An Ember in the Ashes (12 page)

Helene strides down the hall, giving me a pointed look.
Move.

The girl pulls her feet back as we pass, trying to make herself small. Disgusted with myself, I spare her no more attention than I would a heap of trash. I feel heartless as I leave her there to face Mother’s punishment. I feel like a Mask.

«««

T
hat night, my dreams are travels, filled with hisses and whispers. Wind circles my head like a vulture, and I flinch from hands burning with unnatural heat. I try to wake as discomfort turns into nightmare, but I only slip deeper in, until eventually there is nothing but choking, burning light.

When I open my eyes, the first thing I notice is the hard, sandy ground beneath me. The second is that the ground is hot. Skin-shriveling hot.

My hand shakes as I shield my eyes from the sun and scan the wasted landscape around me. A lone, gnarled Jack tree rises from the cracked land
a few feet away. Miles to the west, a vast body of water lays shimmering like a mirage. The air reeks something horrible, a combination of carrion, rotting eggs, and Cadets’ quarters in high summer. The land is so pale and desolate that I might be standing on a distant, dead moon.

My muscles ache, as if I’ve been lying in the same position for hours. The pain tells me that this is no dream. I stagger to my feet, a lonely silhouette in a vast emptiness.

The Trials, it seems, have begun.

D
awn is still a blue rumor on the horizon when I limp into the Commandant’s chambers. She sits at her dressing table, observing her reflection in the mirror. Her bed looks untouched, as it does every morning. I wonder when she sleeps. If she sleeps.

She’s clad in a loose black robe that softens the disdain on her masked face. It’s the first time I’ve seen her out of uniform. The robe slips down her shoulder, and the unusual swirls of her tattoo are revealed to be part of an ornate
A
, the dark ink vivid against the chill paleness of her skin.

Ten days have passed since my mission began, and while I haven’t learned anything that will help me save Darin, I
have
learned how to press a Blackcliff uniform in five minutes flat, how to carry a heavy tray up the stairs with half a dozen welts on my back, and how to remain so silent that I forget my own existence.

Keenan gave me only the barest details about this mission. I’m to gather information about the Trials, and then, when I leave Blackcliff for my errands, the Resistance will contact me.
Might take us three days
,
Keenan said.
Or ten. Be prepared to report every time you go into the city. And never come looking for us.

At the time, I’d suppressed the urge to ask him a dozen questions. Like how to get the information they want. Like how to keep the Commandant from catching me.

Now I’m paying for it. Now I don’t want the Resistance to find me. I don’t want them to learn what a terrible spy I am.

At the back of my mind, Darin’s voice grows fainter:
Find something, Laia. Something that will save me. Hurry.

No
,
another, louder part of me says.
Lay low. Don’t risk spying until you’re certain you won’t get caught.

Which voice do I listen to? The spy or the slave? The fighter or the coward? I thought the answers to such questions would be easy. That was before I learned what real fear was.

For now, I move around the Commandant quietly, setting down her breakfast tray, clearing her tea from the night before, laying out her uniform.
Don’t look at me. Don’t look at me.
My pleas seem to work. The Commandant acts as if I don’t exist.

When I open the curtains, the first rays of morning illuminate the room. I stop to look at the emptiness beyond the Commandant’s window, miles of whispering dunes, rippling like waves in the dawn wind. For a second, I lose myself in their beauty. Then Blackcliff’s drums thud out, a wake-up call for the entire school and half the city.

“Slave-Girl.” The Commandant’s impatience has me moving before she says another word. “My hair.”

As I take a brush and pins from a table drawer, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. The bruises from my run-in with Aspirant Marcus a week ago are fading, and the ten lashes I received afterward have scabbed over. Other wounds have replaced them. Three lashes on my legs for a dust stain on my skirt. Four lashes on my wrists for not finishing her mending. A black eye from a Skull in a foul mood.

The Commandant opens a letter sitting on her dressing table. She keeps her head still as I pull back her hair, ignoring me entirely. For a second, I stand frozen, staring down at the parchment as she reads. She doesn’t notice. Of course she doesn’t. Scholars don’t read—or so she assumes. I brush out her pale hair swiftly.

Look at it, Laia.
Darin’s voice.
Discover what it says.

She will see. She will punish me.

She doesn’t know you can read. She’ll think you’re an idiot Scholar gawping at pretty symbols.

I swallow. I should look. Ten days at Blackcliff with nothing to show for it but bruises and lashes is disastrous. When the Resistance demands a report, I won’t have anything for them. What will happen to Darin then?

Again and again, I glance at the mirror to make sure the Commandant is enmeshed in her letter. When I’m sure, I risk a quick look down.

—too dangerous in the south, and the Commandant is not trustworthy. I advise that you return to Antium. If you must come south, travel with a small force—

The Commandant shifts, and I tear my eyes away, paranoid that I’ve been too obvious. But she reads on, and I risk another glance. By then, she’s turned the parchment over.

—
allies are deserting Gens Taia like rats fleeing a fire. I have learned that the Commandant is planning—

But I do not find out what the Commandant is planning, for at that moment, I look up. She is watching me in the mirror.

“The—the marks are beautiful,” I say in a choked whisper, dropping one of the hairpins. I bend to retrieve it, taking those precious seconds to hide my panic. I’ll be whipped for reading something that doesn’t even make any sense. Why did I let her see me? Why wasn’t I more careful?
“I haven’t seen much of words,” I add.

“No.” The woman’s eyes flicker, and for a moment, I think she’s mocking me. “Your kind doesn’t need to read.” She examines her hair. “The right side’s too low. Fix it.”

Though I feel like crying from relief,
I keep my face carefully bland and slide another pin into her silken hair.

“How long have you been here, slave?”

“Ten days, sir.”

“Have you made any friends?”

This question is so preposterous coming from the Commandant that I almost laugh. Friends? At Blackcliff? Kitchen-Girl is too shy to talk to me, and Cook only speaks to give me orders. The rest of Blackcliff’s slaves live and work on the main grounds. They are silent and distant—always alone, always wary.

“You’re here for life, girl,” the Commandant says, inspecting her now-finished hair. “Maybe you should get to know your fellows. Here.” She hands me two sealed letters. “Take the one with the red seal to the couriers’ office and the one with the black seal to Spiro Teluman. Don’t leave him without a reply.”

Who Spiro Teluman is and how to find him I don’t dare to ask. The Commandant punishes questions with pain. I take the letters and back out of the room to avoid any surprise attacks. A breath explodes out of me when I close the door. Thank the skies the woman is too arrogant to think her Scholar drudge can read. As I walk down the hall, I peek at the first letter and nearly drop it. It’s addressed to Emperor Taius.

What would she be corresponding with Taius about? The Trials? I run an experimental finger near the seal. Still soft, it lifts cleanly.

There’s a scrape behind me, and the letter falls from my hand as I whip around. My mind screams
Commandant!
But the hall is empty. I pick up the letter and shove it into my pocket. It seems alive, like a snake or spider I’ve decided to keep as a pet. I touch the seal again before jerking my hand away.
Too dangerous.

But I need something to give the Resistance. Every day when I leave Blackcliff to run the Commandant’s errands, I fear Keenan will pull me aside and demand a report. Every day he doesn’t is a reprieve. Eventually, I’ll run out of time.

I have to get my cloak, so I head to the servants’ quarters in the open-air hallway just outside the kitchen. My room, like Kitchen-Girl’s and Cook’s, is a dank hole with a low entrance and a ragged curtain that serves as a door. Inside, it’s just wide enough to fit a rope pallet and a crate that serves as a side table.

From here, I can hear the low tones of Cook and Kitchen-Girl speaking. Kitchen-Girl, at least, has been slightly friendlier than Cook. She’s helped me with my duties more than once, and at the end of my first day, when I thought I’d faint from the pain of the lashes I’d received, I saw her scuttle away from my quarters. When I went in, I found a healing salve and a mug of pain-numbing tea.

That’s as far as her friendship extends. I’ve asked her and Cook questions, discussed the weather, complained about the Commandant. No response. I’m fairly certain that if I walked into the kitchen stark-naked and squawking like a chicken, I still wouldn’t get a word out of them. I don’t want to approach them again only to hit a wall of silence, but I need someone to tell me who Spiro Teluman is and how to find him.

I enter the kitchen to find them both sweating from the heat of the blazing hearth. Lunch is baking already. My mouth waters, and I long for Nan’s food. We never had much, but whatever we did have was made with love, which I now know transforms simple fare into a feast. Here, we eat the Commandant’s scraps, and no matter how hungry I am, they taste like sawdust.

Kitchen-Girl gives me a glance in greeting, and Cook ignores me. The older woman perches on a rickety stepstool to reach a string of garlic. She
looks like she’s about to fall, but when I offer a hand to brace her, she glares daggers at me.

I drop my hand and stand there awkwardly for a moment.

“Can—can you tell me where to find Spiro Teluman?”

Silence.

“Look,” I say. “I know I’m new, but the Commandant told me to make friends. I thought—”

Ever so slowly, Cook turns to me. Her face is gray, as if she might be ill.

“Friends.” It’s the first word she’s said to me that isn’t an order. The old woman shakes her head and takes her garlic to the counter. The anger in her strokes as she chops it is unmistakable. I don’t know what I’ve done that’s so terrible, but she won’t help me now. I sigh and leave the kitchen. I’ll have to ask someone else about Spiro Teluman.

“He’s a swordsmith,” I hear a soft voice say. Kitchen-Girl has followed me out. She looks over her shoulder, worried Cook will hear her. “You’ll find him along the river, in the Weapons Quarter.” She quickly turns, ready to walk away, and it’s this more than anything else that makes me speak to her. I haven’t had a conversation with a normal person in ten days; I’ve barely said anything other than “Yes, sir” and “No, sir.”

“I’m Laia.”

Kitchen-Girl freezes. “Laia.” She turns the word over in her mouth. “I’m—I’m Izzi.”

For the first time since the raid, I smile. I’d nearly forgotten the sound of my own name. Izzi looks up toward the Commandant’s room.

“The Commandant wants you to make friends so she can use them against you,” she whispers. “That’s why Cook is upset.”

I shake my head—I don’t understand.

“It’s how she controls us.” Izzi fingers her eyepatch. “It’s the reason Cook does whatever she asks. The reason why every slave in Blackcliff does what she asks. If you do something wrong, she won’t always punish you. Sometimes, she’ll punish the people you care about instead.” Izzi’s so quiet I have to lean forward to hear her. “If—if you want to have friends, make sure she doesn’t know. Make sure it’s secret.”

She slips back into the kitchen, quick as a cat in the night. I leave for the couriers’ office, but I can’t stop thinking about what she’s told me. If the Commandant is sick enough to use the slaves’ friendships against them, then it’s no wonder Izzi and Cook keep their distance. Is that how Izzi lost her eye? Is that how Cook got her scars?

The Commandant hasn’t punished me in any permanent way—yet. But it’s only a matter of time. The Emperor’s letter in my pocket seems suddenly heavier, and I close my hand over it. Do I dare? The faster I get information, the faster the Resistance can save Darin and the faster I can leave Blackcliff.

I debate with myself all the way to the school’s gates. When I approach, the leather-armored auxes, who usually delight in tormenting slaves, barely notice me. They’re intent on two horsemen making their way up to the school. I use the distraction to slip quietly past.

Though it’s still early morning, the desert heat has set in, and I fidget under the itchy weight of the cloak I’ve taken to wearing. Every time I put it on, I think of Aspirant Veturius, of that unabashed fire that burned in him when he first turned to me, of his smell when he stepped close, distractingly clean and masculine. I think of his words, spoken almost thoughtfully.
Can I give you some advice?

I don’t know what I expected of the Commandant’s son. Someone like
Marcus Farrar, who left me with a collar of bruises that ached for days? Someone like Helene Aquilla, who spoke to me as if I was less than dirt?

At the very least, I thought he’d look like his mother—blonde and wan and cold to the bone. But he is black-haired and gold-skinned and though his eyes are the same pale gray as the Commandant’s, there is no trace there of the gimlet flatness that defines most Masks. Instead, when he’d met my gaze for a jolting moment, I’d seen life bursting through, chaotic and alluring beneath the shadow of the mask. I’d seen fire and desire, and my heart had thumped faster.

And his mask. So strange that it sits atop his face like a thing apart. Is it a sign of weakness? It can’t be—I keep hearing he’s Blackcliff’s finest soldier.

Stop, Laia. Stop thinking of him.
If he’s thoughtful, then there’s devilry behind it. If there’s fire in his eyes, it’s a lust for violence. He’s a Mask. They’re all the same.

I wind my way down from Blackcliff, out of the Illustrian Quarter and into Execution Square, home to the city’s largest open-air market as well as one of only two couriers’ offices. The gallows that give the square its name sit empty. But then, the day’s just begun.

Darin once drew the Execution Square gallows, complete with bodies hanging from the gibbet. Nan saw the image and shuddered.
Burn it
,
she’d said. Darin nodded, but later that night, I caught him working on it in our room.

“It’s a reminder, Laia,” he’d said in his quiet way. “It would be wrong to destroy it.”

The crowds move through the square sluggishly, wilted by the heat. I have to push and elbow to make any headway, eliciting grumbles from irritated merchants and a shove from a hatchet-faced slaver. As I dart under a palanquin marked with the symbol of an Illustrian house, I spot the couriers’
office a dozen yards away. I slow, my fingers straying toward the letter to the Emperor. Once I hand it over, there’s no getting it back.

“Bags, purses, and satchels! Silk-stitched!”

I need to open the note. I need to have something for the Resistance. But where can I do it without anyone noticing? Behind one of the stalls? In the shadows between two tents?