A Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes #4) - Sabaa Tahir Page 0,129

lands and treacherous seas. And we do not know if the Mariners will still be fighting by then, or if Keris and the jinn will have defeated them.”

“Get to the point.” The Zaldar of Tribe Shezaad speaks so insolently that his Fakira, a woman Mamie’s age and dressed in black, slaps him on the back of the head. He ducks, gaze as surly as an alley cat’s.

“We take a shorter journey, to the Sher Jinnaat, the City of the Jinn, deep within the Waiting Place.” I consider my words carefully, for I’ll have this one chance to convince them. “Everything the Nightbringer has ever done has been for his people. He will not allow them to be killed. We can draw him and his army away from Marinn and to a place where we have an advantage.”

“How do we have an advantage if it’s their city?” another Zaldar asks. “They will tear through our army with their fire.”

“Most of the jinn in the city are still weak.” Laia speaks up. “They have not recovered from their imprisonment.”

“An army of four thousand Tribespeople and a thousand efrits is no small thing,” Afya says. “The Nightbringer will know we are coming.”

“Not if Elias and I are hidden,” Laia cuts in. “Darin too. We can disguise our fighters and supplies. From a distance, the army will just look like a band of refugees.”

“We like this not, Soul Catcher.” Rowan Goldgale sweeps forward, his fellow efrit lords following. “We will not stand for a massacre. We have witnessed too many.”

“The goal is not to kill the jinn,” I say. “It’s to draw the Nightbringer away from the Free Lands so that he no longer reaps souls. So the Mariner armies can regroup. The Mariners are our allies. They offered sanctuary to the Scholars when the Tribes could not. It is wrong to abandon them when our foe is the same.”

“You say our,” the Nasur Kehanni points out. “But you are a Martial.”

“He is the Banu al-Mauth, Kehanni.” Aubarit’s voice is ice, and she is no longer the scared girl I met one winter ago. “The Chosen of Death. Have a care in how you speak to him, lest I leave your soul to wander.”

The Kehanni bites back whatever retort she had prepared. “The Mariners did not aid us,” she points out. “Sadh and Aish and Nur burned, and we heard nothing from them.”

An old emotion rises in me. One of the first I felt, when Cain awoke my memories. Anger—at the stubbornness of nearly everyone here, at their cussed refusal to see.

But I catch myself. The Zaldars fear they’ll lead those they love to a swift death. They are afraid we’ll fail. The Kehanni of Tribe Nasur fears the same.

“It is a risk,” I say. “But this way, we force the Nightbringer to act. To come to us. We prepare for his attack, and when he comes, we hold off the army as long as possible so—”

I look to Laia, standing in the shadows, hand gripped tight around her scythe.

“So that I can kill him,” she says.

I say nothing of my plan to speak to the jinn in the Sher Jinnaat, to try to persuade them to serve as Soul Catchers once more. Doing so will only complicate matters.

“What other choice do we have?” Afya speaks out. “We arrive in Marinn in time to be massacred? We wait here, until either this maelstrom destroys us or the Commandant does? Our suffering begins and ends with the Nightbringer. Let us finish him.”

“If she can finish him,” the Zaldar of Tribe Shezaad says. “Give the scythe to someone who can wield it. Why not you, Soul Catcher?”

My ire rises, and I find my fists are clenched, but I keep silent, for Laia steps forward, dark eyes reflecting the flames as she regards the Zaldar.

“How many times have you faced the Nightbringer and survived, Zaldar?”

The man fidgets from foot to foot.

“I have defied him and survived him again and again. He has tried to hurt me. But I will not allow myself to be hurt. He has tried to break me. But I will not allow myself to be broken. And I will not be dictated to by a man so afraid to fight the jinn that he must criticize a woman to make himself feel bigger.”

“If we bring the fight to the Sher Jinnaat,” I say, “we choose our own destiny, instead of letting the jinn and Keris Veturia choose for us.”

“I want vengeance on those