An Ember in the Ashes (16 page)

As I take in that disturbing fact, the front door slams shut. Izzi and I both jump.

“Slave-Girl.” It’s the Commandant. “Upstairs.”

Izzi and I exchange a glance, and I’m surprised to find my heart thudding uncomfortably fast. A slow dread sinks into my bones with every step up the stairs. I don’t know why. The Commandant calls me up every evening to take her clothes for washing and braid her hair for the night.
It’s no different today, Laia.

When I enter her room, she stands at her dresser, idly passing a dagger through a candle flame.

“Did you bring back an answer from the swordsmith?”

I relay Teluman’s reply, and the Commandant turns to regard me with cool interest.
It’s the most emotion I’ve seen from her.

“Spiro hasn’t accepted a new commission in years. He must have taken a liking to you.” The way she says it makes my skin crawl. She tests the edge of her knife on her forefinger, then wipes away the drop of blood that beads there.

“Why did you open it?”

“Sir?”

“The letter,” she says. “You opened it. Why?” She stands before me, and if running would have done me any good, I’d have been out the door in a heartbeat. I twist the cloth of my shirt in my hands. The Commandant tilts her head, awaiting my answer as if genuinely curious, as if I might somehow say something that will satisfy her.

“It was an accident. My hand slipped and . . . and broke the seal.”

“You can’t read,” she says. “So I don’t see why you would bother to open it purposefully. Unless you’re a spy planning to give over my secrets to the Resistance.” Her mouth twists into what might be a smile if it didn’t appear so joyless.

“I’m not—I’m . . . ” How did she find out about the letter? I think of the scrape I heard in the hallway after I left her rooms this morning. Did she see me tamper with it? Had the couriers’ office noticed a flaw in the seal? It doesn’t matter. I think of Izzi’s warning when I first got here.
The Commandant sees things. Knows things she shouldn’t.

A knock comes at the door, and on the Commandant’s command, two legionnaires enter and salute.

“Hold her down,” the Commandant says.

The legionnaires grab me, and the presence of the Commandant’s knife is suddenly, sickeningly clear. “No—please, no—”

“Silence.” She draws the word out softly, like the name of a lover. The soldiers pin me to a chair, their armored hands as heavy as manacles around my arms, their knees coming down on my feet. Their faces give nothing away.

“Normally, I’d take an eye for such insolence,” the Commandant muses. “Or a hand. But I don’t think Spiro Teluman will be so interested in you if you’re marred. You’re lucky I want a Teluman blade, girl. You’re lucky he wants a taste of you.”

Her eyes fall on my chest, on the smooth skin above my heart.

“Please,” I say. “It was a mistake.”

She leans in close, her lips inches from mine, those dead eyes lit, for just a moment, with terrifying fury.

“Stupid girl,” she whispers. “Haven’t you learned? I don’t abide mistakes.”

She shoves a gag in my mouth, and then the knife is burning, searing, carving a path through my skin. She works slowly, so slowly. The smell of singed flesh fills my nostrils, and I hear myself begging for mercy, then sobbing, then screaming.

Darin. Darin. Think of Darin.

But I can’t think of my brother. Lost in the pain, I can’t even remember his face.

H
elene’s not dead. She can’t be. She survived initiation, the wilds, border skirmishes, whippings. That she’d die now, at the hands of someone as vile as Marcus, is unthinkable. The part of me that is still a child, the part of me that I didn’t know still existed until this moment, howls in rage.

The crowd in the courtyard pushes forward. Students crane their necks, trying to get a look at Helene. My mother’s ice-chiseled face disappears from view.

“Wake up, Helene,” I yell at her, ignoring the pressing crowd. “Come on.”

She’s gone. It was too much for her.
For a second that never seems to end, I hold her, numb as the realization sinks in.
She’s dead.

“Out of the way, damn you.” Grandfather’s voice seems far away, but a second later, he’s beside me. I stare at him, shaken. Only a few days ago, I saw him dead on the nightmare battlefield. But here he is, alive and well. He lays a hand against Helene’s throat. “Still alive,” he says. “Barely. Clear the way.” His scim is out, and the crowd backs away. “Get the physician! Find a litter! Move!”

“Augur,” I choke out. “Where’s the Augur?” As if my thoughts summon him, Cain appears. I thrust Helene at Grandfather, struggling not to wrap my hands around the Augur’s neck for what he’s put us through.

“You have the power to heal,” I say through gritted teeth. “Save her. While she’s still alive.”

“I understand your anger, Elias. You feel pain, sorro—” His words fall upon my ears like the incessant caws of a crow.

“Your rules—no cheating.”
Calm, Elias. Don’t lose it. Not now.
“But the Farrars cheated. They knew we were coming through the Gap. They ambushed us.”

“The Augurs’ minds are linked. If one of us aided Marcus and Zak, the rest would know. Your whereabouts were concealed from all others.”

“Even my mother?”

Cain pauses for a telling moment. “Even her.”

“You’ve read her mind?” Grandfather speaks up from beside me. “You’re absolutely certain she didn’t know where Elias was?”

“Reading thoughts isn’t like reading a book, General. It requires study—”

“Can you read her or not?”

“Keris Veturia walks dark paths. The darkness cloaks her, hiding her from our sight.”

“That’s a no, then,” Grandfather says dryly.

“If you can’t read her,” I say, “how do you know she didn’t help Marcus and Zak cheat? Did you read them?”

“We do not feel the need—”

“Reconsider.” My temper surges. “My best friend is dying because those sons of a whore pulled the wool over your eyes.”

“Cyrena,” Cain says to one of the other Augurs, “stabilize Aquilla and isolate the Farrars. No one is to see them.” The Augur turns back to me. “If what you say is true, then the balance is upset, and we must restore it. We will heal her. But if we cannot prove that Marcus and Zacharias cheated, then we must leave Aspirant Aquilla to her fate.”

I nod tersely, but in my head, I’m screaming at Cain.
You idiot. You stupid, repulsive demon. You’re letting those cretins win. You’re letting them get away with murder.

Grandfather, unusually silent, walks with me to the infirmary. When we reach the infirmary doors, they open, and the Commandant emerges.

“Giving your lackeys warning, Keris?” Grandfather towers over his daughter, his lip curling.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’re a traitor to your gens, girl,” Grandfather says, the only man in the Empire brave enough to refer to my mother as a girl. “Don’t think I’ll forget it.”

“You picked your favorite, General.” Mother’s eyes slide to me, and I spot a flash of unhinged rage. “And I’ve picked mine.”

She leaves us at the infirmary door. Grandfather watches her go, and I wish I knew what he was thinking. What does he see when he looks at her? The little girl she was? The soulless creature she is now? Does he know why she became like this? Did he watch it happen?

“Don’t underestimate her, Elias,” he says. “She’s not used to losing.”

W
hen I open my eyes, the low roof of my quarters looms over me. I don’t remember losing consciousness. Perhaps I’ve been out for minutes, perhaps hours. Through the curtain strung across my doorway, I catch a glimpse of a sky that looks as if it’s still undecided as to whether it’s night or morning. I push myself to my elbows, stifling a moan. The pain is all consuming, so pervasive it feels as if I’ve never been without it.

I don’t look at the wound. I don’t need to. I watched the Commandant as she carved it into me, a thick-lined, precise
K
stretching from my collarbone to the skin over my heart. She’s branded me. Marked me as her property. It’s a scar I’ll carry to the grave.

Clean it. Bandage it. Get back to work. Don’t give her an excuse to hurt you again.

The curtain shifts. Izzi slips in and sits at the end of my pallet, small enough that she doesn’t need to stoop to avoid hitting her head.

“It’s nearly dawn.” Her hand drifts to her eyepatch, but, catching herself, she knots her fingers into her shirt. “The legionnaires brought you down last night.”

“It’s so ugly.” I hate myself for saying it.
Weak, Laia. You’re so weak.
Mother had a six-inch scar on her hip from a legionnaire who nearly got the best of her. Father had lash marks on his back—he never said how he got them. They both wore their scars proudly—proof of their ability to survive.
Be strong like them, Laia. Be brave.

But I’m not strong. I’m weak, and I’m sick of pretending I’m not.

“Could be worse.” Izzi raises a hand to her missing eye. “This was my first punishment.”

“How—when—” Skies, there’s no delicate way to ask about this. I fall silent.

“A month after we arrived here, Cook tried to poison the Commandant.” Izzi toys with her eyepatch. “I was five, I think. It was more than ten years ago now. The Commandant smelled the poison—Masks are trained in such things. She didn’t lay a finger on Cook—just came at me with a hot poker and made Cook watch. Right before, I remember wishing for someone. My mother? My father? Someone to stop her. Someone to take me away. After, I remember wanting to die.”

Five years old. For the first time, it sinks in that Izzi has been a slave nearly her whole life. What I’ve gone through for eleven days she has suffered for years.

“Cook kept me alive, after. She’s good at remedies. She wanted to bandage you up last night, but . . . well, you wouldn’t let either of us near you.”

I remember, then, the legionnaires throwing my numb body into the kitchen. Gentle hands, soft voices. I fought them with whatever I had left, thinking they meant me harm.

Our silence is broken by the echo of the dawn drums. A moment later, Cook’s raspy voice echoes down the corridor, asking Izzi if I’m up yet.

“The Commandant wants you to bring her sand from the dunes for a scrub,” Izzi says. “Then she wants you to take a file to Spiro Teluman. But you should let Cook tend to you first.”

“No.” My vehemence startles Izzi to her feet. I lower my voice. So many years around the Commandant would make me jumpy too. “The Commandant will want the scrub for her morning bath. I don’t want to be punished for being late.”

Izzi nods, then offers me a basket for the sand and hurries away. When I stand, my vision swoops. I wrap a scarf around my neck to cover the
K
and lurch from my room.

Every step is pain, every ounce of weight pulls at the wound, making me lightheaded and nauseous. Unwillingly, my mind flashes back to the single-minded concentration on the Commandant’s face as she cut into me. She is a connoisseur of pain the way others are connoisseurs of wine. She took her time with me—and that made it so much worse.

I move to the back of the house with excruciating slowness. By the time I reach the cliff path that leads down to the dunes, my whole body shakes. Hopelessness steals over me. How can I help Darin if I can’t even walk? How can I spy if my every attempt is punished like this?

You can’t save him because you won’t survive the Commandant much longer.
My doubts rise insidiously from the soil of my mind like creeping, choking vines.
That will be the end of you and your family. Crushed from existence like so many others.

The trail twists and turns back on itself, treacherous as the shifting dunes. A hot wind blows into my face, forcing tears from my eyes before I can stop them, until I can hardly see where I am going. At the base of the cliffs, I fall to the sand. My sobs echo in this empty place, but I don’t care. There is no one to hear me.

My life in the Scholars’ Quarter was never easy—sometimes it was horrible, like when my friend Zara was taken, or when Darin and I rose and slept with the ache of hunger in our bellies. Like all Scholars, I learned to lower my eyes before the Martials, but at least I never had to bow and scrape before them. At least my life was free of this torment, this waiting, always, for more pain. I
had Nan and Pop, who protected me from far more than I ever realized. I had Darin, who loomed so large in my life that I thought him immortal as the stars.

Gone now. All of them. Lis with her laughing eyes, so vivid in my mind that it seems impossible that she’s been dead twelve years. My parents, who wanted so badly to free the Scholars but who only managed to get themselves killed. Gone, like everyone else. Leaving me here, alone.

Shadows emerge from the sand, circling me. Ghuls.
They feed off sorrow and sadness and the stink of blood.

One of them screams, startling me into dropping the basket. The sound is eerily familiar.

“Mercy!”
They mock in a multilayered, high-pitched voice.
“Please, have mercy!”

I clap my hands over my ears, recognizing my own voice in theirs, my pleas to the Commandant. How did they know? How did they hear?

The shadows titter and circle. One, braver than the rest, nips at my leg, teeth flashing. A chill pierces my skin, and I cry out.

“Stop!”

The ghuls cackle and parrot my plea.
“Stop! Stop!”

If only I had a scim, a knife—something to scare them off, the way Spiro Teluman did. But I have nothing, so I try instead to stagger away, only to run straight into a wall.

At least that’s what it feels like. It takes me a moment to realize that it’s not a wall, but a person. A tall person, broad-shouldered and muscled like a mountain cat.

I flinch back, losing my balance, and two big hands steady me. I look up and freeze when I find myself staring into familiar, pale gray eyes.

T
he morning after the Trial, I wake before dawn, groggy from the sleeping draught I realize I’ve been doused with. My face is shaven, I’m clean, and someone’s changed me into fresh fatigues.

“Elias.” Cain emerges from the shadows of my room. His face is drawn, as if he’s been up all night. He holds up his hand at my instant barrage of questions.

“Aspirant Aquilla is in the very capable hands of Blackcliff’s physician,” he says. “If she’s meant to live, she will. The Augurs will not interfere, for we found nothing to indicate that the Farrars cheated. We have declared Marcus the winner of the First Trial. He has been given a prize of a dagger and—”

“What?”

“He returned first—”

“Because he
cheated—
”

The door opens, and Zak limps in. I reach for the blade Grandfather left at my bedside. Before I can fling it at the Toad, Cain is between us. I get up and quickly stuff my feet into my boots—I won’t be caught lounging on a bed while this filth is within ten feet of me.

Cain steeples his bloodless fingers and examines Zak. “You have something to say.”

“You should heal her.” Veins stand out in Zak’s neck, and he shakes his head like a wet dog ridding itself of water. “Stop it!” he says to the Augur. “Stop trying to get in my head. Just heal her, all right?”

“Feeling guilty, you ass?” I try to shove past Cain, but the Augur blocks me with surprising swiftness.

“I’m not saying we cheated.” Zak looks quickly at Cain. “I’m saying you should heal her. Here.”

Cain’s whole body goes still as he fixates on Zak. The air shifts and grows heavy. The Augur is reading him. I can feel it.

“You and Marcus found each other.” Cain furrows his brow. “You were . . . led to each other . . . but not by one of the Augurs. Nor by the Commandant.” The Augur closes his eyes, as if listening harder, before opening them.

“Well?” I ask. “What did you see?”

“Enough to convince me that the Augurs must heal Aspirant Aquilla. But not enough to convince me that the Farrars commited sabotage.”

“Why can’t you just look into Zak’s mind like you do everyone else’s and—”

“Our power is not without its limits. We cannot penetrate the minds of those who have learned to shield themselves.”

I give Zak an appraising look. How in the ten hells did he figure out how to keep the Augurs out of his head?

“You both have an hour to leave school grounds,” Cain says. “I’ll inform the Commandant that I’ve dismissed you from your duties for the day. Go for a walk, go to the market, go to a whorehouse. I don’t care. Don’t return to the school until evening, and don’t come back to the infirmary. Do you understand?”

Zak frowns. “Why do we have to leave?”

“Because your thoughts, Zacharias, are a pit of agony. And yours, Veturius, echo with such deafening vengeance that I can hear nothing else. Neither will allow me to do what I must to heal Aspirant Aquilla. So you will leave. Now.”

Cain moves aside, and, reluctantly, Zak and I walk out the door. Zak tries to hurry away from me, but I’ve got questions that need answering and I’m not about to let him worm his way out of them. I catch up to him.

“How did you figure out where we were? How did the Commandant know?”

“She has ways.”

“What ways? What did you show Cain? How did you manage to keep him out of your head at will? Zak!” I pull his shoulder around so he faces me. He throws my hand off but doesn’t walk away.

“All that Tribal rubbish about jinn and efrits, ghuls and wraiths—it’s not rubbish, Veturius. It’s not myth. The old creatures are real. They’re coming for us. Protect her. It’s the only thing you’re good for.”

“What do you care about her? Your brother’s tormented her for years, and you’ve never said a word to stop him.”

Zak regards the sand training fields, empty at this early hour.

“You know the worst thing about all this?” he says quietly. “I was so close to leaving him behind forever. So close to being free of him.”

It’s not what I expect to hear. Ever since we came to Blackcliff, there has been no Marcus without Zak. The younger Farrar is closer to his brother than Marcus’s own shadow.

“If you want to be free of him, then why go along with his every whim? Why not stand up to him?”

“We’ve been together for so long.” Zak shakes his head. His face is unreadable where the mask hasn’t yet melded. “I don’t know who I am without him.”

When he walks to the front gates, I don’t follow. I need to clear my head.
I make for the eastern watchtower, where I strap myself into a harness and rappel down to the dunes.

Sand swirls around me. My thoughts are confused. I trudge along the base of the cliffs, watching the horizon pale as the sun rises. The wind grows stronger, hot and insistent. As I walk, it seems like shapes appear in the sands, figures spinning and dancing, feeding off the wind’s ferocity. Whispers ride the air, and I think I hear the piercing staccato of wild laughter.

The old creatures are real. They’re coming for us.
Is Zak trying to tell me something about the next Trial? Is he saying that my mother is consorting with demons? Is that how she sabotaged me and Hel? I tell myself that these thoughts are ridiculous. Believing in the Augurs’ power is one thing. But jinn of fire and vengeance? Efrits bound to elements like wind, sea, or sand? Maybe Zak’s just cracked from the strain of the First Trial.

Mamie Rila used to tell stories of the fey. She was our Tribe’s
Kehanni
, our tale-spinner, and she wove whole worlds with her voice, with the flick of a hand or the tilt of her head. Some of those legends stuck in my head for years—the Nightbringer and his hatred for Scholars. The efrits’ skill at awakening latent magic in humans. Soul-hungry ghuls who feed on pain like vultures on carrion.

But those are just stories.

The wind carries the haunting sound of sobbing to my ears. At first, I think I’m imagining it and chide myself for letting Zak’s talk of the fey get to me. But then it gets louder. Ahead of me, at the foot of the twisting path that leads up to the Commandant’s house, sits a small crumpled figure.

It’s the slave-girl with the gold eyes. The one Marcus nearly choked to death. The one I saw lifeless on the nightmare battlefield.

She holds her head with one hand and bats at the empty air with the other, muttering through her sobs. She staggers, falls to the ground, then rises laboriously. It’s clear she’s not well, that she needs help. I slow, thinking to turn away. My mind roves back to the battlefield and my first kill’s assertion: that everyone on that field will die by my hand.

Stay away from her, Elias
,
a cautious voice urges.
Have nothing to do with her.

But why stay away? The battlefield was the Augurs’ vision of my future. Maybe I should show the bastards that I’m going to fight that future. That I won’t just accept it.

I stood by like a fool once before with this girl. I watched and did nothing as Marcus left bruises all over her. She needed help, and I refused to give it. I won’t make the same mistake again. Without any more hesitation, I walk toward her.