An Ember in the Ashes (35 page)

T
he belltower courtyard fills up slowly, with groups of younger students arriving first, followed by the Cadets, and last, the Skulls. They form up in the center of the courtyard directly in front of the stage, just as Cook said they would. A few of the Yearlings stare at the execution platform with a frightened sort of fascination. Most don’t look, though. They keep their eyes on the ground or on the black walls looming over them.

I wonder, as the Illustrian city leaders file in, if the Augurs will attend.

“You best hope not,” Cook said when I’d voiced my worry in this very courtyard last night. “They hear you thinking what you’re thinking and you’re dead.”

By the time the dawn drums beat out, the courtyard is full. Legionnaires line the walls, and a few archers patrol Blackcliff’s rooftops, but other than that, security is light.

The Commandant arrives with Aquilla after nearly everyone else and stands at the front of the crowd beside the governor, her face harsh in the gray morning light. By now, I shouldn’t be surprised at her utter lack of emotion, but I can’t help but stare at her from where I crouch beneath the execution dais. Doesn’t she care that it’s her son who is going to die today?

Aquilla, standing on the stage, looks calm, almost serene—strange for a girl holding the ax that’s to take off her best friend’s head. I watch her through a crack in the wood at her feet. Had she ever cared about Veturius? Had their friendship, which seemed so precious to him, ever been real to her? Or had she betrayed him the way Mazen betrayed me?

The dawn drums fall silent, and boots march lockstep toward the
courtyard, accompanied by the clank of chains. The crowd parts as four unfamiliar Masks escort Elias across the yard. Marcus leads them, veering off to stand beside the Commandant. I dig my nails into my palm at the satisfaction on his face.
You’ll get yours, swine.

Despite the manacles on his hands and ankles, Elias’s shoulders are thrown back, and he holds his head proudly. I can’t see his face. Is he frightened? Angry? Does he wish he had killed me? Somehow, I doubt it.

The Masks leave Elias on the stage and take up positions behind it. I eye them nervously—I didn’t expect them to remain so close. One of them looks familiar.

Oddly familiar.

I look closer, and my stomach seizes. It’s the Mask who raided my home, who burned it to the ground. The Mask who killed my grandparents.

I find myself taking a step toward him, reaching for the scim beneath my skirt, before stopping myself.
Darin. Izzi. Elias.
I have bigger things to worry about than revenge.

For the hundredth time, I look down at the candles burning behind a screen at my feet. Cook gave me four, along with tinder and flint.

“The flame can’t go out,” she said. “If it goes out, you’re done.”

As I wait, I wonder if Izzi has reached the
Badcat
. Did the acid work on Izzi’s cuffs? Did she remember what to say? Did the crew take her on without questions? And what will Keenan say when he goes to Silas and realizes I’ve given my chance at freedom away to my friend?

He’ll understand. I know he will. If not, Izzi will explain it to him. I smile. Even if none of the rest of my plan works, this wasn’t all for nothing. I got Izzi out. I saved my friend.

The Commandant reads out the charges against Veturius. I bend down, my hand hovering over the candles.
This is it.

“The timing,” Cook said last night, “has to be perfect. When the Commandant begins reading the charges, watch the clock tower. Don’t take your eyes off it. No matter what happens, you have to wait for the signal. When you see it, move. Not a moment sooner. Not a moment later.”

When she gave me the order, it seemed like it would be easy enough to follow. But now the seconds are ticking away, the Commandant is droning on, and I’m getting antsy. I stare at the clock tower through a slim crack in the base of the dais, trying not to blink. What if one of the legionnaires catches Cook? What if she doesn’t remember the formula? What if she makes a mistake? What if I make a mistake?

Then I see it. A flicker of light skittering across the clock face quicker than a hummingbird’s wings. I grab a candle and light the fuse at the back of the stage.

It catches immediately and begins burning with more fury and sound than I expect. The Masks will see. They’ll hear.

But no one moves. No one looks. And I remember something else Cook said.

Don’t forget to take cover. Unless you want your head blown off.
I scurry to the end of the stage farthest from the fuse and crouch, covering my neck and head with my arms and hands, waiting. Everything hinges on this. If Cook remembers the formula wrong, if she doesn’t get to her fuses on time, if my fuse is discovered or put out, it’s all over. There is no backup plan.

Above me, the stage creaks. The fuse hisses as it burns.

And then.

BOOM.
The stage explodes. Chunks of wood and scrap geyser into the air. A deeper boom rumbles and another and another. The courtyard is suddenly fogged with clouds of dust. The explosions are nowhere and everywhere, ripping through the air like a thousand screams, leaving me momentarily deaf.

They have to be harmless
,
I told Cook a dozen times.
Meant to distract and confuse. Strong enough to knock people down, but not strong enough to kill. I don’t want anyone dead because of me.

Leave it to me
,
she said.
I’ve no wish to murder children.

I peer out from under the stage, but it’s difficult to see through the dust. It seems as if the walls of the belltower have burst out, though in truth, the dust is from more than two hundred bags of sand Izzi and I spent all night filling and ferrying to the courtyard. Cook set each one with a charge and connected them together. The result is spectacular.

Behind me, the entire back of the stage is gone, the Masks beyond it unconscious on the ground, including the one who murdered my family. The legionnaires are in a panic, running, shouting, trying to escape. The students drain out of the courtyard, the older ones half dragging, half carrying the Yearlings. Deeper booms echo from further away. The mess hall, a few classrooms—all abandoned at this time and likely collapsing at this very moment. A gleeful grin spreads across my face. Cook hasn’t forgotten a thing.

The drums beat in a frenetic tattoo, and I don’t have to understand their strange language to know that it’s a breach alarm. Blackcliff is pure havoc, worse than I could have imagined. More than I could have hoped for. It’s perfect.

I do not doubt. I do not hesitate. I am the Lioness’s daughter, and I have the Lioness’s strength.

“I’m coming for you, Darin,” I say to the wind, hoping it will carry my message. “You stay alive. I’m coming, and nothing’s going to stop me.”

Then I swing out from my hiding place and hop onto the execution stage. It’s time to free Elias Veturius.

I
s this what happens to everyone when they die? One second, you’re alive, the next, you’re dead, and then
BOOM
, an explosion that tears apart the very air. A violent welcome to the afterlife, but at least there is one.

Screams fill my ears. I open my eyes and find that I’m not, in fact, lying on a fair netherworld plain. Instead, I’m flat on my back beneath the very same platform where I was supposed to have died. Smoke and dust choke the air. I touch my neck, which stings something fierce. My hands come away dark with blood. Does this mean I’ll have a severed head in the afterlife, I wonder stupidly. Seems a bit unfair . . .

A pair of familiar gold eyes appears above my face.

“You’re here too?” I ask. “I thought Scholars had a different afterlife.”

“You’re not dead. Not yet, anyway. And neither am I. I’m setting you free. Here, sit up.”

She puts her arms under me and helps me up. We’re beneath the execution dais; she must have dragged me here. The entire back of the stage is gone, and through the dust, I can barely make out the prone forms of four Masks. As I take in what I see, I understand, slowly, that I’m still alive. There’s been an explosion. Multiple explosions. The courtyard is in chaos.

“Did the Resistance attack?”

“
I
attacked,” Laia says. “The Augurs tricked everyone into thinking I died yesterday. I’ll explain later. What’s important is that I’m setting you free—for a price.”

“What price?” I feel steel against my neck and glance down. She is
holding the knife I gave her to my throat. She pulls two pins from her hair, keeping them just out of reach.

“These pins are yours. You can pick your locks. Use the confusion to get out of here. Leave Blackcliff forever, like you wanted. On one condition.”

“Which is . . . ”

“You get me out of Blackcliff. You guide me to Kauf Prison. And you help me break my brother out of there.”

That’s three conditions
. “I thought your brother was in—”

“He’s not. He’s in Kauf, and you’re the only person I know who’s ever been there. You have the skills to help me survive the trip north. That tunnel of yours—no one knows of it. We can use it to escape.”

Ten burning hells.
Of course she won’t just set me free for the hell of it. From the mayhem around us, it’s clear that she’s gone through considerable trouble to pull this off.

“Decide, Elias.” The clouds of dust shielding us from view are slowly starting to clear. “There’s no time.”

It takes me a moment. She offers me freedom, not realizing that even chained, even facing execution, my soul is already free. It was free when I rejected my mother’s twisted way of thinking. It was free when I decided that dying for what I believed in was worth it.

True freedom—of body and of soul.

What happened in my prison cell was freedom of my soul. But this—this is freedom of my body. This is Cain keeping his promise.

“Fine,” I say. “I’ll help you.” I don’t know how, but that’s a minor detail right now. “Hand them over.” I reach for the pins, but she holds them back.

“Swear it!”

“I swear on my blood, bones, honor, and name, I will help you escape Blackcliff, I will help you get to Kauf, and I will help you save your brother. Pins. Now.”

Seconds later, my manacles are off. The hobbles around my ankles are next. Behind the stage, the Masks stir. Helene still lies facedown, but she mutters as she shudders awake.

In the courtyard, my mother climbs to her feet, peering through the dust and smoke at the dais. Hag. Even when the world explodes around her, her main concern is that I’m dead. Soon enough she’ll have the entire damn school after me.

“Come on.” I grab Laia’s hand and pull her out from under the stage.

She stops, staring at the unmoving form of a Mask, one who escorted me to the courtyard. She brings up the dagger I gave her, and her hand shakes.

“He killed my grandparents,” she says. “He burned my home.”

“I completely sympathize with your desire to stab your family’s killer,” I say, glancing back toward my mother. “But trust me, nothing you could do would begin to compare to the torment he’ll face once the Commandant gets her hands on him. He was guarding me. He failed. My mother hates failure.”

Laia glares at the Mask for a second more before giving me a quick nod. As we duck through the arches at the base of the belltower, I look over my shoulder. My stomach sinks. Helene is staring straight at me. Our eyes lock for a moment.

Then I turn and push open the doors to a classroom building. Students rush through the corridors, but they’re mostly Yearlings, and none of them look twice at us. The structure rumbles ominously.

“What the hell did you do to this place?”

“Set charges in sandbags all over the courtyard. And—and there might be some explosives in other places. Like the mess hall. And the amphitheater. And the Commandant’s house,” she says, quickly adding, “All empty. Didn’t want to kill anyone, just create a distraction. Also . . . I’m sorry I held a knife to you.” She looks embarrassed. “I wanted to make sure you’d say yes.”

“Don’t be sorry.” I look around for the clearest exit, but most are flooded with students. “You’ll be holding a knife to more than one throat before this is all over. You’ll need to practice technique, though. I could have disarmed you—”

“Elias?”

It’s Dex. Faris stands behind him open-mouthed, flummoxed at finding me alive, chain-free, and standing hand-in-hand with a Scholar girl. For a second, I think I’m going to have to fight them. But then Faris grabs Dex and uses sheer bulk to turn him around and shove him into the crowd, away from me. He looks over his shoulder once. I think I see him smile.

Laia and I burst from the building and skid down a grassy slope. I make for the doors of a training building, but she pulls me back.

“Another way.” Her chest heaves from the running. “That building—”

She grabs my arm as the ground beneath us shakes. The building shudders and collapses. Flames explode from its innards, sending plumes of black smoke into the sky.

“I hope there isn’t anyone inside,” I say.

“Not a soul.” Laia releases my arm. “Doors were barred ahead of time.”

“Who’s helping you?” She can’t have done all this alone. That red-haired fellow at the Moon Festival, perhaps? He had the look of a rebel.

“Never mind that!” We sprint around the remains of the training building, and Laia begins to lag. I pull her along mercilessly. We can’t slow down now. I don’t let myself think about how close I am to freedom, or how close I came to death. I think only about the next step, the next turn, the next move.

The Skulls’ barracks rise ahead of us, and we duck inside. I look back—no sign of Helene. “In.” I push open the door to my room and lock it behind us.

“Pull up the center hearthstone,” I say to Laia. “The entrance is beneath. I just have to grab a few things.”

I don’t have time for full armor, but I buckle on my chest plate and bracers. Then I find a cloak and strap on my knives. My Teluman blades are long gone, abandoned on the dais of the amphitheater yesterday. I feel a pang of loss. The Commandant has probably claimed them by now.

From my bureau, I pull out the wooden token given to me by Afya Ara-Nur. It marks a favor owed, and Laia and I will need all the favors we can get in the days to come. As I pocket it, someone pounds on the door.

“Elias.” Helene’s voice is pitched low. “I know you’re in there. Open up. I’m alone.”

I stare at the door. She swore fealty to Marcus. She nearly took my head off minutes ago. And from how quickly she caught up to us, it’s clear she came after me like a hound after a fox. Why? Why do I matter so little to her, after everything we’ve been through?

Laia’s gotten the hearthstone up. She looks between me and the door.

“Don’t open it.” She sees my indecision. “You didn’t see her before your execution, Elias. She was calm. Like . . . like she wanted to do it.”

“I have to ask her why.” I know when I say the words that this will be
the life or death of me, what happens now. “She’s my oldest friend. I have to understand.”

“Open up.” Helene bangs on the door again. “In the name of the Emperor—”

“The Emperor?” I yank open the door, dagger in hand. “You mean the lowborn, murdering rapist who’s been trying to kill us for weeks?”

“That’s the one,” Helene says. She slips under my arm, her scims still in their sheaths, and hands me, to my astonishment, the Teluman blades. “You know, you sound just like your grandfather. Even when I was smuggling him out of the damn city, all he could talk about was the fact that Marcus was a Plebeian.”

She smuggled Grandfather out of the city? “Where is he now? How did you get these?” I hold up the scims.

“Someone left them in my room last night. An Augur, I assume. As for your grandfather, he’s safe. Probably making some innkeeper’s life hell even as we speak. He wanted to lead an attack on Blackcliff to set you free, but I convinced him to lay low for a while. He’s clever enough to keep a rein on Gens Veturia, even while in hiding. Forget about him, and listen. I need to explain—”

At that moment, Laia clears her throat pointedly, and Helene draws her scim.

“I thought she was dead.”

Laia grips her dagger tightly. “
She
is alive and well, thanks.
She
set him free. Which is more than I can say for you. Elias, we need to leave.”

“We’re escaping.” I hold Helene’s eyes. “Together.”

“You have a few minutes,” Helene says. “I sent the legionnaires the other way.”

“Come with us,” I say. “Break your oath. We’ll escape Marcus together.” Laia lets out a sound of protest—this isn’t part of her plan. I continue on regardless. “We can figure out how to bring him down together.”

“I want to,” Hel says. “You don’t know how much. But I can’t. It’s not the oath to Marcus that’s the problem. I made another vow—a different vow—one I can’t break.”

“Hel—”

“Listen to me. Right after graduation, Cain came to me. He told me death was coming for you, Elias, but that I could stop it. I could make sure you lived. All I had to do was swear fealty to whoever won the Trial—and hold to that fealty no matter what the cost. That meant that if you won, I’d swear myself to you. If not . . . ”

“What if you’d won?”

“He knew I wouldn’t win. Said it wasn’t my fate. And Zak was never strong enough to stand up to his brother. It was always between you and Marcus.” She shudders. “I’ve dreamt of Marcus, Elias. For months now. You think I just hate him, but I’m—I’m afraid of him. Afraid of what he’ll make me do, now that I can never say no to him. Afraid of what he’ll do to the Empire, the Scholars, the Tribes.

“It’s why I tried to get Elias to kill you in the Trial of Loyalty.” Hel looks at Laia. “Why I nearly killed you myself. You’d have been one life against the darkness of Marcus’s reign.”

All Helene’s actions of the past few weeks suddenly make sense. She’s been desperate for me to win because she knew what would happen if I didn’t. Marcus would rise and release his madness on the world, and she would become his slave. I think of the Trial of Courage.
Can’t die
,
she’d said.
Have to live.
So she could save me. I think of the night before the
Trial of Strength.
You have no idea what I’ve given up for you—the deal I made.

“Why, Helene? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You think the Augurs would have let me? Besides, I know you, Elias. You wouldn’t have killed her, even if you’d known.”

“You shouldn’t have taken that vow,” I whisper. “I’m not worth that much. Cain—”

“Cain kept his vow. He said if I swore fealty and held it, you’d live. Marcus ordered me to swear my loyalty, so I did. He ordered me to swing that ax at your head. So I did. And here you are. Still alive.”

I touch the wound at my neck—a few inches more, and I’d have been dead. She’d trusted the Augurs with everything—her life, my life. But then, that’s who Helene is: Her faith is steadfast. Her loyalty. Her strength.
They always underestimate me.
I’d underestimated her more than anyone.

Cain and the other Augurs saw it all. When he told me I had a chance at freedom of body and soul, he knew he’d force me to pick between keeping my soul and losing it. He saw what I would do, that Laia would free me, that we’d escape. And he knew that in the end, Helene would swear fealty to Marcus. The vastness of that knowledge staggers me. For the first time, I catch a tiny glimpse of the burden the Augurs must live with.

There is no time to wonder at such things now. The barracks doors creak open, and somebody barks orders. Legionnaires, tasked with sweeping the school.

“After I escape,” I say. “Break the oath then.”

“No, Elias. Cain kept his promise. I’ll keep mine.”

“Elias,” Laia warns softly.

“You forgot something.” Helene lifts her hands and pulls at my mask. It clings tenaciously, as if it knows that once it’s off, it will never get a chance at me again. Slowly, Hel rips it free, rending the flesh of my neck as the metal releases. Blood pours down my back. I hardly notice it.

Footsteps echo in the hall. A mailed hand clanks against the door. I have so much left to say to her.

“Go.” She shoves me toward Laia. “I’ll cover you this last time. But after this, I belong to him. Remember, Elias. After this, we’re enemies.”

Marcus will send her after me. Perhaps not right away, perhaps not until she’s proven herself. But eventually, he will. We both know it.

Laia ducks into the tunnel, and I follow. When Helene reaches for the hearthstone to pull it over me, I grab her arm. I want to thank her, apologize to her, beg her forgiveness. I want to drag her down here with me.

“Let me go, Elias.” She puts soft fingers to my face and smiles a sad, sweet smile that’s mine alone. “Let me go.”

“Don’t forget this, Helene,” I say. “Don’t forget us. Don’t become like him.”

She nods once, and I pray that her nod is a promise. Then she takes hold of the stone and pulls the hearth closed.

Ahead of me, Laia inches forward, her hand outstretched as she feels her way through the dark. Seconds later, she drops from my tunnel into the catacombs with a startled yelp.