A Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes #4) - Sabaa Tahir Page 0,136

Laia,” he says. He spoke those words to me as we fled Blackcliff, what feels like eons ago.

“Are you?” I whisper, for though I wanted this, I am scared to trust it. Scared he will pull away again.

He tucks a curl back from my face. A simple gesture that sets me aflame. “I’m trying.”

The space between us is too great, so I step nearer. “Why?”

“Because—” His voice is low and we are close to—something. Skies know what, but I just want to get there. “Because you are—you are my—”

His head jerks up then, and he steps back, a rueful half smile on his face. “Ah—someone is waiting for you.”

I glance around and spot Mamie vanishing behind a nearby wagon. Internally, I curse.

“One day,” I tell Elias, “we won’t be interrupted. And I expect you to finish that sentence.”

When I reach Mamie’s wagon, I put thoughts of Elias aside. For it is not familiar, loving Mamie Rila waiting for me, but the Kehanni of Tribe Saif. She wears eggplant-purple robes with bell sleeves and a severe neck. They are hand-embroidered in a dozen shades of green and silver, and edged in tiny mirrors. Her thick hair is unbound and curls magnificently about her shoulders, a midnight halo.

Without a word, she gestures for me to follow her. I look back at the camp, worried it will be visible from above, but the wind efrits have enticed a thick fog to hide it.

“Go,” Rehmat whispers. “They are safe.”

Mamie Rila and I make our way past the sentries and up a hill shrouded in mist. When we reach the top she bids me sit on the damp grass, and settles herself across from me. I cannot see the camp from here. I cannot see anything but Mamie.

“The Tale lives in me now, Laia of Serra,” she says. “It is unlike any that I have told. I am changed. But do not fear. For I will return.”

Her eyes fade to white, and she grasps my hands. Her voice deepens, transforming from a gentle lilt to a growl from the very heart of the earth.

“I awoke in the glow of a young world,” she says, and I am gripped. “When man knew of hunting but not tilling, of stone but not steel. It smelled of rain and earth and life. It smelled of hope.

“Arise, beloved.”

For the next few hours, I do not sit with Mamie, but with the Nightbringer. I am not in the Empire, but deep in the Waiting Place, and then in lands far beyond. I am not enthralled by the story of a creature I’m only just beginning to understand. I am him.

I learn of his creation, his education, his loneliness. His relationship to humans and his marrow-deep love of his people. I discover Rehmat as she was in life, a fierce wandering poet. When Cain is mentioned—when Mamie speaks of what he and the Scholars did—I burn with hatred. And when I hear of the Nightbringer’s vengeance, of his love for Husani, my heart breaks.

“—I mourned her then. I mourn her still.”

As suddenly as it begun, the Tale is over. Mamie’s eyes darken to their familiar brown, and when she speaks, it is with her own voice.

“It is done,” she says.

“No.” I stop her from rising. “It cannot be done. There must be something else. Something about—about the scythe, or when he is at his weakest. Something more about him.”

Mamie bows her head. “That is all the darkness gave me, my love,” she says. “It will have to be enough.”

But it is not. I already know that it is not.

LIII: The Soul Catcher

The Blood Shrike and her army approach from the north, on the plains that sweep out from the Waiting Place. When the rumble of hooves is deafening and the smell of horse and men overwhelming, the Shrike lifts her fist and slows her forces to a halt.

Wind howls along the plains, and the two armies stare each other down. Scholars stand with the Blood Shrike’s troops, true. But there are far more Martials, and the Tribes have seen their people destroyed by the Martials.

The Shrike swings off her horse and approaches. My magic, scant as it is, rises, and I sense what is in her. Love. Joy. Sadness. And as she looks at Mamie, a deep well of self-hate.

Mauth’s warning rings through my mind. Your duty is not to the living. Your duty is not to yourself. Your duty is to the dead, even to the breaking of the world.

But