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Keris Veturia has arrived. With her, an army to do the murdering and pillaging after the jinn weaken the city. Her forces are still a good distance away. But a vanguard of riders ranges out from the main force to cut down those Tribespeople who are unfortunate enough to be in their way.
My mother leads them. She is easy enough to recognize, distinctive for her diminutive size—but more for the brutality with which she kills. She wears steel-and-leather armor and wields a long spear that allows her toimpale easily from atop a swift-footed white mare. As I watch, she kills two women, an elderly man, and a child who stands paralyzed as she thunders toward him and mows him down.
I should feel nothing. Emotion is a distraction from my duty.
Yet my mind recoils at the sight of my mother blithely murdering a child. Though I rarely wonder about my father, I think of him now. Perhaps he, too, loved to cause pain. Perhaps that is why I care so little for the living. Perhaps my parents’ lack of humanity is why I was able to become the Chosen of Death.
Suddenly, Keris wheels her horse about and scans Aish’s skyline. Her gaze settles on me. Strange. I could be an archer. A soldier. Anyone.
Yet somehow, she knows it’s me. I feel it in my bones. We gaze at each other, connected by blood and violence and all our sins.
Then she pulls her horse back around and disappears into the band of soldiers returning to the main army. Shaken, I turn away and windwalk the roofs toward the jinn-spawned flames inking the southern sky. I streak past cookfires and rope beds, over pigeon coops and squawking chickens. The sounds of war fill my ears.
I reach for my scims, forgetting that they’ve been in my cabin for months. I want to fight, I realize. I want a battle that isn’t in my head. A battle that can be won based on physical strength and training and strategy. I could find a weapon. Fight with the Tribespeople. It would feel good to do it.
The slow weight of Mauth’s magic pulls at me, a reminder, and I shake myself. Battles mean death. And I have dealt out enough death.Nightbringer. Find the Nightbringer.
The closer I get to the southern edge of the city, the worse the flames are, until I have to stop at a water pump to soak a kerchief.
Screams echo from below me, and a building crumbles to dust before my eyes, a cloaked jinn man staring at it fixedly before turning away and bringing down another. Behind him, a fire-formed jinn hovers in the air as if it’s her own chariot. An unnaturally dry wind follows her, fanning the flames.
Stalking the streets below is a jinn in full flame, her body pulsing with hatred. I recognize her instantly. Umber. Her glaive spins as she cuts down any who block her path, and others who are desperately fleeing from her. As I watch, she lifts one man in the air and crushes his windpipe—slowly.
His spirit leaves his body and, for a moment, hovers near it. Then the air shimmers like a cat’s eyes flickering in the shadows. The spirit disappears.
It does not go to the Waiting Place. Or the other side. I would feel it, if that were the case—I would know in my bones. So what in the ten hells am I seeing?
I skulk along the rooftops, following Umber, watching as she kills. The air around her shimmers and flickers as soul after soul vanishes. Each disappearance leaves behind an emptiness, a void that weighs heavy on the air.
Before Umber spots me, I windwalk away, making for Aish’s tallest building, the Martial garrison. Never have I wished more for Shaeva. For her cool competence and vast well of knowledge. She would know what is happening. She would know how to stop it.
But she is not here, so I must make sense of this alone.
To the Nightbringer, Scholars—and their allies, the Tribes and Mariners—are the enemy. Prey. Meant to be destroyed. And yet, despite freeing thousands of his kindred from the jinn grove, he is primarily using a Martial army to carry out all the murder. The only logical conclusion is that the jinn cannot fight humans head-on.
Perhaps they have been weakened by their imprisonment. Perhaps their magic is limited. All magic comes from Mauth and even I have noticed a dip in Mauth’s strength, a torpidity.
So what, I argue with myself.The Nightbringer is stealing ghosts to fuel his magic?
It is as good an idea as any. If Mauth is the source of all magic, and he is Death, then it would follow that ghosts might be linked to that magic.
If I could get to the Nightbringer himself—I might be able to test the theory further. I reach the garrison’s flat rooftop and drop out of my windwalk, shading my eyes. The buildings all around are engulfed in flame. I won’t be able to see anything from here.
As I make to leave, something gleams in the air. A figure appears out of the smoke billowing across the roof, cloaked and flame-eyed, with a wickedly curved scythe held loosely in one hand. It is attached to a long handle and its dark shine is familiar.
The scythe, I realize, used to be a sickle. A sickle that the Nightbringer used to kill Shaeva months ago.
“Have you come to thank me, Usurper?”
The Nightbringer speaks softly, but his voice no longer makes my skin crawl. Nor do I feel apprehension when I look at him. He is but a living creature, who loves and hates, desires and mourns. A creature who is interfering with my work in the Waiting Place.
Mauth’s magic rises, sensing the threat. “You tamper with the spirits, jinn,” I say. “You tamper with Mauth. You must cease.”
“Then you are not here to thank me.” The feigned surprise in the Nightbringer’s voice grates on my nerves. “I cannot think why. There is so much less work for you, now that you have no ghosts to pass.”
“What are you doing with the spirits?”
“Silence, worm!” Umber appears out of the flames beside the Nightbringer. “You dare to speak to the Meherya thus? Faaz! Azul!” Two jinn materialize from the flames. “Khuri! Talis!”
