The Commandant of Blackcliff Military Academy.
My curiosity for the spy mission withers. The Empire trains the
Masks at Blackcliff — Masks like the one who murdered my family and
stole my brother. The school sprawls atop Serra’s eastern cliffs like a
colossal vulture, a jumble of austere buildings enclosed by a black granite
wall. No one knows what happens behind that wall, how the Masks train,
how many there are, how they are chosen. Every year, a new class of Masks
leaves Blackcliff, young, savage, and dead ly. For a Scholar — especially a
girl — Blackcliff is the most dangerous place in the city.
Mazen goes on. “She lost her personal slave — ”
“The girl threw herself off the cliffs a week ago,” Keenan retorts,
defying Mazen’s glare. “She’s the third slave to die in the Commandant’s
service this year.”
“Quiet,” Mazen says. “I won’t lie to you, Laia. The woman’s unpleasant
— ”
“She’s insane,” Keenan says. “They call her the Bitch of Blackcliff. You
won’t survive the Commandant. The mission will fail.”
Mazen’s fist com es down on the table. Keenan doesn’t flinch.
“If you can’t ke ep your mouth shut,” the Resistance leader growls, “then
leave.”
Tariq’s jaw drops as he looks between the two men. Sana, meanwhile,
watches Keenan with a thoughtful expression. Others in the cavern stare
too, and I get the feeling that Keenan and Mazen don’t disagree very often.
Keenan scrapes his chair back and leaves the table, disappearing into the
muttering crowd behind Mazen.
“You’re perfect for the job, Laia,” Mazen says. “You have all the skills
the Commandant would expect from a hou se slave. She’ll assume you’re
illiterate. And we have the means to get you in.”
“What happens if I’m caught?”
“You’re dead.” Mazen looks me straight in the eye, and I feel a bitter
appreciation for his honesty. “Every spy we’ve sent to Blackcliff has been
discovered and killed. This isn’t a mission for the fainthearted.”
I almost want to laugh. He couldn’t have picked a worse person for it.
“You’re not doing a very good job selling it.”
“I don’t have to sell it,” Mazen says. “We can find your brother and
b reak him out. You can be our eyes and ears in Blackcliff. A simple
exchange.”
“You trust me to do this?” I ask. “You hardly know me.”
“I knew your parents. That’s enough for me.”
“Mazen.” Tariq speaks up. “She’s just a girl. Surely we don’t need to — ”
“She invoked Izzat,” Mazen says. “But Izzat means more than freedom.
It means more than honor. It means courage. It means proving yourself.”
“He’s right,” I say. If the Resistance is going to help me, I can’t have the
fighters thinking I’m weak. A glimmer of re d catches my eye, and I look
across the cavern to where Keenan leans against a bunk watching me, his
hair like fire in the torchlight. He doesn’t want me to take this mission
because he doesn’t want to risk the men to save Darin. I put a hand to my
armlet. Be brave, Laia.
I turn to Mazen. “If I do this, you’ll find Darin? You’ll break him out of
jail?”
“You have my word. It won’t be hard to locate him. He’s not a
Resistance leader, so it’s not as if they’ll send him to Kauf.” Mazen snorts,
but mention of th e infamous northern prison sends a chill across my skin.
Kauf’s interrogators have one goal: to make inmates suffer as much as
possible before they die.
My parents died in Kauf. My sister, only twelve at the time, died there
too.
“By the time you make your first r eport,” Mazen says, “I’ll be able to
tell you where Darin is. When your mission is complete, we’ll break him
out.”
“And after?”
“We pry your slaves’ cuffs off and pull you out of the school. We can
make it look like a suicide, so you’re not hunted. You can join us, if you
like. Or we can arrange passage to Marinn for you both.”
Marinn. The free lands. What I wouldn’t give to es cape there with my
brother, to live in a place with no Martials, no Masks, no Empire.
But first I have to survive a spy mission. I have to survive Blackcliff.
Across the cavern, Keenan shakes his head. But the fighters around me
nod. This is Izzat, they seem to say. I fall silent, as if considering, but my
decision is made the second I realize that going to Blackcliff is the only way
to get Darin back.
“I’ll do it.”
“Good.” Mazen doesn’t sound surprised, and I wonder if he knew all
along that I would say yes. He raises his voice so it carries. “Keenan will be
your handler.”
At this, the younger man’s face goes, if possible, even darker. He presses
his lips together as if to ke ep from speaking.
“Her hands and feet are cut up,” Mazen says. “See to her injuries,
Keenan, and tell her what she needs to know. She leaves for Blackcliff
tonight.”
Mazen leaves, trailed by members of his faction, while Tariq claps me
on the shoulder and wishes me luck. His allies p epper me with advice:
Never go looking for your handler. Don’t trust anyone. They only wish to
help, but it’s overwhelming, and when Keenan cuts through the crowd to
retrieve me, I’m almost relieved.
Almost. He jerks his head to a table in the corner of the cavern and
walks off without waiting for me.
A glint of light near the table turns out to be a small spring. Keenan fills
two tubs with water and a powder I recognize as tanroot. He sets one tub on
the table and one on the floor.
I scrub my hands and feet clean, wincing as the tanroot sinks into the
scrapes I picked up in the catacombs. Keenan watches silently. Beneath his
scrutiny, I am ashamed at how quickly the water turns black with muck —
and then angry at myself for being ashamed.
When I’m done, Keenan sits at the table across from me and takes my
hands. I’m expecting him to be brusque, but his hands are — not gentle,
exactly, but not callous, either. As he examines my cuts, I think of a dozen
question s I could ask him, none of which will make him think that I’m
strong and capable instead of childish and petty. Why do you seem to hate
me? What did I do to you?
“You shouldn’t be doing this.” He rubs a numbing ointment on one of
the de eper cuts, ke eping his attention fixed on my wounds. “This mission.”
You’ve made that clear, you jackass. “I won’t let Mazen down. I’ll do
what I have to.”
“You’ll try, I’m sure.” I’m stung at his bluntness, though by now it
should be clear that he has no faith in me. “The wo man’s a savage. The last
person we sent in — ”
“Do you think I want to spy on her?” I burst out. He looks up, surprise in
his eyes. “I don’t have a choice. Not if I want to save the only family I have
left. So just — ” Shut it, I want to say. “Just don’t make this harder.”
Something like embarrassment crosses his face, and he regards me with
a tiny bit less scorn. “I’m . . . sorry.” His words are reluctant, but a reluctant
apology is better than none at all. I nod jerkily and realize that his eyes are
not blue or green but a de ep chestnut brown. You’re noticing his eyes, Laia.
Which means you’re staring into them. Which means yo u need to stop. The
smell of the salve stings my nostrils, and I wrinkle my nose.
“Are you using twin - thistle in this salve?” I ask. At his shrug, I pull the
bottle from him and take another sniff. “Try ziberry next time. It doesn’t
smell like goat dung, at least.”
Keenan raises a fiery eyebrow and wraps one of my hands with gauze.
“You know your remedies. Useful skill. Your grandparents were healers?”
“My grandfather.” It hurts to speak of Pop, and I pause a long while
before going on. “He started training me formally a year and a half ago. I
mixed his remedies before that.”
“Do you like it? Healing?”
“It’s a trade.” Most Scholars who aren’t enslaved work menial jobs — as
farmhands or cleaners or stevedores — backbreaking labor for which they’re
paid next to nothing. “I’m lucky to have one. Though, when I was little, I
wanted to be a Kehanni.”
Keenan’s mouth curves into the barest smile. It is a small thing, but it
transforms his entire face and lightens the weight on my chest.
“A Tribal tale - spinner?” he says. “Don’t tell me you believe in myths of
jinn and efrits and wraiths that kidnap children in the night?”
“No.” I think of the raid. Of the Mask. My lightness melts away. “I don’t
need to believe in the supernatural. Not when there’s worse that roams the
night.”
He goes still, a sudden stillness that draws my eyes up and into his. My
breath hitches at what I see laid bare in his gaze: a wrenching knowledge, a
Hbitter understanding of pain that I know well. Here’s someone who has
walked paths as dark as mine. D arker, maybe.
Then coldness descends over his face, and his hands are moving again.
“Right,” he says. “Listen carefully. Today was graduation day at
Blackcliff. But we’ve just learned that this year’s ceremony was different.
Special.”
He tells me of the Trials and the four Aspirants. Then he gives me my
mission.
“We need three pieces of information. We need to know what each Trial
is, where it’s taking place, and when. And we need to know this before each
Trial begins, not after.”
I have a dozen questions, but I don’t ask, knowing he’ll just think me
more foolish.
“How long will I be in the school?”
Keenan shrugs and finishes bandaging my hands. “We know next to
nothing about the Trials,” he says. “But I can’t imagine it will take more
than a few weeks — a month, at most.”
“Do you — do you think Darin will last that long?”
Keenan doesn’t answer.
«««
ours later, in the early evening, I find myself in a house in the
Foreign Quarter with Keenan and Sana, standing before an elderly
Tribesman. He’s clad in the loose robes of his people and looks more like a
kindly old uncle than a Resistance operative.
When Sana explains what she wants of him, he takes one look at me and
fo lds his arms across his chest.
“Absolutely not,” he says in heavily accented Serran. “The Commandant
will eat her alive.”
Keenan throws Sana a pointed look, as if to say, What did you expect?
“With respect,” Sana says to the Tribesman, “can we . . . ” She gestures
to a lattice - screen doorway leading to another room. They disappear behind
the lattice. Sana’s speaking too softly for me to hear, but whatever she’s
saying must not be working, because even through the screen, I can see the
Tribesman shaking his head.
“He won’t do it,” I say.
Beside me, Keenan leans against the wall, unconcerned. “Sana can
convince him. She’s not leader of her faction for nothing.”
“I wish I could do something.”
“Try looking a little braver.”
“What, like you?” I arrange my face so it’s blank as slate, slump against
the wall, and look off into the distance. Keenan actually smiles for a
fraction of a second. It takes years off his face.
I rub a bare foot across the hypnotic swirls of the thick Tribal rug on the
floor. Pillows embroid ered with tiny mirrors are strewn across it, and lamps
of colored glass hang from the roof, catching the last rays of sunlight.
“Darin and I came to a house like this to sell Nan’s jams once.” I reach
up to touch one of the lamps. “I asked him why Tribesmen have mirrors
everywhere, and he said — ” The memory is clear and sharp in my mind, and
an ache for my brother, for my grandparents, pulses in my chest with such
violence that I clamp my mouth shut.
Tribesmen think the mirrors ward off evil, Darin said that day. He took
out his sketchbook while we waited for the Tribal trader and started
drawing, capturing the intricacy of the lattice screens and lanterns with
small, quick strokes of charcoal. Jinn and wraiths can’t stand the sight of
themselves, apparently.
After that, he’d answered a dozen more of my questions with his usual
quiet confidence. At the time, I’d wondered how he knew so much. Only
now do I understand — Darin always listened more than he spoke, watching,
learning. In that way, he was like Pop.
The ache in my chest expands, and my eyes are suddenly hot.
“It will get better,” Keenan says. I look up to see sadness flicker across
his face, almost instantly r eplaced by that now - familiar chill. “You’ll never
forget them, not even after years. But one day, you’ll go a whole minute
without feeling the pain. Then an hour. A day. That’s all you can ask for,
really.” His voice drops. “You’ll heal. I promise.”
He looks away, distant again, but I’m grateful to him anyway, because
for the first time since the raid, I feel less alone. A second later, Sana and
the Tribesman come around the screen.
“You’re sure this is what you want?” the Tribesman asks me.
I nod, not trusting my voice.
He sighs. “Very well.” He turns to Sana and Keenan. “Say your
goodbyes. If I take her now, I can still get her into the school by dark.”
“You’ll be all right.” Sana hugs me tightly, and I wonder if she’s trying
to convince me or herself. “You’re the Lioness’s daughter. And the Lioness
was a survivor.”
Until she wasn’t. I lower my gaze so Sana doesn’t see my doubt. She
heads out the door, and then Keenan is before me. I cross my arms, not
wanting him to think I need a hug from him too.
But he doesn’t touch m e. Just cocks his head and lifts his fist to his heart
— the Resistance salute.
“Death before tyranny,” he says. Then he, too, is gone.
«««
half hour later, dusk drops over the city of Serra, and I am following the
Tribesman swiftly through the Mercator Quarter, home to the wealthiest
members of the Martial merchant class. We stop before the ornate iron gate
of a slaver’s home, and the Tribesman checks my manacles, his tan robes
swishing softly as he moves around me. I clasp my bandaged hands
together to sto p them from shaking, but the Tribesman gently pries my
fingers apart.
“Slavers catch lies the way spiders catch flies,” he says. “Your fear is
good. It makes your story real. Remember: Do not speak.”
I nod vigorously. Even if I wanted to say something, I’m too frightened.
The slaver is Blackcliff’s sole supplier, Keenan had explained while
walking me to the Tribesman’s house. It’s taken months for our operative to
gain his trust. If he doesn’t pick you for the Commandant, your mission’s
dead before it begin s.
We’re escorted through the gates, and moments later, the slaver is
circling me, sweating in the heat. He’s as tall as the Tribesman but twice as
broad, with a paunch that strains the buttons of his gold brocade shirt.
“Not bad.” The slaver snaps his fingers, and a slave - girl appears from
the recesses of his mansion bearing a tray of drinks. The slaver slurps one
down, pointedly not offering anything to the Tribesman. “The brothels will
pay well for her.”
“As a whore, she won’t fetch more than a hundred m arks,” the
Tribesman says in his hypnotic lilt. “I need two hundred.”
The slaver snorts, and I want to strangle him for it. The shaded streets of
his neighborhood are littered with sparkling fountains and bow - backed
Scholar slaves. The man’s house is a bloated hodg epodge of arches and
columns and courtyards. Two hundred silvers is a drop in the bucket for
him. He probably paid more for the plaster lions flanking his front door.
“I hoped to sell her as a house slave,” the Tribesman continues. “I heard
you were looking for one.”
“I am,” the slaver admits. “Commandant’s been on my back for days.
Hag ke eps killing off her girls. Temper like a viper.” The slaver eyes me the
way a rancher eyes a heifer, and I hold my breath. Then he shakes his head.
“She’s too small, too young, too pretty. She won’t last a week in
Blackcliff, and I don’t want the bother of r eplacing her. I’ll give you one
hundred for her and sell her to Madam Moh over dockside.”
A bead of sweat trickles down the Tribesman’s otherwise serene face.
Mazen ordere d him to do whatever it took to get me into Blackcliff. But if
he drops his price suddenly, the slaver will be suspicious. If he sells me as a
whore, the Resistance will have to get me out — and there is no guarantee
they can do so quickly. If he doesn’t sell me at all, my attempt to save Darin
will fail.
Do something, Laia. Darin again, fanning my courage. Or I’m dead.
“I press clothes well, Master.” The words are out before I can reconsider.
The Tribesman’s mouth drops open, and the slaver regards me as if I’m a
rat who has begun juggling.
“And, um . . . I can cook. And clean and dress hair,” I trail off into a
whisper. “I’d — I’d make a good maid.”
The slaver stares me down, and I wish I’d k ept my mouth shut. Then his
eyes grow shrewd, almost amused.
“Afraid of whoring, girl? Don’t see why, it’s an honest enough trade.”
He circles me again, then jerks my chin up until I am looking into his
r eptilian green eyes. “You said you can dress hair and press clothes? Can
you barter and handle yourself in the market?”
“ Yes, sir.”
“You can’t read, of course. Can you count?”
Of course I can count. And I can read too, you double - chinned pig.
“Yes, sir. I can count.”
“She’ll have to learn to ke ep her mouth shut,” the slaver says. “I’ve got
to eat the cost of cleanup. Can’t send her to Blackcliff looking like a
chimney swe ep.” He considers. “I’ll take her for one hundred and fifty
silver marks.”
“I can always take her to one of the Illustrian houses,” the Tribesman
suggests. “Underneath all that dirt, she’s a fine - looking girl . I’m sure they’d
pay well for her.”
The slaver narrows his eyes. I wonder if Mazen’s man has erred, trying
to bargain higher. Come on, you miser, I think at the slaver. Cough up a
little extra.
The slaver pulls out a sack of coins. I fight to hide my relief.
“A hundred and eighty marks then. Not a copper more. Take off her
chains.”
Less than an hour later, I’m locked inside a ghost wagon that is heading
for Blackcliff. Wide silver bands that mark me as a slave adorn each wrist.
A chain leads from the collar around my neck to a steel rail inside the
wagon. My skin still smarts from the scrubbing I got from two slave - girls,
and my head aches from the tight bun they tamed my hair into. My dress,
black silk with a corset - tight bodice and diamond - patterned skirt, is the
finest thing I’ve ever worn. I hate it on sight.
The minutes crawl by. The inside of the wagon is so dark that I feel as if
I’ve gone blind. The Empire throws Scholar children into these wagons,
some as young as two or three, ripped screaming from their parents. After
that, who knows what happens to them. The ghost wagons are so named
because those who disappear into them are never seen again.
Don’t think of such things, Dar in whispers to me. Focus on the mission.
On how you’ll save me.
As I go over Keenan’s instructions again in my head, the wagon begins
to climb, moving achingly slow. The heat se eps into me, and when I feel as
if I’ll faint from it, I think up a memory to distract myself — Pop sticking his
finger in a fresh jam pot three days ago and laughing while Nan whacked
him with a spoon.
Their absence is a wound in my chest. I miss Pop’s growling laugh and
Nan’s stories. And Darin — how I miss my brother. His jokes and dr awings
and how he seems to know everything. Life without him isn’t just empty,
it’s scary. He’s been my guide, my protector, my best friend for so long that
I don’t know what to do without him. The thought of him suffering
torments me. Is he in a cell right now? Is he being tortured?
In the corner of the ghost wagon, something flickers, dark and cre eping.
I want it to be an animal — a mouse or, skies, even a rat. But then the
creature’s eyes are on me, bright and ravenous. It is one of the things. One
of the shadows from the night of the raid. I’m going crazy. Bleeding, bat
crazy.
I close my eyes, willing the thing to disappear. When it doesn’t, I swat at
it with trembling hands.
“Laia . . . ”
“Go away. You’re not real.”
The thing inches close. Don’t scream, Laia, I tell myself, biting down
hard on my lip. Don’t scream.
“Your brother suffers, Laia.” Each of the creature’s words is deliberate,
as if it wants to make sure I don’t miss a single one. “The Martials pull
pain from him slowly and with relish.”
“No. Yo u’re in my head.”
The creature’s laugh is like breaking glass. “I’m real as death, little
Laia. Real as shattered bones and traitorous sisters and hateful Masks.”
“You’re an illusion. You’re my . . . my guilt.” I grab Mother’s armlet.
The shadow flashes its predator’s grin, and now it’s only a foot away.
But then the wagon comes to a stop, and the creature gives me a last
male volent look before disappearing with a dissatisfied hiss. Seconds later,
the wagon door swings open, and the forbidding walls of Blackcliff are
before me, their oppressive weight driving the hallucination from my mind.
“Eyes down.” The slaver unchains me from the rail, and I force my gaze
to the cobbled street. “Only speak to the Commandant if she speaks to you.
Don’t look her in the eyes — she’s flogged slaves for less. When she gives
you a task, carry it out quickly and well. She’ll disfigure you in the first few
weeks, but you’ll thank her for it eventually — if the scarring’s bad enough,
it’ll ke ep the older students from raping you too often.
“The last slave lasted two weeks,” the slaver continues, oblivious to my
growing terror. “Commandant wasn’t happy about it. My fault, of course —
I should have given the girl some fair warning. Went batty when the
Commandant branded her, apparently. Threw herself off the cliffs. Don’t
you do the same.” He gives me a hard look, like a father warning an errant
child not to wander off. “Or the Commandant will think I’m supplying her
with inferior goods.”
The slaver nods a greeting to the guards stationed at the gates and pulls
my chain as if I’m a dog. I shuffle after him. Rape . . . disfigurement . . .
branding. I can’t do it, Darin. I can’t.
A visceral urge to flee swe eps through me, so powerful that I slow, stop,
pull away from the slaver. My stomach roils, and I think I’ll be sick. But the
slaver yanks the chain hard, and I stumble forward.
There’s nowhere to run, I realize as we pass beneath Blackcliff’s ironspiked portcullis and
into the fabled grounds. There’s nowhere to go.
There’s no other way to save Darin.
I’m in now. And there is no going back.