A Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes #4) - Sabaa Tahir Page 0,41

is earned after long years of study. We see impressions. The Augurs saw details.”

“When you look at me, what do you see?”

It is not the question I mean to ask. But it is what I have wanted to know from the moment Dex told me the ambassador was here.

“When I look at you now, I see Dil-Ewal,” he says. “She who heals. When I look at your future, I see—” He pauses and shrugs. “Something else.”

He transitions smoothly into the trade agreement, laying out what he wants in return for the sappers and trebuchets. I agree to sell him grain and livestock—skies knows where I will get them from—and tell him the crown will consider the sale of scims, which appears to satisfy him. After he is gone, a knock sounds at my door.

I open it to find my sister’s head bent at an awkward angle. Zacharias clutches a hank of her hair and pulls at it with happy vigor.

“What madness possessed you to leave your hair down?” I tickle Zak’s foot and he releases Livia and flops toward me with a “ba!”

Livia says he’s too young to be speaking. But I think he knows who loves him best. When I take him, he reaches for my braid, but only gives it a light pat before grabbing my face instead.

“Traitor child.” My sister smiles. Zacharias is as beautiful as she was as a baby, with soft brown curls and cheeks that want a pinch. His coloring is a mix of Livia’s and Marcus’s, a glowing golden-brown, and he watches me with the pale yellow eyes of the Farrar family.

“He missed you.” Livvy settles herself into the spot I vacated. “Refused to sleep properly without Auntie Shrike to give him a cuddle. But I told him you were off doing something very important.”

I glance at her ladies-in-waiting, Merina and Coralia Farrar. They’re Marcus’s cousins—and nothing like him. They love my sister and Zacharias with a fierce protectiveness, but they do not need to be party to matters of state. Livia dismisses them, and they take the Emperor from me, escorted by a sober-faced Captain Rallius and three other Masks.

After I tell Livia everything that happened in Marinn, she rises in agitation.

“We knew the Commandant would play dirty,” she says. “The jinn attacks were meant to bring Marinn to its knees just in time for her to demand a treaty.” My sister paces the room. “Sometimes I want to leave all of this. Take Zacharias and go far away, to some warm southern land, where no one will know us. Where he can have a normal life.”

“Your people need you,” I say. “And they need him. He is the child of a Plebeian and an Illustrian, brought into this world by a Scholar. He is a symbol of hope and unity, Empress Regent. A reminder of what the Empire could be.”

“Thank the skies you’ve finally come around.” Livia smiles. “A few months ago, you wanted to throttle me for setting the Scholars free.”

“But you did it anyway,” I say. “You’re brave. And wise. You just have to be patient too.”

By the time Livia and I enter the throne room, a wood-beamed dining hall with too many cobwebs, two dozen Paters have gathered. My uncle, Jans Aquillus, is also there, and nods when I enter. He will be one of the few Livia and I can count on to stand with us.

I offer a greeting, but step back, a hand on my scim, to allow Livia to speak. For the thousandth time, I wish for my mask. Its silver reminded me of who I was. What I was capable of doing. It reminded everyone else as well. Too often, the Paters forget.

“Wine, soldier,” Livia calls to the aux at the door. He disappears and Pater Cassius snorts.

He’s a tall, slope-shouldered fellow with a thick head of gray hair and parchment-pale skin. “He’ll be hard-pressed to find it,” Cassius says.

“A by-product of war, Cassius,” Livia says. “We’re not having a garden party.”

“No, we are not.” Pater Agrippa Mettias speaks up. He is clever, blunt, and an excellent fighter—a quintessential Northman. Though only in his late twenties, he’s successfully guided his Gens since the age of sixteen.

With his deep brown skin and high cheekbones, he is also exceedingly handsome. The grizzled old Paters tease him for it, but he doesn’t seem to mind. His self-assurance makes me like him more. He’s a good ally. I would hate to lose his support.

“Keris seized Gens Mettia’s southern