An Ember in the Ashes (33 page)

“Don’t you talk about my mother.” In my rage, I forget to tell him of the spy. I forget to tell him that the Commandant will know of his grand plan. “She
lived
by
Izzat
. And you’re selling out her children, you bastard. Did you sell her out too?”

Mazen rounds the table, a vein pulsing in his neck. “I’d have followed the Lioness into a fire. I’d have followed her into hell. But you’re not like your mother, Laia. You’re more like your father. And your father was weak. As for
Izzat
—you’re a child. You have no idea what it means.”

My breathing stutters, and I reach out a shaking hand to the table to steady myself. I look back at Keenan, who refuses to meet my eyes.
Traitor.
Had he always known that Mazen didn’t mean to help? Had he watched and laughed as the foolish little girl went off on impossible missions?

Cook was right the whole time. I never should have trusted Mazen. I never should have trusted any of them. Darin knew better. He wanted to change things, but he’d figured out it couldn’t be with the rebels. He’d realized they weren’t worthy of his trust.

“My brother,” I say to Mazen. “He’s not in Bekkar, is he? Is he alive?”

Mazen sighs. “Where the Martials took your brother, no one can follow. Give it up, girl. You can’t save him.”

Tears threaten to spill down my cheeks, but I fight them back. “Just tell me where he is.” I try to keep my voice reasonable. “Is he in the city? In Central? You know. Tell me.”

“Keenan. Get rid of her,” Mazen commands. “Elsewhere,” he adds as an afterthought. “A body won’t go unnoticed in this neighborhood.”

I feel as Elias must have felt only a short time ago. Betrayed. Desolate. Fear and panic threaten to strangle me; I knot them up and shove them away.

Keenan tries to take my arm, but I dodge him, pulling out Elias’s dagger. Mazen’s men rush forward, but I’m closer than they are, and they aren’t fast enough. In an instant, I have the blade at the Resistance leader’s throat.

“Back!” I say to the fighters. They lower their weapons reluctantly. My pulse pounds in my ears, and I have no fear in this moment, only rage for everything Mazen has put me through.

“You tell me where my brother is, you lying son of a whore.” When Mazen says nothing, I dig the blade in deeper, drawing out a thin line of blood. “Tell me,” I say. “Or I’ll slit your throat here and now.”

“I’ll tell you,” he rasps. “For all the good it will do. He’s in Kauf, girl. They shipped him there the day after the Moon Festival.”

Kauf. Kauf. Kauf.
I force myself to believe it. To face it. Kauf, where my parents and sister were tortured and executed. Kauf, where only the foulest criminals are sent. To suffer. To rot. To die.

It’s over
,
I realize. Nothing I’ve endured—the whippings, the scarring, the beatings—none of it matters. The Resistance will kill me. Darin will die in prison. There’s nothing I can do to change it.

My knife is still at Mazen’s throat. “You’ll pay for this,” I say to him. “I swear it to the skies, to the stars. You’ll pay.”

“I very much doubt it, Laia.” His eyes dart over my shoulder and I turn—too late. I catch a flash of red hair and brown eyes before pain bursts in my temple and I fall into darkness.

«««

W
hen I come to, my first feeling is that of relief that I’m not dead. My next is of blunt, consuming rage as Keenan’s face swims into focus.
Traitor! Deceiver! Liar!

“Thank the skies,” he says. “I thought I’d hit you too hard. No—wait—” I fumble for my knife, every second I’m conscious making me more lucid and, thus, more murderous. “I’m not going to hurt you, Laia. Please—listen.”

My knife is gone, and I look around wildly. He’s going to kill me now. We’re in some sort of large shed; sunlight seeps through the cracks between the warped wooden boards, and there’s a jungle of gardening implements leaning against the walls.

If I can escape him, I can hide out in the city. The Commandant thinks I’m dead, so if I can get the slaves’ cuffs off, I might be able to leave Serra. But then what? Do I go back to Blackcliff for Izzi, lest she be taken by the Commandant and tortured? Do I try to help Elias? Do I try to make my way to Kauf and break Darin out? The prison’s more than a thousand miles away. I have no idea how to get there. No skills to survive a country swarming with Martial patrols. If, by some miracle, I do make it there, how will I get in? How will I get out? Darin might be dead by then. He might be dead now.

He’s not dead. If he was dead, I’d know.

All this passes through my mind in an instant. I jump to my feet and lunge for a rake: Right now, what matters most is getting away from Keenan.

“Laia, no.” He grabs my arms and forces them to my sides. “I’m not going to kill you,” he says. “I swear it. Just listen.”

I stare into his dark eyes, hating myself for how weak and stupid I feel. “You knew, Keenan. You knew Mazen never wanted to help me. And you told me my brother was in the death cells. You used me—”

“I didn’t know—”

“If you didn’t know, then why did you knock me out in that basement? Why did you just stand
there while Mazen ordered you to kill me?”

“If I hadn’t gone along with it, he’d have murdered you himself.” It’s the anguish in Keenan’s eyes that makes me listen. For once, he’s holding nothing back. “Mazen locked up everyone he thinks is against him. ‘Confining them,’ he says, for their own good. Sana’s under full guard. I couldn’t let him do the same to me—not if I wanted to help you.”

“Did you know Darin had been sent to Kauf?”

“None of us knew. Mazen played the whole thing too close. He never let us hear the reports from his spies in the prison. He never gave us details of his plan to get Darin out. He ordered me to tell you your brother was in the death cells—maybe he was hoping to goad you into taking a risk that would get you killed.” Keenan lets me go. “I trusted him, Laia. He’s led the Resistance for a decade. His vision, his dedication—those are the only things that kept us together.”

“Just because he’s a good leader doesn’t mean he’s a good person. He lied to you.”

“And I’m a fool for not seeing it. Sana suspected he wasn’t being truthful. When she realized that you and I were . . . friends, she told me her
suspicions. I was sure she was wrong. But then, at that last meeting, Mazen said your brother was in Bekkar. And it didn’t make any sense because Bekkar’s a tiny prison. If your brother was there, we’d have bribed someone to get him out ages ago. I don’t know why he said it. Maybe he thought I wouldn’t notice. Maybe he panicked when he realized you wouldn’t just take him at his word.”

Keenan wipes a tear from my face. “I told Sana what Mazen said about Bekkar, but we rode to attack the Emperor that night. She didn’t confront Mazen until afterward, and she made me stay out of it. A good thing, too. She thought her faction would get behind her, but they abandoned her when Mazen persuaded them that she was an obstacle to his revolution.”

“The revolution won’t work. The Commandant’s known from the beginning that I’m a spy. She knew the Resistance was going to attack the Emperor. Someone in the Resistance is reporting to her.”

Keenan’s face goes pale. “I knew the attack on the Emperor was too easy. I tried to tell Mazen, but he wouldn’t have it. And all the time, the Commandant wanted us to attack. She wanted Taius out of the way.”

“She’ll be ready for Mazen’s revolution, Keenan. She’ll crush the Resistance.”

Keenan digs around in his pockets for something. “I have to get Sana out. I have to tell her about the spy. If she can get to Tariq and the other leaders in her faction, she might be able to stop them before they walk into a trap. But first—” He pulls out a small paper packet and a square of leather and hands them to me. “Acid, to break off your cuffs.” He explains how I’m to use them, making me repeat the directions twice. “No mistakes on this—there’s barely enough. It’s very hard to find.

“Lay low tonight. Tomorrow morning at fourth bell, get to the river docks.
Find a galley called the
Badcat
. Tell them you have a shipment of gems for the jewelers of Silas. Not your name, not my name, nothing else. They’ll hide you in the hold. You’ll go upriver to Silas, about a three-week trip. I’ll meet you there. And we’ll figure out what to do about Darin.”

“He’ll die in Kauf, Keenan. He might not even survive the journey there.”

“He’ll survive. The Martials know how to keep people alive when it suits them. And prisoners are taken to Kauf to suffer, not to die. Most prisoners hold out for a few months; some hold out for years.”

Where there is life
,
Nan used to say,
there is hope.
My own hope flares, a candle in the dark. Keenan’s getting me out. He’s saving me from Blackcliff. He’ll help me save Darin.

“My friend Izzi. She’s helped me. But the Commandant knows we talk. I have to save her. I swore to myself that I would.”

“I’m sorry, Laia. I can get you out—no one else.”

“Thank you,” I whisper. “Please, consider your debt to my father paid—”

“You think I’m doing this for him? For his memory?” Keenan leans forward, his eyes nearly black with intensity, his face so close that I can feel his breath against my cheek. “Maybe it started that way. But not now. Not anymore. You and I, Laia. We’re the same. For the first time since I can remember, I don’t feel alone. Because of you. I can’t—I can’t stop thinking about you. I’ve tried not to. I’ve tried to push you out—”

Keenan’s hand travels ever so slowly up my arm and to my face. His other hand follows the curve of my hip. He pushes my hair back, searching my face as if for something he has lost.

And then he is pressing me against the wall, his hand at the small of my back. He kisses me—a hungry kiss, unyielding in its desire. A kiss that has
been stored up for days, a kiss that has been stalking me impatiently, waiting to be released.

For a moment, I stand frozen, Elias’s face and the Augur’s voice swirling in my head.
Your heart wants Keenan, and yet your body is alight when Elias Veturius is near.
I push the words away.
I want this. I want Keenan. And he wants me back.
I try to lose myself in the feel of his hand tangled with mine, in the silk of his hair between my fingers. But I keep seeing Elias in my mind, and when Keenan pulls away, I can’t meet his gaze.

“You’ll need this.” He hands me Elias’s dagger. “I’ll find you in Silas. I’ll find a way to Darin. I’ll take care of everything. I promise.”

I force myself to nod, wondering why the words bother me so. Seconds later he’s out the shed’s door, and I’m staring at the packet of acid he gave me.

My future, my freedom, all here in a little packet that will break me from these bonds.

What had this envelope cost Keenan? What had passage on the ship cost? And once Mazen realizes he’s been betrayed by his former lieutenant? What will
that
cost Keenan?

He only wants to help me. Yet I take no comfort in what he said:
I’ll find you in Silas. I’ll find a way to Darin. I’ll take care of everything. I promise.

Once, I’d have wanted that. I’d have wanted someone to tell me what to do, to fix everything. Once, I’d have wanted to be saved.

But what has that gotten me? Betrayal. Failure. It’s not enough to expect Keenan to have all the answers. Not when I think of Izzi, who even now might be suffering at the Commandant’s hands because she chose friendship over self-preservation. Not when I think of Elias, who gave up his own life for mine.

The shed is stifling suddenly, hot and close, and I’m across the floor and out the door. A plan forms in my head, tentative, outlandish, and mad enough that it just might work. I wind my way through the city, across Execution Square, past the docks, and down to the Weapons Quarter. To the forges.

I need to find Spiro Teluman.

H
ours pass. Or maybe days. I have no way to know. Blackcliff’s bells don’t penetrate the dungeon. I can’t even hear the drums. The granite walls of my windowless cell are a foot thick, the iron bars two inches wide. There are no guards. There’s no need for them.

Strange, to have survived the Great Wastes, to have fought supernatural creatures, to have sunk so low as to kill my own friends, only to die now—in chains, still masked, stripped of my name, branded a traitor. Disgraced—an unwanted bastard, a failure of a grandson, a murderer. A nobody. A man whose life means nothing.

Such foolish hope, to have thought that despite being raised to violence I might one day be free of it. After years of whippings and abuse and blood, I should have known better. I should never have listened to Cain. I should have deserted Blackcliff when I had the chance. Maybe I’d have been lost and hunted, but at least Laia would be alive. At least Demetrius and Leander and Tristas would be alive.

Now it’s too late. Laia’s dead. Marcus is Emperor. Helene’s his Blood Shrike. And soon I’ll be dead.
Lost as a leaf on the wind.

The knowledge is a demon gnawing insatiably at my mind. How did this happen? How could Marcus—mad, depraved Marcus—be overlord of the Empire? I see Cain naming him Emperor, see Helene kneeling before him, swearing to honor him as her master, and I bang my head against the bars in a futile and painful attempt to get the images out of my mind.

He succeeded where you failed
.
He showed strength where you showed weakness.

Should I have killed Laia? I’d be Emperor if I had. She died anyway, in the end. I pace my prison cell. Five steps one way, six another. I wish I’d never carried Laia up the cliffs after my mother marked her. I wish I’d never danced with her or spoken with her or seen her. I wish I had never allowed my accursedly single-minded male brain to linger over every detail about her. That is what brought her to the Augurs’ attention, what made them choose her as the prize for the Third Trial and the victim for the Fourth. She’s dead, and it’s because I singled her out.

So much for keeping my soul.

I laugh, and it echoes in the dungeon like shattered glass. What did I think was going to happen? Cain was clear enough: Whoever killed the girl won the Trial. I just didn’t want to believe that rulership of the Empire could come down to something so brutal.
You’re naïve, Elias. You’re a fool.
Helene’s words from a few hours before come back to me.

I couldn’t agree more, Hel.

I try to rest but instead fall into the dream of the killing field. Leander, Ennis, Demetrius, Laia—bodies everywhere, death everywhere. My victims’ eyes are open and staring, and the dream is so real I can smell the blood. I think for a long time that I must be dead, that this is some ring of hell I’m walking.

Hours, or minutes later, I jerk awake. I know immediately that I’m not alone.

“Nightmare?”

My mother stands outside my cell, and I wonder how long she’s been watching me.

“I have them too.” Her hand strays to the tattoo at her neck.

“Your tattoo.” I’ve been wanting to ask about those blue whorls for years, and, as I’m going to die anyway, I figure I have nothing to lose. “What is it?” I don’t expect her to answer, but to my surprise, she unbuttons her uniform jacket and pulls up the shirt beneath to reveal a stretch of pallid skin. The markings that I mistook as designs are actually letters that twine around her torso like a coil of nightshade:
ALWAYS VICTO

I raise an eyebrow—I wouldn’t expect Keris Veturia to wear her house’s motto so proudly, especially considering her history with Grandfather. Some of the letters are newer than others. The first
A
is faded, as if it was inked years ago. The
T
, meanwhile, looks just days old.

“Run out of ink?” I ask her.

“Something like that.”

I don’t ask her anything else about it—she’s said all she’s going to. She stares at me in silence. I wonder what she’s thinking. Masks are supposed to be able to read people, to understand them by observing them. I can tell if strangers are nervous or fearful, honest or insincere, just by watching them for a few seconds. But my own mother is a mystery to me, her face as dead and remote as a star.

Questions spring free in my mind, questions I thought I no longer cared about.
Who is my father? Why did you leave me to die? Why didn’t you love me?
Too late to ask them now. Too late for the answers to mean anything.

“The moment I knew you existed”—her voice is soft—“I hated you.”

Despite myself, I look up at her. I know nothing about my conception or birth. Mamie Rila only told me that if the Tribe Saif hadn’t found me
exposed in the desert, I’d have died. My mother wraps her fingers around the bars of my cell. Her hands are so small.

“I tried to get you out of me,” she says. “I used lifesbane and nightswood and a dozen other herbs. Nothing worked. You thrived, eating away at my health. I was sick for months. But I managed to get my commander to send me on a solo mission hunting Tribal rebels. So no one knew. No one suspected.

“You grew and grew. Got so big I couldn’t ride a horse, swing a sword. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t do anything but wait until you were born so I could kill you and be done with it.”

She leans her forehead against the bars, but her eyes don’t leave mine. “I found a Tribal midwife. After I’d attended a few dozen births with her and learned what I needed, I poisoned her.

“Then one winter morning, I felt the pains. Everything was prepared. A cave. A fire. Hot water and towels and cloths. I wasn’t afraid. Suffering and blood I knew well. The loneliness was an old friend. The anger—I used it to carry me through.

“Hours later, when you emerged, I didn’t want to touch you.” She releases the bars and paces outside my cell. “I needed to tend to myself, to make sure there was no infection, no danger. I wasn’t about to let the son kill me after the father had failed.

“But some weakness took me, some ancient beast’s inclination. I found myself cleaning your face and mouth. I saw that your eyes were open. And they were my eyes.

“You didn’t cry. If you had, it would have been easier. I’d have broken your neck the way I’d break a chicken’s neck, or a Scholar’s. Instead, I wrapped
you, held you, fed you. I laid you in the crook of my arm and watched as you slept. It was deep night then, the time of night that doesn’t feel quite real. The time of night that’s like a dream.

“One dawn later, when I could walk, I got on my horse and carried you to the nearest Tribal camp. I watched them for a time and saw a woman I liked. She picked up children like sacks of grain and carried a large stick wherever she went. And though she was young, she didn’t seem to have any children of her own.”

Mamie Rila.

“I waited until night. And left you in her tent, on her bed. Then I rode away. But after a few hours, I turned back. I had to find you and kill you. No one could know of you. You were a mistake, a symbol of my failure.

“By the time I got back, the caravan was gone. Worse, they’d split up. I was weak and exhausted and had no way to track you. So I let you go. I’d already made one mistake. Why not one more?

“And then six years later, the Augurs brought you to Blackcliff. My father ordered me back from the mission I was on. Ah, Elias—”

I start. She’s never said my name before.

“You should have heard the things he said.
Whore. Slut. Streetwalker. What will our enemies say? Our allies?
As it turns out, they said nothing. He made sure of that.

“When you survived your first year at the school, when he saw his own strength in you, then you were all he could talk about. After years of disappointment, the great Quin Veturius had an heir he could be proud of. Did you know,
son
,
that I was the best student this school had seen in a generation? The fastest? The strongest? After I left, I caught more Resistance scum
alone than the rest of my class put together. I brought down the Lioness herself. None of that mattered to my father. Not before you were born. Even less so once you arrived. When it came time for him to name an heir, he didn’t even consider choosing me. Instead, he named you. A bastard. A mistake.

“I hated him for it. And you, of course. But more than both of you, I hated myself. For being so
weak
.
For not killing you when I had the chance. I vowed I’d never again make such a mistake. I’d never again show weakness.”

She comes back to the bars and pins me with her eyes.

“I know what’s in your mind,” she says. “Remorse. Anger. You go back in your head and imagine yourself killing the Scholar girl, the way I imagined killing you. Your regret weighs you down like lead in your blood—if you’d only done it! If only you’d had the strength! One mistake and you’ve given up your life. Is it not so? Is it not torture?”

I feel an odd mix of disgust and sympathy for her as I realize that this is the closest she’ll ever come to relating to me. She takes my silence as assent. For the first and probably the only time in my life, I see something a little like sadness in her eyes.

“It’s a hard truth, but there is no going back. Tomorrow, you’ll die. Nothing can stop it. Not me, not you, not even my indomitable father, though he’s tried. Take comfort in knowing that your death will give your mother peace. That the gnawing sense of wrong that has haunted me for twenty years will be set right. I’ll be free.”

For a few seconds, I can’t bring myself to say anything. That’s it? I’m going to my death, and all she’s willing to say is what I already know? That she hates me? That I’m the biggest mistake she ever made?

No, that’s not true. She’s told me that she’d been human once. That she’d had mercy in her. She hadn’t exposed me as I’d always been told. When she left me with Mamie Rila, she’d tried to give me life.

But when that brief mercy faded, when she regretted her humanity in favor of her own desires, she became what she is now. Unfeeling. Uncaring. A monster.

“If I feel regret,” I say, “it’s that I wasn’t willing to die sooner. That I wasn’t willing to cut my own throat in the Third Trial instead of killing men I’d known for years.” I stand and go toward her. “I don’t regret not killing Laia. I’ll never regret that.”

I think of what Cain said to me that night we stood on the watchtower and looked out at the dunes.
You’ll have a chance at true freedom—of body and of soul.

And suddenly, I don’t feel bewildered or defeated. This—
this—
was what Cain spoke of: the freedom to go to my death knowing it’s for the right reason. The freedom to call my soul my own. The freedom to salvage some small goodness by refusing to become like my mother, by dying for something that is worth dying for.

“I don’t know what happened to you,” I say. “I don’t know who my father was or why you hate him so much. But I know my death won’t free you. It won’t give you peace. You’re not the one killing me.
I
chose to die. Because I’d rather die than become like you. I’d rather die than live with no mercy, no honor, no soul.”

I wrap my hands around the bars and look down into her eyes. For a second, confusion flashes there, an all-too-brief crack in her armor. Then her gaze turns to steel. It doesn’t matter. All I feel for her in this moment is pity.

“Tomorrow, I’m the one who will be set free. Not you.”

I release the bars and move to the back of the cell. Then I slide to the floor and close my eyes. I don’t see her face as she leaves. I don’t hear her. I don’t care.

The killing blow is my release.

Death is coming for me. Death is nearly here.

I am ready for him.