Sparkers (22 page)

I
thrust my hand into my pocket and take out the flask.

“Marah, what are you doing?” Azariah says.

I walk up to the dais and hold the bottle out to Yiftach David.

“This is the cure,” I say. “All that's left.”

David seems to have turned to stone. I hold my breath. Then he reaches across the desk with trembling fingers and takes the flask. I don't let his hand touch mine. Summoning his last reserves of strength, he walks around the desk to stand before me.

He fumbles with the cork and tosses it aside. Then, his dark eyes burning with hatred, he throws his head back and downs the cure.

There's a shocked silence. David flings the glass bottle to the floor, where it shatters. He scorches me with his gaze, furious with me because he now owes a halan girl his life, furious with himself because he couldn't resist the offer of the cure. Without warning, he strikes me across the face. I stagger back, a flower of pain unfurling on my cheek. Stunned, I touch cold fingertips to my face.

“What are you doing?” Azariah shouts at the First Councilor, flying up to the dais, his fists clenched.

“Get back here!” Banar Rashid tells his son.

Azariah seizes my hand.

David stares at me, his lips still shining. He takes a step toward me, and I shrink from him.

“Leave her alone!” The scribe, the boy, shoves the portable desk off his lap and jumps up from the bench. His inkwell smashes on the floor, the ink spattering everywhere. “Father, she saved your life!”

Father?
Shaking, I turn toward the scribe. He's gazing at me with his clear, light eyes as though he's never truly seen a halan in his life.

David turns swiftly and speaks an incantation, his hands fluttering. There's a flash of light. The boy pitches forward, but not before I see the resemblance to David in his jawline, his forehead . . .

I scream. The boy is on the ground, facedown, dark ink seeping everywhere like blood. Azariah takes a step toward him.

“Leave him!” David cries. His son groans and rolls onto his side, curling up like a little child.

I look at the broken glass on the floor and then up at David. It's all over now. He hasn't changed his mind. I thought my act of mercy would force him to see me as a person and to reconsider wiping out the halani. If anything, I've only fueled his hatred of us. My heart hardens, and I curse myself for giving him the cure.

There are shouts behind us, and half a dozen kasir officials explode into the room.

“Fire!”

“The city's on fire!”

“Then put it out!” David yells.

“The hall is burning!”

The kasiri, chests heaving, are clustered near the entrance. David hesitates for a moment, then steps down from the dais. At the door, flanked by his subordinates, he turns back, seeking out his son. For the first time, a trace of remorse crosses his face.

“Tsuriel,” he orders the police captain, “bring Adriel and come.”

The captain pulls David's son to his feet and slips his arm around him. The boy can hardly stand, but he twists his head around and locks eyes with me again. The underlings hasten out, followed by the captain with David's son Adriel, and finally David himself. He looks over his shoulder at his advisor, who has stepped down from the dais and is fingering her sapphire pendant.

“Guard the prisoners, Hoshea,” he tells her.

“As you wish,” she replies.

David rushes out. The next moment, Hoshea is shouting rapid-fire incantations, magic budding on her fingertips. I cringe, but she aims her spells at Banar Rashid and Gadi Faysal. When the sparks subside, Azariah's parents stand frozen like statues. They don't even seem able to blink. Beside me, Azariah braces himself for his own round of paralyzing spells, but David's advisor glances down at the two of us with disdain and turns away.

“I don't know why Yiftach didn't just kill you,” she says. “I knew you would never—”

A strident incantation bursts out next to my ear. My mouth falls open as Hoshea crumples to the ink-spattered floor. I turn to see Azariah with his hands held out stiffly in front of him. “Did you—?”

“I didn't kill her,” he says. He lets out his breath and hurries to free his parents.

“Where did you learn that spell?” Banar Rashid asks, waving toward the unconscious advisor as soon as he can move again. “And the counterspells for binding? You're only in Final!”

“I've done some reading on the side,” Azariah says.

His parents' awe is soon eclipsed by the direness of our situation. As Gadi Faysal examines the locked door, her face sharp with concentration, I imagine flames licking toward where we're trapped in the heart of the Assembly Hall.

“There are coded spells on this door,” she announces. “Only a handful of authorized officials will know the codes, and it's almost impossible to break them.”

Banar Rashid joins her and casts some spells himself, his brow furrowed.

Then Azariah says, “Hoshea must know the codes.”

His parents exchange glances, and Gadi Faysal, looking nauseated, kneels beside David's inert advisor.

“Wake her, Azariah. I'm ready.” She rises on one knee, her fingers rigid in an elaborate sign.

Azariah looks fearfully at her, then crouches and shakes Hoshea's shoulder. With a moan, she opens her eyes. At the sight of us, she recoils and struggles to sit up. Her gaze fastens onto Gadi Faysal's hands, and she freezes.

“Do as I say, or you're dead,” says Azariah's mother. The whole thing would seem absurd if Azariah didn't look like he was about to be sick. Though I can't sense it, I imagine the tension Hoshea must feel in the air, the magic brewing like a storm, and suddenly Gadi Faysal doesn't look so ridiculous.

“Stand up and go to the door,” she orders. She keeps the spell trained on Hoshea's chest as they get to their feet. The two women move together toward the exit.

“Unseal the door.”

Banar Rashid, Azariah, and I hover around Hoshea and Gadi Faysal, anxious to pass through the doorway but afraid of drawing too near.

Veins stand out in Hoshea's neck. She seems transfixed by Gadi Faysal's bent fingers. Then she utters a set of words, her hands dancing. Banar Rashid lunges for the doorknob, and—we're free.

Instantly, Gadi Faysal rearranges her hands and speaks. Hoshea collapses again, but this time, Banar Rashid catches her and drags her out onto the landing. I tumble out after him with Azariah. The atrium is swarming with kasiri, three times as many as before, and the hall rings with cries.

“Get out of the building!” shouts Gadi Faysal, waving me and Azariah away. “Wait for us outside. We'll meet you as soon as we've dealt with her.”

As she and her husband ease Hoshea onto a marble bench, I seize Azariah's hand and run. We pass through the crowd unnoticed, like ghosts, and burst out onto the steps of the Assembly Hall.

Smoke and snow.

B
illowing black clouds blot out the sky. Is that ash on the ice? I can't stop shaking. But we're out.

Azariah and I dash down the steps into the panicked horde filling the square. The police blockade must have broken. Some people brandish torches, caught up in the frenzy, eager to destroy now that pandemonium reigns, but already others are fighting the small fires burning here and there in the plaza. Halani come running with sloshing buckets of water, and ordinary kasiri rip off their gloves and cast spells to smother the flames.

The roiling sea of people almost rips my hand from Azariah's. We press forward until we break free of the human eddies and find ourselves in a part of the square that is almost empty. It only takes a moment to see why.

To our right, along the eastern wing of the Assembly Hall, broken windows vomit flames. As we watch, a dozen government clerks spill out of a side door and stagger toward the blaze, averting their faces from the heat. Waves of blue light flare from their outstretched hands as cinders settle on their suits.

For a moment, Azariah and I just stand there, breathless.

Then he turns to me and shouts over the roar of the fire and the crowd. “Why did you do it?”

“What?” I stare at him, uncomprehending.

“Why did you give David the cure?”

I shudder as I remember the First Councilor plucking the flask from my fingers. “Azariah, this isn't the time!”

“It was the last dose, Marah!” His expression is betrayed.

“I don't know!” I cry. “I—I thought if I saved his life when he was ready to kill me and my people he—he wouldn't be able to go through with it, he'd have a change of heart . . .” It made sense at the time, but now it sounds crazy.

Azariah gapes at me. “Marah, David is irredeemable.”

“I know it was for nothing!” I say, angrier at myself than at him. I wish I'd never saved David.

Two clerks stumble away from the fire and lurch across the cobblestones toward us, one coughing as he bats at his smoldering jacket cuff.

“It was boys with firebombs! Kasir boys!” the other official bellows at his companion. “They looked like Firem Secondary students. I saw them throw bombs through the windows. They'll pay for this!”

The heat of the flames is intensifying, and Azariah and I plunge back into the crush to escape the scorching air. Everyone's shouting for order, for the cure, for the councilors' heads, for news. Amid the chaos, a wagoner struggles to calm his terrified horse. Then by some miracle, we spot a familiar figure pushing his way toward the hall's front entrance.

“Melchior!” Azariah screams over the din.

Melchior turns in confusion, then reaches out a sturdy hand to his brother.

“I was about to go in for you!” he says, his voice thick with relief. Clustered around him are a handful of boys with sweaty, dirt-smudged faces. Their wild eyes burn with a tremendous anger. Shock scuttles across my skin.

“Was it you?” I croak. “The firebombs?”

Melchior nods.

Azariah's jaw drops. “Are you insane?”

“They'll contain it,” his brother says roughly. “Where are Mother and Father?”

“They're dealing with Hoshea.”

“Who?” says Melchior, but before he can reply, another of his Firem friends appears at his side.

“Word is David's left the hall,” he says.

“Let's find him,” one of the other boys says.

“No—wait—” Melchior reaches out a hand, but his classmates are already marching off. “Forget it.” He pulls Azariah and me toward the edge of the choked square. The cobblestones are littered with jagged pieces of glass. Looking up, I realize some of the apartment windows that face the square have been smashed.

“After Asa took you away, I drove into the city and rounded up my friends,” Melchior is explaining. “When we saw the Corps had blocked off the Assembly Hall, I feared the worst. I thought I might be able to get past the guards and find you in the hall if we created some chaos. My friends were happy to help. Shemuel's brother has the dark eyes. But things got a bit out of hand—”

“Melchior, there's more,” I break in.

He swears. “Why is there always more!”

I have no answer. We look across the plaza. From somewhere behind the Assembly Hall, a new plume of smoke rises into the glittering blue sky.

“We need to find Mother and Father,” Azariah says. “They said they'd meet us.”

“Let's go that way.” Melchior nods toward the western wing of the hall, which is not on fire.

This side of the square is more crowded, probably because it appears safer than the smoky eastern side. As I squeeze through the packed bodies, treading on a soiled scarf and tripping over some kasir's lost hat, I wonder how we'll ever find Banar Rashid and Gadi Faysal in this mess.

“Up there!” Melchior shouts, pointing to a tall, narrow scaffold clinging to the façade of the western wing. He elbows his way to the foot of the structure, Azariah and I sticking close behind. The three of us clamber up a ladder to the first plywood platform.

“One more,” Azariah gasps. “Need to be higher.”

I reach the next level first and kick aside a paint-speckled drop cloth so the boys won't get their feet tangled in it. Then I make the mistake of looking down. The square is much farther below us than I expected, and the scaffold shifts and creaks under our weight.

Swallowing, I drop to my knees and crawl to the edge of the platform, scanning the sea of heads for Azariah's parents. There must be thousands of people down there. I hope to God Mother and Caleb are safe at home. But could Shaul and his brother and the other students from the pharmacy be here? Might Gadi Yakov's grief have moved her to protest? Would Aradi Imael march? During rehearsal, she always kept her politics to herself. What did she think when my name was printed in the newspaper like a criminal's, two days after my Qirakh audition?

“God of the Maitaf,” Azariah says beside me. I follow his gaze and catch sight of what we couldn't see when we were down in the square ourselves. Along the northern edge of the plaza, opposite the Assembly Hall, ranks of kasiri in black uniforms are colliding with each other in sprays of colored light.

“It's the First Councilor's Corps,” Melchior says.

“But they're fighting each other,” I say. As we watch, it becomes obvious that the Assembly's elite force is divided against itself. Even as the officers clash, the crowd in the square is growing, swelling like a storm cloud. The throngs are attacking the Corps too, and their greater numbers threaten to engulf the police.

Melchior shoves his brother. “Look for Mother and Father!”

Azariah tears his gaze from the north edge of the square and glances down, but the violence is quickly spreading toward us and the hall.

A column of Corps officers plows its way into the center of the square. The crowd throws itself upon them like a pack of wolves, civilian kasiri's spells flashing while halani wield bricks and metal rods.

The mob targets one officer with particular viciousness, separating him from the rest of the column, driving him this way. Suddenly, I glimpse his face. It's Tsuriel, the captain of the First Councilor's Corps. His left temple and the side of his neck are wet with blood.

I jerk back on the scaffold, my mouth filling with saliva. Azariah's face is drawn. Melchior keeps searching the crowd for his parents, swearing steadily in a mix of Ashari and Xanite. I grind my palms into the plywood, feeling paralyzed. I can't think of what we should be doing. Controlling the fires? Keeping people safe? Stopping the councilors?

I hear Azariah gasp. Before I know what's happening, he's tugging me to the far side of the platform. From here we have a clear view of the clogged southwest corner of the square and the Assembly Hall's western portico.

Yiftach David is standing on the portico steps, alone, trapped between the protesters on the porch and the crowd on the cobblestones pressing in around him. A man in a ragged coat throws a rock at the First Councilor's head and misses. David spins around, hands crooked. A bolt of silver light, and the rock thrower falls. There's another body already slumped at the foot of the steps.

“Ouch, you're hurting me,” Azariah says, wresting his fingers from my desperate grip.

“It's hopeless,” Melchior says. “He's outnumbered fifty to one, a hundred to one . . .”

There are kasiri shooting spells at David, but he wards them off, swaying on the porch steps. Then the mob surges forward, undaunted by the First Councilor's barrage of spells. Not flinching at the sparks, the halani fall upon David with their broken boards and bricks. He disappears from view.

Suddenly, a burst of light flares up from the portico, concealing everyone on the steps in a sheath of gold. The next instant, it's gone. People spring back to reveal an inert David.

I look to the brothers. Melchior's face could be carved of stone. Azariah's eyes are huge, his mouth hanging open.

“What is it?” I ask.

“I've—I've never seen it,” Azariah stammers, “only read, but—that gold light—I think he killed himself.”

Relief floods my veins. I sag on the scaffolding. Some part of my mind tells me I should shudder with horror, but all I feel is the tension bleeding from my body.

A sound comes from below, a chanting that spreads through the crowd until the whole square rings with the words.

“David is dead!”

I creep to the edge of the platform again. Despite the clear chorus rising from the plaza, not everyone is chanting. Firefighters battle the blaze in the eastern wing while bucket brigades struggle to douse the small street fires. In the middle of the square, units of the First Councilor's Corps are still skirmishing with each other and the masses.

“What are they doing?” I say. “Their commander is dead!”

“There are still five councilors left,” Melchior says grimly.

We watch helplessly from the scaffold as the fighting continues below. I lose all sense of time, stuck in a nightmare of drifting smoke, flickering spells, and dull chanting.

Then a voice loud enough to split open the sky booms through the square. “Citizens!”

Azariah claps his hands over his ears, and I seize his coat to keep him from toppling off the scaffold.

“People of Ashara, this is Yehudit Chesed.”

I know that name. Yehudit Chesed is a member of the Assembly, but I can't remember which one until Melchior says, “It's the Fifth Councilor.”

We look wildly around the square for her, but her voice is so amplified by magic it's impossible to tell where it's coming from.

“Yiftach David is dead, and the Assembly will not stand against the people any longer. I beg you, lay down your weapons and cease casting spells so that no more blood may be shed and no more lives lost.”

Yehudit Chesed's voice drowns out every other sound. A hush falls over the square.

“Where is she?” I ask. “Is this real?”

“I swear to you that the cure for the dark eyes will be given to all, halani and kasiri.”

“There!” Melchior points at two figures on the front steps of the Assembly Hall. One is a woman with glossy brown hair and flawless posture. I squint at the young man next to her. When I recognize him, I catch my breath. Standing beside Yehudit Chesed, his shirt stained down the front with ink, is Adriel David, the First Councilor's son.