A Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes #4) - Sabaa Tahir Page 0,167

head that is not your own.

Do not fail me, Banu al-Mauth.

Behind me, the air hisses as hundreds of scims leave their scabbards.

“Look at that, bleeding hells—”

“Must be scores of them living in that city—”

Down in the Sher Jinnaat, across the gash in the earth, figures emerge. Most are in human form, though some wear their shadows, and others swirl in full flame.

“Soul Catcher.” The Blood Shrike limps toward me. Behind her, our ranks of Tribesmen, Scholars, and Martials are already forming up again into neat lines. Her gaze is fixed on the jinn watching us from the Sher Jinnaat.

“The catapults. There are two still working.” She raises her voice. “Load the salt—”

But I turn on her, Mauth’s power filling me, and my voice booms out across the jinn grove.

“You will not touch them.”

The Blood Shrike looks at me in surprise. As the rest of our men realize what I am saying, an angry mutter rises.

“We cannot let what they’ve done stand, Soul Catcher,” the Blood Shrike says. “Their leader is dead. Their human minions are dead or scattered. This is our chance.”

“They are not the Nightbringer,” I say. “The Augurs imprisoned them for a thousand years for doing nothing more than defending their borders. Unless you wish to punish yourself for defending Antium against invaders?”

“You saw what they can do at full strength. Such a threat—”

“We can treat with them,” I say. “This is what the Augurs worked toward, Blood Shrike. The foretellings, the raising of Blackcliff, the Trials. All their machinations were to bring us to this moment. They knew there was going to be a war years ago. Ever since they stole the jinn’s magic, they’ve been trying to make up for the evil they did. But they are not here to see it through.” I look at Laia and the Shrike in turn. “That falls to us.”

As I regard them, I wonder at the strange twists of fate that have led us here. The impossibility of this outcome, of the three of us alive, together, and standing before a host of the creatures desperately needed to restore balance to our world.

“Right.” Laia takes my hand in her left, and the Blood Shrike’s in her right. “Let’s get on with this.”

Hand in hand, we make our way down the escarpment and to the waiting jinn. We stop at a far enough distance that they don’t feel threatened.

“Where is he?” Umber steps forward, recognizable only by her wrathful voice and the glaive in her hand. Even her eyes have dimmed, her fire a bare flicker of what it was in the battle.

“He is gone.” Laia steps forward. “Bound by Rehmat, who gave her life so yours might be spared. For he would have destroyed this world, and there is yet much good in it.”

“No.” Umber crumples, weeping, not in rage as I expected, but in desolation. “No—he loved us—”

But the other jinn are silent, for they bore witness. They saw what he became.

“You are needed in this world,” Laia goes on. “You should not be driven into hiding or to war by the greed of a human king from a thousand years ago. The jinn were wronged. The Nightbringer avenged that wrong. Let it end now.”

“What do you wish us to do?” The jinn called Faaz steps forward, brown-haired and dark-eyed in his human form. “Serve your kind again? You will only return to thieve our powers.”

“We will not.” The Blood Shrike steps forward. “I am Blood Shrike of the Martial Empire and Regent to Emperor Zacharias. In his name, I vow that no Martial shall cross the border of the Waiting Place unless you will it, and no Martial shall raise arms against you, unless in defense. We will make no treaty with any nation that does not agree to do the same.”

I look at the Shrike in surprise, but then consider what she said to me only days ago. Another war. Will it ever end, Soul Catcher? Or will this be the legacy I leave my nephew?

“We cannot go back.” The crowd parts to let a jinn through. He is thin and stoop-shouldered, heavily cloaked, but I recognize him instantly. Maro—the jinn who siphoned the ghosts for the Meherya, who did nothing as thousands upon thousands of humans died. “Not after all we have done,” he says. “Not after all that has been done to us.”

“You can.” I think of my father. “I have saved lives and taken them. I have been whipped and beaten and broken