By the time Helene and I reach Blackcliff’s belltower, nearly all of the
school’s three thousand students have formed up. Dawn’s an hour
away, but I don’t see a single sle epy eye. Instead, an eager buzz runs
through the crowd. The last time someone deserted, the courtyard was
covered in frost.
Every student knows what’s coming. I clench and unclench my fists. I
don’t want to watch this. Like all Blackcliff students, I came to the school at
the age of six, and in the fourteen years since, I’ve witnessed puni shments
thousands of times. My own back is a map of the school’s brutality. But
deserters are always the worst.
My body is tight as a spring, but I flatten my gaze and ke ep my
expression emotionless. Blackcliff’s subject masters, the Centurions, will be
watching. Drawing their ire when I’m so close to es caping would be
unforgivably stupid.
Helene and I walk past the youngest students, four classes of maskless
Yearlings, who will have the clearest view of the carnage. The smallest are
barely seven. The bigge st, nearly eleven.
The Yearlings look down as we pass; we are upperclassmen, and they
are forbidden from even addressing us. They stand poker - straight, scims
hanging at precise 45 - degree angles on their backs, boots spit - shined, faces
blank as stone. By now, even the youngest Yearlings have learned
Blackcliff’s most essential lessons: Obey, conform, and ke ep your mouth
shut.
Behind the Yearlings sits an empty space in honor of Blackcliff’s second
tier of students, called Fivers because so many die in their fifth year. At age
eleven, the Centurions throw us out of Blackcliff and into the wilds of the
Empire without clothes, food, or weaponry, to survive as best as we can for
four years. The remaining Fivers return to Blackcliff, receive their masks,
and spend another four years as Cadets and then two more years as Skulls.
Hel and I are Senior Skulls — just completing our last year of training.
The Centurions monitor us from beneath the arches that line the
courtyard, hands on their whips as they await the arriva l of Blackcliff’s
commandant. They stand as still as statues, their masks long since melded
to their features, any semblance of emotion a distant memory.
I put a hand to my own mask, wishing I could rip it off, even for a
minute. Like my classmates, I received the mask on my first day as a Cadet,
when I was fourteen. Unlike the rest of the students — and much to Helene’s
dismay — the smooth liquid silver hasn’t dissolved into my skin like it’s
supposed to. Probably because I take the damned thing off whenever I ’m
alone.
I’ve hated the mask since the day an Augur — an Empire holy man —
handed it to me in a velvet - lined box. I hate the way it gloms on to me like
some kind of parasite. I hate the way it presses into my face, molding itself
to my skin.
I’m the only student whose mask hasn’t melded to him yet — something
my enemies enjoy pointing out. But lately, the mask has started fighting
back, forcing the melding process by digging tiny filaments into the back of
my neck. It makes my skin crawl, makes me feel like I’m not myself
anymore. Like I’ll never be myself again.
“Veturius.” Hel’s lanky, sandy - haired platoon lieutenant, Demetrius,
calls out to me as we take our spots with the other Senior Skulls. “Who is
it? Who’s the deserter?”
“I don’t know. Dex and the auxes brought him in.” I look around for my
lieutenant, b ut he hasn’t arrived yet.
“I hear it’s a Yearling.” Demetrius stares at a hunk of wood poking out
of the blood - browned cobbles at the base of the belltower. The whipping
post. “An older one. A fourth - year.”
Helene and I exchange a look. Demetrius’s little brother also tried to
desert in his fourth year at Blackcliff, when he was only ten. He lasted three
hours outside the gates before the legionnaires brought him in to face the
Commandant — longer than most.
“Maybe it was a Skull.” Helene scans the ranks of o lder students, trying
to see if anyone is missing.
“Maybe it was Marcus,” Faris, a member of my battle platoon who
towers over the rest of us, says, grinning, his blond hair popping up in an
unruly cowlick. “Or Zak.”
No such luck. Marcus, dark - skinned and yellow - eyed, stands at the front
of our ranks with his twin, Zak: second - born, shorter and lighter, but just as
evil. The Snake and the Toad, Hel calls them.
Zak’s mask has yet to attach fully around his eyes, but Marcus’s clings
tightly, having joined wit h him so completely that all of his features — even
the thick slant of his eyebrows — are clearly visible beneath it. If Marcus
tried to remove his mask now, he’d take off half his face with it. Which
would be an improvement.
As if he senses her glance, Marcus turns and looks Helene over with a
predatory gaze of ownership that makes my hands itch to strangle him.
Nothing out of the ordinary, I remind myself. Nothing to make you stand
out.
I force myself to look away. Attacking Marcus in front of the entire
scho ol would definitely qualify as out of the ordinary.
Helene notices Marcus’s leer. Her hands ball into fists at her sides, but
before she can teach the Snake a lesson, the sergeant - at - arms marches into
the courtyard.
“ATTENTION.”
Three thousand bodies swing forward, three thousand pairs of boots snap
together, three thousand backs jerk as if yanked straight by a puppeteer’s
hand. In the ensuing silence, you could hear a tear drop.
But we don’t hear the Commandant of Blackcliff Military Academy
approach; we f eel her, the way you feel a storm coming. She moves silently,
emerging from the arches like a fair - haired jungle cat from the underbrush.
She wears all black, from her tight - fitting uniform jacket to her steel - toed
boots. Her blonde hair is pulled, as always, into a stiff knot at her neck.
She’s the only living female Mask — or will be until Helene graduates
tomorrow. But unlike Helene, the Commandant exudes a deathly chill, as if
her gray eyes and cut - glass features were carved from the underbelly of a
glacier.
“Bring the accused,” she says.
A pair of legionnaires march out from behind the belltower, dragging a
small, limp form. Beside me, Dem etrius tenses. The rumors were right — the
deserter’s a Fourth - Yearling, no older than ten. Blood drips down his face,
blending into the collar of his black fatigues. When the soldiers dump him
before the Commandant, he doesn’t move.
The Commandant’s silver face reveals nothing as she looks down at the
Yearling. But her hand strays toward the spiked riding crop at her belt,
fashioned out of bruise - black ironwood. She doesn’t remove it. Not yet.
“Fourth - Yearling Falconius Barrius.” Her voice carries, though it ’s soft,
almost gentle. “You abandoned your post at Blackcliff with no intention of
returning. Explain yourself.”
“No explanation, Commandant, sir.” He mouths the words we’ve all said
to the Commandant a hundred times, the only words you can say at
Blackcliff when you’ve screwed up utterly.
It’s a trial to ke ep my face blank, to drive emotion from my eyes. Barrius
is about to be punished for the crime I’ll be committing in less than thirtysix hours. It
could be me up there in two days. Bloodied. Broken.
“Le t us ask your peers their opinion.” The Commandant turns her gaze
on us, and it’s like being blasted by a frigid mountain wind. “Is Yearling
Barrius guilty of treason?”
“Yes, sir!” The shout shakes the flagstones, rabid in its ferocity.
“Legionnaires,” the Commandant says. “Take him to the post.”
The resulting roar from the students jerks Barrius out of his stupor, and
as the legionnaires tie him to the whipping post, he writhes and bucks.
His fellow Fourth - Yearlings, the same boys he fought and sweated and
suffered with for years, thump the flagstones with their boots and pump
their fists in the air. In the row of Senior Skulls in front of me, Marcus
shouts his approval, his eyes lit with unholy joy. He stares at the
Commandant with a reverence reserved for deities.
I feel eyes on me. To my left, one of the Centurions is watching. Nothing
out of the ordinary. I lift my fist and cheer with the rest of them, hating
myself.
The Commandant draws her crop, caressing it like a lover. Then she
brings it whistling d own onto Barrius’s back. His gasp echoes through the
courtyard, and every student falls silent, united in a shared, if brief, moment
of pity. Blackcliff’s rules are so numerous that it’s impossible not to break
them at least a few times. We’ve all been tied to that post before. We’ve all
felt the bite of the Commandant’s crop.
The quiet doesn’t last. Barrius screams, and the students howl in
response, flinging jeers at him. Marcus is loudest of all, leaning forward,
practically spitting in excitement. Faris rumbles his approval. Even
Demetrius manages a shout or two, his green eyes flat and distant as if he is
somewhere else entirely. Beside me, Helene cheers, but there’s no joy in her
expression, only a stern sadness. The rules of Blackcliff demand that she
voice her anger at the deserter’s betrayal. So she does.
The Commandant seems indifferent to the clamor, fixated as she is on
her work. Her arm rises and falls with a dancer’s grace. She circles Barrius
as his skinny limbs begin to seize, pausing between each lash, no doubt
pondering how she can make the next one more painful than the last.
After twenty - five lashes, she takes him by his limp stalk of a neck and
turns him around. “Face them,” she says. “Face the men you’ve betrayed.”
Barrius’s eyes beseech the courtyard, seeking out anyone willing to offer
him a shred of pity. H e should have known better. His gaze collapses to the
flagstones.
The cheers continue, and the crop comes down again. And again.
Barrius falls to the white stones, the pool of blood around him spreading
rapidly. His eyes flutter. I hope his mind is gone. I hope he can’t feel it
anymore.
I make myself watch. This is why you’re leaving, Elias. So you’re never
a part of this again.
A gurgling moan trickles from Barrius’s mouth. The Commandant drops
her arm, and the courtyard is silent. I see the deserter breat hing. In once.
Out. And then nothing. No one cheers. Dawn breaks, the sun’s rays tracing
the sky above Blackcliff’s ebony belltower like bloodied fingers, tingeing
everyone in the courtyard a lurid red.
The Commandant wipes her crop on Barrius’s fatigues before returning
it to her belt. “Take him to the dunes,” she orders the legionnaires. “For the
scavengers.” Then she surveys the rest of us.
“Duty first, unto death. If you betray the Empire, you will be caught, and
you will pay. Dismissed.”
The lines of s tudents dissolve. Dex, who brought the deserter in, slips
away quietly, his darkly handsome face slightly sick. Faris lumbers after, no
doubt to clap Dex on the back and suggest he forget his troubles at a
brothel. Demetrius stalks off alone, and I know he’s remembering that day
two years ago when he was forced to watch his little brother die just like
Barrius. He won’t be fit to speak with for hours. The other students drain
out of the courtyard quickly, still discussing the whipping.
“ — only thirty lashes, what a weakling — ”
“ — did you hear him gasping, like a scared girl — ”
“Elias.” Helene’s voice is soft, as is the touch of her hand on my arm.
“Come on. The Commandant will see you.”
She’s right. Everyone is walking away. I should too.
I can’t do it.
No one looks at Barrius’s bloody remains. He is a traitor. He is nothing.
But someone should stay. Someone should mourn him, even if for a
moment.
“Elias,” Helene says, urgent now. “Move. She’ll see you.”
“I need a minute,” I r eply. “You go on.”
She wants to argue with me, but her presence is conspicuous, and I’m
not budging. She leaves with a last backward glance. When she’s gone, I
look up to see the Commandant watching me.
We lock eyes across the long courtyard, and I am struck for the
hundredth time at how different we are. I have black hair, she has blonde.
My skin glows golden brown, and hers is chalk - white. Her mouth is ever
disapproving, while I look amused even when I’m not. I am broadshouldered and well
over six feet, while she is smaller than a Scholar
woman, even, with a dec eptively willowy form.
But anyone who sees us standing side by side can tell what she is to me.
My mother gave me her high cheekbones and pale gray eyes. She gave me
the ruthless instinct and speed that make me the best student Blackcliff has
seen in two decades.
Mother. It’s not the right word. Mother evokes warmth and love and
sweetness. Not abandonment in the Tribal desert hours after birth. Not years
of silence and implacable hatred.
She’s taught me many things, this woman who bore me. Control is one
of them. I tamp down my fury and disgust, emptying myself of all feeling.
She frowns, a slight twist of her mouth, and raises a hand to her neck, her
fingers following the whorls of a strange blue tattoo poking out of her
collar.
I expect her to approach and demand to know why I’m still here, why I
challenge her with my stare. She doesn’t. Instead, she watches me for a
moment longer before turning and disappearing beneath the arches.
The belltower tolls six, and the drums thud. All students r eport to mess.
At the foot of the tower, the legionnaires heave up what’s left of Barrius and
carry him away.
The courtyard stands silent, empty exc ept for me staring at a puddle of
blood where a boy once stood, chilled by the knowledge that if I’m not
careful, I’ll end up just like him.