A ​Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes, #4)

by Sabaa Tahir

“Your wife,” she says, “is a pain in the a—” “Estranged wife.” Musa says.

We are, all of us, just visitors in each other’s lives, he’d said. You will forget my visit soon enough.

I want sand and stories and a clear night sky. I want to stare up into pale gray eyes filled with love and that edge of wickedness I ache for. I want to know what he said to me in Sadhese, a year and a half ago, when we danced at the Moon Festival in Serra. I want Elias Veturius back.

Those people—who are they? They are in the scent of winter fruit and the feel of a soft blanket.

I did not give you the dreams. You see them because they are truth. Because some small part of your old self lives within you yet. It screams to be free.”

I wish, suddenly, for Elias. He could sweet-talk a stone into giving him water.

“I’ve been looking all over for you. What happened?” “I . . . I was—”—taken by Jaduna, who performed some sort of rite that led to a . . . thing coming out of me, but now it is gone and I have no idea what any of it means.

Now isn’t the time to be distracted, Mauth, I shout in my mind. Unless you want me barbecued.

“Stop—bleeding, burning skies—” The words are strange in my mouth and I realize I haven’t sworn for months. “You mad old bastard!”

“I’ll take out the old woman. You get the—” “We are not knocking out an old woman!” Laia hisses. “She could be someone’s grandmother.”

Laia sighs. “Men are a terrible waste of air.” “Utter garbage,” I agree. “Useless rubbish,” she adds, grinning.

“A Scholar rebel and a Martial Blood Shrike are friends and the sky didn’t fall in. Whatever shall we do?”

“You are a child of kedim jadu, girl. Old magic. For centuries, I have waited for one of the kedim jadu to defy the Nightbringer. You did so, glorious and fearless, and now you quake, child? Now you quiver?”

By the time I am finished telling the tale, dawn is a pale suggestion on the horizon and the snow clouds have given way to a tangerine sky.

“The world’s not only full of bad things, you know.

Why are we laughing? I’d asked her at the time. Because laughing makes it hurt less.

When she is close enough, I reach out with Mauth’s magic to try to understand what she needs. This is the trickiest part of passing a ghost on. Get too close and they bolt. Not close enough, and they rage at you for misunderstanding them.

The voice that speaks conjures laughter and wonder, molten honey skin and hair the color of night.

“Do not listen to them,” he says. “They want to break the chain. They want to fall upon each of you, tear you away and consume your minds. Do not let them. Fight.” “I can’t,” I whisper. “I—” “You can. It is who you are. It is what you do best.” It is what I do best. Because I am strong, and I dig for that strength now. I watched my family bleed out at my feet and I fought for my people and faced a horde of Karkauns alone on a hill of dead bodies. I am a fighter. I am the Blood Shrike. You are a child. I am the Blood Shrike. You are weak. I am the Blood Shrike. You are nothing. “I am the Blood Shrike!” I scream, and the words echo back to me, not in my own voice but in my father’s and my mother’s, in Hannah’s and in the voices of all those lost at Antium.

So much evil. So many monsters.

“But I think that if you were the one who got chained up in the forest, Elias would never give up. If you had forgotten how much you loved him, he’d find a way to make you remember. He’d keep fighting until he brought you back.” My face burns in shame as Tas returns to the cabin. I want to call out after him, You are only a child. You have no idea what you speak of. But I do not. Because he is right.

“My heart”—I draw myself up—“fell in love with a murderous jinn. It cannot be trusted.” “Your heart is the only thing that can be trusted.”

“How do I care for them? How do I help them?” You love them, he said.

“Laia of Serra,” I say. “You have trespassed into the Wa—” “I swear to the skies, Elias, if you finish that sentence, I will tackle you. And you wouldn’t like it.” Something twinges within, low in my body. A sly voice in my head urges me to say, Maybe I would.

Shouldn’t have looked. I direct my gaze up toward the treetops, which are infinitely less interesting.

Where would I take her if I could? The voice imprisoned within answers: Somewhere peaceful. Rain drumming above and a fire crackling, a soft bed and hours and hours ahead.

The space he leaves is vast, that gnawing loneliness of showing your heart to someone only to find they never wanted to see it.

“You need a pet, Elias,” I say, “if you are turning to rocks for company.” “I don’t need a pet.” He leans down, grabs me by the waist, and throws me over his shoulder. I yelp. “Elias Veturius, you—you put me down—” He drops me at the edge of the clearing—not ungently—and goes back to his boulder.

Pater Mettias, who until now has observed the proceedings from beside the fire, looks at me askance. “How can women fight against those monsters? How will you arm them?” “Have you forgotten that the Shrike is a woman, Mettias?” Livia examines the young Pater with enough asperity to make him fidget. “Do not bore us with old prejudices. You are a better man than that.”

I need to get away from him. He’s too close. Too angry. I like emotionless Harper. Cold Harper. Fiery Harper—the Harper who looks at me like I’m precious to him—that’s the Harper I need to avoid.

“I know what you need, Shrike.” He runs a hand up my arm, so careful despite his anger. “I want you to ask for it.” I need you to disappear. To never leave. I need to have never met you or felt you. You. You. You. I need you.

He’s just there on the other side. Maybe his heart thuds like mine. Maybe his hands shake like mine.

“It was an honor to serve by your side, Helene Aquilla,” he says. “Give my best to Elias, if you see him. And for skies’ sake, put Harper out of his misery. Poor bastard deserves a roll in the hay after all you’ve put him through.”

“Laia.” Rehmat flickers in agitation and I wonder if the creature is not an “it” but a “he,” for there is something irritatingly male about its obduracy.

We gaze at each other, connected by blood and violence and all our sins.

It doesn’t matter because it was a life cut down too early. Even if he was a Karkaun child, he would still be worth mourning, because at this age, he would have been tender and soft, not yet molded by the violence of his elders. Whoever he was, he did not deserve any of this. Adults brought this upon him. I brought this upon him. The Commandant. All of us striving for power and control, and destroying any who got in the way.

I feel like I am chasing down memories, instead of reality.

“There are many things more powerful than death. Your kind wax eloquent about them in song and ballads and poetry.” “Love,” I say. “Hope. Memory.” “Sorrow. Despair. Rage.”

The Commandant’s interrogation training kicks in. If you must, offer the shortest answers you can while maintaining the illusion of cooperation. “Reconnaissance,” I say.

“Some names are etched into the stars,” Talis goes on. “Melody and countermelody, a harmony that echoes in the blood. I hear such harmony in your names—Laia-Elias.” He speaks them so they sound like one word, so they sound like a song. “You might seek to deny her, but you cannot. Fate will always lead you back to her, for good or for ill.”

“Suffering is a state of mind, a feeling,” I say. “It can’t do anything.”

“Suffering is a monster, waiting to be released from a cage.

“A commander who has tasted the bitter fruit of war is the only one worthy of waging it. For he understands the cost.

“We are doomed, you and I,” the Nightbringer whispers, and when he touches my face with his hands, their fire cooled, I do not quail. “To offer more love than we will ever be given.”

Would that we all knew the cracked terrain of each other’s broken hearts. Perhaps then, we would not be so cruel to those who walk this lonely world with us.

My mind snags on one word: Fearless. For I am not fearless. To be fearless means to have a heart of steel. But my heart betrayed itself. It is soft and hopeful. And I know now that it belongs entirely to Avitas Harper. No matter how I wish to deny it, my reaction when I thought him dead tells me I am fully, foolishly in love with him. He is the weak spot in my armor, the flaw in my defense.

My heart was hers, and I knew that if she did not wish to become my queen, I would never have one.

“I am sorry. But—” “No.” She puts a finger to my lips. “I am sorry was the perfect place to stop.” She stands close enough for me to see the myriad tiny scratches all over her face. I brush my fingers against one lightly. “The river that did this to you,” I say. “I don’t like it.” Her smile is a lightning flash in the dark. “Are you going to find the bad river, Elias? Make it pay?” “It’s Soul Catcher. And yes.” My thoughts toward this river turn baleful. “Maybe I can divert it down a canyon, or—” The fire turns her gold eyes molten, and she throws back her head and laughs. Watching her is like watching a waterfall thundering down a gorge. Like watching the Northern Dancers illuminate the sky.

Do not mistake me, Kinnius. We are not so desperate for allies that we will tolerate the insults of a man too weak to fight for his people.

“I hear, Shrike, that the people hailed you as Imperator Invictus.” Kinnius turns to me. “Could it be that you wish to take your nephew’s throne for yourse—” I have a knife to Kinnius’s throat in two seconds. “Go on.” I draw a bit of blood. “Finish that sentence, you cowardly pissant.”