She turns to me. “Help us, Banu al-Mauth,” she says. “There are too many jinn. Too many Martials. And a city filled with innocent people who did nothing to invite this invasion. You could use your magic to defeat the enemy—”

“That is not how the magic works, Kehanni.”

“But if you helped, fewer would die.” Aubarit grabs my arm, holding on to me even when I attempt to shake her off. “There would be fewer ghosts to pass—”

But I do not seek fewer ghosts. I seek to understand what is happening to them.

What if it is the Nightbringer’s doing? Laia’s words echo in my head. The few Fakirs who could have answered my questions were murdered by the Nightbringer. In the battles he has fought, where hundreds of ghosts should flow into the Waiting Place, none arrive.

Perhaps this is an opportunity to see why.

“Make for water.” I raise my voice, and the Tribespeople nearby fall silent. “The jinn hate it.”

“The only water is in Aish’s wells,” Mamie Rila says.

“The Malikh escarpment has water.” The information costs me nothing. “Stream is running high.”

The horns of Aish call out again, a low thrum that elicits cries from across the encampment. The approaching fire is distant no longer. The jinn are here.

Aubarit and Mamie’s questions fall upon the unfeeling wind as I stream away, past the Tribespeople scrambling to get into the city, past the refugees from Sadh looking for shelter where there will be none. Keris Veturia’s army will pour through Aish’s many gates. The wide streets that are perfect for Tribal caravans, open markets, and traveling players will become killing fields.

Such is the world of the living.

I pull up my hood so no one recognizes me and scan the horizon. Screams echo from the south, and flames light up the sky, moving like whirling typhoons. Jinn. The fear of the Tribespeople curdles the air, turning the cold night bitter.

A rooftop will offer a better view, and I spot a trellis I could climb. But it is blocked by a wagon with an old man and two little children inside. A woman struggles to hitch her horse to it while her daughter, barely tall enough to reach the harnesses, tries to buckle them.

I look around for another place to climb. Finding none, I lift the child into the wagon and buckle the straps for her. The girl peers at me, and then offers me a brilliant smile. It is so incongruous with the panic around us that I freeze.

“Banu al-Mauth!” she whispers.

I put my finger to my lips and secure the wagon shafts. The child’s mother sighs in relief.

“Thank you, brother—”

“Make for Nur,” I tell her, keeping my hood low. “Warn them of what’s coming. Tell others to do the same. Go.”

The woman climbs into the wagon seat and snaps the reins. But only yards away, she is slowed by people cramming into the streets. Her daughter looks back at me, hopeful, like I will clear the way for them.

I turn from the child, climb the trellis, and head east, toward the sound of thundering Martial drums. A distant, unified shout follows: “Imperator Invictus! Imperator Invictus!”

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 to impale 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.