Sana and Mazen disappear up an interior staircase as Keenan walks me
out of the basement. I expect him to beg off as quickly as possible.
Instead, he beckons me to follow him to a weed - choked backstreet nearby.
The street is empty but for a band of urchins crouching over some small
treasure, and they scatter at our approach.
I sidle a glance at the red - haired fighter, to find his attention fixed on me
with an intensity that sends an unexpected flutter through my chest.
“They’ve been hurting you.”
“I’m fine, ” I say. I won’t let him think I’m weak. I’m on thin ice as it is.
“Darin’s all that matters. The rest is just . . . ” I shrug. Keenan cocks his
head and brushes a thumb across the now - faint bruises on my neck. Then he
takes my wrist and turns it over to reveal the angry welts the Commandant
left there. His hands are slow and gentle as candle flame, and the warmth in
my chest spreads up through my collarbone and down to my fingertips. My
pulse skitters, and I shake his hand away, unnerved at my own reaction .
“Was it all the Commandant?”
“It’s nothing to worry about,” I say more sharply than I intend. His eyes
go cold at the bite in my voice, and I soften. “I can do this, all right? It’s
Darin’s life at stake here. I just wish I knew . . . ” If he is nearby. If he is all
right. If he is in pain.
“Darin’s still in Serra. I heard the spy who gave the r eport.” Keenan
walks me further down the street. “But he’s not . . . well. They’ve been at
him.”
A punch to the stomach would have been gentler. I don’t have to as k
who “they” are, I already know. Interrogators. Masks.
“Look,” Keenan says. “You don’t know the first thing about spying.
That’s clear. Here are some basics: Gossip with the other slaves — you’ll be
surprised at what you learn. Ke ep your hands busy — sewing, scrubbing,
fetching. The busier you are, the less likely it is that anyone will question
your presence, wherever you might be. If you see a chance to get your
hands on real information, take it. But always have an exit plan. The cloak
Ayou’re wearing is go od — it helps you blend in. But you walk and act like a
freewoman. If I noticed it, others will too. Shuffle, hunch. Act beaten. Act
broken.”
“Why are you trying to help me?” I ask. “You didn’t want to risk the
men to save my brother.”
He is suddenly very interested in the moldering bricks of a nearby
building. “My parents are dead too,” he says. “My whole family, actually. A
long time ago now.” He gives me a quick, almost angry glance, and for a
second, I see them in his eyes, this lost family, flashes of fiery hair and
freckles. Did he have brothers? Sisters? Was he the oldest? The youngest? I
want to ask, but his face is shuttered.
“I still th ink the mission is a terrible idea,” he says. “But that doesn’t
mean I don’t understand why you’re doing it. And it doesn’t mean I want
you to fail.” He touches his fist to his heart and holds out his hand to me.
“Death before tyranny,” he murmurs.
“Death before tyranny.” I take his hand, aware of every muscle in his
fingers.
No one has touched me for the past ten days exc ept to hurt me. How I
miss being touched — Nan stroking my hair, Darin arm - wrestling me and
pretending to lose, Pop squeezing my shoulder g ood night.
I don’t want Keenan to let go. As if he understands, he holds on a
moment longer. But then he turns and walks away, leaving me alone on an
empty street with fingers still tingling.
«««
fter delivering the Commandant’s first letter to the couriers’ office, I
head to the smoke - choked streets near the river docks. Serran
summers are always blistering, but the heat in the Weapons Quarter takes
on an animal esurience.
The district is a hive of movement and sound, busier on a regular day
than most mark ets are on festival days. Sparks fly from hammers as big as
my head, forge fires glow a red de eper than blood, and cottony plumes of
steam erupt every few feet from freshly quenched swords. Blacksmiths
shout orders as apprentices jostle to follow them. And above it all, the strain
and pump of hundreds of bellows, creaking like a fleet of ships in a storm.
Within seconds of entering the district, I am stopped by a platoon of
legionnaires demanding to know my business. I offer them the
Commandant’s remaining letter only to find myself arguing with them over
its authenticity for ten minutes. Finally, grudgingly, they send me on my
way.
It makes me wonder yet again how Darin managed to get into the district
not just once, but day after day.
They’ve been at him, Keenan said. How long can Darin hold out against
his torturers? Longer than me, certainly. When Darin was fifteen, he fell
from a tree while trying to draw Scholars working a Martial orchard. He
arrived home with bone jutting out of his wrist, and I scream ed and nearly
fainted at the sight. It’s all right, he said to me. Pop will set it. Find him and
then go back for my sketchbook. I dropped it, and I don’t want someone to
take it.
My brother has Mother’s iron will. If anyone can survive a Martial
interrogation, it’s him.
As I walk, I feel a tug on my skirt and glance down, expecting to find it
caught beneath someone’s boot. Instead, I catch a glimpse of a slit - eyed
shadow slipping quickly across the cobbles. A tingle runs up my spine at
the sight, and I hear a low, cruel cackle. My skin prickles — that laugh was
directed at me. I’m certain of it.
Unsettled, I quicken my pace, eventually persuading an elderly Plebeian
man to direct me t o Teluman’s forge. I find it just off the main street,
marked only by an ornate iron T hammered into the door.
Unlike the other forges, this one is utterly silent. I knock, but no one
answers. Now what? Do I open the door and risk angering the smith by
barging in, or do I go back to the Commandant without a response when she
specifically demanded one?
It’s not a difficult choice.
The front door opens to an antechamber. A dust - coated counter splits the
room, backed by dozens of glass display cases and anothe r, narrower door.
The forge itself sits in a larger room to my right, cold and empty, its bellows
still. A hammer lies on an anvil, but the other tools hang neatly from pegs
on the walls. Something strikes me about the room. It reminds me of
another I’ve seen, but I can’t place it.
Light filters in weakly through a bank of high windows, illuminating the
dust I kicked up when entering. The place has an abandoned feel to it, and I
feel my frustration building. How am I supposed to take back a response if
the smith isn’t here?
Sunlight glints off the row of glass cases, and my gaze is drawn to the
weapons within. They are gracefully wrought, each one worked with the
same intricate, almost obsessive detail, from hilt to crossbar to minutely
etched blade. Intrigued by their beauty, I move closer. The blades remind
me of something, as the whole shop does — something important, something
I should be able to put my finger on.
And then I understand. The Commandant’s letter falls from my suddenly
numb hand, and I know. D arin drew these weapons. He drew this forge. He
drew that hammer and that anvil. I’ve spent so much time trying to figure
out how to save my brother that I’d nearly forgotten the drawings that had
gotten him into trouble in the first place. And here is their source, before
my eyes.
“Something the matter, girl?”
A Martial man comes through the narrow back door, looking more like a
river pirate than a blacksmith. His head is shaved, and he drips with
piercings — six through each ear, one in his nose, his eyebro ws, his lips.
Multicolored tattoos — of eight - pointed stars, lush - leafed vines, a hammer
and anvil, a bird, a woman’s eyes, scales — run from his wrists up his arms
and into a black leather jerkin. He can’t be more than fifteen years older
than me. Like most Martials, he’s tall and muscled, but lanky, without the
brawn I’d expect of a blacksmith.
Is this the man Darin was spying on?
“Who are you?” I’m so thrown off that I forget he’s a Martial.
The man lifts his eyebrows as if to say, Me? Who in the ten hells are
you? “This is my shop,” he says. “I’m Spiro Teluman.”
Of course he is, Laia, you idiot. I scramble for the note from the
Commandant, hoping the smith thinks my comment is the result of being a
dim - witted Scholar rat. He reads the note but says nothing.
“She — she requested a response. Sir.”
“Not interested.” He looks up. “Tell her I’m not interested.” Then he
returns to the back room.
I stare after Teluman uncertainly. Does he know my brother was taken to
prison for spying on his shop? Has the smith seen what Darin drew? Is his
shop always abandoned? Is that how Darin got so close? I’m still trying to
piece it all together when an unsettling feeling cre eps up my neck, like the
greedy touch of a ghost’s fingers.
“Laia.”
A clump of shadows is gathered at the foot of the door, black as spilled
ink. The shadows tak e shape, eyes glinting, and I begin to sweat. Why here?
Why now? How can creatures of my own mind not be controllable by me?
Why can I not will them away?
“Laia.” The shadows rise, morphing into a manlike shape. They take on
form and color, and the voice is as familiar and true as if my brother is
standing in front of me.
“Why did you leave me, Laia?”
“Darin?” I forget that this is a hallucination, that I’m in a Martial forge
with a murderous - looking blacksmith yards away.
The simulacrum tilts its head, jus t like Darin used to. “They’re hurting
me, Laia.”
It’s not Darin. My mind is slipping. This is guilt, fear. The voice
changes, twisting and layering as if there are three Darins all talking at
once. The light in the fake - Darin’s eyes goes out as quickly as a sun in a
storm, and his irises darken into black pits, as if his entire body is filled
with shadow.
“I won’t survive it, Laia. It hurts.”
The simulacrum’s hand shoots out to grab my arm, and a bone - de ep cold
jolts through me. I scream before I can stop myself, and a second later, the
creature’s hand drops away. I feel a presence behind me and turn to find
Spiro Teluman wielding the most beautiful scim I’ve ever seen. He pushes
me casually to the side, holding the scim to the simulacrum.
As if he can see the creatures. As if he can hear them.
“Begone,” he says.
The simulacrum swells, titters, and then falls into a pile of laughing
shadows, their cackles falling against my ears like slivers of ice.
“We have the boy now. Our brothers gnaw at his soul. Soon he will be
mad and ripe. Then we shall feast.”
Spiro brings the scim down. The shadows scream, and the sound is like
nails on wood. They squeeze under the door, a mass of rats es caping a
flood. Seconds later, they’re gone.
“You — you can see them,” I say. “I thought they were all in my head. I
thought I was going mad.”
“They’re called ghuls,” Teluman says.
“But . . . ” Seventeen years of Scholar pragmatism protest the existence
of creatures that are supposed to be nothing but legend. “But ghuls aren’t
real.”
“They are as real as you or I. They left our wo rld for a time. But they’ve
returned. Not everyone can see them. They feed off sorrow and sadness and
the stink of blood.” He looks around his forge. “They like this place.”
His pale green eyes meet mine, careful and wary. “I’ve changed my
mind. Tell the Commandant I’ll consider her request. Tell her to send me
some specs. Tell her to send them with you.”
»»»
y mind whirls with questions when I leave the smithy. Why did
Darin draw Teluman’s shop? How did he get in? Why can Teluman
see the ghuls? Did he see the shadow - Darin too? Is Darin dying? If ghuls
are real, then are jinn real too?
When I arrive back at Blackcliff, I attack my tasks with a single - minded
focus, losing myself in the polishing of floors and scrubbing of baths so that
I might es cape the cyclone of thoughts in my head.
By late evening, the Commandant still has not returned. I head to the
kitchen smelling of polish, my head aching with the indecipherable echo of
Blackcliff’s drums, which have been pounding all day.
Izzi risks a glance in my dir ection while she folds a stack of towels.
When I smile, she offers a tentative twitch of her lips in return. Cook wipes
down the counters for the night, ignoring me, as usual. I think back to
Keenan’s advice: to gossip, to ke ep myself busy. Quietly, I take up a basket
of mending and sit at the worktable. As I watch Cook and Izzi, I suddenly
wonder if they are related. They tilt their heads in the same way, they are
both small and fair - haired. And there’s a quiet companionship between
them that makes my hear t ache for Nan.
Eventually, Cook turns in for the night, and silence fills the kitchen.
Somewhere in the city, my brother suffers in a Martial prison. You have to
get information, Laia. You have to get the Resistance something. Get Izzi to
talk.
“The legionnaires were in an uproar outside,” I say without looking up
from my mending. Izzi makes a polite sound.
“And the students too. I wonder why.” When she doesn’t respond, I shift
my sitting position, and she glances over her shoulder at me.
“It’s the Trials.” She stops her folding for a moment. “The Farrar
brothers came back this morning. Aquilla and Veturius barely made it on
time. They’d have been killed if they’d showed up even seconds later.”
This is the most she’s said to me at once, and I have to remind myself
not to stare. “How do you know all this?” I ask.
“The entire school’s talking about it.” Izzi lowers her voice, and I inch
closer. “Even the slaves. Not much else to talk about around here, unless
you want to sit around comparing b ruises.”
I chuckle, and it feels strange, almost wrong, like making a joke at a
funeral. But Izzi smiles, and I don’t feel as bad. The drums start up again,
and though Izzi doesn’t halt her work, I can tell she’s listening.
“You understand the drums.”
“They mostly give orders. Blue Platoon r eport for watch. All Cadets to
the armory. That sort of thing. Right now they’re ordering a swe ep of the
eastern tunnels.” She looks down at the neat stack of towels. A strand of
blonde hair falls into her face, making h er appear especially young. “When
you’ve been here for a while, you’ll learn to understand them.”
As I take in that disturbing fact, the front door slams shut. Izzi and I both
jump.
“Slave - Girl.” It’s the Commandant. “Upstairs.”
Izzi and I exchange a glance, and I’m surprised to find my heart
thudding uncomfortably fast. A slow dread sinks into my bones with every
st ep up the stairs. I don’t know why. The Commandant calls me up every
evening to take her clothes for washing and braid her hair for the night. It’s
no different today, Laia.
When I enter her room, she stands at her dresser, idly passing a dagger
through a candle flame.
“Did you bring back an answer from the swordsmith?”
I relay Teluman’s r eply, and the Commandant turns to regard me with
cool interest. It’s the most emotion I’ve seen from her.
“Spiro hasn’t acc epted a new commission in years. He must have taken a
liking to you.” The way she says it makes my skin crawl. She tests the edge
of her knife on her forefinger, then wipes away the drop of b lood that beads
there.
“Why did you open it?”
“Sir?”
“The letter,” she says. “You opened it. Why?” She stands before me, and
if running would have done me any good, I’d have been out the door in a
heartbeat. I twist the cloth of my shirt in my hands. The Commandant tilts
her head, awaiting my answer as if genuinely curious, as if I might
somehow say something that will satisfy her.
“It was an accident. My hand slipped and . . . and broke the seal.”
“You can’t read,” she says. “So I don’t see why you would b other to
open it purposefully. Unless you’re a spy planning to give over my secrets
to the Resistance.” Her mouth twists into what might be a smile if it didn’t
appear so joyless.
“I’m not — I’m . . . ” How did she find out about the letter? I think of the
scrape I heard in the hallway after I left her rooms this morning. Did she see
me tamper with it? Had the couriers’ office noticed a flaw in the seal? It
doesn’t matter. I think of Izzi’s warning when I first got here. The
Commandant sees things. Knows things she shouldn’t.
A knock comes at the door, and on the Commandant’s command, two
legionnaires enter and salute.
“Hold her down,” the Commandant says.
The legionnaires grab me, and the presence of the Commandant’s knife
is suddenly, sickeningly clear. “No — please, no — ”
“Silence.” She draws the word out softly, like the name of a lover. The
soldiers pin me to a chair, their armored hands as heavy as manacles around
my arms, their knees coming down on my feet. Their faces give nothing
away.
“Normally, I’d take an eye for such insolence,” the Commandant muses.
“Or a hand. But I don’t think Spiro Teluman will be so interested in you if
you’re marred. You’re lucky I want a Teluman blade, girl. You’re lucky he
wants a taste of you.”
Her eyes fall on my chest, on the smooth skin above my heart.
“Please,” I say. “It was a mistake.”
She leans in close, her lips inches from mine, those dead eyes lit, for just
a moment, with terrifying fury.
“Stupid girl,” she whispers. “Haven’t you learned? I don’t abide
mistakes.”
She shoves a gag in my mouth, and then the knife is burning, searing,
carving a path through my skin. She works slowly, so slowly. The smell of
singed flesh fills my nostrils, and I hear myself begging for mercy, then
sobbing, then screaming.
Darin. Darin. Think of Darin.
But I can’t think of my brother. Lost in the pain, I can’t even remember
his face.