A Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes #4) - Sabaa Tahir Page 0,134

not knowing where he had gone, or whether he lived, or what she had done to deserve his silence.

I mourned her then. I mourn her still.

Like the Tribes, the Mariners have their own rites for the dead. Like the Tribes, they begin to understand that against me, those rites mean nothing.

The palace of the Mariner royal family is rubble around me—as is much of Adisa. The city that gave haven to my enemies has been laid low by Keris Veturia. Thousands of souls flow from her killing fields and into my hands.

Maro still recovers from the wound Laia dealt him. But I catch nearly as many spirits as him. The souls of men are fickle and thin. They come to me easily. Almost willingly.

“The city is ours.” Keris walks gingerly through the ruins of the palace, her gaze snagging on the shattered glass dome that used to sit above Irmand’s driftwood throne. There is a proprietary air about her. This is her city. Her palace. An extension of her Empire. Just as I promised.

She is splattered with the blood of Marinn’s brave soldiers, none of them a match for her savagery. “Before I killed her, Nikla raised the white flag—”

I give her a withering look, and she bows her head, barely cowed. “My lord,” she adds.

“Adisa is a fallen city,” I tell her. “But the Mariners are not a broken people. Many in the city fled. How many dead?”

“More than twelve thousand, my lord.”

More, the Sea whispers in my mind. More.

I shift my gaze to my lieutenant. “What troubles you, Keris?”

“I should have killed the child.” She shifts from foot to foot, her boots crunching the multicolored glass of the dome. “Zacharias.”

“You had your opportunity. Why did you not strike?”

“I needed him,” she says. “To lure the Blood Shrike. But as I was holding him, I was reminded of Ilyaas.”

“There is no weakness in having remembered your child,” I tell her. “The weakness lies in denying it. What did you feel?”

Keris is silent for a long time, and though she is a grown woman, she looks, for a moment, like the child she was long ago. I suppose to me, they are all children.

She grasps at the hilt of her bloody scim.

“It does not matter—”

But I do not let her turn away, for the weakness must out, so that it does not fester within her.

“When you see your son again, will you be able to do what must be done?”

“I did see him again,” she says. “In Aish. He was—different. But the same. A Veturius.” She offers the name unemotionally. For a long time, we do not speak.

“I do not know,” she finally says, “if I will be able to do what must be done.”

It is one of the talents of humans to surprise, even after millennia of knowing their kind. She meets my flame eyes, for of all creatures who walk this earth, only Keris Veturia has never flinched from my gaze. Her darkest moments are long behind her.

“There are some things that do not die. No matter how many blades we put into them,” she says.

“Indeed, Keris.” I know it better than any.

We stare out at the burning city. A white flag hangs limp in the still air. The Sea stirs, hungry. More.

Thousands are dead. So much suffering.

But not enough.

LII: Laia

We trek out of the Tribal desert and into the grasslands of the southern Empire. It is sparsely populated, so it is easy enough to stay far from villages and garrisons. About three weeks after we set out, the mottled horizon thickens into a mass of tangled green branches.

“The Waiting Place. Not long to go, Laia.” Darin speaks from beside me. I have cloaked him so it appears his horse is riderless—something the horse protested with vigorous head-tossing and angry whinnies. Elias, riding ahead of us, is also invisible, though I can hear the steady hum of conversation between him and Jans Aquillus.

All around, weapons and armor are stowed away. A great many of the fighters travel inside wagons, while their mounts bear supplies instead of riders. The sand efrits settle the dust of the caravan so it’s unnoticeable from afar, and the wind efrits lure clouds over us to mask us further. A jinn would have to get close to tell that this is an army, and according to the efrits none have.

“Once we’re in,” Darin says, “the Soul Catcher said there won’t be a need for the invisibility.”

“Because we won’t be able to hide from him,”