this. Neither you nor anyone else will take it from me.”
Mamie sweeps out, and as she does, Afya jerks her head toward the back of her tent. “Move,” she says. “And keep your faces hidden, even from my Tribe. Only Mamie, Gibran, and I know who you are, and that’s how it needs to stay until we’re out of the city. You and Laia will stay with me. Gibran has already taken Keenan and Izzi.”
“Where?” I say. “Where are we going?”
“The storytellers’ stage, Veturius.” Afya arches a brow at me. “The Kehanni is going to save you with a story.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Helene
The city of Nur feels like a damned powder keg. It’s as if every Martial soldier I’ve released into the streets is a charge waiting to be lit.
Despite threats to the men of public whippings and reductions in rank, they’ve had a dozen altercations with the Tribesmen already. No doubt more are coming.
The Tribesmen’s objection to our presence is ridiculous. They were happy enough to have Empire support in battling Barbarian pirate frigates along the coast. But come into a Tribal city looking for a criminal and it’s as if we’ve unleashed a jinn horde upon them.
I pace the rooftop balcony of the Martial garrison on the western side of the city, looking down at the teeming market below. Elias could be bleeding anywhere.
If he’s here at all.
The possibility that I’m wrong—that Elias has slipped south while I’ve been wasting time in Nur—offers a strange sort of relief. If he’s not here, I can’t catch him or kill him.
He’s here. And you must find him.
But since arriving at the garrison at Atella’s Gap, everything has gone wrong. The outpost was undermanned. I had to scrape reserve soldiers from surrounding guard posts in order to muster a force large enough to search Nur. When I arrived at the oasis, I found the force here depleted as well, with no information about where the rest of the men were sent.
All told, I have a thousand men, mostly auxes, and a dozen Masks. It’s not nearly enough to search a city swollen to a hundred thousand. It’s all I can do to maintain a cordon around the oasis so no wagon leaves without a search.
“Blood Shrike.” Faris’s blond head pops up from the stairwell leading into the garrison. “We’ve got her. She’s in a cell.”
I suppress my dread as Faris and I head down a narrow flight of stairs to the dungeon. When I last saw Mamie Rila, I was a gangly, maskless fourteen-year-old. Elias and I stayed with Tribe Saif for two weeks on our way back to Blackcliff after finishing out our years as Fivers. And though, as a Fiver, I was essentially a Martial spy, Mamie’d only ever treated me with kindness.
And I’m about to repay her with an interrogation.
“She entered the Nur encampment three hours ago,” Faris says. “Dex nabbed her on the way out. The Fiver assigned to follow her says she visited a dozen Tribes today.”
“Get me intelligence on those Tribes,” I tell Faris. “Sizes, alliances, trade routes—everything.”
“Harper is speaking to our Fiver spies now.”
Harper. I wonder what Elias would make of the Northman. Eerie as the ten hells, I imagine him saying. Less chatty too. I can hear my friend in my head—that familiar baritone that thrilled and calmed me at the same time. Would that Elias and I were here together, hunting some Mariner spy or Barbarian assassin.
His name is Veturius, I remind myself for the thousandth time. And he is a traitor.
In the dungeon, Dex stands with his back to the cell, his jaw tight. Since he too spent time with Tribe Saif as a Fiver, I’m surprised at the tension in his body.
“Watch it with her,” he says under his breath. “She’s up to something.”
Within the cell, Mamie sits on the lone, hard bunk as if it is a throne, her back rigid, chin up, one long-fingered hand holding her robes off the floor. She rises when I enter, but I wave her back down.
“Helene, my love—”
“You will address the commander as Blood Shrike, Kehanni,” Dex says quietly as he gives me a pointed look.
“Kehanni,” I say. “Do you know the whereabouts of Elias Veturius?”
She looks me up and down, her disappointment obvious. This is the woman who gave me herbs to slow my moon cycle so it wasn’t hell to deal with at Blackcliff. The woman who told me, without an ounce of irony, that on the day I married, she would