A jinn would have completed the prophecy, but the boy is only human, his body a frail vessel. Blood pours from the wound in his neck and he collapses, dead.

“What in the skies are you?” I speak to the darkness within the child, but it has fled, and taken the answer to my question with it.

II: Laia

The storyteller in the Ucaya Inn holds the packed common room in her thrall. The winter wind moans through Adisa’s streets, rattling the eaves outside, and the Tribal Kehanni trembles with equal intensity. She sings of a woman fighting to save her true love from a vengeful jinn. Even the most ale-soaked denizens are rapt.

As I watch the Kehanni from a table in the corner of the room, I wonder what it is like to be her. To offer the gift of story to those you meet, instead of suspecting that they might be enemies out to kill you.

At the thought, I scan the room again and feel for my dagger.

“You pull that hood any lower,” Musa of Adisa whispers from beside me, “and people will think you’re a jinn.” The Scholar man sprawls in a chair to my right. My brother, Darin, sits on his other side. We are tucked by one of the inn’s foggy windows, where the warmth of the fire does not penetrate.

I do not release my weapon. My skin prickles, instinct telling me that unfriendly eyes are upon me. But everyone watches the Kehanni.

“Stop waving around your blade, aapan.” Musa uses the Mariner honorific that means “little sister” and speaks with the same exasperation I sometimes hear from Darin. The Beekeeper, as Musa is known, is twenty-eight—older than Darin and I. Perhaps that is why he delights in bossing us around.

“The innkeeper is a friend,” he says. “No enemies here. Relax. We can’t do anything until the Blood Shrike returns anyway.”

We are surrounded by Mariners, Scholars, and only a few Tribespeople. Still, when the Kehanni ends her tale, the room explodes into applause. It is so sudden that I half draw my blade.

Musa eases my hand off the hilt. “You break Elias Veturius out of Blackcliff, burn down Kauf Prison, deliver the Martial Emperor in the middle of a war, face down the Nightbringer more times than I can count,” he says, “and you jump at a loud noise? I thought you were fearless, aapan.”

“Leave off, Musa,” Darin says. “Better to be jumpy than dead. The Blood Shrike would agree.”

“She’s a Mask,” Musa says. “They’re born paranoid.” The Scholar watches the door, his mirth fading. “She should be back by now.”

It is strange to worry about the Shrike. Until a few months ago, I thought I would go to my grave hating her. But then Grímarr and his horde of Karkaun barbarians besieged Antium, and Keris Veturia betrayed the city. Thousands of Martials and Scholars, including me, the Shrike, and her newly born nephew, the Emperor, fled to Delphinium. The Shrike’s sister, Empress Regent Livia, freed those Scholars still bound in slavery.

And somehow, between then and now, we became allies.

The innkeeper, a young Scholar woman around Musa’s age, emerges from the kitchen with a tray of food. She sweeps toward us, the tantalizing scents of pumpkin stew and garlic flatbread preceding her.

“Musa, love.” The innkeeper sets down the food and I am suddenly starving. “You won’t stay another night?”

“Sorry, Haina.” He flips a gold mark at her and she catches it deftly. “That should cover the rooms.”

“And then some.” Haina pockets the coin. “Nikla’s raised Scholar taxes again. Nyla’s bakery was shuttered last week when she couldn’t pay.”

“We’ve lost our greatest ally.” Musa speaks of old King Irmand, who’s been ill for weeks. “It’s only going to get worse.”

“You were married to the princess,” Haina says. “Couldn’t you talk to her?”

The Scholar offers her a wry smile. “Not unless you want your taxes even higher.”

Haina departs and Musa claims the stew. Darin swipes a platter of fried okra still popping with oil.

“You ate four ears of street corn an hour ago,” I hiss at him, grappling for a basket of bread.

As I wrest it free, the door blows open. Snow drifts into the room, along with a tall, slender woman. Her silvery-blonde crown braid is mostly hidden beneath a hood. The screaming bird on her breastplate flashes for an instant before she draws her cloak over it and strides to our table.

“That smells incredible.” The Blood Shrike of the Martial Empire drops into the seat across from Musa and takes his food.

At his petulant expression, she shrugs. “Ladies first. That goes for you too, smith.” She slides Darin’s groaning plate toward me and I dig in.

“Well?” Musa says to the Shrike. “Did that shiny bird on your armor get you in to see the king?”

The Blood Shrike’s pale eyes flash. “Your wife,” she says, “is a pain in the a—”

“Estranged wife.” Musa says. A reminder that once, they adored each other. No longer. A bitter ending to what they hoped was a lifelong love.

It is a feeling I know well.

Elias Veturius saunters into my mind, though I have tried to lock him out. He appears as I last saw him, sharp-eyed and aloof outside the Waiting Place. We are, all of us, just visitors in each other’s lives, he’d said. You will forget my visit soon enough.

“What did the princess say?” Darin asks the Shrike, and I push Elias from my head.

“She didn’t speak to me. Her steward said the princess would hear my appeal when King Irmand’s health improved.”

The Martial glares at Musa, as if he is the one who has refused an audience. “Keris bleeding Veturia is sitting in Serra, beheading every ambassador Nikla has sent. The Mariners have no other allies in the Empire. Why is she refusing to see me?”

“I’d love to know,” Musa says, and an iridescent flicker near his face tells me that his wights, tiny winged creatures who serve as his spies, are near. “But while I have eyes in many places, Blood Shrike, the inside of Nikla’s mind isn’t one of them.”

“I should be back in Delphinium.” The Shrike stares out at the howling snowstorm. “My family needs me.”

Worry furrows her brow, uncharacteristic on a face so studied. In the five months since we escaped Antium, the Blood Shrike has thwarted a dozen attempts to assassinate young Emperor Zacharias. The child has enemies among the Karkauns as well as Keris’s allies in the south. And they are relentless.

“We expected this,” Darin says. “Are we decided, then?”

The Blood Shrike and I nod, but Musa clears his throat.