An Ember in the Ashes (2 page)

T
he deserter will be dead before dawn.

His tracks zigzag like a struck deer’s in the dust of Serra’s catacombs. The tunnels have done him in. The hot air is too heavy down here, the smells of death and rot too close.

The tracks are more than an hour old by the time I see them. The guards have his scent now, poor bastard. If he’s lucky, he’ll die in the chase. If not . . .

Don’t think about it. Hide the backpack. Get out of here.

Skulls crunch as I shove a pack loaded with food and water into a wall crypt. Helene would give me hell if she could see how I’m treating the dead. But then, if Helene finds out why I’m down here in the first place, desecration will be the least of her complaints.

She won’t find out. Not until it’s too late.
Guilt pricks at me, but I shove it away. Helene’s the strongest person I know. She’ll be fine without me.

For what feels like the hundredth time, I look over my shoulder. The tunnel is quiet. The deserter led the soldiers in the opposite direction. But safety’s an illusion I know never to trust. I work quickly, piling bones back in front of the crypt to cover my trail, my senses primed for anything out of the ordinary.

One more day of this. One more day of paranoia and hiding and lying. One day until graduation. Then I’ll be free.

As I rearrange the crypt’s skulls, the hot air shifts like a bear waking from hibernation. The smells of grass and snow cut through the fetid breath of the tunnel. Two seconds is all I have to step away from the crypt and kneel, examining the ground as if there might be tracks here. Then she is at my back.

“Elias? What are you doing down here?”

“Didn’t you hear? There’s a deserter loose.” I keep my attention fixed on the dusty floor. Beneath the silver mask that covers me from forehead to jaw, my face should be unreadable. But Helene Aquilla and I have been together nearly every day of the fourteen years we’ve been training at Blackcliff Military Academy; she can probably hear me thinking.

She comes around me silently, and I look up into her eyes, as blue and pale as the warm waters of the southern islands. My mask sits atop my face, separate and foreign, hiding my features as well as my emotions. But Hel’s mask clings to her like a silvery second skin, and I can see the slight furrow in her brow as she looks down at me.
Relax, Elias
, I tell myself
. You’re just looking for a deserter.

“He didn’t come this way,” Hel says. She runs a hand over her hair, braided, as always, into a tight, silver-blonde crown. “Dex took an auxiliary company off the north watchtower and into the East Branch tunnel. You think they’ll catch him?”

Aux soldiers, though not as highly trained as legionnaires and nothing compared to Masks, are still merciless hunters. “Of course they’ll catch him.” I fail to keep the bitterness out of my voice, and Helene gives me a hard look. “The cowardly scum,” I add. “Anyway, why are you awake? You weren’t on watch this morning.”
I made sure of it.

“Those bleeding drums.” Helene looks around the tunnel. “Woke everyone up.”

The drums. Of course.
Deserter
, they’d thundered in the middle of the graveyard watch.
All active units to the walls.
Helene must have decided to join the hunt. Dex, my lieutenant, would have told her which direction I’d gone. He’d have thought nothing of it.

“I thought the deserter might have come this way.” I turn from my hidden pack to look down another tunnel. “Guess I was wrong. I should catch up to Dex.”

“Much as I hate to admit it, you’re not usually wrong.” Helene cocks her head and smiles at me. I feel that guilt again, wrenching as a fist to the gut. She’ll be furious when she learns what I’ve done. She’ll never forgive me.
Doesn’t matter. You’ve decided. Can’t turn back now.

Hel traces the dust on the ground with a fair, practiced hand. “I’ve never even seen this tunnel before.”

A drop of sweat crawls down my neck. I ignore it.

“It’s hot, and it reeks,” I say. “Like everything else down here.”
Come on
,
I want to add. But doing so would be like tattooing “I am up to no good” on my forehead. I keep quiet and lean against the catacomb wall, arms crossed.

The field of battle is my temple.
I mentally chant a saying my grandfather taught me the day he met me, when I was six. He insists it sharpens the mind the way a whetstone sharpens a blade.
The swordpoint is my priest. The dance of death is my prayer. The killing blow is my release.

Helene peers at my blurred tracks, following them, somehow, to the crypt where I stowed my pack, to the skulls piled there. She’s suspicious, and the air between us is suddenly tense.

Damn it.

I need to distract her. As she looks between me and the crypt, I run my gaze lazily down her body. She stands two inches shy of six feet—a half-foot shorter than me. She’s the only female student at Blackcliff; in the black, close-fitting fatigues all students wear, her strong, slender form has always drawn admiring glances. Just not mine. We’ve been friends too long for that.

Come on, notice. Notice me leering and get mad about it.

When I meet her eyes, brazen as a sailor fresh into port, she opens her mouth, as if to rip into me. Then she looks back at the crypt.

If she sees the pack and guesses what I’m up to, I’m done for. She might hate doing it, but Empire law would demand she report me, and Helene’s never broken a law in her life.

“Elias—”

I prepare my lie.
Just wanted to get away for a couple of days, Hel. Needed some time to think. Didn’t want to worry you.

BOOM-BOOM-boom-BOOM.

The drums.

Without thought, I translate the disparate beats into the message they are meant to convey.
Deserter caught. All students report to central courtyard immediately.

My stomach sinks. Some naïve part of me hoped the deserter would at least make it out of the city. “That didn’t take long,” I say. “We should go.”

I make for the main tunnel. Helene follows, as I knew she would. She would stab herself in the eye before she disobeyed a direct order. Helene is a true Martial, more loyal to the Empire than to her own mother. Like any good Mask-in-training, she takes Blackcliff’s motto to heart:
Duty first, unto death.

I wonder what she would say if she knew what I’d really been doing in the tunnels.

I wonder how she’d feel about my hatred for the Empire.

I wonder what she would do if she found out her best friend is planning to desert.

T
he Mask saunters through the gate, big hands loose at his sides. The strange metal of his namesake clings to him from forehead to jaw like silver paint, revealing every feature of his face, from the thin eyebrows to the hard angles of his cheekbones. His copper-plated armor molds to his muscles, emphasizing the power in his body.

A passing wind billows his black cape, and he looks around the backyard like he’s arrived at a garden party. His pale eyes find me, slide up my form, and settle on my face with a reptile’s flat regard.

“Aren’t you a pretty one,” he says.

I yank at the ragged hem of my shift, wishing desperately for the shapeless, ankle-length skirt I wear during the day. The Mask doesn’t even twitch. Nothing in his face tells me what he’s thinking. But I can guess.

Darin steps in front of me and glances at the fence, as if gauging the time it will take to reach it.

“I’m alone, boy.” The Mask addresses Darin with all the emotion of a corpse. “The rest of the men are in your house. You can run if you like.” He moves away from the gate. “But I insist you leave the girl.”

Darin raises the knife.

“Chivalrous of you,” the Mask says.

Then he strikes, a flash of copper and silver lightning out of an empty sky. In the time it takes me to gasp, the Mask has shoved my brother’s face into the sandy ground and pinned his writhing body with a knee. Nan’s knife falls to the dirt.

A scream erupts from me, lonely in the still summer night. Seconds later, a scimpoint pricks my throat. I didn’t even see the Mask draw the weapon.

“Quiet,” he says. “Arms up. Now get inside.”

The Mask uses one hand to yank Darin up by the neck and the other to prod me on with his scim. My brother limps, face bloodied, eyes dazed. When he struggles, a fish on a hook, the Mask tightens his grip.

The back door of the house opens, and a red-caped legionnaire comes out.

“The house is secure, Commander.”

The Mask shoves Darin at the soldier. “Bind him up. He’s strong.”

Then he grabs me by the hair, twisting until I cry out.

“Mmm.” He bends his head to my ear, and I cringe, my terror caught in my throat. “I’ve always loved dark-haired girls.”

I wonder if he has a sister, a wife, a woman. But it wouldn’t matter if he did. To him, I’m not someone’s family. I’m just a thing to be subdued, used, and discarded. The Mask drags me down the hallway to the front room as casually as a hunter drags his kill.
Fight
,
I tell myself.
Fight.
But as if he senses my pathetic attempts at bravery, his hand squeezes, and pain lances through my skull. I sag and let him pull me along.

Legionnaires stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the front room amid upturned furniture and broken bottles of jam.
Trader won’t get anything now.
So many days spent over steaming kettles, my hair and skin smelling of apricot and cinnamon. So many jars, steamed and dried, filled and sealed. Useless. All useless.

The lamps are lit, and Nan and Pop kneel in the middle of the floor, their hands bound behind their backs. The soldier holding Darin shoves him to the ground beside them.

“Shall I tie up the girl, sir?” Another soldier fingers the rope at his belt, but the Mask leaves me between two burly legionnaires.

“She’s not going to cause any trouble.” He stabs at me with those eyes. “Are you?” I shake my head and shrink back, hating myself for being such a coward. I reach for my mother’s tarnished armlet, wrapped around my bicep, and touch the familiar pattern for strength. I find none. Mother would have fought. She’d have died rather than face this humiliation.
But I can’t make myself move. My fear has ensnared me.

A legionnaire enters the room, his face more than a little nervous. “It’s not here, Commander.”

The Mask looks down at my brother. “Where’s the sketchbook?”

Darin stares straight ahead, silent. His breath is low and steady, and he doesn’t seem dazed anymore. In fact, he’s almost composed.

The Mask gestures, a small movement. One of the legionnaires lifts Nan by her neck and slams her frail body against a wall. Nan bites her lip, her eyes sparking blue. Darin tries to rise, but another soldier forces him down.

The Mask scoops up a shard of glass from one of the broken jars. His tongue flickers out like a snake’s as he tastes the jam.

“Shame it’s all gone to waste.” He caresses Nan’s face with the edge of the shard. “You must have been beautiful once. Such eyes.” He turns to Darin. “Shall I carve them out of her?”

“It’s outside the small bedroom window. In the hedge.” I can’t manage more than a whisper, but the soldiers hear. The Mask nods, and one of the legionnaires disappears into the hallway. Darin doesn’t look at me, but I feel his dismay.
Why did you tell me to hide it
,
I want to cry out.
Why did you bring the cursed thing home?

The legionnaire returns with the book. For unending seconds, the only sound in the room is the rustling of pages as the Mask flips through the sketches. If the rest of the book is anything like the page I found, I know
what the Mask will see: Martial knives, swords, scabbards, forges, formulas, instructions—things no Scholar should know of, let alone re-create on paper.

“How did you get into the Weapons Quarter, boy?” The Mask looks up from the book. “Has the Resistance been bribing some Plebeian drudge to sneak you in?”

I stifle a sob. Half of me is relieved Darin’s no traitor. The other half wants to rage at him for being such a fool. Association with the Scholars’ Resistance carries a death sentence.

“I got myself in,” my brother says. “The Resistance had nothing to do with it.”

“You were seen entering the catacombs last night after curfew”—the Mask almost sounds bored—“in the company of known Scholar rebels.”

“Last night, he was home well before curfew,” Pop speaks up, and it is strange to hear my grandfather lie. But it makes no difference. The Mask’s eyes are for my brother alone. The man doesn’t blink as he reads Darin’s face the way I’d read a book.

“Those rebels were taken into custody today,” the Mask says. “One of them gave up your name before he died. What were you doing with them?”

“They followed me.” Darin sounds so calm. Like he’s done this before. Like he’s not afraid at all. “I’d never met them before.”

“And yet they knew of your book here. Told me all about it. How did they learn of it? What did they want from you?”

“I don’t know.”

The Mask presses the shard of glass deep into the soft skin below Nan’s eye, and her nostrils flare. A trickle of blood traces a wrinkle down her face.

Darin draws a sharp breath, the only sign of strain. “They asked for my sketchbook,” he says. “I said no. I swear it.”

“And their hideout?”

“I didn’t see. They blindfolded me. We were in the catacombs.”

“
Where
in the catacombs?”

“I didn’t see. They blindfolded me.”

The Mask eyes my brother for a long moment. I don’t know how Darin can remain unruffled beneath that gaze.

“You’re prepared for this.” The smallest bit of surprise creeps into the Mask’s voice. “Straight back. Deep breathing. Same answers to different questions. Who trained you, boy?”

When Darin doesn’t answer, the Mask shrugs. “A few weeks in prison will loosen your tongue.” Nan and I exchange a frightened glance. If Darin ends up in a Martial prison, we’ll never see him again. He’ll spend weeks in interrogation, and after that they’ll either sell him as a slave or kill him.

“He’s just a boy,” Pop speaks slowly, as if to an angry patient. “Please—”

Steel flashes, and Pop drops like a stone. The Mask moves so swiftly that I don’t understand what he has done. Not until Nan rushes forward. Not until she lets out a shrill keen, a shaft of pure pain that brings me to my knees.

Pop. Skies, not Pop.
A dozen vows sear themselves into my mind.
I’ll never disobey again, I’ll never do anything wrong, I’ll never complain about my work, if only Pop lives.

But Nan tears her hair and screams, and if Pop was alive, he’d never let her go on like that. He wouldn’t have been able to bear it. Darin’s calm is sheared away as if by a scythe, his face blanched with a horror I feel down to my bones.

Nan stumbles to her feet and takes one tottering step toward the Mask. He reaches out to her, as if to put his hand on her shoulder. The last thing I see in my grandmother’s eyes is terror. Then the Mask’s gauntleted wrist flashes
once, leaving a thin red line across Nan’s throat, a line that grows wider and redder as she falls.

Her body hits the floor with a thud, her eyes still open and shining with tears as blood pours from her neck and into the rug we knotted together last winter.

“Sir,” one of the legionnaires says. “An hour until dawn.”

“Get the boy out of here.” The Mask doesn’t give Nan a second glance. “And burn this place down.”

He turns to me then, and I wish I could fade like a shadow into the wall behind me. I wish for it harder than I’ve ever wished for anything, knowing all the while how foolish it is. The soldiers flanking me grin at each other as the Mask takes a slow step in my direction. He holds my gaze as if he can smell my fear, a cobra enthralling its prey.

No, please, no. Disappear, I want to disappear.

The Mask blinks, some foreign emotion flickering across his eyes—surprise or shock, I can’t tell. It doesn’t matter. Because in that moment, Darin leaps up from the floor. While I cowered, he loosened his bindings. His hands stretch out like claws as he lunges for the Mask’s throat. His rage lends him a lion’s strength, and for a second he is every inch our mother, honey hair glowing, eyes blazing, mouth twisted in a feral snarl.

The Mask backs into the blood pooled near Nan’s head, and Darin is on him, knocking him to the ground, raining down blows. The legionnaires stand frozen in disbelief and then come to their senses, surging forward, shouting and swearing. Darin pulls a dagger free from the Mask’s belt before the legionnaires tackle him.

“Laia!” my brother shouts. “Run—”

Don’t run, Laia. Help him. Fight.

But I think of the Mask’s cold regard, of the violence in his eyes.
I’ve always loved dark-haired girls.
He will rape me. Then he will kill me.

I shudder and back into the hallway. No one stops me. No one notices.

“Laia!” Darin cries out, sounding like I’ve never heard him. Frantic. Trapped. He told me to run, but if I screamed like that, he would come. He would never leave me. I stop.

Help him, Laia
,
a voice orders in my head.
Move.

And another voice, more insistent, more powerful.

You can’t save him. Do what he says. Run.

Flame flickers at the edge of my vision, and I smell smoke. One of the legionnaires has started torching the house. In minutes, fire will consume it.

“Bind him properly this time and get him into an interrogation cell.” The Mask removes himself from the fray, rubbing his jaw. When he sees me backing down the hallway, he goes strangely still. Reluctantly, I meet his eyes, and he tilts his head
.

“Run, little girl,” he says.

My brother is still fighting, and his screams slice right through me. I know then that I will hear them over and over again, echoing in every hour of every day until I am dead or I make it right. I know it.

And still, I run.

»»»

T
he cramped streets and dusty markets of the Scholars’ Quarter blur past me like the landscape of a nightmare. With each step, part of my brain shouts at me to turn around, to go back, to help Darin. With each step, it becomes less likely, until it isn’t a possibility at all, until the only word I can think is
run.

The soldiers come after me, but I’ve grown up among the squat, mud-brick houses of the Quarter, and I lose my pursuers quickly.

Dawn breaks, and my panicked run turns to a stumble as I wander from alley to alley. Where do I go? What do I do? I need a plan, but I don’t know where to start. Who can offer me help or comfort? My neighbors will turn me away, fearing for their own lives. My family is dead or imprisoned. My best friend, Zara, disappeared in a raid last year, and my other friends have their own troubles.

I’m alone.

As the sun rises, I find myself in an empty building deep in the oldest part of the Quarter. The gutted structure crouches like a wounded animal amid a labyrinth of crumbling dwellings. The stench of refuse taints the air.

I huddle in the corner of the room. My hair has slipped free of its braid and lays in hopeless tangles. The red stitches along the hem of my shift are ripped, the bright yarn limp. Nan sewed those hems for my seventeenth year-fall, to brighten up my otherwise drab clothing. It was one of the few gifts she could afford.

Now she’s dead. Like Pop. Like my parents and sister, long ago.

And Darin. Taken. Dragged to an interrogation cell where the Martials will do who-knows-what to him.

Life is made of so many moments that mean nothing. Then one day, a single moment comes along to define every second that comes after. The moment Darin called out—that was such a moment. It was a test of courage, of strength. And I failed it.

Laia! Run!

Why
did I listen to him?
I should have stayed. I should have done something. I moan and grasp my head. I keep hearing him. Where is he now?
Have they begun the interrogation? He’ll wonder what happened to me. He’ll wonder how his sister could have left him.

A flicker of furtive movement in the shadows catches my attention, and the hair on my nape rises. A rat? A crow? The shadows shift, and within them, two malevolent eyes flash. More sets of eyes join the first, baleful and slitted.

Hallucinations
,
I hear Pop in my head, making a diagnosis.
A symptom of shock.

Hallucinations or not, the shadows look real. Their eyes glow with the fire of miniature suns, and they circle me like hyenas, growing bolder with each pass.

“
We saw
,”
they hiss.
“We know your weakness. He’ll die because of you.”