An Ember in the Ashes (18 page)

I let the battle rage take me and surge up the stairs, scims flying. One cuts into the gut of a legionnaire, the other slides across a throat. The stairwell isn’t wide enough for two scims, so I sheath one and pull out my dagger, driving it into the kidney of a third soldier and the heart of a fourth. In seconds, the way above is clear, and Helene and I race up the stairs. We get to the top of the watchtower only to find more soldiers waiting.

Are you going to kill them all, Elias? How many added to your tally? Four already—ten more? Fifteen? Just like your mother. Fast as her. Ruthless as her.

My body freezes as it never has in battle, my foolish heart taking control. Helene shouts, spins, kills, defends, while I stand there. Then it’s too late to fight, because a jut-jawed brute with arms like tree trunks tackles me.

“Veturius!” Helene says. “More soldiers coming from the north!”

“Mrffggg.” The big aux has my face smashed against the side of the
watchtower, his hand so tight around my skull that I’m sure he means to crush it. He uses his knee to pin me, and I can’t budge an inch.

For a moment, I admire his technique. He recognizes that he can’t counter my fighting skills and has instead used surprise and his colossal bulk to best me.

My admiration fizzles as stars burst before my eyes.
Cunning! You have to use cunning!
But the time for cunning is past. I shouldn’t have gotten distracted. I should have run a scim through the aux’s chest before he ever got to me.

Helene darts away from her attackers to help me, pulling on my belt as if to yank me away from the giant soldier, but he pushes her away.

The aux slides me along the wall to a niche in the battlements and shoves me through, holding me by my neck above the dunes like a child with a rag doll. Six hundred feet of hungry air grasps at my legs. Behind my captor, a sea of legionnaires tries to pull Helene down, barely keeping a hold on her as she twists and spits, a cat in a net.

Always victorious.
Grandfather’s voice echoes in my head.
Always victorious.
I dig my fingers into the tendons of the brute’s arms, trying to work myself free.

“I bet ten marks on you.” The aux appears genuinely pained. “But orders are orders.”

Then he opens his hand and lets me fall.

The fall lasts an eternity and no time at all. My heart shoots into my throat, my stomach plunges, and then, with a jerk that rattles my skull, I’m not falling anymore. But I’m not dead, either. My body dangles, tethered by a rope hooked to my belt.

Helene had yanked on my belt—she must have attached the rope then. Which means she is on the other end. Which means if the soldiers throw her
over and I’m still dangling like a comatose spider, we’ll both fall hard and fast to the hereafter.

I swing toward the cliff face and scrabble for a handhold. The rope is thirty feet long, and this close to the base of the watchtower, the cliffs aren’t as sheer. A granite shelf juts out from a fissure a few feet away. I wedge myself in tightly and only just in time.

A shriek echoes from above me followed by a tumble of blonde and silver. I brace my legs and pull in the rope as fast as I can, but I am still nearly yanked off the rock shelf by the force of Helene’s weight.

“I’ve got you, Hel,” I shout, knowing how terrified she must be hanging hundreds of feet in the air like this. “Hold on.”

When I pull her into the fissure, she is wild-eyed and shaking. There is hardly room for both of us on the shelf, and she grabs my shoulders to anchor herself.

“It’s all right, Hel.” I tap the ledge with a boot. “See? Solid rock beneath us.” She nods into my shoulder, clinging to me in a most un-Helene-like way.

Even through our armor, I feel her curves, and my stomach leaps strangely. She fidgets, which really doesn’t help things, seemingly as aware as I of the closeness of our bodies. My face grows hot at the sudden tension between us.
Focus, Elias.

I pull away from her as an arrow thunks into the rock beside us—we’ve been spotted.

“We’re easy pickings on this ledge,” I say. “Here.” I unknot the cord from my belt and hers, and stuff it into her hands. “Tie this to an arrow. Make it tight.”

She does as I ask while I grab a bow from my back and scan the cliffs for a harness. One dangles fifteen feet away. It’s a shot I could make with my eyes
closed—except that the legionnaires are hauling the harness back up the cliff face and into the tower.

Helene hands me the arrow, and before more missiles come hurtling from above, I lift my bow, notch the arrow, shoot.

And miss.

“Damn it!” The legionnaires pull the harness just out of range. They yank up the other harnesses along the cliff, strap themselves in, and begin rappelling down.

“Elias—” Helene nearly flings herself off the ledge trying to avoid an arrow, grabbing on to my arm. “We have to get out of here.”

“I figured that out, thanks.” I barely dodge an arrow myself. “If you’ve got a genius plan, I’m open to ideas.”

Helene grabs the bow from me, takes aim with the corded arrow, and a second later, one of the legionnaires rappelling down goes limp. She pulls the body over and unbuckles him from the harness. I try to ignore the distant thump of the soldier’s body hitting the dunes. Hel frees the cord while I grab the harness and strap myself in—I’ll have to carry her down.

“Elias,” she whispers when she realizes what we have to do. “I—I can’t—”

“You can. I won’t let you fall. I promise.”

I test the harness anchor with a sharp yank, hoping it will hold the weight of two fully armed Masks.

“Climb onto my back.” I take her chin and force her to meet my eyes. “Rope us together like before. Wrap your legs around my waist. Don’t let go until we hit the sand.”

She does as I ask and ducks her head into my neck as I leap off the edge, her breath coming short and fast.

“Don’t fall, don’t fall,” I hear her muttering. “Don’t fall, don’t—”

Arrows streak toward us from the tower, and the legionnaires have dropped level now. They draw scims and glide across the cliff face. My hand itches toward a weapon, but I resist—I have to keep hold of the ropes so we don’t plummet to the desert floor.

“Keep them off me, Hel.”

Her legs tighten around my hips and her bow twangs as she launches arrow after arrow into our pursuers.

Thwunk. Thwunk. Thwunk.

One howl of agony is joined by another and another as Helene draws and shoots, fast as lightning striking. The arrows from the tower thin as we drop, clattering off our armor uselessly. Every muscle in my arms strains to keep us dropping steadily.
Almost there
 . . .
almost
 . . .

Then a searing pain shoots through my left thigh. We slide fifty feet as I lose control of the descender. Helene grabs me as her head snaps back, and she screams, a girlish shriek I know I should never, ever mention.

“Damn it, Veturius!”

“Sorry,” I grind out when I get hold of the ropes. “I’m hit. They still coming?”

“No.” Helene cranes her neck back and stares up the sheer cliff face. “They’re going back up.”

The hairs on the back of my neck rise in warning. There’s no reason for the soldiers to stop the attack. Not unless they think someone else will take over for them. I peer down at the dunes, still two hundred feet below us. I can’t tell if there’s anyone down there.

A gust of wind blows out of the desert, knocking us hard against the cliff
face, and I almost lose control of the ropes again. Helene yelps, her arm tense around me. My leg burns with pain, but I ignore it—it’s just a flesh wound.

For a second, I think I hear a peal of deep, mocking laughter.

“Elias.” Helene looks out at the desert, and I know what she’s going to say before she says it. “There’s something—”

The wind steals the words from her mouth, sweeping out of the dunes with unnatural fury. I release the descender, and we drop. But not fast enough.

A violent gust rips my hands from the ropes, halting our descent. Sand from the dunes rises in a funnel around us. Before my disbelieving eyes, the particles weave together, coalescing into large, manlike shapes with grasping hands and holes for eyes.

“What are they?” Helene slashes the air uselessly with her scim, her strokes increasingly uncontrolled.

Not human and not friendly.
The Augurs have already unleashed one supernatural terror on us. It isn’t much of a stretch to assume that they’d trot out another.

I reach for the ropes, now hopelessly tangled. The pain in my thigh explodes, and I look down to see the arrow being slowly pulled through my flesh by a sandy hand. The laughter echoes again as I hurriedly break off the arrowhead—I’ll be crippled for life if it’s dragged through my leg.

Sand buffets my face, biting at my skin before solidifying into another creature. This one looms over us, a miniature mountain, and although his features are poorly defined, I can still make out his wolf’s smile.

I smother my disbelief and try to think back to Mamie Rila’s stories. We’ve already dealt with wraiths, and this thing is big—not like a wight or a ghul. Efrits are supposed to be shy, but jinn are vicious and cunning . . .

“It’s a jinn!” I shout over the wind. The sand creature laughs as delightedly as if I’m juggling and pulling faces.

“
Jinn are dead, little Aspirant.”
His screams are like a wind out of the north. Then he swoops in close, eyes narrowing. His other brethren form up behind him, dancing and somersaulting with the zeal of acrobats at a carnival.
“Destroyed by your kind long ago, in a great war. I am Rowan Goldgale, king of the sand efrits. I will claim your souls as mine.”

“Why would a king of efrits concern himself with mere humans?” Helene plays for time as I frantically untangle the ropes and straighten the descender.

“
Mere humans!”
The efrits behind the king hoot with laughter.
“You are Aspirants. Your footsteps echo in the sand and the stars. To own souls such as yours is a great honor. You will serve me well.”

“What’s he talking about?” Helene asks me in an undertone.

“No idea,” I say. “Keep him distracted.”

“Why enslave us?” Helene asks. “When we would—ah—serve you willingly?”

“Stupid girl! In these sacks of flesh, your souls are useless. I must awaken and tame them. Only then can you serve me. Only then—”

His voice is lost in a whoosh of wind as we drop away. The efrits shriek and streak after us, surrounding and blinding us, tearing my hands from the ropes once more.

“Take them,”
Rowan bays at his cohort. Helene’s grip on me loosens as an efrit works his way between us. Another pries the scim from her hand and the bow from her back, shrieking in elation as the weapons drop to the dunes.

Yet another efrit saws at our rope with a sharp rock. I draw my scim and shove it through the creature, twisting, hoping steel will kill the thing. The
efrit howls—in pain or anger, I can’t tell. I try to take off its head, but it flits up out of reach, cackling nastily.

Think, Elias!
The shadow-assassins had a weakness. The efrits must too. Mamie Rila told tales about them, I know she did. But I can’t bleeding remember any of them.

“Ahhhh!” Helene’s arms jerk free of me, and she holds on with only her legs. The efrits ululate, doubling their efforts to pull her away. Rowan puts his hands on either side of her face and squeezes, imbuing her with an otherworldly gold light.

“
Mine!”
the efrit says.
“Mine. Mine. Mine.”

The rope frays. Blood pours from the wound on my thigh. The efrits rip Helene away, and as they do, I spot a niche in the cliff that runs all the way down to the desert floor. Mamie Rila’s face appears in my head, illuminated by the campfire as she chants:

Efrit, efrit of the wind, kill him with a star-steel pin.

Efrit, efrit of the sea, light a fire to make him flee.

Efrit, efrit of the sand, a song is more than he can stand.

I hurl my scim up at the efrit sawing at the ropes and swing forward, plucking Helene from the grip of the efrits and shoving her into the niche, all the while ignoring her yell of surprise and the angry, tearing hands at my back.

“Sing, Hel! Sing!”

She opens her mouth, to shout or sing, I don’t know, because the rope finally gives way and I plummet. Helene’s pale face fades away above me. Then the world goes quiet and white, and I know no more.

I
zzi finds me after I leave the kitchen, still shaken by Cook’s warning. The girl offers me a sheaf of papers—the Commandant’s specs for Teluman.

“I offered to take them,” she says. “But she—she didn’t like that idea.”

No one pays me heed as I make my way through Serra to Teluman’s forge. No one can see the raw, bloody
K
beneath the cloak I wear. As I stumble along, it’s clear I’m not the only injured slave. Some Scholar slaves have bruises. Some have whip marks. Others walk as if injured inside, hunched and limping.

While still in the Illustrian Quarter, I pass a large glass display of saddles and bridles and stop short, startled at my own reflection, at the haunted, hollow-eyed creature looking back at me. Sweat soaks my skin, half from fever, half from the unabating heat. My dress clings to my body, my skirt bunching and tangling around my legs.

It’s for Darin.
I keep walking.
Whatever you’re suffering, he’s suffering worse.

As I near the Weapons Quarter, my feet slow. I remember the Commandant’s words from last night.
You’re lucky I want a Teluman blade, girl. You’re lucky he wants a taste of you.
I loiter near the smithy door for long minutes before entering. Surely Teluman won’t want to come near me when my skin is the color of whey and I’m sweating buckets.

The shop is as quiet as it was the first time I visited, but the smith is here. I know it. Sure enough, within seconds of me opening the door, I hear the whisper of footsteps, and Teluman appears from the back room.

He takes one look at me and disappears, returning seconds later with a
dripping glass of cool water and a chair. I drop into the seat and drain the water, not stopping to consider if it might be poisoned.

The forge is cool, the water cooler, and for a second, my fevered shaking slows. Then Spiro Teluman slips past me to the forge door.

He locks it.

Slowly, I stand, holding the glass out like an offering, like a trade, like I’ll give him his glass back and he’ll unlock the door and let me go without hurting me. He takes it from my hand, and I wish then that I’d kept it, broken it to use as a weapon.

He looks into the glass. “Who did you see when the ghuls came?”

The question is so unexpected that I’m startled into the truth. “I saw my brother.”

The smith scrutinizes my face, his brow furrowed as if he’s considering something, making a decision. “You’re his sister then,” he says. “Laia. Darin spoke of you often.”

“He—he spoke—” Why would Darin speak to this man about me? Why would he speak to this man at all?

“Strangest thing.” Teluman leans back against the counter. “The Empire tried forcing apprentices on me for years, but I didn’t find one until I caught Darin spying on me from up there.” The shutters on the high bank of windows are open, revealing the crate-littered balcony of the building next door. “Dragged him down. Thought I’d haul him to the auxes. Then I saw his sketchbook.” He shakes his head, not needing to explain. Darin put so much life into his drawings that it seemed if you just reached out, you could pull them from the page.

“He wasn’t just drawing the inside of my forge. He was designing the
weapons themselves. Such things I’d only seen in dreams. I offered him the apprentice spot there and then, thinking he’d run, that I’d never see him again.”

“But he didn’t run,” I whisper. He wouldn’t run—not Darin.

“No. He came into the forge, looked around. Cautious, yes. Not afraid. I never saw your brother afraid. He felt fear—I’m sure he did.
But he never seemed to focus on what could turn out wrong. He only ever thought about how things could turn out right.”

“The Empire thought he was Resistance,” I say. “All this time, he was working for the Martials? If that’s true, why is he still in jail? Why haven’t you gotten him out?”

“Do you think the Empire would allow a Scholar to learn their secrets? He wasn’t working for the Empire. He was working for me. And I parted ways with the Empire a long time ago. I do enough for them to keep them off my back. Armor, mostly. Until Darin came, I hadn’t made a true Teluman scim for seven years.”

“But . . . his sketchbook had pictures of swords—”

“That damn sketchbook.” Spiro snorts. “I told him to keep it here, but he wouldn’t listen. Now the Empire has it, and there’s no getting it back.”

“He wrote down formulas in it,” I say. “Instructions. Things—things he shouldn’t have known—”

“He was my apprentice. I taught him to make weapons. Fine weapons. Teluman weapons. But
not
for the Empire.”

I swallow nervously as the implications of his words sink in. No matter how clever Scholar uprisings have been, in the end it comes down to steel against steel, and in that battle, the Martials always win.

“You wanted him to make weapons for the Scholars?”
That would be
treason.
When Spiro nods, I can’t believe him. This is a trick, like with Veturius this morning. It’s something Teluman’s planned with the Commandant to test my loyalty.

“If you’d really been working with my brother, someone would have seen. Other people must work here. Slaves, assistants—”

“I’m the Teluman smith. Other than my apprentice, I work alone, as my forefathers did. It’s the reason your brother and I were never caught. I
want
to help Darin. But I can’t. The Mask who took Darin recognized my work in his sketches. I’ve been questioned about it twice already. If the Empire learns I took your brother as my apprentice, they’ll kill him. Then they’ll kill me, and right now I’m the only chance the Scholars have at casting off their chains.”

“Were you working with the Resistance?”

“No,” Spiro says. “Darin didn’t trust them. He tried to stay away from the fighters. But he used the tunnels to get here, and a few weeks ago, two rebels spotted him leaving the Weapons Quarter. Thought he was a Martial collaborator. He had to show them his sketchbook to keep them from killing him.” Spiro sighs. “Then, of course, they wanted him to join up. Wouldn’t leave him alone. Lucky, in the end. That connection to the Resistance is the only reason either of us is still alive. As long as the Empire thinks he’s holding rebel secrets, they’ll keep him in prison.”

“But he told them he wasn’t with the Resistance,” I say. “When the Mask raided us.”

“Stock answer. Empire expects real rebels to deny membership for days—weeks, even—before giving in. We prepared for this. I taught him how to survive interrogation and prison. As long as he stays here in Serra and out of Kauf, he should be fine.”

For how long
, I wonder.

I’m afraid to cut Teluman off, but I’m more afraid not to. If he’s telling the truth, then the more of this I listen to, the more danger I’m in. “The Commandant’s expecting a reply. She’ll send me back for it in a few days. Here.”

“Laia—wait—”

But I shove the papers in his hands, dart to the door, and unlock it. He can easily come after me, but he doesn’t. Instead, he watches as I hurry down the alley. When I turn the corner, I think I hear him curse.

«««

A
t night, I toss restlessly in the tiny box that is my room, the rope of my pallet digging into my back, the roof and walls so close that I can’t breathe. My wound burns, and my mind echoes with Teluman’s words.

Serric steel is the heart of the Empire’s strength. No Martial would give up its secrets to a Scholar. And yet something about Teluman’s claims rings true. When he spoke of Darin, he captured my brother perfectly—his drawings, the way he thinks. And Darin, like Spiro, told me he wasn’t with the Martials or the Resistance. It all aligns.

Except the Darin I knew wasn’t interested in rebellion.

Or was he?
Memories cascade through my head: Darin’s silence when Pop told us of how he set the bones of a child beaten by auxes. Darin excusing himself when Nan and Pop discussed the most recent Martial raids, fists clenched. Darin ignoring us to draw Scholar women flinching from Masks and children fighting over a rotted apple in the gutter.

I thought my brother’s silence meant he was pulling away from us. But maybe silence was his solace. Maybe it was the only way he could fight his outrage at what was happening to his people.

When I do fall asleep, Cook’s warning about the Resistance burrows its way into my dreams. I see the Commandant cut me over and over. Each time, her face changes from Mazen’s to Keenan’s to Teluman’s to Cook’s.

I wake to choking darkness and gasp for breath, trying to push away the walls of my quarters. I scramble out of my bed, through the open-air corridor, and into the back courtyard, guzzling the cool night breezes.

It’s past midnight, and clouds scud over a nearly full moon. In a few days, it will be time for the Moon Festival, the Scholars’ midsummer celebration of the largest moon of the year. Nan and I were supposed to hand out cakes and pastries this year. Darin was supposed to dance until his feet fell off.

In the moonlight, the forbidding buildings of Blackcliff are almost beautiful, the sable granite softened to blue. The school is, as always, eerily hushed. I never feared the night, not even as a child, but Blackcliff’s night is different, heavy with a silence that makes you look over your shoulder, a silence that feels like a living thing.

I look up at the stars hanging low in a sky that makes me think I’m seeing the infinite. But beneath their cold gaze, I feel small. All the beauty of the stars means nothing when life here on earth is so ugly.

I didn’t used to think so. Darin and I spent countless nights on the roof of our grandparents’ house tracing the path of the Great River, the Archer, the Swordsman. We’d watch for falling stars, and whoever saw one first would issue a dare. Since Darin’s eyes were sharp as a cat’s, I was always the one stuck stealing apricots from the neighbors, or pouring cold water down the back of Nan’s shirt.

Darin can’t see the stars now. He’s stuck in a cellblock, lost in the labyrinth of Serra’s prisons. He’ll never see the stars again, unless I get the Resistance what they want.

A light flares in the Commandant’s study, and I start, surprised she’s still awake. Her curtains flutter, and voices drift down through the open window. She’s not alone.

Teluman’s words come back to me.
I never saw your brother afraid. He never seemed to focus on what could turn out wrong. He only ever thought about how things could turn out right.

A worn trellis runs up alongside the Commandant’s window, covered in summer-dead vines. I give the trellis a shake—it’s rickety, but not un-climbable.

She’s probably not saying anything useful anyway. She’s probably talking to a student.

But why would she meet a student at midnight? Why not during the day?

She’ll whip you.
My fear pleads with me.
She’ll take an eye. A hand.

But I’ve been whipped and beaten and strangled, and I’ve survived. I’ve been carved up with a hot knife, and I’ve survived.

Darin didn’t let fear control him. If I want to save him, I can’t let fear control me either.

Knowing my courage will diminish the longer I think about it, I grab the trellis and climb. Keenan’s advice pops into my head.
Always have an exit plan.

I grimace. Too late for that now.

Every scrape of my sandals sounds to me like a detonation. A loud creak makes my heart stutter, but after a minute of paralysis, I realize the sound is just the trellis groaning under my weight.

When I reach the top, I still can’t hear the Commandant. The windowsill is a foot to my left. Three feet below the sill, a section of stone has crumbled,
leaving a small foothold. I take a breath, grab the sill, and swing from the trellis to the window. My feet scrape against the sheer wall for a terrifying moment before I find the foothold.

Don’t collapse
,
I beg the stone beneath my feet.
Don’t break.

My chest wound has opened again, and I try to ignore the blood dripping down my front. My head is even with the Commandant’s window. If she leans out, I’m dead.

Forget that
,
Darin tells me.
Listen.
The clipped tones of the Commandant’s voice float through the window, and I lean forward.

“—be arriving with his entire retinue, my Lord Nightbringer. Everyone—his councilors, the Blood Shrike, the Black Guard—as well as most of Gens Taia.” The subdued nature of the Commandant’s voice is a revelation.

“Make sure of it, Keris. Taius must arrive after the Third Trial, or our plan is for naught.”

At the sound of the second voice, I gasp and nearly fall. The voice is deep and soft, not a sound so much as a feeling. It is storm and wind and leaves twisting in the night. It is roots sucking deep at the earth, and the pale, sightless creatures that live below the ground. But there’s something wrong with this voice, something diseased at its core.

Though I’ve never heard the voice before, I find myself trembling, tempted for a second to drop to the ground just to get away from it.

Laia.
I hear Darin.
Be brave.

I risk a peek through the curtains and catch a glimpse of a figure standing in the corner of the room, swathed in darkness. He looks to be nothing more than a medium-sized man in a cloak. But I know in my bones that this is no normal man. Shadows pool near his feet, writhing, as if trying to get the
figure’s attention. Ghuls. When the thing turns toward the Commandant, I flinch, for the darkness beneath his hood has no place in the human world. His eyes glow, slitted suns filled with ancient malevolence.

The figure moves, and I jerk away from the window.

The Nightbringer
,
my mind screams.
She called him the Nightbringer.

“We have a different problem, my lord,” the Commandant says. “The Augurs suspect my interference. My . . . instruments are not as subtle as I’d hoped.”

“Let them suspect,” the creature says. “As long as you shield your mind and we continue teaching the Farrars to shield theirs, the Augurs will remain ignorant. Though I do wonder if you’ve chosen the right Aspirants, Keris. They’ve just botched a second ambush, though I told them everything they needed to end Aquilla and Veturius.”