An Ember in the Ashes (28 page)

You can’t kill Hel. You can’t.

But what choice is there? One of us has to kill the other, or the Trial won’t end.

Let her kill you. Let her win.

As if she senses my weakness, Helene grits her teeth and drives me back, her pale eyes glacial, daring me to challenge her.
Let her, let her, let her.
Her scim cuts into my neck, and I counter with a quick thrust just as she’s about to take my head off.

My battle rage rushes through me, shoving all other thoughts aside. Suddenly, she isn’t Helene. She is an enemy who wants me dead. An enemy I must survive.

I fling my scim to the sky, watching with mercenary satisfaction as Helene’s eyes flick up to follow the weapon’s path. Then I strike, coming down on her like an executioner. My knee drives into her chest, and even through the storm, I hear the crack of a rib and the surprised whoosh of her breath leaving her.

She is beneath me, her ocean eyes terrified as I pin her scim arm down. Our bodies are entangled, entwined, but Helene is foreign to me suddenly, unknowable as the heavens. I tear a dagger from my chest, and my blood roars as my fingers touch the cold hilt. She knees me and grabs her scim, determined to finish me before I can finish her. I’m too fast. I lift the dagger high, my rage peaking, holding like the highest note of a mountain storm.

And then I bring the blade down.

I
n the predawn darkness, the storm churning above Serra strikes with the wrath of a conquering army. The servants’ corridor swims in a half foot of rain, and Cook and I sweep out the water with rush brooms while Izzi tirelessly stacks sandbags. Rain lashes my face like the icy fingers of a ghost.

“Nasty day for a Trial!” Izzi calls to me over the downpour.

I don’t know what the Third Trial will be, and I don’t care, except to hope that it serves as a distraction for the rest of the school while I look for a secret entrance into Blackcliff.

No one else seems to share my indifference. In Serra, bets over who will win border on the obscene. The odds, Izzi tells me, have shifted to favor Marcus instead of Veturius.

Elias.
I whisper his name to myself. I think of his face without the mask and the low, thrilling timbre of his voice when he whispered in my ear at the Moon Festival. I think of how he moved when he fought with Aquilla, that sensual beauty that took my breath away. I think of his implacable anger when Marcus nearly killed me.

Stop, Laia. Stop
.
He’s a Mask and I’m a slave, and thinking of him in this way is so wrong that I wonder for a second if the beating Marcus gave me has muddled my brain.

“Inside, Slave-Girl.” Cook takes my broom, her hair a wild halo in the storm. “Commandant’s calling.”

I rush upstairs, soaked through and shivering, to find the Commandant pacing her room with a violent energy, her blonde tresses unbound.

“My hair,” the woman says when I dart into her chambers. “Quickly, girl, or I’ll have it out of your hide.”

The second I finish, she leaves the room, snatching her weapons from the wall, not bothering to give me her usual litany of orders.

“Shot out of here like a wolf on the hunt,” Izzi says when I enter the kitchen. “Went straight for the amphitheater. That must be where the Trial is. I wonder—”

“You and the rest of the school, girl,” Cook says. “We’ll find out soon enough. We’re stuck inside today. Commandant said any slave out on the grounds will be killed on sight.”

Izzi and I exchange a glance. Cook kept us up preparing for the storm until past midnight last night, and I’d been planning to look for a secret entrance today.

“It’s not worth the risk, Laia,” Izzi warns me when Cook turns away. “You still have tomorrow. Rest your mind for a day, and a solution might present itself.” A rumble of thunder greets her comment. I sigh and nod. I hope she’s right.

“Get to work, you two.” Cook shoves a rag in Izzi’s hand. “Kitchen-Girl, you finish the silver, polish the banister, scrub the—”

Izzi rolls her eye and throws down the cloth. “Dust the furniture, hang the laundry, I know. Let it wait, Cook. The Commandant’s gone for an entire day. Can’t we appreciate that, even for a minute?” Cook presses her lips together in disapproval, but Izzi assumes a wheedling tone. “Tell us a story. Something scary.” She shivers in anticipation, and Cook makes a strange sound that could be a laugh or a groan.

“Life isn’t scary enough for you, girl?”

Quietly, I slip to the back of the kitchen worktable to press the seemingly endless stack of the Commandant’s uniforms. It’s been ages since I’ve heard a good tale, and I long to get lost in one. But if Cook knows that, she’ll probably keep silent on principle.

The old woman appears to ignore us. Her hands, small and fine, sift through jars of spices as she prepares lunch.

“You won’t give up, will you?” I think at first that Cook is speaking to Izzi, only to look up and find her regarding me. “You mean to see this mission to save your brother through to the end. No matter what the cost.”

“I have to.” I wait for her to launch into another of her rants against the Resistance. But instead, she nods, unsurprised. “I have a story for you, then,” she says. “It has no hero or heroine. It has no happy ending. But it’s a story you need to hear.”

Izzi raises an eyebrow and takes up her polishing cloth. Cook shuts one spice jar and opens another. Then she begins.

“Long ago,” she says, “when man knew not greed, malice, tribe, nor clan, jinn walked the earth.”

Cook’s voice is nothing like a Tribal
Kehanni
’s: It is stern where a tale-spinner’s would be gentle, all edges where a tale-spinner’s would be mellow and curved. But the old woman’s cadence reminds me of the Tribespeople anyway, and I’m pulled into the tale.

“Immortal the jinn were.” Cook’s eyes are quiet, as if she’s lost in an inner musing. “Created of sinless, smokeless fire. They rode the winds and read the stars, and their beauty was the beauty of the wild places.

“Though the jinn could manipulate the minds of lesser creatures, they were honorable and occupied themselves with the raising of their young and
the protection of their mysteries. Some were fascinated by the untempered race of man. But the leader of the jinn, the King-of-No-Name, who was oldest and wisest of them, counseled his people to avoid men. So they did.

“As centuries passed, men grew strong. They befriended the race of wild elementals, the efrits. In their innocence, the efrits showed men the paths to greatness, granting them powers of healing and fighting, of swiftness and fortune-telling. Villages became cities. Cities rose into kingdoms. Kingdoms fell and were melded into empires.

“From this ever-changing world arose the Empire of the Scholars, strongest among men, dedicated to their creed:
Through knowledge, transcendence.
And who had more knowledge than the jinn, the oldest creatures of the earth?

“In an attempt to learn the secrets of the jinn, the Scholars sent delegations to negotiate with the King-of-No-Name. They received a gentle but firm response.

“
We are jinn. We are apart.

“But the Scholars hadn’t created an empire by giving up at the first rejection. They sent cunning messengers, raised to oration the way Masks are raised to war. When that failed, they sent wise men and artists, spellcasters and politicians, teachers and healers, royalty and commoners.

“The response was the same.
We are jinn. We are apart
.

“Soon, hard times struck the Scholar Empire. Famine and plague took whole cities. Scholar ambition turned to bitterness. The Scholar Emperor grew angry, believing that if only his people had the knowledge of the jinn, they could rise again. He gathered the finest Scholar minds into a Coven and set them to one task: mastery of the jinn.

“The Coven found dark allies among the fey—cave efrits, ghuls, wraiths.
From these twisted creatures, the Scholars learned to trap the jinn with salt and steel and summer rain still warm from the heavens. They tormented the old creatures, seeking the source of their power. But the jinn kept their secrets.

“Enraged at the evasion of the jinn, the Coven no longer cared for fey secrets. They sought now only to destroy the jinn. Efrits, ghuls, and wraiths abandoned the Scholars, understanding the full extent of man’s thirst for power. Too late. The fey had given their knowledge freely and in trust, and the Coven used that knowledge to create a weapon that would conquer the jinn forever. They called it the Star.

“The fey watched in horror, desperate to stop the doom they helped unleash. But the Star gave the humans unnatural power, and so the lesser creatures fled, disappearing into the deep places to wait out the war. The jinn stood fast, but they were too few. The Coven cornered them and used the Star to lock them forever in a grove of trees, a living, growing prison, the only place powerful enough to bind such creatures.

“The power unleashed by the jailing destroyed the Star—and the Coven. But the Scholars rejoiced, for the jinn were defeated. All but the greatest of them.”

“The king,” Izzi says.

“Yes. The King-of-No-Name escaped imprisonment. But he had failed to save his people, and his failure drove him mad. It was a madness he carried with him like a cloud of ruin. Wherever he went, darkness fell, deeper than a midnight ocean. The king was at long last given a name: the Nightbringer.”

My head snaps up.

My Lord Nightbringer . . .

“For hundreds of years,” Cook says, “the Nightbringer plagued mankind however he could. But it was never enough. Like rats, men scurried into their hiding places when he came. And like rats, they emerged as soon as he was gone. So he began to plan. He allied himself with the Scholars’ ancient enemy, the Martials, a cruel people exiled to the northern reaches of the continent. He whispered to them the secrets of steelcraft and statecraft. He taught them to rise above their brutish roots. Then he waited. Within a few generations, the Martials were ready. They unleashed the invasion.

“The Scholar Empire fell quickly, its people enslaved, broken. But still alive. And so the Nightbringer’s thirst for revenge remains unquenched. He lives now in the shadows, where he lures and enslaves the lesser of his brethren—the ghuls, the wraiths, the cave efrits—to punish them for their betrayal so long ago. He watches, he waits, until the time is right, until he can exact his full revenge.”

As Cook’s words die away, I realize I’m holding the press midair. Izzi gapes, her polishing forgotten. Lightning flashes outside, and a gust of wind rattles the windows and doors.

“Why do I need to know this story?” I ask.

“You tell me, girl.”

I take a deep breath. “Because it’s true, isn’t it?”

Cook smiles her twisted smile. “You’ve seen the Commandant’s nighttime visitor, I take it.”

Izzi looks between us. “What visitor?”

“He—he called himself the Nightbringer,” I say. “But it can’t be—”

“He’s exactly what he says he is,” Cook says. “Scholars want to close their eyes to the truth. Ghuls, wraiths, wights, jinn—they’re just stories. Tribal
myths. Campfire tales. Such arrogance.” She sneers. “Such pride. Don’t you make that mistake, girl. Open your eyes to it, or you’ll end up like your mother. Nightbringer was right in front of her, and she never even knew it.”

I set the press down. “What do you mean?”

Cook speaks quietly, as if she’s afraid of her own words. “He infiltrated the Resistance,” she says. “Took human form and p-posed as—as a fighter.” She clenches her jaw and huffs before going on. “Got close to your mother. Manipulated and used her.” Cook pauses again, her face growing pinched and pale. “Y-your fath-father caught on. N-Nightbringer—had—help. A tr-trai-traitor. Out-outwitted Jahan and—and sold your parents to Keris—no—I—”

“Cook?” Izzi jumps up as the old woman grabs her head with one hand and staggers back into the wall with a moan. “Cook!”

“Away—” The older woman shoves Izzi in the chest, nearly knocking her to the floor. “Get away!”

Izzi raises her hands, her voice pitched low as if she’s speaking to a frightened animal. “Cook, it’s all right—”

“Get to work!” Cook draws herself upright, the brief quiet in her eyes shattered, replaced with something close to madness. “Leave me be!”

Izzi pulls me from the kitchen hurriedly. “She gets like that sometimes,” she says once we’re out of earshot. “When she talks about the past.”

“What’s her name, Izzi?”

“She’s never told me. I don’t think she wants to remember it. Do you think it’s true? What she said about the Nightbringer? And about your mother?”

“I don’t know. Why would the Nightbringer go after my parents? What did they ever do to him?” But even as I ask the question, I know the answer. If the Nightbringer hates the Scholars as much as Cook says, then it’s no wonder he
sought to destroy the Lioness and her lieutenant. Their movement was the only hope the Scholars ever had.

Izzi and I return to our work, each of us silent, our heads filled with thoughts of ghuls and wraiths and smokeless fire. I find that I can’t stop wondering about Cook. Who is she? How well did she know my parents? How did a woman who crafted explosives for the Resistance end up a slave? Why not just blow the Commandant to the tenth ring of hell?

Something occurs to me suddenly, something that makes my blood run cold.

What if Cook is the traitor?

Everyone caught with my parents was killed—everyone who would know anything about the betrayal. And yet Cook’s told me things about that time that I’ve never heard before. How would she know, unless she was there?

But why would she be a slave in the Commandant’s house if she’d handed over Keris’s biggest catch?

“Perhaps someone in the Resistance will know who Cook is,” I say that evening as Izzi and I trudge to the Commandant’s bedroom with buckets and dusters. “Perhaps they’ll remember her.”

“You should ask your red-haired fighter,” Izzi says. “He seems like a sharp one.”

“Keenan? Maybe . . . ”

“I knew it,” Izzi crows. “You like him. I can tell by how you say his name.
Keenan.
” She grins at me, and a blush races up my neck. “He’s a looker,” she comments. “Which you’ve noticed, I take it.”

“Don’t have time for that. I’ve got other things on my mind.”

“Oh, stop,” Izzi says. “You’re human, Laia. You’re allowed to like a boy. Even Masks have crushes. Even I—”

We both freeze as the front door rattles downstairs. The latch clicks open, and wind gusts through the house with a bone-chilling shriek.

“Slave-Girl!” The Commandant’s voice cracks up the stairwell. “Come here.”

“Go.” Izzi shoves me to my feet. “Quick!”

Duster in hand, I hurry down the stairs, where the Commandant is waiting for me, flanked by two legionnaires. Instead of her usual disgust, her silver face is almost thoughtful as she regards me, as if I’ve transformed into something unexpectedly fascinating.

I notice a fourth figure then, lurking in the shadows behind the legionnaires, his skin and hair as white as bones bleached in the sun. An Augur.

“Well”—the Commandant throws a wary look at the Augur—“is she the one?”

The Augur gazes at me with black eyes that swim in a sea of blood red. Rumor says the Augurs can read minds, and the things in my head are enough to take me straight to the gallows for treason. I force myself to think of Pop and Nan and Darin. A great, familiar grief fills my senses.
Read my mind then
.
I meet the Augur’s gaze.
Read the pain your Masks have caused me.