An Ember in the Ashes (26 page)

E
verything hurts—my skin, my bones, my fingernails, even the roots of my hair. My body doesn’t feel like my own anymore. I want to scream. All I can manage is a moan.

Where am I? What happened to me?

Flashes of it come back. The secret entrance. Marcus’s fists. Then shouts and gentle arms. A clean smell, like rain in the desert, and a kind voice. Aspirant Veturius, delivering me from my murderer so I can die on a slave’s pallet instead of a stone floor.

Voices rise and fall around me—Izzi’s anxious murmur and Cook’s rasp. I think I hear the cackle of a ghul. It fades when cool hands coax my mouth open and pour liquid down. For a few minutes, my pain dulls. But it’s still near, an enemy pacing impatiently outside the gates. And eventually, it bursts through, burning and reaving.

I watched Pop work for years. I know what injuries like this mean. I’m bleeding on the inside. No healer, no matter how skilled, can save me. I’m going to die.

The knowledge is more painful than my wounds, for if I die, Darin dies. Izzi remains in Blackcliff forever. Nothing in the Empire changes. Just a few more Scholars sent to their graves.

The shred of my mind that still clings to life rages.
Need a tunnel for Mazen. Keenan will be waiting for a report. Need something to tell him.

My brother is counting on me. I see him in my mind’s eye, huddled in a dark prison cell, his face hollow, his body shaking.
Live, Laia.
I hear him.
Live, for me.

I can’t, Darin.
The pain is a beast that’s taken over. A sudden chill penetrates my bones, and I hear laughter again.
Ghuls. Fight them, Laia.

Exhaustion sweeps over me. I’m too tired to fight. And at least my family will be together now. Once I die, Darin will eventually join me, and we’ll see Mother and Father, Lis, Nan and Pop. Zara might be there. And later, Izzi.

My pain fades as a great, warm tiredness descends. It’s so enticing, like I’ve been working in the sun and have come home to sink into a feather bed, knowing nothing will disturb me. I welcome it. I want it.

“I’m not going to hurt her.”

The whisper is hard as glass, and it cuts into my sleep, yanking me back to the world, back to the pain. “But I will hurt you, if you don’t clear out.”

A familiar voice. The Commandant? No. Younger.

“If either of you say a word about this to anyone, you’re dead. I swear it.”

A second later, cool night air pours into my room, and I drag my eyes open to see Aspirant Aquilla silhouetted in the door. Her silver-white hair is pulled back in a messy bun, and instead of armor, she wears black fatigues. Bruises mar the pale skin of her arms. She ducks into the room, her masked face blank, her body betraying a nervous energy.

“Aspirant—Aquilla—” I choke out. She looks at me as if I smell of rotting cabbage. She doesn’t like me, that much is plain. Why is she here?

“Don’t talk.” I expect venom, but her voice shakes. She kneels beside my pallet. “Just keep quiet and . . . and let me think.”

About what?

My ragged breathing is the only sound in the room. Aquilla is so silent that it seems as if she’s fallen asleep sitting up. She stares at her palms. Every few minutes, she opens her mouth, as if to speak. Then she clamps it shut again and wrings her hands.

A wave of pain washes over me, and I cough. The briny taste of blood fills my mouth, and I spit it out on the floor, in too much pain to care what Aquilla thinks.

She takes my wrist, her fingers cool against my skin. I flinch, thinking she means me harm. But she just holds my hand limply, the way you would if you were at the deathbed of a relative you barely knew and liked even less.

She starts to hum.

At first, nothing happens. She feels out the melody the way a blind man feels his way forward in an unfamiliar room. Her hum crests and falls, explores, repeats. Then something changes, and the hum rises into a song that wraps around me with the sweetness of a mother’s arms.

My eyes close, and I drift into the strain. My mother’s face appears, then my father’s. They walk with me at the edge of a great sea, swinging me between them. Above us, the night sky gleams like polished glass, its wealth of stars reflected in the oddly still surface of the water. My toes skim the fine sand below my feet, and I feel as though I’m flying.

I understand now. Aquilla is singing me into death. She’s a Mask, after all. And it’s a sweet death. If I’d known it was this kind, I’d never have been so afraid.

The intensity of the song swells, though Aquilla keeps her voice low, as if she doesn’t want to be heard. A flash of pure fire burns into me from crown to heel, snatching me from the peace of the seashore. I open my eyes wide, gasping.
Death is here
,
I think.
This is
the final pain before the end
.

Aquilla strokes my hair, and warmth flows from her fingers into my body, like spiced cider on a freezing morning. My eyes grow heavy, and I close them again as the fire recedes.

I return to the beach, and this time Lis races ahead of me, her hair a
blue-black banner glowing in the night. I stare at her willow-fine limbs and dark blue eyes, and I’ve never seen anything so gorgeously alive.
You don’t know how I’ve missed you, Lis.
She looks back at me, and her mouth moves—one word, sung over and over. I can’t make it out.

Realization comes slowly. I’m seeing Lis. But it’s Aquilla who’s singing, Aquilla who is commanding me, with just one word repeated in an infinitely complex melody.

Live live live live live live live.

My parents fade—
no! Mother! Father! Lis!
I want to go back to them, see them, touch them. I want to walk the night shores, hear their voices, marvel at their closeness. I reach for them, but they’re gone, and there’s only me and Aquilla and the stifling walls of my quarters. And that’s when I understand that Aquilla isn’t singing me to a sweet death.

She’s bringing me back to life.

T
he next morning at breakfast, I sit apart and speak to no one. A chill, dark fog has rolled in off the dunes, settling heavily over the city.

It matches the blackness of my mood nicely.

I’ve forgotten about the Third Trial, about the Augurs, about Helene. All I can think of is Laia. The memory of her bruised face, her broken body. I try to devise some way to help her. Bribing the head physician? No, he doesn’t have the guts to defy the Commandant. Sneaking a healer in? Who would risk the Commandant’s wrath to save a slave’s life, even for a fat purse?

Does she still live? Maybe her injuries weren’t as bad as I thought. Maybe Cook can heal her.

Maybe cats can fly, Elias.

I’m mashing my food to a pulp when Helene walks into the crowded mess hall. I’m startled at the sloppiness of her hair and the pink shadows beneath her eyes. She spots me and approaches. I stiffen and shove a spoonful of food into my mouth, refusing to look at her.

“The slave is feeling better.” She lowers her voice so the students around us can’t hear. “I . . . stopped by there. She got through the night. I . . . um . . . well . . . I . . . ”

Is she going to apologize? After refusing to help an innocent girl who hadn’t done anything wrong except be born a Scholar instead of a Martial?

“Better, is she?” I say. “I’m sure you’re thrilled.” I get up and walk away. Helene is stone-still behind me, as stunned as if I’ve punched her, and I feel a savage flood of satisfaction.
That’s right, Aquilla. I’m not like you. I’m not going to forget her just because she’s a slave.

I send a silent thanks to Cook. If Laia survived, it’s no doubt due to the older woman’s ministrations. Should I visit the girl? What will I say? “Sorry Marcus nearly raped and killed you. Heard you’re feeling better, though.”

I can’t visit her. She won’t want to see me anyway. I’m a Mask. If she hates me for that alone, it’s reason enough.

But maybe I can stop by the house. Cook can tell me how Laia’s doing. I can take something for her, something small. Flowers?
I look around the school grounds. Blackcliff doesn’t have flowers. Maybe I’ll give her a dagger. There are plenty of those around, and skies know she needs one.

“Elias!” Helene has followed me out of the mess hall, but the fog helps me evade her. I duck into a training building, watching from a window until she gives up and goes on her way.
See how she likes the silent treatment.

A few minutes later, I find myself heading to the Commandant’s house.
Just a quick visit. Just to see if she’s all right.

“Your mother hears about this, she’ll skin you alive,” Cook says from the kitchen door when I slip into the servants’ corridor. “And the rest of us too, for letting you in here.”

“Is she all right?”

“She’s not dead. Go on, Aspirant. Leave. I’m not joking about the Commandant.”

If a slave spoke like that to Demetrius or Dex, they’d backhand her. But Cook is only doing what she thinks is best for Laia. I do as she asks.

The rest of the day is a blur of failed combat battles, curt conversations, and narrow escapes from Helene. The mist gets so thick I can barely see my hand in front of my face, making training more grueling than usual. When
the curfew drums beat, all I want is sleep. I head to the barracks, dead on my feet, when Hel catches up to me.

“How was training?” She appears out of the mist silently as a wraith, and despite myself, I jump.

“Splendid,” I say darkly. Of course, it wasn’t splendid, and Helene knows it. I haven’t fought so poorly in years. What little focus I recovered during last night’s battles with Hel is gone.

“Faris said you missed scim practice this morning. Said he saw you walking to the Commandant’s house.”

“You and Faris gossip like schoolgirls.”

“Did you see the girl?”

“Cook didn’t let me in. And the girl has a name. It’s Laia.”

“Elias . . . it could never work out between you two.”

My answering laugh echoes weirdly in the mist. “What kind of idiot do you take me for? Of course it couldn’t work. I only wanted to find out if she was all right. So what?”

“So what?” Helene grabs my arm and yanks me to a halt. “You’re an Aspirant. You have a Trial to take tomorrow. Your life will be on the line, and instead you’re mooning
over some Scholar.” My hackles rise. She senses it and takes a breath.

“All I’m saying is that there are more important things to think about. The Emperor will be here in days, and he wants us all dead. The Commandant doesn’t seem to know—or care. And I have a bad feeling about the Third Trial, Elias. We have to hope that Marcus gets eliminated. He can’t win, Elias. He can’t. If he does—”

“I know, Helene.”
I’ve staked every hope I have on these damned Trials.
“Trust me, I know.” Ten hells. I liked her better when she wasn’t speaking to me.

“If you know, then why are you letting yourself get destroyed in combat? How can you win the Trial if you don’t have the confidence to defeat someone like Zak? Don’t you understand what’s at stake?”

“Of course I do.”

“But you don’t! Look at you! You’re too befuddled by that slave-girl—”

“It’s not her that’s befuddling me, all right? It’s a million other things. It’s—this place. And what we do here. It’s you—”

“Me?” She looks bewildered, and that makes me angrier. “What did I do—”

“You’re in love with me!” I shout at her now because I’m so angry at her for loving me, even though the logical part of me knows that I’m being cruelly unfair. “But I’m not in love with you, and you hate me for it. You’ve let that ruin our friendship.”

She just stares, the wound in her eyes raw and growing. Why did she have to fall for me? If she had controlled her emotions, we never would have fought the night of the Moon Festival. We would have spent the last ten days planning for the Third Trial instead of avoiding each other.

“You’re in love with me,” I say again. “But I could never be in love with you, Helene. Never. You’re just like every other Mask. You were willing to let Laia die just because she’s a slave—”

“I didn’t let her die.” Helene’s voice is quiet. “I went to her last night, and I healed her. That’s why she’s alive. I sang to her, sang until my voice was gone and I felt like I’d had the life sucked out of me. Sang until she was well again.”

“
You
healed her? But—”

“What, you don’t believe I
could do something kind for another human? I’m not evil, Elias, no matter what you say.”

“I never said—”

“But you did.” Her voice rises. “You just said I’m like every other Mask. You just said you could never—never love—” She spins away from me, but after only a few steps, turns back. Trails of mist sweep out behind her like a ghostly dress.

“You think I want to feel this way about you? I
hate
it, Elias. Watching you flirt with Illustrian girls and sleep with Scholar slaves and find the good in everyone—
everyone—
but me.” A sob escapes her—the only time I’ve ever heard her cry. She chokes it back. “Loving you is the worst thing that has ever happened to me—worse than the Commandant’s whippings, worse than the Trials. It’s torture, Elias.” She digs a shaking hand into her hair. “You don’t know what it’s like. You have no idea what I’ve given up for you, the deal I made—”

“What do you mean?” I say. “What deal? With who? For what?”

She doesn’t answer. She’s walking—running—away from me. “Helene!” I chase after her, my fingers brushing the wetness of her face for one tantalizing second. Then the mist swallows her up, and she’s gone.

“G
et her up, damn you.” The Commandant’s orders cut through the fog of my brain, startling me from sleep. “I didn’t pay two hundred marks so she could sleep all day.”

My mind is like tar, my body racked with dull pain, but I’m aware enough to know that if I don’t rise from this pallet, I really am dead. As I grab a cloak, Izzi pushes the curtain to my room aside.

“You’re awake.” She’s obviously relieved. “Commandant’s on the warpath.”

“What . . . what day is it?” I shiver—it’s cold—far colder than is normal for summer. I have a sudden fear that I’ve been unconscious for weeks, that the Trials are over, that Darin is dead.

“Marcus attacked you last night,” Izzi says. “Aspirant Aquilla—” Her eye is wide, and I know then that I didn’t dream the Aspirant’s presence—or the fact that she healed me.
Magic.
I find myself smiling at the thought. Darin would laugh, but there’s no other explanation. And, after all, if ghuls and jinn walk our world, then why not forces of good too? Why not a girl who can heal with a song?

“Can you stand?” Izzi says. “It’s past noon. I took care of your morning chores and I’d do the others, but the Commandant’s quite insistent that you—”

“Past noon?” The smile drops from my face. “Skies—Izzi, I had a meeting with the Resistance two hours ago. I have to tell them about the tunnel. Keenan might still be waiting—”

“Laia, the Commandant sealed up the tunnel.”

No.
No
. That tunnel is the only thing that stands between Darin and death.

“She questioned Marcus last night after Veturius brought you in,” Izzi says miserably. “He must have told her about the tunnel, because when I went by it this morning, the legionnaires were bricking it closed.”

“Did she question you?”

Izzi nods. “And Cook too. Marcus told the Commandant that you and I were spying on him, but I, well . . . ” She fidgets and looks over her shoulder. “I lied.”

“You . . . you lied? For me?” Skies, when the Commandant finds out, she’ll kill Izzi.

No, Laia,
I tell myself.
Izzi won’t die, because you’ll find a way to get her out of here before it comes to that.

“What did you say to her?” I ask.

“Told her that Cook sent us to get crowleaf from the storage room by the barracks and that Marcus waylaid us on the way back.”

“And she believed you? Over a Mask?”

Izzi shrugs. “I’ve never lied to her before,” she says. “And Cook backed up my story—said she was having horrible back pain and that crowleaf was the only thing that would help. Marcus called me a liar, but then the Commandant sent for Zak, and he admitted there was a chance that he’d left the tunnel entrance open and that we just happened to pass by. Commandant let me go after that.” Izzi looks at me worriedly. “Laia, what are you going to tell Mazen?”

I shake my head. I have no idea.

»»»

C
ook sends me into the city with a stack of letters for the courier without so much as a mention of the beating I took.

“Be quick about it,” the old woman says when I appear in the kitchen to resume my duties. “There’s a nasty storm coming, and I need you and Kitchen-Girl to board up the windows before they’re blown out.”

The city is strangely quiet, its cobbled lanes emptier than usual, its spires shrouded in unseasonable fog. The smells of bread and beast, smoke and steel are dulled, as if the mist has weakened their potency.

Conscious of my freshly healed limbs, I move gingerly. But even after a half hour of walking, all that remains of the beating I took are ugly bruises and a dull soreness. I head first to the couriers’ office in Execution Square, hoping that the Resistance is still waiting for me. The rebels don’t disappoint. Within seconds of entering the square, I smell cedarwood. Moments later, Keenan materializes out of the fog.

“This way.” He says nothing of my injuries, and I’m stung by his lack of concern. Just as I’m willing myself not to care, he takes my hand as if it’s the most natural thing in the world and leads me to the back room of a cramped, abandoned shoe shop.

Keenan sets a spark to a lamp hanging on the wall, and as the light flares, he turns and looks me full in the face. The aloofness drops. For a second, he’s unveiled, and I know with lightning certainty that behind that coolness he feels something for me. His eyes are almost black as he takes in every bruise.

“Who did this?” he asks.

“An Aspirant. It’s why I missed the meeting. I’m sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing?” He is incredulous. “Look at you—look what
they’ve done to you. Skies. If your father was alive and knew I let this happen—”

“You didn’t let it happen.” I put a hand on his arm, surprised at the tautness of his body, like a wolf raring for a fight. “It’s no one’s fault but the Mask who did it. And I’m better now.”

“You don’t have to be brave, Laia.” His words are spoken with a quiet fierceness, and I suddenly feel shy of him. He raises his hand, slowly tracing my eyes, my lips, the curve of my neck with the tip of his finger.

“I’ve been thinking about you for days.” He puts his warm hand against my face, and I want so much to lean into it. “Hoping I’d see you in the square wearing a gray scarf so this can all be over. So that you can get your brother back. And after, we could . . . you and I could . . . ”

He trails off. My breath comes in short, shallow bursts, and my skin tingles in wild impatience. He moves closer, drawing up my gaze, pinning me with his eyes.
Oh skies, he’s going to kiss me
 . . . .

Then, bizarrely, he steps away from me. His eyes are guarded again, his face empty of any emotion but a sort of professional detachment. My skin burns in embarrassment at the rejection. A second later, I understand.

“There she is,” a gruff voice sounds from the door, and Mazen enters the room. I look to Keenan, but he appears almost bored, and I’m shaken at how his eyes can go cold as quickly as a candle being blown out.

He’s a fighter
, a practical voice chides me
. He knows what’s important. As should you. Focus on Darin.

“We missed you this morning, Laia.” Mazen takes in my injuries. “Now I see why. Well, girl. Do you have what I want? Do you have an entrance?”

“I have something.” The lie takes me by surprise, as does the smoothness with which I tell it. “But I need more time.” Surprise flashes across Mazen’s
face for a brief, naked second. Is it my lie that’s caught him off guard? My request for more time?
Neither
,
my instinct tells me.
Something else
. I fidget as I remember what Cook said days ago.
You ask him where, exactly, your brother is in Central Prison. What cell?

I muster my courage. “I . . . have a question for you. You know where Darin is, right? Which prison? Which cell?”

“Of course I know where he is. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be spending all my time and energy figuring out how to free him, now would I?”

“But . . . well, Central is so heavily guarded. How will you—”

“Do you have a way into Blackcliff or not?”

“Why do you need one?” I burst out. He’s not answering my questions, and some stubborn part of me wants to shake the answers loose from him. “How will a secret entrance to Blackcliff help you free my brother from the most fortified prison in the south?”

Mazen’s gaze hardens from wariness to something close to anger. “Darin’s not in Central,” he says. “Before the Moon Festival, the Martials moved him to the death cells in Bekkar Prison. Bekkar provides backup guard to Blackcliff. So when we launch a surprise attack on Blackcliff with half of our forces, the soldiers will pour out of Bekkar to Blackcliff, leaving the prison open for our other forces to take.”

“Oh.” I fall silent. Bekkar is a small prison in the Illustrian Quarter, not too far from Blackcliff, but that’s all I know about it. Mazen’s plan makes sense now. Perfect sense. I feel like an idiot.

“I didn’t mention anything to you, or anyone else”—he looks pointedly at Keenan—“because the more people who know about a plan, the more likely it is to be compromised. So, for the last time: Do you have something for me?”

“There’s a tunnel.”
Buy time. Say anything.
“But I have to figure out where it lets out.”

“That’s not enough,” Mazen says. “If you have nothing, then this mission is a failure—”

“Sir.” The door pounds open, and Sana tumbles in. She looks as if she hasn’t slept in days, and she doesn’t share the smug smiles of the two men behind her. When she sees me, she does a double take. “Laia—your face.” Her eyes drop to my scar. “What happened—”

“Sana,” Mazen barks. “Report.”

Sana snaps her attention to the Resistance leader. “It’s time,” she says. “If we’re going to do it, then we need to leave. Now.”

Time for what? I look at Mazen, thinking he’ll tell them to wait a moment, that he’ll finish with me. But instead he limps to the door as if I’ve ceased to exist.

Sana and Keenan exchange a glance, and Sana shakes her head, as if in warning. Keenan ignores her. “Mazen,” he says. “What about Laia?”

Mazen stops to consider me, the annoyance on his face ill-concealed. “You need more time,” he says. “You have it. Get me something by midnight, day after tomorrow. Then we’ll get your brother out, and this whole thing will be over.”

He walks out, engaged in low conversation with his men, snapping at Sana to follow. The older woman gives Keenan an unreadable look before hurrying out.

“I don’t understand,” I say. “A minute ago, he said we were done.”

“Something’s not right.” Keenan stares hard at the door. “And I need to find out what it is.”

“Will he keep his promise, Keenan? To free Darin?”

“Sana’s faction’s been pushing him. They think he should have broken Darin out already. They won’t let him back away from this. But . . . ” He shakes his head. “I have to go. Be safe, Laia.”

Outside, the fog is so heavy that I have to put my hands in front of me to keep from running into anything. It’s the middle of the afternoon, but the sky grows darker by the second. A thick bank of clouds roils above Serra as if gathering strength for an assault.

As I head back to Blackcliff, I try to make sense of what just happened. I want to believe that I can trust Mazen, that he’ll hold to his end of the bargain. But something is off. I’ve struggled for days to eke out extra time from him. It makes no sense for him to suddenly give it away so easily.

And something else sets my nerves on edge. It’s how quickly Mazen forgot about me when Sana showed up. And it’s how, when he promised to save my brother, he didn’t quite look me in the eyes.