“We’ll use the war machines to deter.” His words are iron. “Not to kill.”

I bite my lip, trying to mask my frustration. Deterring the jinn won’t be enough. And if that’s the mentality we take into battle, we will lose.

“He’s no fool, Shrike.” Harper, riding on the other side of me, glances at his half brother. “Trust him.”

“It’s the Commandant I don’t bleeding trust,” I say. “That hag will find a way to use this against us. We need something on her. I was thinking”—I turn back to the Soul Catcher—“about how you said we don’t have to repeat the mistakes of those who have gone before.”

He glances at me askance. “And?”

“And the Martials who follow Keris do not do so because they love their empress.” My mouth twists around the word. “They follow her because they fear her. And because she wins.”

“You want to assassinate her.”

“She’ll see it coming,” I say. “Cook knew the Commandant better than anyone. She told Laia to learn Keris’s story. Said if we learned her story, we’d also learn how to stop her. She even told Laia to ask Musa about it—but he didn’t know much. No one knows Keris’s full story. No one living, anyway.”

The Soul Catcher catches my meaning and pulls in his horse, waiting for Quin to move out of earshot. “I’m not summoning Karinna for you to interrogate,” he says. “My duty is to pass the ghosts on. Not torment them.”

“I just want to talk to her,” I say. “And if she doesn’t talk to me, fine.”

The Soul Catcher shifts atop his mount, agitated. “I will not call her for you,” he says. “But—” He glances out at the trees, their tops visible now as dawn approaches. “She is curious about you. I’ve seen her watching you. I think you remind her of her daughter.”

I recoil at the thought of reminding anyone of Keris bleeding Veturia, but the Soul Catcher goes on.

“Her curiosity might be a boon, Shrike. Karinna has not looked at a single other living being here. Not even her own husband, who, presumably, she loved. You’ll need to be gentle. Patient. No quick movement. Let her talk. But offer her something to talk about. Find running water. She likes it. And wait until night. Ghosts prefer the dark. Last—”

He turns his gray eyes on me, and they are icy and stern, the glare of a Soul Catcher offering a warning. “She calls Keris lovey. Remembers her as a child. Knowing what Keris has become would distress her.”

For hours, I ponder what to say to the ghost. By the time I have figured it out, the sun is high and the troops grumble in exhaustion. The road curves upward through a thick patch of trees before flattening out into a broad, scarred plain.

“The jinn grove,” the Soul Catcher informs us.

It stretches for acres, flat as the Great Wastes, with only the occasional burned-out tree breaking the empty sweep. In the center, a great dead yew reaches its charred limbs to the sky, a chain hanging from the lowest branch.

“It feels haunted.” Laia shivers as we urge our reluctant horses out onto the field.

“It is haunted,” the Soul Catcher says. “But it’s big enough for the army. And”—he nods to a valley visible beyond the rim of the grove—“there lies Sher Jinnaat. The City of the Jinn. This is the best, most defensible place from which we can launch an attack.”

I dismount and walk toward the rim. It slopes sharply down a dozen feet.

“We can position our pikemen here.” The Soul Catcher comes up beside me, and we look over the valley. It is massive, hemmed in by the river to the east and south, and forest to the west. “Then archers and catapults.”

“It’s unlike Keris to attack from below,” I say. Despite the sun shining above me, the valley is cloaked in thick mist, similar to what seeped into our camp last night. “It’s unlike her to give us any advantage. Even if her forces outnumber ours.”

“She has jinn,” the Soul Catcher says. “They will bring fire to take out the pikemen and the trebuchets. It will be an ugly battle, Shrike. All we’re doing is buying time for Laia.”

“In all our years at Blackcliff,” I say, “I never imagined this was how you and I would draw swords. Fending off our old teacher while a Scholar hunted a jinn.”

“There is no one I’d rather have at my back, Blood Shrike,” he says, and there is a fierceness to his voice that makes my heart ache, that reminds me of all we have survived. “No one.”

Tents are erected, horses picketed, fires lit, and latrines dug. When it’s clear that everything is well in hand, I disentangle myself from the war preparations and make my way into the trees.

I head north, away from the Sher Jinnaat and the jinn grove. Spring has come to the wood, and the green of unending pines is broken by the pink-wreathed branches of the occasional Tala tree. An hour from the encampment, I reach a small stream. I sit. And then I sing.

It is a quiet song, for I do not want to draw the attention of creatures that will harm me. The song is one of healing. Of mothers and daughters. Of my own mother and her quiet love, which bathed me like the rays of the sun for as long as she lived.

A shiver of air against my neck. I am no longer alone.

Ever so slowly, I turn, and catch my breath. There she is, a wisp of a thing, just like the Soul Catcher said. She watches me and I do not speak.

“My lovey is close,” she whispers. “But I cannot reach her. Do you know how I can reach her?”

Elias’s warning echoes in my mind. “I do know your lovey,” I say. “But—she’s a bit—a bit different.”

“There is only one lovey.” Karinna sounds angry. “My lovey. My little one.”

“Tell me of her,” I say. “Tell me about your lovey.”

Karinna turns away from me, as if to leave, and I think of what the Soul Catcher said. To be patient. To offer her something to talk about.

“I just want to help you get to her,” I say. “My—my mother is gone.” My heart clenches in sorrow, an emotion that has chased me for far too long. An emotion I hate letting myself feel. “My sisters too,” I say. “My father. I know loss. I know pain.”

“Yes.” Karinna turns back, tilting her spectral head. “I feel it in you like I feel it in the other.”

“The other?” I reach for my scim, and the movement startles Karinna. She rears back, and I lift my hands, keeping my voice low. “What—what other? Who else have you been talking to?”

“A spirit.” Karinna flutters past me, and I think I feel her hands along my hair. “Haunted like you.”