At exactly midnight, I return to Blackcliff in full battle armor, dripping
with weaponry. After the Trial of Courage, I’m not about to be
caught shoeless with only a dagger for defense.
Though I’m desperate to know if Hel is all right, I resist the urge to go to
the infirmary. Cain’s orders to stay away didn’t leave room for argument.
As I stalk past the gate guards, I fervently hope not to run into my
mother. I think I’d snap at the sight of her, especially knowing that her
scheming nearly killed Helene. A nd especially after seeing what she’d done
to the slave - girl this morning.
When I’d seen the K carved into the girl — Laia — I’d flexed my fists,
imagining, for one glorious moment, the feel of inflicting such pain on the
Commandant. See how she likes it, the hag. At the same time, I wanted to
back away from Laia in shame. Because the woman who’d done such evil
shares my blood. She is half of me. My own reaction — that ravenous lust
for violence — is proof.
I’m not like her.
Or am I? I think back to the nightmare b attlefield. Five hundred thirtynine bodies. Even
the Commandant would be hard - pressed to take so many
lives. If the Augurs are right, I’m not like my mother. I’m worse.
You will become everything you hate, Cain had said when I’d considered
deserting. But how could leaving my mask behind make me any worse of a
person than the one I saw on that battlefield?
Lost in my thoughts, I don’t notice anything unusual about Skulls’
quarters when I arrive at my room. But after a moment, it sinks in.
Leander’s not snori ng, and Demetrius isn’t mumbling his brother’s name.
Faris’s door isn’t open, as it almost always is.
The barracks are abandoned.
I draw my scims. The only sound is the occasional pop of the oil lamps
flickering against the black brick.
Then, one by one, the lamps go out. Gray smoke se eps beneath the door
at one end of the hall, expanding like a roiling bank of storm cloud. In an
instant, I realize what’s happening.
The Second Trial, the Trial of Cunning, has begun.
“Watch out!” a voice shouts from behind me. Helene — alive — shoves
through the doors at my back, fully armed and without a hair out of place. I
wa nt to tackle her in a hug, but instead I drop to the floor as a volley of
razor - edged throwing stars hurtles through the space where my neck was.
The stars are followed by a trio of attackers who spring from the smoke
like coiled snakes. They are lithe and quick, their bodies and faces wrapped
in funereal strips of black cloth. Almost before I’m on my feet, one of the
assassins has a scim at my throat. I spin back and kick his feet out from
under him, but my leg meets only air.
Strange, he was there — just no w —
At my side, Helene’s scim flashes swift as quicksilver as an assassin
presses her toward the smoke. “Evening, Elias,” she calls over the clash of
scims. She catches my eye, an irr epressible grin spreading across her face.
“Miss me?”
I don’t have the breath to answer. The other two assassins come at me
fast, and though I fight with both scims, I can’t get the upper hand. My left
scim finally hits its mark, sinking into the chest of my opponent.
Bloodthirsty triumph surges through me.
Then the attacker fli ckers and disappears.
I freeze, doubting what I’ve seen. The other assassin takes advantage of
my hesitation and shoves me back into the smoke.
It’s as if I’ve been dropped into the darkest, blackest cave in the Empire.
I try to feel my way forward, but my limbs are leaden, and in moments I
slip to the floor, my body a deadweight. A throwing star cuts through the
air, and I barely register the fact that it has grazed my arm. My scims hit the
stone of the hallway, and Helene screams. The sounds are muted, as if I’m
hearing them through water.
Poison. The word brings me out of my senselessness. The smoke is
poisonous.
With my last shreds of consciousness, I scour the ground for my scims
and crawl out of the darkness. A few breaths of clean air help me reclaim
my wits, and I notice that Helene has disappeared. As I search the smoke
for any sign of her, an assassin emerges.
I duck beneath his scim, intending to wrap my arms around his chest and
slam him to the floor. But when my skin meets his, cold lances throug h me,
and I gasp and jerk away. It feels as if I’ve dipped my arm into a bucket of
snow. The assassin flickers and disappears, reappearing a few yards away.
They’re not human, I realize. Zak’s warning echoes in my head. The old
creatures are real. They’re coming for us. Ten burning hells. And I thought
he had cracked. How is it possible? How could the Augurs have —
The assassin circles me, and I shelve my questions. How this thing got
here doesn’t matter. How to kill it — that’s a question worth answering.
A flash of silver catches my eye — Helene’s gauntleted hand, clawing the
floor as she tries to pull herself out of the smoke. I drag her out, but she’s
too bleary to stand, so I throw her over my shoulder and flee down the hall.
When I’m well away, I dump her to the ground and turn to face the enemy.
The three of them are on me at once, moving too fast for me to counter.
Within half a minute, I have nicks all over my face and a gash in my left
arm.
“Aquilla!” I holler. She staggers to her feet. “A little help, yeah?”
She draws her scim and plunges into the fight, forcing two of the
attackers to engage.
“They’re wraiths, Elias,” she shouts. “Bleeding, burning wraiths.”
Ten hells. Masks train with scims and staffs and our bare hands, on
horses and boats, blindfolded and chained, with no sle ep, with no food. But
we’ve never trained against something that isn’t supposed to exist.
What did that damn foretelling say? Cunning to outwit their foes.
There’s a way to kill these things. They must have a weakness. I just have
to figure out what it is.
Lemokles offense. Grandfather created the offense himself. A series of
full - body attacks allowing one to identify a combatant’s deficiencies.
I attack head, then legs, arms, and torso. A dagger I fling at the wraith’s
chest goes right through him, falling to the floor with a clatter. But he
doesn’t try to block the dagger. Instead, his hand flashes up to protect his
throat.
Behind me, Helene shouts for aid as the other two wraiths press the
attack. One lifts a dagger high above her heart, but before it comes down, I
whip my scim around and through his neck.
The wraith’s head plunges to the ground, and I grimace as an unearthly
scream echoes in the hall. Seconds later, the head — and the body it goes
with — d isappears.
“Watch your left,” Hel shouts. I swe ep my scim in an arc to my left
without looking. A hand closes on my wrist, and piercing cold numbs my
arm to the shoulder. But then my scim strikes home, the hand is gone, and
another eldritch scream pierces the air.
The assault slows as the last wraith circles us.
“You really should run,” Helene says to the creature. “You’re just going
to die.”
The wraith looks between us and sets upon Helene. They always
underestimate me. Even wraiths, apparently. She ducks beneath his arm,
light - footed as a dancer, and takes off his head with one clean stroke. The
wraith vanishes, the smoke dissipates, and the barracks go still, as if the last
fifteen minutes never happened.
“Well, that was — ” Helene’s eyes go wide, and I lunge to one side
without needing to be told, turning just in time to see a knife hurtling
through the air. It misses me — barely — and Helene is past me in a blur of
blonde and silver.
“Marcus,” she says. “I’m on him.”
“Wait, you idiot! It might be a trap!”
But the door is already swinging shut behind her, and I hear the crash of
scim striking scim, followed by the crunch of bone beneath fist.
I burst from the barracks to see Helene advancing on Marcus, who has a
hand to his bloodied nose. Helene’s eyes are ferocious slits, and for the first
time, I see her as others must — deadly, remorseless. A Mask.
Though I want to help her, I hold back, scanning the darkened grounds
around us. If Marcus is here, Zak won’t be far.
“All healed up, Aquilla?” Marcus feints left with his scim, and when
Helene counters, he grins. “You and I have some unfinished business.” His
eyes inch over her form. “You know what I’ve always wondered? If raping
you will be like fighting you. All thos e lean muscles, that pent - up energy
— ”
Helene delivers a roundhouse that leaves Marcus on his back with blood
pouring from his mouth. She stamps on his sword arm and presses her
scimpoint to his throat.
“You filthy son of a whore,” she spits at him. “Just because you got one
lucky swipe in the forest doesn’t mean I can’t still gut you with my eyes
closed.”
But Marcus gives her a vicious smile, unfazed by the steel digging into
his throat. “You’re mine, Aquilla. You belong to me, and we both know it.
The Aug urs told me. Save yourself the trouble and join me now.”
The blood drains from Helene’s face. There’s black, hopeless rage in her
eyes, the type of anger you feel when your hands are tied and there’s a knife
at your jugular.
Only Helene is the one holding the blade. What in the skies is wrong
with her?
“Never.” The tone of her voice doesn’t match the strength of the scim in
her fist, and, as if she knows it, her hand shakes. “Never, Marcus.”
A flicker in the shadows beyond the barracks catches my eyes. I’m
halfway there when I see Zak’s light brown hair and the flash of an arrow
cutting through the air.
“Drop, Hel!”
She plunges to the ground, the arrow sailing harmlessly over her
shoulder. I know instantly that she was never in any danger, at least not
from Zak. Not even a one - eyed Yearling with a lame arm would miss a shot
that easy.
The brief distraction is all Marcus needs. I expect him to attack Hel, but
he rolls away and flees into the night, still grinning, Zak close behind.
“What the hell was that?” I bellow at Helene. “You could have cut him
open and you choke? What was that rubbish he was spouting — ”
“Now’s not the time.” Helene’s voice is tight. “We need to get out of the
open. The Augurs are trying to kill us.”
“Tell me something I don’t know — ”
“No, that’s the Second Trial, Elias, them actively trying to assassinate us.
Cain told me after he healed me. The Trial will last until dawn. We have to
be clever enough to avoid our murderers — whoever or whatever they might
be.”
“Then we need a base,” I say. “Out here, anyone can pick us off with an
ar row. There’s no visibility in the catacombs, and the barracks are too
cramped.”
“There.” Hel points to the eastern watchtower, which overlooks the
dunes. “The legionnaires manning it can set a guard at the entrance, and it’s
a good fighting space.”
We make for the tower, sticking close to the walls and the shadows. At
this hour, there isn’t a single student or Centurion out. Silence hangs over
Blackcliff, and my voice seems inordinately loud. I lower it to a whisper.
“I’m glad you’re all right.”
“Worried, w ere you?”
“Of course I was worried. I thought you were dead. If something had
happened to you . . . ” It doesn’t bear thinking about. I look Helene square
in the face, but she only meets my gaze for a second before flicking her
eyes away.
“Yes, well, you should have been worried. I heard you dragged me to the
belltower covered in blood.”
“I did. Wasn’t pleasant. You stank, for one.”
“I owe you, Veturius.” Her eyes soften, and the steely, Blackcliff - trained
part of me shakes its head. She can’t turn into a g irl on me now. “Cain told
me everything you did for me, from the second Marcus attacked. And I
want you to know — ”
“You’d have done the same.” I cut her off gruffly, satisfied by the
stiffening of her body, the ice in her eyes. Better ice than warmth. Better
strength than weakness.
Unspoken things have arisen between Helene and me, things that have to
do with how I feel when I see her bare skin and her awkwardness when I
tell her I worry for her. After so many years of straightforward friendship, I
don’t kno w what these things mean. But I do know that now’s not the time
to think about them. Not if we want to survive the Second Trial.
She must get it; she gestures for me to take point, and we don’t speak as
we head to the watchtower. When we reach its base, I allow myself to relax
for a second. The tower sits at the edge of the cliffs and overlooks the dunes
to the east and the school to the west. Blackcliff’s watch wall extends north
and south. Once we’re at the top, we’ll see any threat long before it reaches
us.
But when we’re halfway up the tower’s inner stairs, Helene slows
behind me.
“Elias.” The warning in her voice has me drawing both of my scims —
the only thing that saves me. A shout sounds from below us, another from
above, and suddenly the stairwell echoes with the ping of arrows and the
shuffle of boots. A squad of legionnaires pours down the stairs, and for a
second, I’m confused. Then they’re on me.
“Legionnaires,” Helene shouts. “Stand down — stand — ”
I want to tell her to save her breath. No doubt the Augurs told the
legionnaires that for this night, we are enemies and they are to kill us on
sight. Damn it. Cunning to outwit their foes. We should have realized that
anyone — everyone — could be an enemy.
“Back - to - back, Hel!”
Her back is to mine in an instant. I cross scims with the soldiers coming
down from the top of the tower while she battles those heading up from the
base. My battle rage surges, but I rein it in, fighting to wound, not kill. I
know some of these men. I can’t just butcher them.
“Damn it, Elias!” Hel screams. One of the legionnaires I’ve slashed
pushes down past me and marks Hel’s sword arm. “Fight! They’re Martials,
not turn - tail Barbarian rabble!”
Hel’s fighting off three soldiers below her and two above, with more
coming. I have to clear the stairs so we can make it to the top of the tower.
It’s the only way we’ll avoid death - by - skewering.
I let the battle rage take me and surge up the stairs, scims flying. One
cuts into the gut of a legionnaire, the other slides across a throat. The
stairwell isn’t wide enough for two scims, so I sheath one and pull out m y
dagger, driving it into the kidney of a third soldier and the heart of a fourth.
In seconds, the way above is clear, and Helene and I race up the stairs. We
get to the top of the watchtower only to find more soldiers waiting.
Are you going to kill them all, Elias? How many added to your tally?
Four already — ten more? Fifteen? Just like your mother. Fast as her.
Ruthless as her.
My body freezes as it never has in battle, my foolish heart taking
control. Helene shouts, spins, kills, defends, while I stand th ere. Then it’s
too late to fight, because a jut - jawed brute with arms like tree trunks tackles
me.
“Veturius!” Helene says. “More soldiers coming from the north!”
“Mrffggg.” The big aux has my face smashed against the side of the
watchtower, his hand so tight around my skull that I’m sure he means to
crush it. He uses his knee to pin me, and I can’t budge an inch.
For a moment, I admire his technique. He recognizes that he can’t
counter my fighting skills and has instead used surprise and his colossal
bulk to best me.
My admiration fizzles as stars burst before my eyes. Cunning! You have
to use cunning! But the time for cunning is past. I shouldn’t have gotten
distracted. I should have run a scim through the aux’s chest before he ever
got to me.
Helene darts away from her attackers to help me, pulling on my belt as if
to yank me away from the giant soldier, but he pushes her away.
The aux slides me along the wall to a niche in the battlements and
shoves me through, holding me by my neck above the dunes like a child
with a rag doll. Six hundred feet of hungry air grasps at my legs. Behind my
captor, a sea of legionnaires tries to pull Helene down, barely ke eping a
hold on her as she twists and spits, a cat in a net.
Always victorious. Gra ndfather’s voice echoes in my head. Always
victorious. I dig my fingers into the tendons of the brute’s arms, trying to
work myself free.
“I bet ten marks on you.” The aux appears genuinely pained. “But orders
are orders.”
Then he opens his hand and lets me fall.
The fall lasts an eternity and no time at all. My heart shoots into my
throat, my stomach plunges, and then, with a jerk that rattles my skull, I’m
not falling anymore. But I’m not dead, either. My body dangles, tethered by
a rope hooked to my belt .
Helene had yanked on my belt — she must have attached the rope then.
Which means she is on the other end. Which means if the soldiers throw her
over and I’m still dangling like a comatose spider, we’ll both fall hard and
fast to the hereafter.
I swing toward the cliff face and scrabble for a handhold. The rope is
thirty feet long, and this close to the base of the watchtower, the cliffs aren’t
as sheer. A granite shelf juts out from a fissure a few feet away. I wedge
myself in tightly and only just in time.
A shriek echoes from above me followed by a tumble of blonde and
silver. I brace my legs and pull in the rope as fast as I can, but I am still
nearly yanked off the rock shelf by the force of Helene’s weight.
“I’ve got you, Hel,” I shout, knowing how terrified she must be hanging
hundreds of feet in the air like this. “Hold on.”
When I pull her into the fissure, she is wild - eyed and shaking. There is
hardly room for both of us on the shelf, and she grabs my shoulders to
anchor herself.
“It’s all right, Hel .” I tap the ledge with a boot. “See? Solid rock beneath
us.” She nods into my shoulder, clinging to me in a most un - Helene - like
way.
Even through our armor, I feel her curves, and my stomach leaps
strangely. She fidgets, which really doesn’t help things, seemingly as aware
as I of the closeness of our bodies. My face grows hot at the sudden tension
between us. Focus, Elias.
I pull away from her as an arrow thunks into the rock beside us — we’ve
been spotted.
“We’re easy pickings on this ledge,” I say. “Here. ” I unknot the cord
from my belt and hers, and stuff it into her hands. “Tie this to an arrow.
Make it tight.”
She does as I ask while I grab a bow from my back and scan the cliffs
for a harness. One dangles fifteen feet away. It’s a shot I could make with
my eyes closed — exc ept that the legionnaires are hauling the harness back
up the cliff face and into the tower.
Helene hands me the arrow, and before more missiles come hurtling
from above, I lift my bow, notch the arrow, shoot.
And miss.
“Damn it!” The legionnaires pull the harness just out of range. They
yank up the other harnesses along the cliff , strap themselves in, and begin
rappelling down.
“Elias — ” Helene nearly flings herself off the ledge trying to avoid an
arrow, grabbing on to my arm. “We have to get out of here.”
“I figured that out, thanks.” I barely dodge an arrow myself. “If you’ve
got a genius plan, I’m open to ideas.”
Helene grabs the bow from me, takes aim with the corded arrow, and a
second later, one of the legionnaires rappelling down goes limp. She pulls
the body over and unbuckles him from the harness. I try to ignore the
dista nt thump of the soldier’s body hitting the dunes. Hel frees the cord
while I grab the harness and strap myself in — I’ll have to carry her down.
“Elias,” she whispers when she realizes what we have to do. “I — I can’t
— ”
“You can. I won’t let you fall. I promise.”
I test the harness anchor with a sharp yank, hoping it will hold the
weight of two fully armed Masks.
“Climb onto my back.” I take her chin and force her to meet my eyes.
“Rope us together like before. Wrap your legs around my waist. Don’t let
go unti l we hit the sand.”
She does as I ask and ducks her head into my neck as I leap off the edge,
her breath coming short and fast.
“Don’t fall, don’t fall,” I hear her muttering. “Don’t fall, don’t — ”
Arrows streak toward us from the tower, and the legionnaires have
dropped level now. They draw scims and glide across the cliff face. My
hand itches toward a weapon, but I resist — I have to ke ep hold of the ropes
so we don’t plummet to the desert floor.
“Ke ep them off me, Hel.”
Her legs tighten around my hips and h er bow twangs as she launches
arrow after arrow into our pursuers.
Thwunk. Thwunk. Thwunk.
One howl of agony is joined by another and another as Helene draws
and shoots, fast as lightning striking. The arrows from the tower thin as we
drop, clattering off our armor uselessly. Every muscle in my arms strains to
ke ep us dropping steadily. Almost there . . . almost . . .
Then a searing pain shoots through my left thigh. We slide fifty feet as I
lose control of the descender. Helene grabs me as her head snaps b ack, and
she screams, a girlish shriek I know I should never, ever mention.
“Damn it, Veturius!”
“Sorry,” I grind out when I get hold of the ropes. “I’m hit. They still
coming?”
“No.” Helene cranes her neck back and stares up the sheer cliff face.
“They’re going back up.”
The hairs on the back of my neck rise in warning. There’s no reason for
the soldiers to stop the attack. Not unless they think someone else will take
over for them. I peer down at the dunes, still two hundred feet below us. I
can’t tell if there’s anyone down there.
A gust of wind blows out of the desert, knocking us hard against the cliff
face, and I almost lose control of the ropes again. Helene yelps, her arm
tense around me. My leg burns with pain, but I ignore it — it’s just a flesh
wound.
For a second, I think I hear a peal of de ep, mocking laughter.
“Elias.” Helene looks out at the desert, and I know what she’s going to
say before she says it. “There’s something — ”
The wind steals the words from her mouth, swe eping out of the dunes
with unnatural fury. I release the descender, and we drop. But not fast
enough.
A violent gust rips my hands from the ropes, halting our descent. Sand
from the dunes rises in a funnel around us. Before my disbelieving eyes, the
particles weave together, coalescing into large, manlike shapes with
grasping hands and holes for eyes.
“What are they?” Helene slashes the air uselessly with her scim, her
strokes increasingly uncontrolled.
Not human and not friendly. The Augurs have already unleashed one
supernatural terror on u s. It isn’t much of a stretch to assume that they’d trot
out another.
I reach for the ropes, now hopelessly tangled. The pain in my thigh
explodes, and I look down to see the arrow being slowly pulled through my
flesh by a sandy hand. The laughter echoes again as I hurriedly break off
the arrowhead — I’ll be crippled for life if it’s dragged through my leg.
Sand buffets my face, biting at my skin before solidifying into another
creature. This one looms over us, a miniature mountain, and although his
features are poorly defined, I can still make out his wolf’s smile.
I smother my disbelief and try to think back to Mamie Rila’s stories.
We’ve already dealt with wraiths, and this thing is big — not like a wight or
a ghul. Efrits are supposed to be shy, but jinn are vicious and cunning . . .
“It’s a jinn!” I shout over the wind. The sand creature laughs as
delightedly as if I’m juggling and pulling faces.
“Jinn are dead, little Aspirant.” His screams are like a wind out of the
north. Then he swoops in close, eyes nar rowing. His other brethren form up
behind him, dancing and somersaulting with the zeal of acrobats at a
carnival. “Destroyed by your kind long ago, in a great war. I am Rowan
Goldgale, king of the sand efrits. I will claim your souls as mine.”
“Why would a king of efrits concern himself with mere humans?”
Helene plays for time as I frantically untangle the ropes and straighten the
descender.
“Mere humans!” The efrits behind the king hoot with laughter. “You are
Aspirants. Your footst eps echo in the sand and the stars. To own souls such
as yours is a great honor. You will serve me well.”
“What’s he talking about?” Helene asks me in an undertone.
“No idea,” I say. “Ke ep him distra cted.”
“Why enslave us?” Helene asks. “When we would — ah — serve you
willingly?”
“Stupid girl! In these sacks of flesh, your souls are useless. I must
awaken and tame them. Only then can you serve me. Only then — ”
His voice is lost in a whoosh of wind as we drop away. The efrits shriek
and streak after us, surrounding and blinding us, tearing my hands from the
ropes once more.
“Take them,” Rowan bays at his cohort. Helene’s grip on me loosens as
an efrit works his way between us. Another pries the scim from her hand
and the bow from her back, shrieking in elation as the weapons drop to the
dunes.
Yet another efrit saws at our rope with a sharp rock. I draw my scim and
shove it through the creature, twisting, hoping steel will kill the thing. The
efrit howls — in pain or anger, I can’t tell. I try to take off its head, but it flits
up out of reach, cackling nastily.
Think, Elias! The shadow - assassins had a weakness. The efrits must too.
Mamie Rila told tales about them, I know she did. But I can’t bleeding
remember any of them.
“Ahhhh!” Helene’s arms jerk free of me, and she holds on with only her
legs. The efrits ululate, doubling their efforts to pull her away. Rowan puts
his hands on either side of her face and squeezes, imbuing her with an
otherworldly gold light.
“Mine!” the efrit says. “Mine. Mine. Mine.”
The rope frays. Blood pours from the wound on my thigh. The efrits rip
Helene away, and as they do, I spot a niche in the cliff that runs all the way
down to the desert floor. Mamie Rila’s face appears in my he ad, illuminated
by the campfire as she chants:
Efrit, efrit of the wind, kill him with a star - steel pin.
Efrit, efrit of the sea, light a fire to make him flee.
Efrit, efrit of the sand, a song is more than he can stand.
I hurl my scim up at the efrit sawing at the ropes and swing forward,
plucking Helene from the grip of the efrits and shoving her into the niche,
all the while ignoring her yell of surprise and the angry, tearing hands at my
back.
“Sing, Hel! Sing!”
She opens her mouth, to shout or sing, I don’t know, because the rope
finally gives way and I plummet. Helene’s pale face fades away above me.
Then the world goes quiet and white, and I know no more.