An Ember in the Ashes

‘Fourth-Yearling Falconius Barrius.’ Her voice carries, though it’s soft, almost gentle. ‘You abandoned your post at Blackcliff with no intention of returning. Explain yourself.’

‘No explanation, Commandant, sir.’ He mouths the words we’ve all said to the Commandant a hundred times, the only words you can say at Blackcliff when you’ve screwed up utterly.

It’s a trial to keep my face blank, to drive emotion from my eyes. Barrius is about to be punished for the crime I’ll be committing in less than thirty-six hours. It could be me up there in two days. Bloodied. Broken.

‘Let us ask your peers their opinion.’ The Commandant turns her gaze on us, and it’s like being blasted by a frigid mountain wind. ‘Is Yearling Barrius guilty of treason?’

‘Yes, sir!’ The shout shakes the flagstones, rabid in its ferocity.

‘Legionnaires,’ the Commandant says. ‘Take him to the post.’

The resulting roar from the students jerks Barrius out of his stupor, and as the legionnaires tie him to the whipping post, he writhes and bucks.

His fellow Fourth-Yearlings, the same boys he fought and sweated and suffered with for years, thump the flagstones with their boots and pump their fists in the air. In the row of Senior Skulls in front of me, Marcus shouts his approval, his eyes lit with unholy joy. He stares at the Commandant with a reverence reserved for deities.

I feel eyes on me. To my left, one of the Centurions is watching. Nothing out of the ordinary. I lift my fist and cheer with the rest of them, hating myself.

The Commandant draws her crop, caressing it like a lover. Then she brings it whistling down onto Barrius’s back. His gasp echoes through the courtyard, and every student falls silent, united in a shared, if brief, moment of pity. Blackcliff’s rules are so numerous that it’s impossible not to break them at least a few times. We’ve all been tied to that post before. We’ve all felt the bite of the Commandant’s crop.

The quiet doesn’t last. Barrius screams, and the students howl in response, flinging jeers at him. Marcus is loudest of all, leaning forward, practically spitting in excitement. Faris rumbles his approval. Even Demetrius manages a shout or two, his green eyes flat and distant as if he is somewhere else entirely. Beside me, Helene cheers, but there’s no joy in her expression, only a stern sadness. The rules of Blackcliff demand that she voice her anger at the deserter’s betrayal. So she does.

The Commandant seems indifferent to the clamour, fixated as she is on her work. Her arm rises and falls with a dancer’s grace. She circles Barrius as his skinny limbs begin to seize, pausing between each lash, no doubt pondering how she can make the next one more painful than the last.

After twenty-five lashes, she takes him by his limp stalk of a neck and turns him around. ‘Face them,’ she says. ‘Face the men you’ve betrayed.’

Barrius’s eyes beseech the courtyard, seeking out anyone willing to offer him a shred of pity. He should have known better. His gaze collapses to the flagstones.

The cheers continue, and the crop comes down again. And again. Barrius falls to the white stones, the pool of blood around him spreading rapidly. His eyes flutter. I hope his mind is gone. I hope he can’t feel it anymore.

I make myself watch. This is why you’re leaving, Elias. So you’re never a part of this again.

A gurgling moan trickles from Barrius’s mouth. The Commandant drops her arm, and the courtyard is silent. I see the deserter breathing. In once. Out. And then nothing. No one cheers. Dawn breaks, the sun’s rays tracing the sky above Blackcliff’s ebony belltower like bloodied fingers, tingeing everyone in the courtyard a lurid red.

The Commandant wipes her crop on Barrius’s fatigues before returning it to her belt. ‘Take him to the dunes,’ she orders the legionnaires. ‘For the scavengers.’ Then she surveys the rest of us.

‘Duty first, unto death. If you betray the Empire, you will be caught, and you will pay. Dismissed.’

The lines of students dissolve. Dex, who brought the deserter in, slips away quietly, his darkly handsome face slightly sick. Faris lumbers after, no doubt to clap Dex on the back and suggest he forget his troubles at a brothel. Demetrius stalks off alone, and I know he’s remembering that day two years ago when he was forced to watch his little brother die just like Barrius. He won’t be fit to speak with for hours. The other students drain out of the courtyard quickly, still discussing the whipping.

‘—only thirty lashes, what a weakling—’

‘—did you hear him gasping, like a scared girl—’

‘Elias.’ Helene’s voice is soft, as is the touch of her hand on my arm. ‘Come on. The Commandant will see you.’

She’s right. Everyone is walking away. I should too.

I can’t do it.

No one looks at Barrius’s bloody remains. He is a traitor. He is nothing. But someone should stay. Someone should mourn him, even if for a moment.

‘Elias,’ Helene says, urgent now. ‘Move. She’ll see you.’

‘I need a minute,’ I reply. ‘You go on.’

She wants to argue with me, but her presence is conspicuous, and I’m not budging. She leaves with a last backward glance. When she’s gone, I look up to see the Commandant watching me.

We lock eyes across the long courtyard, and I am struck for the hundredth time at how different we are. I have black hair, she has blonde. My skin glows golden brown, and hers is chalk-white. Her mouth is ever disapproving, while I look amused even when I’m not. I am broad-shouldered and well over six feet, while she is smaller than a Scholar woman, even, with a deceptively willowy form.

But anyone who sees us standing side by side can tell what she is to me. My mother gave me her high cheekbones and pale grey eyes. She gave me the ruthless instinct and speed that make me the best student Blackcliff has seen in two decades.

Mother. It’s not the right word. Mother evokes warmth and love and sweetness. Not abandonment in the Tribal desert hours after birth. Not years of silence and implacable hatred.

She’s taught me many things, this woman who bore me. Control is one of them. I tamp down my fury and disgust, emptying myself of all feeling. She frowns, a slight twist of her mouth, and raises a hand to her neck, her fingers following the whorls of a strange blue tattoo poking out of her collar.

I expect her to approach and demand to know why I’m still here, why I challenge her with my stare. She doesn’t. Instead, she watches me for a moment longer before turning and disappearing beneath the arches.

The belltower tolls six, and the drums thud. All students report to mess. At the foot of the tower, the legionnaires heave up what’s left of Barrius and carry him away.

The courtyard stands silent, empty except for me staring at a puddle of blood where a boy once stood, chilled by the knowledge that if I’m not careful, I’ll end up just like him.

CHAPTER FIVE

Laia

The silence of the catacombs is as vast as a moonless night, and as eerie. Which isn’t to say that the tunnels are empty; as soon as I drop through the grate, a rat skitters across my bare feet, and a clear, fist-sized spider descends on a thread inches from my face. I bite my hand so I don’t scream.

Save Darin. Find the Resistance. Save Darin. Find the Resistance.

Sometimes I whisper the words. Mostly I chant them in my head. They keep me moving, a charm to ward off the fear nipping at my mind.

I’m not sure, really, what I should be looking for. A camp? A hideout? Any sign of life that isn’t rodent in nature?

Since most of the Empire’s garrisons are located east of the Scholars’ Quarter, I head west. Even in this skies-forsaken place, I can point unfailingly to where the sun rises and where it sets, to the Empire’s capital in the north, Antium, and to Navium, its main port due south. It’s a sense I’ve had for as long as I can remember. When I was a child and Serra should have seemed vast to me, I was always able to find my way.

I take heart from it – at least I won’t be wandering in circles.

For a time, sunshine trickles into the tunnels through the catacomb grates, weakly lighting the floor. I hug the crypt-pocked walls, swallowing my revulsion at the reek of rotting bones. A crypt is a good place to hide if a Martial patrol gets too close. Bones are just bones, I tell myself. A patrol will kill you.

In the daylight, it’s easier to push away my doubts and convince myself that I’ll find the Resistance. But I wander for hours, and eventually, the light fades and night falls, dropping like a curtain over my eyes. With it, fear comes rushing into my mind, a river that’s broken a dam. Every thump is a murderous aux soldier, every scritch a horde of rats. The catacombs have swallowed me as a python swallows a mouse. I shudder, knowing that I have a mouse’s chance of survival down here.

Save Darin. Find the Resistance.

Hunger gathers into a knot in my stomach, and thirst burns my throat. I spot a torch flickering in the distance, and feel a mothlike urge to head towards it. But the torches mark Empire territory, and the aux soldiers who get tunnel duty are probably Plebeians, the most lowborn of the Martials. If a group of Plebes catches me down here, I don’t want to think of what they’ll do.

I feel like a hunted, craven animal, which is exactly how the Empire sees me – how it sees all Scholars. The Emperor says that we are a free people who live under his benevolence. But that’s a joke. We can’t own property or attend schools, and even the mildest transgression results in enslavement.

No one else suffers such harshness. Tribesmen are protected under a treaty; during the invasion, they accepted Martial rule in exchange for free movement for their people. Mariners are protected by geography and the vast amounts of spices, meat, and iron they trade.

In the Empire, only Scholars are treated like trash.

Then defy the Empire, Laia, I hear Darin’s voice. Save me. Find the Resistance.

The darkness slows my footsteps until I’m practically crawling. The tunnel I’m in narrows, the walls crowding closer. Sweat pours down my back, and my whole body quakes – I hate small spaces. My breath echoes raggedly. Somewhere ahead, water falls in a lonely drip. How many ghosts haunt this place? How many vengeful spirits roam these tunnels?

Stop, Laia. No such things as ghosts. As a child, I spent hours listening to Tribal tale-spinners weave their legends of the mythical fey: the Nightbringer and his fellow jinn; ghosts, efrits, wraiths, and wights.

Sometimes the tales spilled into my nightmares. When they did, it was Darin who calmed my fears. Unlike Tribesmen, Scholars are not superstitious, and Darin has always had a Scholar’s healthy scepticism. No ghosts here, Laia. I hear his voice in my mind and close my eyes, pretending he’s beside me, allowing myself to be reassured by his steady presence. No wraiths either. There’s no such thing.

My hand goes to my armlet, as it always does when I need strength. It’s nearly black with tarnish, but I prefer it that way; it draws less attention. I trace the pattern in the silver, a series of connecting lines that I know so well I see it in my dreams.

Mother gave me the armlet the last time I saw her, when I was five. It’s one of the few clear memories I have of her – the cinnamon scent of her hair, the sparkle in her storm-sea eyes.

‘Keep it safe for me, little cricket. Just for a week. Just until I come back.’

What would she say now, if she knew I’d kept the armlet safe but lost her only son? That I’d saved my own neck and sacrificed my brother’s?

Set it right. Save Darin. Find the Resistance. I release the armlet and stumble on.

Soon after, I hear the first sounds behind me.

A whisper. The scrape of a boot on stone. If the crypts weren’t silent, I doubt I’d have noticed, the sounds are so quiet. Too quiet for an aux soldier. Too furtive for the Resistance. A Mask?

My heart thumps, and I whirl, searching the tarry blackness. Masks can prowl through darkness like this as easily as if they are part wraith. I wait, frozen, but the catacombs fall silent again. I don’t move. I don’t breathe. I hear nothing.

Rat. It’s just a rat. A really big one, maybe …

When I dare to take another step, I catch a whiff of leather and woodsmoke – human smells. I drop and search the floor with my hands for a weapon – a rock, a stick, a bone – anything to fight off whoever is stalking me. Then tinder hits flint, a hiss splits the air, and a moment later, a torch catches fire with a whoosh.

I stand, shielding my face with my hands, the impression of the flame pulsing behind my lids. When I force my eyes open, I make out a half-dozen hooded figures in a circle around me, all with loaded bows pointed at my heart.

‘Who are you?’ one of the figures says, stepping forward. Though his voice is cool and flat as a legionnaire’s, he doesn’t have the breadth and height of a Martial. His bare arms are hard with muscle, and he moves with fluid grace. A knife rests in one hand like it’s an extension of his body, and he holds the torch in his other. I try to find his eyes, but they’re hidden beneath the hood. ‘Speak.’

‘I—’ After hours of silence, I can barely manage a croak. ‘I’m looking for …’

Why didn’t I think this through? I can’t tell them I’m looking for the Resistance. No one with half a brain would admit to seeking out the rebels.

‘Check her,’ the man says when I don’t go on.

Another of the figures, slight and womanly, slings her bow on her back. The torch sputters behind her, casting her face into deep shadow. She looks too small to be a Martial, and the skin of her hands doesn’t have the dark hue of a Mariner’s. She’s probably either a Scholar or a Tribeswoman. Maybe I can reason with her.

‘Please,’ I say. ‘Let me—’

‘Shut it,’ the man who’d spoken before says. ‘Sana, anything?’

Sana. A Scholar name, short and simple. If she were Martial, her name would have been Agrippina Cassius or Chrysilla Aroman or something equally long and pompous.

But just because she’s a Scholar doesn’t mean I’m safe. I’ve heard rumours of Scholar thieves lurking in the catacombs, popping through grates to grab, raid, and usually kill whoever is nearby before dropping back into their lair.

Sana runs her hands over my legs and arms. ‘An armlet,’ she says. ‘Might be silver. I can’t tell.’

‘You’re not taking that!’ I jerk away from her, and the thieves’ bows, which had dropped a notch, come back up. ‘Please, let me go. I’m a Scholar. I’m one of you.’

‘Get it done,’ the man says. Then he signals to the rest of his band, and they begin to slip back into the tunnels.

‘Sorry about this.’ Sana sighs, but she has a dagger in her hand now. I retreat a step.

‘Don’t. Please.’ I knot my fingers together to hide their tremor. ‘It was my mother’s. It’s the only thing I have left of my family.’

Sana lowers the knife, but then the leader of the thieves calls to her and, seeing her hesitation, stalks towards us. As he does, one of his men signals to him. ‘Keenan, heads up. Aux patrol.’

‘Pair and scatter.’ Keenan lowers his torch. ‘If they follow, lead them away from base, or you’ll answer for it. Sana, get the girl’s silver and let’s go.’

‘We can’t leave her,’ Sana says. ‘They’ll find her. You know what they’ll do.’

‘Not our problem.’

Sana doesn’t move, and Keenan shoves the torch into her hands. When he takes me by the arm, Sana gets between us. ‘We need silver, yes,’ she says. ‘But not from our own people. Leave her.’

The unmistakable, clipped cadence of Martial voices carries down the tunnel. They haven’t seen the torchlight yet, but they will in just a few seconds.

‘Damn it, Sana.’ Keenan tries to go around the woman, but she shoves him away with surprising force, and her hood falls back. As the torchlight illuminates her face, I gasp. Not because she’s older than I thought or because of her fierce animosity, but because on her neck, I see a tattoo of a closed fist raised high with a flame behind it. Beneath it, the word Izzat.

‘You – you’re—’ I can’t get the words out. Keenan’s eyes fall on the tattoo, and he swears.

‘Now you’ve done it,’ he says to Sana. ‘We can’t leave her. If she tells them she saw us, they’ll flood these tunnels until they find us.’

He puts out the torch with brute swiftness and grabs my arm, pulling me after him. When I stumble into his hard back, he jerks his head around, and for a second, I catch the angry shine of his eyes. His scent, sharp and smoky, wafts over me.

‘I’m sorr—’

‘Keep quiet and watch your step.’ He’s closer than I realized, his breath warm against my ear. ‘Or I’ll knock you senseless and leave you in one of the crypts. Now move.’ I bite my lip and follow, trying to ignore his threat and instead focus on Sana’s tattoo.

Izzat. It’s Old Rei, the language spoken by Scholars before the Martials invaded and forced everyone to speak Serran. Izzat means many things. Strength, honour, pride. But in the past century, it’s come to mean something specific: freedom.

This is no band of thieves. It’s the Resistance.

CHAPTER SIX

Elias

Barrius’s screams blister my brain for hours. I see his body fall, hear the rasp of his last breath, smell the taint of his blood on the flagstones.

Student deaths don’t usually hit me this way. They shouldn’t – the Reaper’s an old friend. He’s walked with all of us at Blackcliff at some point. But watching Barrius die was different. For the rest of the day, I’m short-tempered and distracted.

My odd mood doesn’t go unnoticed. As I trudge to combat training with a group of other Senior Skulls, I realize Faris has just asked me a question for a third time.

‘You look like your favourite whore’s caught the pox,’ he says when I mutter an apology. ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’

‘Nothing.’ I realize too late how angry I sound, how unlike a Skull on the verge of Maskhood. I should be excited – bursting with anticipation.

Faris and Dex trade a sceptical glance, and I stifle a curse.

‘You sure?’ Dex asks. He’s a rule-follower, Dex. Always has been. Every time he looks at me, I know he’s wondering why my mask hasn’t joined with me yet. Piss off, I want to say to him. Then I remind myself that he’s not prying. He’s my friend, and he’s genuinely worried. ‘This morning,’ he says, ‘at the whipping, you were—’

‘Hey, leave the poor man be.’ Helene strolls up behind us, flashing a smile at Dex and Faris and throwing a careless arm around my shoulders as we enter the armoury. She nods at a rack of scims. ‘Go on, Elias, pick your weapon. I challenge you, best of three.’

She turns to the others and murmurs something as I walk away. I lift a blunted practice scim, checking its balance. A moment later, I feel her cool presence beside me.

‘What did you tell them?’ I ask her.

‘That your grandfather’s been hounding you.’

I nod. The best lies come from the truth. Grandfather is a Mask, and like most Masks, he’s never satisfied with anything less than perfection.

‘Thanks, Hel.’

‘You’re welcome. Repay me by pulling yourself together.’ She crosses her arms at my frown. ‘Dex is your platoon lieutenant, and you didn’t commend him after he caught a deserter. He noticed. Your entire platoon noticed. And at the whipping, you weren’t … with us.’

‘If you’re saying that I wasn’t baying for the blood of a ten-year-old, you’d be right.’

Her eyes tighten, enough for me to know that some part of her sympathizes with me, even if she’ll never admit it.

‘Marcus saw you stay behind after the whipping. He and Zak are telling everyone that you thought the punishment was too harsh.’

I shrug. As if I care what the Snake and Toad say about me.

‘Don’t be an idiot. Marcus would love to sabotage the heir to Gens Veturia a day before graduation.’ She refers to my familial house, one of the oldest and most respected in the Empire, by its formal title. ‘He’s all but accusing you of sedition.’

‘He accuses me of sedition every other week.’

‘But this time, you did something to earn it.’

My eyes jerk to hers, and for one tense moment, I think she knows everything. But there’s no anger or judgment in her expression. Only concern.

She counts off my sins on her fingers. ‘You’re squad leader of the platoon on watch, yet you don’t bring Barrius in yourself. Your lieutenant does it for you, and you don’t commend him. You barely contain your disapproval when the deserter’s punished. Not to mention the fact that it’s the day before graduation, and your mask has only just begun to meld with you.’

She waits for a response, and when I give none, she sighs.

‘Unless you’re stupider than you look, even you can see how this appears, Elias. If Marcus reports you to the Black Guard, they might have enough evidence to pay you a visit.’

A prickle of unease creeps down my neck. The Black Guard is tasked with ensuring the loyalty of the military. They wear the emblem of a bird, and their leader, once picked, gives up his name and is known simply as the Blood Shrike. He’s the right hand of the Emperor and the second most powerful man in the Empire. The current Blood Shrike has a habit of torturing first and asking questions later. A midnight visit from those black-armoured bastards will land me in the infirmary for weeks. My entire plan will be ruined.

I try not to glare at Helene. Must be nice to believe so fervently in what the Empire spoon-feeds us. Why can’t I just be like her – like everyone else? Because my mother abandoned me? Because I spent the first six years of my life with Tribesmen who taught me mercy and compassion instead of brutality and hatred? Because my playfellows were Tribeschildren, Mariners, and Scholars instead of other Illustrians?

Hel hands me a scim. ‘Fall in,’ she says. ‘Please, Elias. Just for a day. Then we’re free.’

Right. Free to report for duty as full-fledged servants of the Empire, after which we’ll lead men to their deaths in the never-ending border wars with Wildmen and Barbarians. Those of us not ordered to the border will be given city commands, where we’ll hunt down Resistance fighters or Mariner spies. We’ll be free, all right. Free to laud the Emperor. Free to rape and kill.

Funny how that doesn’t seem like freedom.

I keep quiet. Helene’s right. I’m drawing too much attention to myself, and Blackcliff is the worst place to do so. Students here are like starving sharks when it comes to sedition. One whiff of it, and they swarm.

For the rest of the day, I do my best to act like a Mask on the verge of graduation – smug, brutish, violent. It’s like covering myself in filth.

When I return to my cell-like quarters in the evening for a precious few minutes of free time, I tear off my mask and toss it on my cot, sighing when the liquid metal releases its hold.

At the sight of my reflection in the mask’s polished surface, I grimace. Even with the thick black lashes that Faris and Dex love to mock, my eyes are so much my mother’s that I hate seeing them. I don’t know who my father is, and I no longer care, but for the hundredth time, I wish that he’d at least given me his eyes.

Once I escape the Empire, it won’t matter. People will see my eyes and think Martial instead of Commandant. Plenty of Martials roam the south as merchants, mercenaries, and craftsmen. I’ll be one among hundreds.

Outside, the belltower tolls eight. Twelve hours until graduation. Thirteen until the ceremony is done. Another hour for pleasantries. Gens Veturia is a distinguished house, and Grandfather will want me to shake dozens of hands. But eventually, I’ll beg off and then …