A Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes #4) - Sabaa Tahir Page 0,112

this—” I raise my hand to his dark hair, pushing it back. “And Mauth won’t give you a splitting headache.”

He catches my hand, gripping it for a moment before the Soul Catcher takes hold again and he releases me.

“I wish you luck, Laia,” he says. “But I have my own mission. If you’re in trouble, I can’t help.”

“I am not expecting you to,” I say. “But if something happens to me—”

“Defeat in the mind is defeat on the—”

“You Blackcliff types and all your sayings.” I kick his boot. “Listen, for skies’ sake. If something happens, be a brother to Darin for me. Swear you will.”

“I don’t—” He takes in my scowl and nods. “I promise,” he says.

“Thank you, Soul Catcher.”

“Elias,” he says after a moment, the slightest bit of warmth entering those cold gray eyes. “From you I prefer Elias.”

Now it is my turn to be stunned. If we were not about to confront the Nightbringer, I would kiss him. Instead, all I can do is stare as he disappears over the side of the building.

Mission, Laia. Focus on the mission.

As I scurry across the rooftop, wind howls out of the south, a spine-chilling preface to the approach of the jinn and their human army.

I look up to find the entire southern horizon obscured by a towering wall of sand. The storm is ten times larger than the one the Nightbringer conjured up in this very same desert the first time Elias and I came through. And it moves fast—too fast.

When I am only halfway across the roof, it hits, propelling me backward with its force. Though I bend my head against it, the sand is so thick and the wind so strong that I can barely see. I am forced back—finding shelter between a pile of sandbags and the wall—which is no shelter at all. I crouch, coughing the sand out of my lungs, frantically pulling a kerchief over my eyes so I do not go sand blind.

My plan was to hide in a weapons shed on the other side of the wall. But I cannot possibly make it now. Not before the Nightbringer arrives.

“I can help.” Rehmat’s glow flickers as thick clouds of sand float through her. “If you let me in.”

“Will he not sense you?”

She hesitates. “Yes. But I am ready for him. And this storm, it is hurting you.” Her form shifts, as if she’s fidgeting, and her voice is so soft I almost can’t hear it. “I would not see you harmed, Laia. Whether you believe it or not, I am bonded to you, the way a fine blade is bonded to its maker.”

Like with Mamie, I feel a sudden flush of warmth at her words. But it is tempered with wariness. Rehmat is so fey. So unknowable. How can I trust her again?

“I’m not ready for you to join with me,” I say, and she recoils in frustration. I do not wish to hurt her. But I will not be betrayed again. She has not met the Nightbringer since the flood. This is an opportunity to see if she truly is my ally instead of his. “Let’s stick to the plan.”

Something thuds atop the tower. A voice speaks, and I clench the hilt of my dagger, fighting back the urge to disappear, and trying desperately not to give myself away by coughing.

“Whip up the winds to spread the fire.” The Nightbringer’s thunderstorm voice rolls across the roof. “And take the storm north. Slow the rats who flee until the Martials can slaughter them.”

“Yes, Meherya,” a voice responds. From what Elias told us, it must be Azul, the jinn who can control the weather.

Azul leaves, and the sandstorm howls past, the thick grit billowing toward where the Tribes evacuate the city. Behind me, the screaming intensifies as the Nightbringer’s kin set houses alight. The sand efrits, it turns out, are excellent actors.

I tense, hoping to the skies that the Nightbringer does not pay close attention to those screams. But he hardly seems to notice them.

Instead, he stares out at Nur. In Aish, Sadh, and most of the villages in Marinn, he always found the tallest building in the city from which to witness the carnage. As despicable as it is, at least it’s predictable. He bows his head, and something flickers behind him.

Maro, Rehmat told me when Elias and I first conjured up this plan. The jinn who steals the souls for him. The two of them will be distracted by the exertion required to