Snow Like Ashes (31 page)

I lean against the wall, knees to my chest. I can’t help but think she’s right—any small bit of information is enough. But we deserve more than that.

And I’m tired of waiting for
someday
.

Someday we will be more than words in the dark.

That night stays with me through the next few days as I trek up and down the ramps. The memory cave, the words etched in stone, and Nessa’s hopeful sigh.

“These tunnels offer their own type of escape.”

And I realize through all these flickers of desire, these pulses of what could be, that what the Winterians need above all is just what that cave offers, but on a grander scale: hope. Hope to make their lives brighter; hope to help them endure. I have to believe that Mather is still out there, rallying support and preparing an army to march on Spring, and that someday, he’ll tear down Abril’s walls. But whether or not I live to see that day, I will go down in a vicious swirl that will make Angra rue the moment he ordered Herod to put me in here—and that will prove to the Winterians that hope still exists.

Excitement fills me up, makes me jittery and ready to put a plan, any plan, into action. I regret that I let myself wallow so long before I actually
tried
to do anything.

And, one day, a plan forms in my mind. A plan to bring down more than just one or two soldiers—a plan to bring down enough of them that the Winterians have to take notice, have to feel the weight lift. Not freedom, but the first step in a longer journey. A boost in morale.

The city runs with the efficiency and order of a carefully controlled machine—every soldier in his place, every door tightly bolted. This means that schedules are the norm, and weeks of the repetition embed the soldiers’ routines into my mind as well. When they get us every morning; when they dismiss us every night; when they change shifts. The repetition makes them efficient, yes, but it also gives them a huge weakness: it makes them predictable.

I know, for instance, that the soldiers stationed on the ramps will change shift every day at noon and that the ramps will clear of Winterians, who gather around the children and their jars of water. For the briefest moment, not only are the ramps clear of Winterians, they’re also packed with double the number of Spring soldiers—those leaving and those taking up their new posts.

And though Herod stripped me of weapons long before we reached Abril, I still have the smallest piece of metal on me—the buckle holding my belt around my pants. So after another endless day working at the wall, I crawl into the cage with Nessa, Conall, and Garrigan, wait for the soldiers to lock us up, and carefully work the buckle out of the leather strap.

Nessa and her brothers eye me as I hunch in the corner, wiggling apart the buckle and using one piece to whittle the other. Scraping metal on metal, so focused I don’t know if Nessa tries to say anything to me before she falls asleep, and by morning, I have a beautiful little knife in my palm. As long as my index finger, one edge worn into a blade. I squeeze it so tightly that the edge bites into my skin as I join the rest bound for the wall.

The routine at the wall is unchanged. Holsters, rocks on our backs, trekking up and down, up and down the creaking wood. Before I head up the ramps, I eye the structure, a quick glance that goes unnoticed. The first plank of wood slopes up from the right side of the structure, connected to the ramps above with wooden posts at every corner. But if the other posts were weakened and the bottom one were to snap as the Spring soldiers changed their shift midday . . .

If it brings even the smallest blip of hope to the Winterians, it will be worth it.

I twist the makeshift blade in my hand, keeping it poised between my fingers, and with every back and forth, back and forth repetition up the wood planks, I reach out and slide the blade against the posts that hold us in the air. The posts are as thin as my wrist, the wood already warped and brittle under the sun, and it doesn’t take much effort to make small nicks. But only on all the right-side posts, and only enough to slowly, imperceptibly, break them down over the next few days.

Back and forth.
Chip.

Back and forth.
Chip.

Three days of this, and I’m making progress. I can see thin lines developing on the posts, inconspicuous enough that everyone else brushes right by, mistaking them for the wood’s natural wear. And as the sun stretches higher in the sky that third day, scooting closer to noon, my heart thumps harder and harder in my chest. It’s nearly ready, nearly brittle enough. But what if I miscalculated, and the whole thing comes down too soon? What if I send dozens of Winterians tumbling to their deaths? I don’t have time to answer my own worries. I didn’t miscalculate. I won’t kill anyone but Spring soldiers, and the Winterians will see that fighting back is still possible.

This will work.

Noon comes with the creaking of the gate. It echoes over the yard, a screeching wail that makes adrenaline burst within me. I take a deep breath and slow my pace on the ramps, falling to the back of the line of Winterians heading down for their noon water break.

I exhale, dragging my feet, watching the last Winterian trudge into the dirt.

Now.

Spring soldiers file past me, stomping up the ramp to their posts. I count them, adding their numbers to the ones already above me. Twenty-four.

Now.

I swipe the knife through the final post one last time, deepening the gouge I’ve been making for the past three days.

NOW.

With a sharp bump, my shoulder connects to the post, snapping the weak thing in half. I keep walking, focusing on the people ahead of me, the Winterians sipping water out of clay ladles. Not on the ramps, the other right-side posts breaking, one after another, all the way up.

Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.

Everything holds for one moment, the intake of breath before the agonizing wail of terror. Then, as if they all realized what was happening at the same time, every Spring soldier shouts, the planks disintegrating under their feet in one great crack of splintering wood.

The Winterians gape at the collapsing structure. Other Spring soldiers dash forward like they might be able to help, like they might be able to stop it. And I swing around on my heels to watch it fall, to watch it all crumble, unable to get rid of the wicked grin on my face.

I hope you feel them die, Angra,
I think, my nose flaring in a growl.
I hope you feel their bodies break.

“You!”

In the chaos of the structure falling, in the cloud of dust that explodes up around the shattered wood, a soldier looks at me. His face scrunches in a livid rage, one hand pointing toward me.

“You did this!” he snarls.

I don’t know how he knows. Maybe he saw me bump the post; maybe he saw my smile. However he knows, I confirm it by grinning and holding up the wonderful little knife. I don’t care anymore. I showed the Winterians that fighting back is still possible. I don’t need to look behind me to see what emotion cloaks them—wonder or relief or fear. Whatever it is, it’ll eventually turn to hope. It will eventually start their blizzard.

And I would have been able to go numb in that thought, to let whatever fate descend upon me like a deluge of rain, if not for the sudden cry that pierces the air.

“Don’t hurt her!”

The little boy. The one who got scolded for offering me water that first day, the one who has watched me every day since, his round blue eyes apologetic and curious and determined all at once. Every day he looks at me, his fingers tight on his ladle of water. And every day he twitches toward me half a step, like he wants to break the rules, wants to help me, but he always gives in to his fear before he gets farther.

But today he casts off his fear, slamming his ladle on the ground in a shatter of clay. He races across the yard toward me, flying around the dozens of slack-jawed Winterians who stare at the still-settling mess of wood and dust and rocks, the debris interspersed with the bodies of Spring soldiers.

All attention sucks to the boy, his little legs pumping over the ground, shouting as he goes, “Don’t hurt her! I want her to live—don’t hurt her! STOP HURTING US!”

His voice rips into me, sharper than the knife in my hand, deadlier than the structure that just collapsed. I grip my chest, my fingers digging into the space over my heart.

He’s going to get himself killed. Because of me.

The soldier whirls as the boy stumbles to a halt in front of him. The boy’s round face is red in his anger, his hands in tight little fists, his eyes alive with fury. He snarls up at the soldier like that’s all it takes to stop an attack, and stands there, holding his ground.

The soldier blinks in surprise before he reacts. I see it all happen in a flash of terror and I scream, a single word bursting through my confidence, through my satisfaction at killing so many of Angra’s men all at once, through any excitement I had in coming up with this plan.

“STOP!”

Nothing stops, though. Not the soldier, not the men beyond him, scrambling to pick through the rubble, dragging out a few still-alive comrades. Not comprehension creeping over me, showing me what I just did, what’s happening around me.

I could have killed my own people. And now the boy will suffer for it.

“Winterian scum,” the soldier hisses, yanks a whip off a hook on his belt, and unwinds it in a single crack that sends the boy crumpling to his knees, ripping flesh from his brittle bones.

“Stop!” I cry again, and lunge forward, but cold hands pull me back and the small knife flies from my grip, scattering into the dust. I yank on two Winterian men who hold me but they don’t relent, their faces set in determined glares.

“You’re making it worse,” one grunts, and shakes me back. Even farther from the boy, who screams again, the whip’s cracking the only other sound to break his pain.

“I can’t just stand here,” I bite back. “I can’t do nothing anymore.”

I don’t regret bringing the ramps down. I don’t regret taking action. But I will always regret letting any Winterian hurt when I could have helped them, when I could have saved them.

Tears spring to my eyes, blurring everything. The men release me when I shove them off and fling myself toward the boy. His back is a bloody mess now, thick lines of maroon running through a smear of scarlet red. I slide to my knees in front of him, cradling his white head as he holds himself in a ball on the dirt. Grabbing onto him like I should have grabbed the man, his heavy black rock pulling him off the platform, rolling through the air like a magnet getting dragged to its mate. Helpless and alone, falling and falling, left to die while a battle rages on around him, while I get thrown through the air by a cannon and Mather gets dragged to Bithai . . .

The whip pops but I catch it this time, the leather licking around my arm and holding tight. I grab the thicker end and yank, pulling it out of the soldier’s hand in one flesh-biting jerk. The soldier’s eyes flash wide before he barks for help from nearby men, from other soldiers struggling between saving their comrades and the growing panic around the boy and me.

I pivot to the boy, the whip still around my forearm. “You’ll be all right—” I start, but see his back. Blood pours down his sides from the ripped flesh, his ribs sticking out as white islands in a bloodred sea. He doesn’t move, doesn’t cry, doesn’t do anything but stay curled on the dirt.

My hands go back to his head. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper, my forehead pressed to his matted hair. He squirms, a flicker of life in my palms. “I’ll make this better, somehow, I’ll save you.”

This is so wrong. And I can’t change it, couldn’t stop it, made it worse—
I did this to him.

A chill turns my limbs to ice, makes my lungs freeze so much I’m sure frost puffs out with my breath. Everything about me turns to snowy chill, my hands hardening in a cage around the boy’s head. So wondrously cold, every fiber in me twisting like ice-covered branches in a forest. Am I slipping away now? Is the horror of this pushing me to death?

This was how I felt when Sir died. This uncontainable chill, everything in me going numb.

Soldiers break through the snowy vortex of my panic, their rough fingers grabbing me and hauling me up, yanking the whip off my arm and tearing me away from the boy. I pull against their grip, kicking out at them, fighting to get back to the child.

The boy peeks at me from between his fingers, his blue eyes rimmed with tears and . . .

Relief.

He’s relieved. I gawk, not sure if what I’m seeing is real or some distorted image I want to be real with all my heart. My eyes travel past his face to his back, his back that should be bloody and gruesome, but . . . isn’t now. His torn shirt shows clean white skin gleaming in the hot sun, not a scar or a scrape or a single lingering cut. Like he was never whipped at all.

The soldiers holding me notice it too. Everyone feels it, this moment, echoing through the Winterians as they’re filled with the same relief. He’s healed.

A wave of cold slides through me, and I want to bask in it forever, let icy flakes coat my body, whisk me away to somewhere peaceful and safe. No one else around me seems aware of the sudden cold I feel, and I wonder if I’m hallucinating.

The soldiers wake from their stupors before I do. Their hands tighten on my arms, fingers slipping in the blood that cakes my skin from where the whip bit into my forearm. They drag me away, through the crowd of Winterians who gape as I pass.

She brought the ramps down. She healed the boy.

A Winterian man steps forward. One of the many who looked at me with suspicion and hatred, who echoed Conall’s distrust of me. His face relaxes in a smile so genuine and pure I expect the entire foundation of Abril to shatter in two, and he lifts his arms into the air, tips his head back, and screams. His cry of joy is the shock wave that sets off the rest, the screams and cries rippling through the Winterians like their excitement had been building since the first post snapped. Spring soldiers look up from the bodies of their dead comrades, their fallen ramps. Their prisoners have never had such joy before. How do they stop it?