A Reaper at the Gates (An Ember in the Ashes, #3)

by Sabaa Tahir

I see no columns or domes or ornate patterns. The structures in the Empire or Marinn or the Tribal deserts reflect their people. Those cities laugh and cry and shout and snarl. This city is one note, the purest note ever sung, held until my heart wants to break at the sound.

“Everyone believes that nothing concerns them until the monsters are knocking on their doors!” She winces at my shriek, but I do not care. “Until they are burning down your homes and destroying your lives and killing your families!”

Love cannot live here.

I want him to be an Aquilla. And I want him to be a Martial. So I sing my sister Livia into him—her kindness and laughter. I sing him my father’s conviction and prudence. My mother’s thoughtfulness and intelligence. I sing him Hannah’s fire. Of his father, I sing only one thing: his strength and skill in battle—one quick word, sharp and strong and clear—Marcus if the world had not ruined him. If he had not allowed himself to be ruined.

I am not nothing.”

The shadows hang thick between the tents, and I let them cradle me as I make my way through the periphery of the camp.

You will know victory, or you will know death.

“For I was born to love. It was my calling, my purpose. Now it is my curse. I know love better than any other creature alive. Certainly better than a girl who gives her heart to whoever happens by.”

She is a child whose happiness is gauged by the strange weather between her parents, sometimes sunny but more often a gale.

“Forgive her, if you can,” I say. “Remember that fate is never what we think it will be. Your mother—my mother—we can never understand their torments. Their hurts. We may suffer the consequences of their mistakes and their sins, but we should not carry them on our hearts. We don’t deserve that.”

“There’s a famine among their people and a firebrand warlock who has taken advantage of it. Nothing motivates a man like hunger in the bellies of his children.

The magic fills my sight, and I see the ghosts for what they are: hurting, alone, confused, regretful. Some are desperate for forgiveness. Others for kindness. Others for understanding. Others for an explanation. But a few require judgment, and those spirits take longer to deal with, for they must suffer the hurt they inflicted on others before they are free. Each time I recognize what a spirit needs, I find myself willing it forth from the magic and giving it to them.

Childbirth is not something I have wasted much thought on. I do not wish for children. I will never be a midwife. I have a sister, but no female friends. Babies hold no appeal for me, though I was always fascinated by the way my mother loved us: with a fierceness that was almost frightening. She used to call us her miracles. Now, as my sister releases a roar, I finally understand.

“Hail, nephew.” I pull him close to me so that he’s only inches from my face. “I wish for you joy and a family that loves you, adventures that shape you, and true friends to have them with.”

“The world must be broken before it can be remade,” I say, “or else the balance will never be restored.”

“There is success,” I say. “And there is failure. The land in between is for those too weak to live. Duty first, unto death.”

From the city, a hellish sound rises. It is worse than the silence of Blackcliff after the Third Trial, worse than the tortured moans of Kauf’s prisoners. It is the screaming of those I left behind as they face the violence of the Karkauns. The wolves are among my people now.

I am a thing from the Barbarians’ nightmares, a silver-faced, blood-drenched demon of the hells, and I will not let them pass.