A Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes #4) - Sabaa Tahir Page 0,70

and faster until sand turns to scrub and scrub to trees. I do not stop until I am at my cabin. There, the only sound is my ragged breathing. And once it slows, the silence settles in. I am so used to hearing the soughing of the ghosts that their complete absence is unnatural.

A small figure emerges from the trees. She looks around with innocent curiosity, and I know her immediately. The child from Aish who recognized me. Of course. She and her family could not have survived the assault.

“Welcome to the Waiting Place, the realm of ghosts, little one,” I say to her. “I am the Soul Catcher, and I am here to help you cross to the other side.”

“I know who you are,” she says. “Why didn’t you help us? I looked for you.”

“You must forget the living,” I say. “For they can hurt you no longer.”

“How can I forget? That silver woman killed Irfa and Azma at the same time. Azma was only four. Why did she do that, Soul Catcher? Why didn’t you help?”

The child is but one ghost, but it takes me hours to pass her on, for how do I answer her queries? How do I explain Keris’s hatred to an innocent?

When it is done, when I have finally answered every question and heard every hurt, small or large, she walks into the river. I wait for the old sense of rightness to fill me. All the way home I wait. It does not come, not even when I enter my cabin and light the lamps.

Home, I tell myself. I am home. But it doesn’t feel like home anymore.

It feels like a prison.

XXVIII: The Blood Shrike

Something sits on my chest.

The fact sinks into my consciousness slowly and I don’t move a muscle. Whatever it is, it’s warm. Alive. And I don’t want it to realize I’m awake.

The weight shifts. A drop of warm water plops onto my forehead. I tense. I’ve heard of Karkaun water torture—

“Ha! Ba-ba-ba-ba.”

Two small hands dig into my face and pull the way one’s face simply shouldn’t be pulled. I open my eyes to find my nephew sitting atop me, drooling happily. When he sees I am awake, he smiles, revealing one perfect, pearly tooth that was not there when I left.

“Ba!” he declares as I sit up gingerly.

“I thought if anyone could wake you up”—Livia offers me a handkerchief from her seat beside my bed—“it was the Emperor.”

I wipe off the baby drool and give Zacharias a kiss, carefully untangling his fingers from my jaw and swinging my legs out of the bed. Snow flurries swirl outside the mottled glass windows of my room, and the blazing fireplace does little against the chill in the air. I feel hollowed out, like someone has taken a shovel to my insides. I edge away from the feeling, focusing instead on standing up.

“Easy, Shrike.” Livia takes Zacharias from me. “Spiro Teluman carried you through the tunnels, and you’ve been in and out of consciousness for the last two days. That bite on your neck was infected. You were raving when he first got here.”

And it must have taken at least five days to get out of the tunnels. Bleeding skies. A week. I have to pull together a strike force for Antium. Convince the Paters of my plan. Make sure we’ve enough weapons and food and horses. Alert those resisting within the capital. So much to accomplish and I’ve been asleep.

“I need my scims, Empress.” My vision goes funny when I stand, and my leg aches something vicious. But I thank the skies for my healing power, for without it, I’d have died before even reaching Teluman. I limp to the dresser and pull on a clean set of fatigues. “Where’s Teluman?”

“The Paters wanted him in the dungeons, but I thought that would be poor thanks for the man who brought back our Shrike,” Livia says. “He’s with Darin and Tas at the forge. Speaking of—I’ve made young Tas a little bed in Zacharias’s room. The child doesn’t seem keen on smithing, and I thought he could be companion to the Emperor instead.”

“The Paters won’t like—”

“The Paters won’t notice. To them, he’s just a Scholar. But he’s clever and kind-hearted. He likes Zacharias. Perhaps Tas could be a friend to him.” My sister’s face clouds. “Something normal in all of this madness.”

I nod quickly, because the last thing I need is Livia again musing about running off with the Emperor to the