A Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes #4) - Sabaa Tahir Page 0,26

her.

And fear.

“She’s gone.” Karinna says, and my head spins as I try to follow her ceaseless movement through the trees. “My sweet lovey is gone. If she still existed in this world, I would know. But she wouldn’t leave without me. Never. She would wait. Have you seen her?”

“Karinna.” I take a different tack. “Will you tell me how you died? Perhaps if I know, I can help you find your lovey.”

Usually ghosts are still thinking about their deaths—even discussing them. But for as long as I’ve been in the Waiting Place, I’ve never heard Karinna say a word about her passing.

She turns her face away. “I thought we were safe,” she says. “I’d never have gone, I’d never have taken her if I didn’t think we were safe.”

“The world of the living is capricious,” I say. “But the other side is not. You’ll be safe there.”

“No. There is no safe place anymore.” She whirls on me. The air crackles with cold, the rain hardening to sleet. “Not even beyond the river. It’s madness. I will not go.”

Beyond the river. She means the other side. “The other side is not like our world—”

“How do you know?” Her fear sharpens and settles around her, a poisonous miasma. “You have not been there. You do not sense what crouches in the beyond.”

“Other ghosts pass through and find peace.”

“They do not!” she shrieks. “You send them to the chasm and they do not know what awaits them! A maelstrom, a great hunger—”

The dream. “Karinna.” Urgency grips me, but I do not let it show. “Tell me of this maelstrom.”

But my grandmother’s spirit stiffens and spins east, toward the river. Seconds later, I sense what she does—outsiders to the far north.

“Karinna—wait—” But she is gone. Skies only know when I will find her again.

My ire at the outsiders is fueled by her departure. If they hadn’t breached the Waiting Place, I could have gotten some answers out of her.

I windwalk north, considering whether to kill them or simply frighten them. When I reach the River Dusk, I do not slow. To the spirits, the Dusk is a pathway to the other side. To me, it is just a river. But today, as I cross, the midmorning mist rises and brings with it a swirl of memory. The ghosts’ memories, I realize. Joy and contentment, peace and—

Agony. Not physical, but something deeper. A wound of the soul.

I have never stumbled when windwalking the Dusk. Stepping across it is like hopping across a rivulet instead of a river wide enough to hold a dozen Mercator barges.

But the pain shocks me and I plunge into the freezing water. Something grabs me—hands, pulling, pressing so hard that I can feel the skin break on my arms, my legs—

Jinn! I fight my way to the surface, sputtering, and swim for the far bank. The past few months of training have made me strong and I break free, kicking violently.

A low trick, ambushing me in the water—but one I should have been prepared for.

At shore, I look back, steeling myself for another battle with the jinn. But the river is quiet, moving swift and sure. There is no sign of anything that might wish me harm. I inspect my arms, my legs.

No marks. Though I was sure I felt blood leaking out of me.

I’m tempted to return to the river, but the intruders await. I streak northeast, frost collecting on my wet clothes, my hair, my eyelashes as I travel. The wind whips against me, fey and angry until, for the second time in a week, I walk the border of the Waiting Place, prepared to drive out whoever is foolish enough to enter it.

The fools, it turns out, are manifold.

Nearly a hundred, in fact. There are soldiers in longboats, most of whom sling arrows at a group of people clustered at the water’s edge, on a short spit of beach. Those few are locked in close combat with a dozen more Martial soldiers.

The beach backs to the cliffs, with a few treacherous paths leading up to my domain.

“To the woods, Tas, run!”

The man who speaks is tall and sandy-haired, his brown skin matching that of the young woman next to him. Her armor is piecemeal, her cloak in tatters. She’s hooded so I cannot see her face. But I know her. I know the way she moves, and the color of her skin and the set of her shoulders.

“Laia! Watch it!” a Scholar man with dark skin and long,