps it has tampered with my mind, or the Nightbringer has.

Or perhaps my instinct has been honed by enough betrayal that when it sings truth, I listen. Perhaps I finally believe that my victories have been because I decided to fight, when others might have given up.

The Shrike slings arrows and the boat rocks beneath me. Avitas curses as the Martials draw closer.

The world seems to slow, as if time no longer exists. It is a moment of perfect chaos, and within it, I hear my nan. Where there is life, there is hope.

I will not accept death. Why should I, when there is life yet burning in my veins? I will not let the Nightbringer win so easily when it is my fury that will destroy him, and my strength that will release the Scholars from the yoke of his terror.

Disappear. Power breaks over me and I shudder at the force of it. This? This is what I can do?

“Imagine the darkness enveloping the Blood Shrike and Avitas Harper,” Rehmat says. “Quick now!”

This is more difficult, for I do not understand how to do it. I stretch the darkness that covers me, and try to toss it over the Blood Shrike. She flickers.

“Again,” Rehmat urges. “Hold it this time!”

Sweat breaks out on my brow as I try again. And again. Each time, the Shrike flickers, though she does not appear to notice. The Mask she fights gapes at her in