An Ember in the Ashe
My big brother reaches home in the dark hours before dawn, when
even ghosts take their rest. He smells of steel and coal and forge.
He smells of the enemy.
He folds his scarecrow body through the window, bare feet silent on the
rushes. A hot desert wind blows in after him, rustling the limp curtains. His
sketchbook falls to the floor, and he nudges it under his bunk with a quick
foot, as if it’s a snake.
Where have you been, Darin? In my head, I have the courage to ask the
question, and Darin trusts me enough to answer. Why do you ke ep
disappearing? Why, when Pop and Nan need you? When I need you?
Every night for almost two years, I’ve wanted to ask. Every nig ht, I’ve
lacked the courage. I have one sibling left. I don’t want him to shut me out
like he has everyone else.
But tonight’s different. I know what’s in his sketchbook. I know what it
means.
“You shouldn’t be awake.” Darin’s whisper jolts me from my thoughts.
He has a cat’s sense for traps — he got it from our mother. I sit up on the
bunk as he lights the lamp. No use pretending to be asle ep.
“It’s past curfew, and three patrols have gone by. I was worried.”
“I can avoid the soldiers, Laia. Lots of practice .” He rests his chin on my
bunk and smiles Mother’s sweet, crooked smile. A familiar look — the one
he gives me if I wake from a nightmare or we run out of grain. Everything
will be fine, the look says.
He picks up the book on my bed. “Gather in the Night,” he reads the
title. “Spooky. What’s it about?”
“I just started it. It’s about a jinn — ” I stop. Clever. Very clever. He likes
hearing stories as much as I like telling them. “Forget that. Where were
you? Pop had a dozen patients this morning.”
And I filled in for you because he can’t do so much alone. Which left
Nan to bottle the trader’s jams by herself. Exc ept she didn’t finish. Now the
trader won’t pay us, and we’ll starve this winter, and why in the skies don’t
you care?
I say these things in my head. The smile’s already dropped off Darin’s
face.
“I’m not cut out for healing,” he says. “Pop knows that.”
I want to back down, but I think of Pop’s slumped shoulders this
morning. I think of the sketchbook.
“Pop and Nan d epend on you. At least talk to them. It’s been months.”
I wait for him to tell me that I don’t understand. That I should leave him
be. But he just shakes his head, drops down into his bunk, and closes his
eyes like he can’t be bothered to r eply.
“I saw your drawings.” The words tumble out in a rush, and Darin’s up
in an instant, his face stony. “I wasn’t spying,” I say. “One of the pages was
loose. I found it when I changed the rushes this morning.”
“Did you tell Nan and Pop? Did they see?”
“N o, but — ”
“Laia, listen.” Ten hells, I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to hear
his excuses. “What you saw is dangerous,” he says. “You can’t tell anyone
about it. Not ever. It’s not just my life at risk. There are others — ”
“Are you working for the Empire, Darin? Are you working for the
Martials?”
He is silent. I think I see the answer in his eyes, and I feel ill. My brother
is a traitor to his own people? My brother is siding with the Empire?
If he hoarded grain, or sold books, or taught children to re ad, I’d
understand. I’d be proud of him for doing the things I’m not brave enough
to do. The Empire raids, jails, and kills for such “crimes,” but teaching a
six - year - old her letters isn’t evil — not in the minds of my people, the
Scholar people.
But what Darin has done is sick. It’s a betrayal.
“The Empire killed our parents,” I whisper. “Our sister.”
I want to shout at him, but I choke on the words. The Martials conquered
Scholar lands five hundred years ago, and since then, they’ve done nothing
but oppress and enslave us. Once, the Scholar Empire was home to the
finest universities and libraries in the world. Now, most of our people can’t
tell a school from an armory.
“How could you side with the Martials? How, Darin?”
“It’s not what you think, Laia. I’ll explain everything, but — ”
He pauses suddenly, his hand jerking up to silence me when I ask for the
promised explanation. He cocks his head toward the window.
Through the thin walls, I hear Pop’s snores, Nan shifting in her sle ep, a
mourning dove’s croon. Fa miliar sounds. Home sounds.
Darin hears something else. The blood drains from his face, and dread
flashes in his eyes. “Laia,” he says. “Raid.”
“But if you work for the Empire — ” Then why are the soldiers raiding
us?
“I’m not working for them.” He sounds calm. Calmer than I feel. “Hide
the sketchbook. That’s what they want. That’s what they’re here for.”
Then he’s out the door, and I’m alone. My bare legs move like cold
molasses, my hands like wooden blocks. Hurry, Laia!
Usually, the Empire raids in the heat of the day. The soldiers want
Scholar mothers and children to watch. They want fathers and brothers to
see another man’s family enslaved. As bad as those raids are, the night raids
are worse. The night raids are for when the Empire doesn’t want witnesses.
I wonder if this is real. If it’s a nightmare. It’s real, Laia. Move.
I drop the sketchbook out the window into a hedge. It’s a poor hiding
place, but I have no time. Nan hobbles into my room. Her hands, so steady
when she stirs vats of jam or braids my hair, flutter like frantic birds,
desperate for me to move faster.
She pulls me into the hallway. Darin stands with Pop at the back door.
My grandfather’s white hair is scattered as a haystack and his clothes are
wrinkled, but there’s no sle ep in the de ep grooves of his face. He murmurs
something to my brother, then hands him Nan’s largest kitchen knife. I
don’t know why he bothers. Against the Serric steel of a Martial blade, the
knife will only shatter.
“You and Darin leave through the backyard,” Nan says, her eyes darting
from window to window. “They haven’t surrounded the house yet.”
No. No. No. “Nan,” I breathe her name, stumbling when she pushes me
toward Pop.
“Hide in the east en d of the Quarter — ” Her sentence ends in a choke,
her eyes on the front window. Through the ragged curtains, I catch a flash
of a liquid silver face. My stomach clenches.
“A Mask,” Nan says. “They’ve brought a Mask. Go, Laia. Before he
gets inside.”
“What about you? What about Pop?”
“We’ll hold them off.” Pop shoves me gently out the door. “Ke ep your
secrets close, love. Listen to Darin. He’ll take care of you. Go.”
Darin’s lean shadow falls over me, and he grabs my hand as the door
closes behind us. He slou ches to blend into the warm night, moving silently
across the loose sand of the backyard with a confidence I wish I felt.
Although I am seventeen and old enough to control my fear, I grip his hand
like it’s the only solid thing in this world.
I’m not working for them, Darin said. Then whom is he working for?
Somehow, he got close enough to the forges of Serra to draw, in detail, the
creation process of the Empire’s most precious asset: the unbreakable,
curved scims that can cut through three men at once.
Ha lf a millennium ago, the Scholars crumbled beneath the Martial
invasion because our blades broke against their superior steel. Since then,
we have learned nothing of steelcraft. The Martials hoard their secrets the
way a miser hoards gold. Anyone caught near our city’s forges without
good reason — Scholar or Martial — risks execution.
If Darin isn’t with the Empire, how did he get near Serra’s forges? How
did the Martials find out about his sketchbook?
On the other side of the house, a fist pounds on the front door. Boots
shuffle, steel clinks. I look around wildly, expecting to see the silver armor
and red capes of Empire legionnaires, but the backyard is still. The fresh
night air does nothing to stop the sweat rolling down my neck. Distantly, I
hear the thud of drums from Blackcliff, the Mask training school. The
sound sharpens my fear into a hard point stabbing at my center. The Empire
doesn’t send those silver - faced monsters on just any raid.
The pounding on the door sounds again.
“In the name of the Empire,” an irritated voice says, “I demand you open
this door.”
As one, Darin and I freeze.
“Doesn’t sound like a Mask,” Darin whispers. Masks speak softly with
words that cut through you like a scim. In the time it would take a
legionnaire to knock and issue an order, a Mask would already be in the
house, weapons slicing through anyone in his way.
Darin meets my eyes, and I know we’re both thinking the same thing. If
the Mask isn’t with the rest of the soldiers at the front door, then where is
he?
“Don’t be afraid, Laia,” Darin says. “I won’t let anything happen to
you.”
I want to believe him, but my fear is a tide tugging at my ankles, pulling
me under. I think of the couple that lived next door: raided, imprisoned, and
sold into slavery three weeks ago. Book smugglers, the Martials said. Five
days after that, one of Pop’s oldest patients, a ninety - three - year - old man
who could barely walk, was executed in his own home, his throat slit from
ear to ear. Resistance collaborator.
What will the soldiers do to Nan and Pop? Jail them? Enslave them?
Kill them?
We reach the back gate. Darin stands on his toes to unhook the latch
when a scrape in the alley beyond stops him short. A breeze sighs past,
sending a cloud of dust into the air.
Darin pushes me behind him. His knuckles are white around the knife
handle as the gate swings open with a moan. A finger of terror draws a trail
up my spine. I peer over my brother’s shoulder into the alley.
There is nothing out there but the quiet shifting of sand. Nothing but the
occasional gust of wind and the shuttered windows of our sle eping
neighbors.
I sigh in relief and st ep around Darin.
That’s when the Mask emerges from the darkness and walks through the
gate.