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“Rehmat,” I say. “This storm—”
“It is him.” The creature realizes it as I do. “He knows you are out here, Laia of Serra. He seeks to harm you. Climb, child.”
“Climb?” The path I am on is too narrow, the walls of the canyon too steep. Rehmat’s light flares in alarm as the earth beneath me rumbles.
“The canyon is flooding, Laia! Climb!”
Rehmat flies a dozen yards ahead, where the canyon curves into a small ridge. I try to run, but can only lurch heavily through the water. A deafening groan splits the air. Something moves behind me, a shattered forest come to life, gobbling and chewing as it goes. A flash flood.
I slosh forward as the water around me rises to my knees, then my thighs.
“Faster, Laia!” Rehmat barks, and now I have reached the ridge, but it is too slick for me to hold on to. The roar of the flood is so loud I cannot hear myself think. The headwall approaches too quickly.
“Help me!” I scream at Rehmat.
“The only way is to join with your mind.” Rehmat twists around me. “But we are too powerful together, Laia. And the Nightbringer is too close. If I lend you my magic, he would sense us!”
“Blast the Nightbringer!” I jump, clawing and scrabbling at the ridge. “Maybe that fiery bastard deserves to know I will not just lay down anddie, Rehmat! He should know I’ll fight. But I cannot fight if you do not help me!”
The water pummels me, dragging me from the ridge. “Help me or I die!” I scream. “Please, Rehmat!”
The creature lunges, and for a moment, I feel it within my mind.
But it is too late. The flood has me now, and before I can draw on Rehmat’s magic, before I can even wrap my thoughts around the fact that it has joined with me, the water sweeps me away.
XXXI:The Soul Catcher
At first glance, the City of the Jinn looks as it always does. The wind scatters leaves and dirt down empty streets. The clouds above surge and heave, promising a storm. A hush blankets the spare buildings, heavy as the doors of a mausoleum.
In the distance, the River Dusk gleams a dull silver, more sluggish than normal. No doubt because it is choked with debris. After leaving Laia, I returned to find more dead patches along its banks. In the two weeks since then, those dead bits have only expanded.
I did not wish to come here. For nearly a fortnight, I put it off. But Mauth does not speak to me. The ghosts remain absent from the Waiting Place. And it all ties back to the Nightbringer. Here, in his home, perhaps I can learn why.
As I enter the outskirts of the city, it feels different. Awake. I slide through the shadows and spot the drift of a curtain in the wind. When I look again, it’s still. The edge of a cloak flits into view, followed by the low hum of voices in conversation. I follow the sound and find myself on a dead-end street. I think I smell cloves and coriander and apple on the air, but moments later the scent is gone.
I feel like I am chasing down memories, instead of reality.
The wind, which screamed through the trees of the Waiting Place just minutes ago, is muted here, and transformed into a melancholy music that echoes through pipes hidden among the buildings. The melodies are beautiful. They also mask the sound of my passage.
Mauth’s magic does not extend to invisibility, so I must draw on all thatI learned at Blackcliff. I stick to the shadows and take my time, making my way to the center of the city. There, on a street lined with high buildings, I hear voices that do not fade. They come from a gate twice my height—or more specifically, from the courtyard beyond it. There is no way to approach directly—not without risking discovery. I glance up, but the rooftops of the city are sloped, and smooth as polished glass. I’ll break my neck if I try to cross them.
Ten hells. Curse the jinn for not planting any bleeding shrubbery around their buildings. I edge toward a deep archway, hoping to the skies no jinn choose to walk past.
The murmur of conversation clarifies. Still, at first I cannot make sense of it. Then I realize why. The voices speak in Archaic Rei. The language of the jinn.
But Blackcliff’s rhetoric Centurion made us study Archaic Rei. It’s the parent language for Sadhese and Old Rei, the Scholar tongue. Thank the skies that old goat was so in love with ancient languages. After a few moments, I can translate:
“—cannot fight, you have yet to heal. There is no honor in death by idiocy—”
“—bring hot water and neem leaf, quickly—”
“—will be here soon. But he fights so we may forever be free of the Scholar scourge.”
The voices fade. I catch enough to understand that I’ve stumbled upon some sort of hospital or infirmary. But for whom? Do jinn even catch illnesses? When I lived with Shaeva, she never so much as sneezed.
I inch closer, and at that moment, two shapes plummet out of the sky, thundering down to the street just yards away.
One is Umber in her shadow form, glaive clutched tight. The other is the dark-eyed, dark-skinned jinn who accompanied her before—Talis.
