Hours after I’m named an Aspirant, I dutifully stand beside
Grandfather in his cavernous foyer to greet guests arriving for my
graduation party. Though Quin Veturius is seventy - seven years old, women
blush when he looks them in the eye, and men wince when he deigns to
shake their hands. The lamplight paints his thick mane of white hair gold,
and the way he towers over everyone else, the way he nods at those entering
his home, makes me imagine a falcon watching the world from an updraft.
By eighth bell, the mansion is packed with the finest Illustrian families,
along with a few of the wealthiest Mercators. The only Plebeians are the
stable hands.
My mother wasn’t invited.
“Congratulations, Aspirant Veturius,” a mustached man who might be a
cousin says as he shakes my hand in both of his, using the title the Augurs
bestowed on me during graduation. “Or should I say, your Imperial
Majesty.” The man dares to meet Grandfather’s gaze with an obsequious
grin. Grandfather ignores him.
It’s been like this all night. People whose names I don’t know are
treating me as if I’m their long - lost son or brother or cousin. Half of them
probably are related to me, bu t they’ve never bothered acknowledging my
existence before this.
The bootlickers are interspersed with friends — Faris, Dex, Tristas,
Leander — but the person I wait most impatiently for is Helene. After I took
the oath, the families of the graduates flooded the field, and she was sw ept
away in a tide of Gens Aquilla before I had a chance to speak to her.
What is she thinking about the Trials? Are we competing against each
other for emperorship? Or will we work together, as we have since entering
Blackcliff? My questions lead to more questions, most urgently how
becoming the leader of an Empire I loathe can possibly result in my
attaining “true freedom — of body and of soul.”
One thing is certain: As much as I want to es cape Blackcliff, the school
isn’t done with me yet. Instead of a month of leave, we only get two days.
Then the Augurs have demanded that all students — even graduates — return
to Blackcliff to serve as witnesses to the Trials.
When Helene finally arrives at Grandfather’s house, parents and sisters
in t ow, I forget to greet her. I’m too busy staring. She salutes Grandfather,
slender and shining in her ceremonials, her black cloak fluttering lightly.
Her hair, silver in the candlelight, pours down her back like a river.
“Careful, Aquilla,” I say as she approaches. “You almost look like a
girl.”
“And you almost look like an Aspirant.” Her smile doesn’t reach her
eyes, and instantly, I know something’s off. Her earlier elation has
evaporated, and she’s jittery, the way she is before a battle she thinks she
w on’t win.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. She tries to get past me, but I take her hand and
pull her back. There’s a storm in her eyes, but she forces a smile and gently
untangles her fingers from mine. “Nothing’s wrong. Where’s the food? I’m
starving.”
“I’ll come with you — ”
“Aspirant Veturius,” Grandfather booms. “Governor Leif Tanalius
wishes a word.”
“Best not ke ep Quin waiting,” Helene says. “He looks determined.” She
slips away, and I grit my teeth as Grandfather coerces me into a stilted
discussion with the go vernor. I r epeat the same boring conversation with a
dozen other Illustrian leaders over the next hour, until at long last,
Grandfather st eps away from the unending stream of guests and pulls me
aside.
“You’re distracted when you can ill afford to be,” he says. “These men
could be very helpful.”
“Can they take the Trials for me?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Grandfather says in disgust. “An Emperor is not an
island. It takes thousands to run the Empire effectively. The city governors
will r eport to you, but they’ll mislead and manipulate you at every st ep, so
you’ll need a spy network to ke ep them in check. The Scholars’ Resistance,
border raiders, and the more troublesome of the Tribes will see a change i n
dynasty as an opportunity to sow disorder. You’ll need the full support of
the military to put down any hint of rebellion. In short, you need these men
— as advisers, ministers, diplomats, generals, spymasters.”
I nod distractedly. There’s a Mercator girl in a tantalizingly flimsy dress
eyeing me from the door leading to the crowded garden. She’s pretty.
Really pretty. I smile at her. Maybe after I find Helene . . .
Grandfather grabs my shoulder and steers me away from the garden,
which I’ve been inching t oward. “Pay attention, boy,” he says. “The drums
carried news of the Trials to the Emperor this morning. My spies tell me he
left the capital as soon as he heard. He and most of his house will be here in
a matter of weeks — the Blood Shrike too, if he wants to ke ep his head.” At
my look of surprise, Grandfather snorts. “Did you think Gens Taia would go
down without a fight?”
“But the Emperor practically worships the Augurs. He visits them every
year.”
“Indeed. And now they’ve turned against him by threatening to usurp his
dynasty. He’ll fight — you can count on it.” Grandfather narrows his eyes.
“If you want to win this, you need to wake up. I’ve already wasted too
much time cleaning up your messes. The Farrar brothers are telling anyone
who will listen that you nearly let a deserter es cape yesterday, that your
mask not joining with you is a sign of disloyalty. You’re lucky the Blood
Shrike is in the north. He’d have had you in the stocks by now. As it is, the
Black Guard chose not to investigate once I reminded them that the Farrars
are lowborn Plebeian scum and you’re from the finest house in the Empire.
Are you listening to me?”
“Of course I am.” I act affronted, but since I’m half eyeing the Mercator
girl and half looking into the garden for Helene, Grandfather isn’t
convinced. “I wanted to find Hel — ”
“Don’t you dare get distracted by Aquilla,” Grandfather says. “How she
managed to be named Aspirant in the first place I don’t understand. Women
have no place in the military.”
“Aquilla’s one of the best fighters at the school.” At my defense of her,
Grandfather slams his hand on an antique entryway table so hard that a vase
falls from it and shatters. The Mercator girl yelps and scurries away.
Grandfather doesn’t blink.
“Rubbish,” Grandfather says. “Don’t tell me you have feelings for the
wench.”
“Grandfather — ”
“She belongs to the Empire. Though I suppose if you were named
Emperor, you could set her aside as Blood Shrike and marry her instead.
She’s an Illustrian of strong stock, so at least you’d have a passel of heirs
— ”
“Grandfather. Stop.” I am uncomfortably aware of the heat rising in my
neck at the prospect of making heirs with Helene. “I don’t think of her like
that. She’s a — she’s — ”
Grandfather lifts a silver eyebrow as I stammer like a fool. I am full of it,
of course. Students don’t get much in the way of women at Blackcliff,
unless they rape a slave or pay a whore, neither of which I’ve ever had any
interest in. I’ve had plenty of diversions during leave — but leave comes
once a year. Helene is a girl, a pretty girl, and I spend most of my time
around her. Of course I’ve thought of her in that way. But it doesn’t mean
anything.
“She’s a comrade - in - arms, Grandfather,” I say. “Could you love a fellow
soldier the way you loved Grandmother?”
“None of my fellows were tall blonde girls.”
“Am I done here? I’d like to celebrate my graduation.”
“One more thing.” Grandfather disappears, returning a few moments
later with a long package wrapped in black silk. “These are for you,” he
says. “I was planning to leave them to you when you became Pater of Gens
Veturia. But they’ll serve you better now.”
When I open the package, I nearly drop it.
“Ten burning hells.” I stare at the scims in my hands, a matched set with
intricate black etchings that probably have no equal in the Empire. “These
are Teluman scims.”
“Made by the current Teluman’s grandfather. Good man. Good friend.”
Gens Teluman has produced the most talented Empire smiths for
centuries. The current Teluman smith spends months fashioning the Masks’
Serric steel armor every year. But a Teluman scim — a true Teluman scim,
able to cut through five bodies at once — is forged every few years, at the
most. “I can’t take these.”
I try to give the blades back, but Grandfather plucks my own scims from
where I’ve slung them on my back and r eplaces them with the Teluman
blades.
“They are a fitting gift for an Emperor,” he says. “See that you earn
them. Always victorious.”
“Always victorious.” I echo the Veturia motto, and Grandfather leaves to
attend to his guests. Still reeling from the gift, I head to the food tent,
hoping to find Helene. Every few feet, people stop to chat with me.
Someone shoves a plate of spiced kabobs into my hand. Someone else, a
drink. A pair of older Masks bemoan the fact that the Trials didn’t take
place in their time, while a group o f Illustrian generals discuss Emperor
Taius in hushed tones, as if his spies might be watching. No one speaks of
the Augurs with anything less than reverence. No one would dare.
When I finally es cape the crowd, Helene’s nowhere in sight, though I
spot her sisters, Hannah and Livia, eyeing a bored - looking Faris.
“Veturius,” Faris grunts at me, and I’m relieved that he doesn’t treat me
with the same fawning awe as everyone else. “I need you to introduce me.”
He looks pointedly at a knot of silk - clad, bejeweled Illustrian girls lurking
near the ed ges of the tent, some of whom are watching me in a disturbingly
predatory way. I know a few of the girls well — too well, actually, for all that
whispering they’re doing to come to any good.
“Faris, you’re a Mask. You don’t need an introduction. Just go talk to
them. If you’re that nervous, ask Dex or Demetrius to go with you. Have
you seen Helene?”
He ignores my question. “Demetrius didn’t come. Probably because fun
is against his moral code. And Dex is drunk. Loosening up for once in his
life, thank the ski es.”
“What about Trist — ”
“Too busy drooling at his fiancée.” Faris nods to one of the tables, where
Tristas sits with Aelia, pretty and black - haired. He looks happier than I’ve
seen him all year. “And Leander confessed his love to Helene — ”
“Again?”
“Again. She told him to piss off before she broke his nose a second time,
and he went looking for solace in the back garden with some redhead.
You’re my last hope.” Faris looks lasciviously at the Illustrian girls. “If we
remind them that you’ll be Emperor, I bet we could get two each.”
“Now there’s a thought.” I actually consider this for a moment before
remembering Helene. “But I have to find Aquilla.”
At that moment, she walks into the tent and past the knot of girls,
stopping when one speaks to her. She glances at me before whispering
something. The girl’s jaw drops open, and Helene turns back around and
leaves the tent.
“I’ve got to catch Helene,” I say to Faris, who has noticed Hannah and
Livia and is smiling invitingly at them while smoothing back his cowlic k.
“Don’t get too drunk,” I advise. “And unless you want to wake up without
your manhood, stay away from those two. They’re Hel’s little sisters.”
The smile drops off Faris’s face, and he moves determinedly out of the
tent. I hurry after Helene, spotting a flash of blonde heading through
Grandfather’s vast gardens and toward a rickety shed at the back of the
house. The light of the party tents doesn’t reach this far, and I have only
starlight by which to navigate. I ke ep my plate, toss my drink, and pull
my self atop the shed one - handed before clambering onto the sloped roof of
the house.
“You could have picked an easier spot to get to, Aquilla.”
“It’s quiet up here,” she says from the darkness. “Plus you can see all the
way to the river. Did you bring any for me?”
“Piss off. You probably had two plates while I shook hands with all
those stuffed shirts.”
“Mother says I’m too skinny.” She spears a pastry off my plate with a
dagger. “What took you so long to get up here, anyway? Paying court to
your bevy of maidens?”
My awkward conversation with Grandfather comes sharply to mind, and
a thorny silence descends. Helene and I don’t discuss girls. She teases Faris
and Dex and the others about their dalliances, but not me. Never me.
“I — uh — ”
“Would you believe Lavinia Tanalia had the nerve to ask me if you’d
ever spoken of her? I about shoved a kabob skewer through that bursting
bodice of hers.” The barest frisson of tension tinges Helene’s voice, and I
clear my throat.
“What’d you say to her?”
“I told her you called out her name every time you visited the dock girls.
Shut her right up.”
I burst into laughter, understanding now the horrified look on Lavinia’s
face. Helene smiles, but her eyes are sad. She seems lonely, suddenly. When
I tilt my head to capture her gaze, she look s away. Whatever is wrong, she’s
not ready to tell me.
“What will you do if you become Empress?” I ask. “What will you
change?”
“You’re going to win, Elias. And I’ll be your Blood Shrike.” She speaks
with such conviction that for a second, it’s like she’s speaking some old
truth, like she is telling me the color of the sky. But then she shrugs and
looks away. “But if I won, I’d change everything. Expand trade south, bring
women into the army, open up relations with the Mariners. And I’d — I’d do
something abo ut the Scholars.”
“You mean the Resistance?”
“No. What happens in the Quarter. The raids. The killing. It’s not . . . ” I
know she wants to say that it’s not right. But that would be sedition.
“Things could be better,” she says. There’s a challenge in her face when she
looks at me, and I lift my eyebrows. Helene never struck me as a Scholar
sympathizer. I like her more for it.
“What about you?” she asks. “What would you do?”
“Same as you, I guess.” I can’t tell her that I have no interest in ruling
and neve r will. She won’t understand. “Maybe I’d just let you run things
while I lounged in my harem.”
“Be serious.”
“I’m very serious.” I grin at her. “The Emperor does have a harem,
right? Because that’s the only reason I took the oath — ” She shoves me —
practically off the roof — and I beg for mercy.
“It’s not funny.” She sounds like a Centurion, and I try to arrange my
face in an appropriately sober manner. “Our lives are on the line here,” she
says. “Promise me you’ll fight to win. Promise me you’ll give the Trial s
everything you’ve got.” She grabs a strap on my armor. “Promise!”
“All right, bleeding skies. It was just a joke. Of course I’ll fight to win.
I’m not planning to die, that’s for sure. But what about you? Don’t you want
to become Empress?”
She shakes her head vehemently. “I’m better suited to being Blood
Shrike. And I don’t want to compete with you, Elias. The moment we start
working against each other is the moment we let Marcus and Zak win.”
“Hel . . . ” I think to ask her what’s wrong again, hoping that all this talk
of sticking together will make her want to confide in me. She doesn’t give
me the chance.
“Veturius!” Her eyes widen when she catches sight of the scabbards on
my back. “Are those Teluman blades?”
I show her the scims, and she is appropriately envious. We are quiet for a
while after, content to contemplate the stars above us, to find music in the
distant sounds that drift up from the forges.
I take in her slim body, her lean profile. What would Helene have been if
not a Mask? It’s impossible t o imagine her as a typical Illustrian girl,
angling for a good match, attending fetes and allowing herself to be seduced
by fittingly highborn men.
I guess it doesn’t matter. Whatever we might have been — healers or
politicians, jurists or builders — was trained out of us, spun up and away into
the funnel of darkness that is Blackcliff.
“What’s going on with you, Hel?” I say. “Don’t insult me by pretending
you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“I’m just nervous about the Trials.” She doesn’t pause or stutter. She
looks right into my eyes, her blue irises clear and mild, her head tilted
slightly. Anyone else would believe her without question. But I know
Helene, and I know instantly, down in my bones, that she’s lying. In another
flash of insight, born of the awareness that only makes itself known de ep in
the night, when the mind opens strange doors, I realize something else. This
is not a quiet lie. It is violent and shattering.
She sighs at my expression. “Leave it alone, Elias.”
“So there is something — ”
“Fine .” She cuts me off. “I’ll tell you what’s bothering me if you tell me
what you were really doing in the tunnels yesterday morning.”
The comment is so unexpected that I have to look away from her. “I told
you, I — ”
“Yes. You said were looking for the deserter. And I’m saying there’s
nothing wrong with me. Now it’s all clear and in the open.” There is a bite
to her voice I’m not used to. “And there’s nothing else to talk about.”
She meets my gaze, an unfamiliar wariness in her eyes. What are you
hiding, Elias? her expression asks.
Hel’s a master at ferreting out secrets. Something about the combination
of her loyalty and patience creates an uncanny urge to confide. She knows,
for instance, that I smuggle sheets to the Yearlings so they don’t get
whipped for wetting their beds. She knows I write to Mamie Rila and my
foster brother, Shan, every month. She knows I once dumped a bucket of
cow dung on Marcus’s bed. She chuckled for days over that one.
But there’s so much now that she doesn’t know. My loathing of the
Empire. How desperately I want to be free of it.
We aren’t kids anymore, laughing over shared confidences. We never
will be again.
In the end, I don’t answer her question. She doesn’t answer mine.
Instead, we sit without words, watching the city, the river, the desert
beyond, our secrets heavy between us.