Despite the slaver’s warning to ke ep my head down, I gaze at the
school with sick wonder. Night blends into the gray of the stone until
I can’t tell where the shadows end and the buildings of Blackcliff begin.
Blue - fire lamps make even the bare, sand training fields of the school seem
ghostly. In the distance, moonlight glimmers off the columns and arches of
a dizzyingly high amphitheater.
Blackcliff’s students are on leave, and the scrape of my sandals is the
only sound to break the sinister quiet of the p lace. Every hedge is squared
as if by a plane, every path is neatly paved without a crack in sight. There
are no flowers or blooming vines crawling up the buildings, no benches
where students can relax.
“Face forward,” the slaver barks. “Eyes down.”
We head for a structure crouching on the lip of the southern cliffs like a
black toad. It’s built of the same brooding granite as the rest of the school.
The Commandant’s house. A sea of sand dunes stretches below the cliffs,
lifeless and unforgiving. Far beyond the dunes, the blue jags of the Serran
Range cut into the horizon.
A diminutive slave - girl opens the front door of the house. The first thing
I notice is her ey epatch. She’ll disfigure you in the first few weeks, the
slaver had said. Will the Commandant take my eye too?
Doesn’t matter. I reach for my armlet. It’s for Darin. All for Darin.
The inside of the house is as gloomy as a dungeon, the smattering of
candles providing little illumination against the dark stone walls. I look
around, glimpsing the simp le, almost monkish furnishings of a dining room
and sitting room before the slaver grabs a fistful of my hair and pulls on it
so hard I think my neck will break. A knife appears in his hand, its tip
caressing my eyelashes. The slave - girl winces.
“You look up one more time,” the slaver says, his hot breath foul in my
face, “I’ll carve out your eyes. Understand?”
My eyes water, and at my rapid nod, he releases me.
“Stop blubbering,” he says as the slave leads us upstairs. “Commandant
would rather put a scim through you than deal with tears, and I didn’t spend
one hundred eighty marks just to throw your corpse to the vultures.”
The slave - girl leads us to a door at the end of a hallway, straightening
her already perfectly pressed black dress before knocking softly. A voice
orders us to enter.
As the slaver pushes the door open, I get a glimpse of a heavily
curtained window, a desk, and a wall of hand - drawn faces. Then I
remember the slaver’s knife and pin my eyes to the floor.
“It took you long enough,” a soft voice greets us.
“Forgive me, Commandant,” the slaver says. “My supplier — ”
“Silence.”
The slaver swallows. His hands rasp like a snake’s coils as he rubs them
together. I stand perfectly still. Is the Commandant looking at me?
Examining me? I try to look beaten and obedient, the way I know Martials
like Scholars to look.
A second later, she is before me, and I jump, surprised at how silently
she’s come around her d esk. She’s smaller than I expect — shorter than me
and reed - slim. Almost delicate. If not for the mask, I might mistake her for
a child. Her uniform is pressed to perfection, and her pants are tucked into
mirror - bright black boots. Every button of her ebony shirt gleams with the
shimmer of a serpent’s eyes.
“Look at me,” she says. I force myself to obey, instantly paralyzed as I
meet her gaze. Looking into her face is like looking at the flat, smooth
surface of a gravestone. There isn’t a shred of humanity in her gray eyes,
nor any evidence of kindness in the planes of her masked features. A spiral
of faded blue ink curls up the left side of her neck — a tattoo of some kind.
“What is your name, girl?”
“Laia.”
My head is jerked to one side, my cheek on fire before I even realize
she’s struck me. Tears spring to my eyes at the sharpness of the slap, and I
dig my nails into my thigh to ke ep from running.
“Wrong,” the Commandant informs me. “You have no name. No
identity. You are a slave. That is all you are. That is all you will ever be.”
She turns to the slaver to discuss payment. My face is still smarting when
the slaver unhooks my collar. Before walking out, he pauses.
“May I offer you my congratulations, Commandant?”
“On what?”
“On the naming of the Aspirants. It’s all over the city. Your son — ”
“Get out,” the Commandant says. She turns her back on the startled
slaver, who quickly retreats, and settles her gaze on me. This thing actually
spawned? What kind of demon had she whelped? I shudder, hoping I never
find ou t.
The silence lengthens, and I remain still as a post, too afraid to even
blink. Two minutes with the Commandant and she’s already cowed me.
“Slave,” she says. “Look behind me.”
I look up, and the peculiar impression of faces I’d gotten when I first
walked in resolves itself. The wall behind the Commandant is covered with
wood - framed posters of men and women, old and young. There are dozens,
row after row.
WANTED:
REBEL SPY . . . SCHOLAR THIEVES . . . RESISTANCE
HENCHMAN . . .
REWARD: 250 MARKS . . . 1,000 MARKS.
“These are the faces of every Resistance fighter I’ve hunted down, every
Scholar I’ve jailed and executed, most before my tenure as Co mmandant.
Some after.”
A paper cemetery. The woman is sick. I look away.
“I will tell you the same thing I tell every slave brought into Blackcliff.
The Resistance has tried to penetrate this school countless times. I have
discovered it every time. If you are working with the Resistance, if you
contact them, if you think of contacting them, I will know and I will destroy
you. Look.”
I do as she asks, trying to ignore the faces and letting the images and
words fade into a blur.
But then I see two faces that will not fade. Two faces that, however
poorly rendered, I could never ignore. Shock courses through me slowly, as
if my body is fighting it. As if I don’t want to believe what I see.
MIRRA AND JAHAN OF SERRA
RESISTANCE LEADERS
TOP PRIORITY
DEAD OR ALIVE
REWARD: 10,000 MARKS
Nan and Pop never told me who destroyed my family. A Mask, they said.
Does it matter which one? And here she is. This is the woman who crushed
my parents under her steel - bottomed boot, who brought the Resistance to its
knees by killing t he greatest leaders it ever had.
How did she do it? How, when my parents were such masters of
concealment that few knew what they looked like, let alone how to find
them?
The traitor. Someone swore allegiance to the Commandant. Someone
my parents trusted.
Did Mazen know he was sending me into the lair of my parents’
murderer? He’s a stern man, but he doesn’t seem like a willfully cruel one.
“If you cross me” — the Commandant holds my eyes relentlessly
— “you’ll join the faces on that wall. Do you understand?”
Ripping my gaze from my parents, I nod, trembling in my struggle not to
allow my body to betray my shock. My words are a strangled whisper.
“I understand.”
“Good.” She goes to the door and pulls on a cord. Moments later, the
one - eyed girl appears to escort me downstairs. The Commandant closes the
door behind me, and anger rises in me like a sickness. I want to turn around
and attack the woman. I want to scream at her. You killed my mother, who
had a lion’s heart, and my sister, who laughed like the rain, and my father,
who captured truth with a few strokes of a pen. You took them from me. You
took them from this world.
But I don’t turn back. Darin’s voice comes to me again. Save me, Laia.
Remember why you’re here. To spy.
Skies . I didn’t notice anything in the Commandant’s office exc ept for her
wall of death. The next time I go in, I have to pay closer attention. She
doesn’t know I can read. I might learn something just by glancing at the
papers on her desk.
My mind occupied, I barely hear the feather - light whisper of the girl as it
drifts past my ear.
“Are you all right?”
Though she is only a few inches smaller than me, she seems tiny
somehow, her stick - thin body swimming in her dress, her face pinched and
frightened, like that of a starved mouse. A morbid part of me wants to ask
her how she lost her eye.
“I’m fine,” I say. “Don’t think I got on her good side, though.”
“She doesn’t have a good side.”
That’s clear enough. “What’s your name?”
“I — I don’t have a name,” the girl says. “None of us do.”
Her hand strays to her ey epatch, and I suddenly feel sick. Is that what
happened to this girl? She told someone her name and she had her eye
gouged out?
“Be careful,” she says softly. “The Commandant sees things. Knows
things she shouldn’ t.” The girl hurries ahead of me, as if wishing to
physically es cape the words she’s just spoken. “Come, I’m supposed to take
you to Cook.”
We make our way to the kitchen, and as soon as I walk in, I feel better.
The space is wide, warm, and well lit, with a giant hearth and stove
squatting in one corner and a wooden worktable sprawled in the center. The
roof drips with strings of shriveled red p eppers and paper - skinned onions. A
spice - laden shelf runs along one wall, and the scent of lemon and
cardamom per meates the air. If not for the largeness of the place, I could be
back in Nan’s kitchen.
A stack of dirty pots rises from a sink, and a kettle of water boils on the
stove. Someone has laid out a tray with biscuits and jam. A small, whitehaired woman in
a diamond - patterned dress identical to mine stands at the
worktable, chopping an onion with her back to us. Beyond her is a screened
door that leads outside.
“Cook,” the girl says. “This is — ”
“Kitchen - Girl,” the woman addresses her without turning. Her voice is
strange — raspy, as if she’s ill. “Didn’t I ask you to wash those pots hours
ago?” Kitchen - Girl doesn’t get a chance to protest. “Stop your dawdling
and get to it,” the woman snaps. “Or you’ll be sle eping with an empty belly,
and I’ll not feel a shred of guilt.”
When the girl grabs her apron, Cook turns from her onion, and I stifle a
gasp, trying not to gawp at the ruin of her face. Ropy, vivid red scars run
from her forehead down across her cheeks, lips, and chin, all the way into
the high neck of her black dress. It looks as though a wild animal clawed
her to shreds and she had th e misfortune of surviving. Only her eyes, a dark,
agate blue, remain whole.
“Who — ” She takes me in, standing unnaturally still. Then, without
explanation, she turns and limps out the back door.
I look at Kitchen - Girl for aid. “I didn’t mean to stare.”
“Cook?” Kitchen - Girl moves timidly to the door, opening it a crack.
“Cook?”
When no response comes, Kitchen - Girl glances between me and the
door. The kettle on the stove whistles shrilly.
“It’s nearly ninth bell.” She twists her hands together. “That’s when th e
Commandant has evening tea. You’re to take it up, but if you’re late . . . the
Commandant . . . she’ll — ”
“She’ll what?”
“She — she’ll be angry.” Terror — true, animal terror — fills the girl’s face.
“Right,” I say. Kitchen - Girl’s fear is contagious, and I hurriedly pour
water from the kettle into the mug on the tray. “How does she take it?
Sugar? Cream?”
“She takes cream.” The girl rushes to a cupboard and pulls out a covered
pail, spilling some of the milk. “Oh!”
“Here.” I take the pail from her and spoon out the cream, trying to stay
calm. “See? All done, I’ll just clean up — ”
“There’s no time.” The girl shoves the tray into my arms and pushes me
toward the hall. “Please — hurry. It’s almost — ”
The bells begin to toll.
“Go,” the girl says. “Get up there before the last bell!”
The stairs are ste ep, and I’m walking too fast. The tray lists, and I barely
have a chance to grab the cream pot before the teaspoon clatters to the
ground. The bell tolls for a ninth time and falls silent.
Calm down, Laia. This is ridiculous. The Commandant probably won’t
even notice if I’m five seconds late, but she will notice if the tray is in
disarray. I balance the tray in one hand and swe ep up the spoon, taking a
moment to neaten the crockery before approaching the door.
It swings open as I raise my hand to knock. The tray is out of my arms,
the cup of hot tea sailing past my head and exploding against the wall
behind me.
I’m still gaping when the Commandant pulls me into her office.
“Turn around.”
My whole body shakes as I turn to face t he closed door. I don’t register
the zing of wood cutting through the air until the Commandant’s riding crop
slices into my back. The shock of it drops me to my knees. It comes down
thrice more before I feel her hands in my hair. I yelp as she brings my face
close to hers, the silver of her mask nearly touching my cheeks. I clench my
teeth shut against the pain, forcing back tears as I think of the slaver’s
words. The Commandant would rather put a scim in you than deal with
tears.
“I don’t tolerate tardiness,” she says, her eyes eerily cal m. “It won’t
happen again.”
“Y - yes, Commandant.” My whisper is no louder than Kitchen - Girl’s had
been. It hurts too much to speak any louder. The woman releases me.
“Clean up the mess in the hall. R eport to me tomorrow morning at sixth
bell.”
The Commandant st eps around me, and moments later, the front door
slams shut.
The silverware rattles as I pick up the tray. Only four lashes and I feel as
if my skin has been torn open and drenched in salt. Blood drips down the
back of my shirt.
I want to be logical, p ractical, the way Pop taught me to be when dealing
with injuries. Cut the shirt off, my girl. Clean the wounds with witch hazel
and pack them with turmeric. Then bandage them and change the dressings
twice a day.
But where will I get a new shirt? Witch hazel? How will I bandage the
wounds with no one to help me?
For Darin. For Darin. For Darin.
But what if he’s dead? a voice whispers in my head. What if the
Resistance doesn’t find him? What if I’m about to put myself through hell
for nothing?
No. If I let m yself go down that path, I won’t make it through the night,
let alone survive weeks of spying on the Commandant.
As I pile shards of ceramic on the tray, I hear a rustle on the landing. I
look up, cringing, terrified the Commandant has returned. But it’s only
Kitchen - Girl. She kneels beside me and silently mops up the spilled tea
with a cloth.
When I thank her, her head jerks up like a startled deer’s. She finishes
mopping and scurries down the stairs.
Back in the empty kitchen, I place the tray in the sink and collapse at the
worktable, letting my head fall into my hands. I’m too numb for tears. It
occurs to me then that the Commandant’s office door is probably still open,
her papers strewn about, visible to anyone with the courage to look.
Commandant’ s gone, Laia. Go up there and see what you can find.
Darin would do it. He’d see this as the perfect chance to gather information
for the Resistance.
But I’m not Darin. And in this moment, I can’t think about the mission,
or the fact that I’m a spy, not a slav e. All I can think about is the throbbing
in my back and the blood soaking my shirt.
You won’t survive the Commandant, Keenan had said. The mission will
fail.
I lower my head to the table, closing my eyes against the pain. He was
right. Skies, he was right.