“And yet you are here with your army, your steel, your salt, repeating history.” Talis’s rage is potent, fueled by a sense of betrayal. He trusted me. And I repaid that trust by bringing an army to his home.

“Only to draw the Meherya away from Marinn.” I speak quickly, for the Blood Shrike stirs. “Talis—please persuade him to lay down arms. To stop this endless killing.”

“What would you have me do?” Talis steps so close that though he wears his human form, my skin burns. “Turn against my own?”

“Come back to Mauth,” I say. “Take up your duties as—as Soul Catchers—” Even as I say it, it sounds so deeply unjust. Why should the jinn pass on human ghosts, if it was humans who imprisoned them?

“We cannot come back.” Talis’s gaze is bleak. “There is no return from what was done to us. From what we have done in retaliation. We are tainted now.”

He speaks with such finality that hopelessness envelops me. I know what it is to do terrible things. To never forgive yourself for them. Mauth wants me to restore the balance, but how can I? Too much violence lives between humans and jinn.

“Talis!” Another jinn appears from the trees. “We must retreat—there are too many—”

Talis gives me a last, considering look and then whirls away, the other jinn following. The mist disappears with them. Cries and shouts resound from behind us, where the bulk of the army still fights the remaining wraiths.

Something cold pokes at my throat. I turn to find the Blood Shrike back on her feet, scim in hand and digging into my skin.

“Why in the bleeding hells,” she hisses, “did you just let the enemy walk away?”

LIV: The Blood Shrike

The Soul Catcher puts a hand to my blade, but I growl at him, and he raises his arms.

“You’re in league with them,” I say. He was talking to the bleeding jinn. Pleading with them. He let them go free. “You don’t even want to fight them.”

“What good is war, Blood Shrike?” The sadness etched into his face feels ancient, the sorrow of a Soul Catcher instead of the friend I’ve known since childhood. “How many have died because of a king’s greed or a commander’s pride? How much pain exists in the world because we cannot get past what has been done to us, because we insist on inflicting pain right back?”

“This war isn’t out of greed or pride. It’s because a mad jinn is attempting to destroy the world, and we need to save it. Skies, Soul Catcher, do you even remember his crimes? Laia’s family. Navium. Antium. My sister—”

“What did we do to the jinn first?”

“That was the bleeding Scholars!” I poke him in the chest, then wince, because it’s like poking a stone. “The Martials—”

“Have oppressed Scholars for half a millennium,” the Soul Catcher says. “Crushed them, enslaved them, and murdered them en masse—”

“That was Marcus and the Commandant—”

“You’re right,” he says. “You were too busy trying to catch me. A great threat to the Empire, no? A man alone, running for his life, trying to help a friend.”

I open my mouth. Then close it.

“There’s always a reason that something isn’t our fault.” He pushes my blade away now, and I do not stop him. “I understand why you don’t want to accept responsibility for the Martials’ crimes. Neither do I. It hurts too much. Skies, the things I’ve done.” He looks down at his hands. “I do not think I will ever make my peace with it. But I can be better.”

“How?” I ask. “I talked to Mamie, you know. I—” I did not wish to. I was ashamed. But I made myself go to her. Made myself ask for forgiveness for imprisoning her and her Tribe when I was hunting Elias. And I made myself walk away when she refused to grant it. “How does one move past such huge sins?”

In a strange way, I realize I am asking him a question I’ve been asking myself since that moment in the tunnel that I found myself staring at a dead child.

“Skies if I know,” he says. “I’m as lost as you, Shrike. The Empire trained us. It made us what we are. But at some point, you accepted it. Not everyone does. Do you—do you remember Tavi?”

I jerk my head up. It is an old memory and one that I don’t like. A memory of a friend lost when we were Fivers. Tavi sacrificed himself for Elias and me—and for a group of Scholars who would have died if not for his courage.

“Tavi was the first person I knew to reject the idea that we had to be what the Empire wanted us to be,” the Soul Catcher says. “I didn’t understand it fully until the Fourth Trial. Sometimes, it is better to die than to live as a monster.”

He takes my hand and I start. I expected his skin to be cold, but he rubs warmth into my fingers.

“We have to fight,” he says. “We have to give Laia a chance to kill the Nightbringer. But we don’t have to be monsters. We don’t have to make the mistakes of those who have gone before. I showed the jinn mercy. Perhaps they, too, might show mercy. Perhaps when they see what the Nightbringer intends, they will remember this moment.”

I think about his words all the way back to camp. The wraiths have withdrawn, and though the troops are in some disarray, order is restored swiftly.

“At least two hundred dead from the Martial forces.” Harper finds me as I return. “Another three hundred from the Tribes. Afya’s cut up, and Laia too.”

Bleeding hells. Five hundred dead out of ten thousand is not a small number. Not when we’ll be facing an army three times our size.

We bury the dead quickly. Laia triages the injured, and after a few hours, we’re on our way again. The Soul Catcher sets a punishing pace, but I glare at my soldiers, daring them to complain. They don’t. No one wants to be caught on the road again.

“We’ll reach the jinn grove by midday,” the Soul Catcher says to me and Quin as we lead the column through the darkness before dawn. “The jinn hate it there. They will not approach. At least, not right away”

“Banu al-Mauth.” A wind efrit appears, and I strain to catch her words. “The Nightbringer’s army is just east of us, across the river. They will reach the grove by dawn tomorrow.”

“Not possible,” Quin growls. “They could not move so quickly.”

“They can with his magic,” the Soul Catcher says. “It’s how they got to Marinn after leaving the Tribal lands. We’ll only have a day to prepare. How quick can the sappers get the trebuchets up, Shrike?”

“A few hours, according to the Ankanese,” I say. “Though”—I raise my eyebrows at him—“I’m surprised you want to use them.”