When the door to my cell opens, I bolt toward the sound, determined
to es cape into the hallway beyond. But the chill in the room has
penetrated my bones. My limbs are too heavy, and a hand catches me easily
about the waist.
“Door’s sealed by an Augur.” The hand releases me. “You’ll hurt
yourself.”
My blindfold is pulled off, and a Mask stands before me. I know him
instantly. Veturius. His fingers brush my wrists and neck as he unbinds my
hands and pulls off my gag. For a second, I’m bewildered. He saved my life
all those times so he could interrogate me now? I realize that some naïve
sliver of me hoped that he was better than this. Not good, necessarily. Just
not evil. You knew this, Laia, a voice chides me. You knew he was playing a
sick game.
Veturius kneads his neck awkwardly, and that’s when I notice that his
leather armor is covered in blood and muck. He has bru ises and cuts all
over, and his fatigues hang in dull, tattered strips. He looks down at me, and
his eyes glint in brief, hot rage before cooling into something else — shock?
Sadness?
“I won’t tell you anything.” My voice is high and thin, and I grit my
teeth. Be like Mother. Don’t show fear. I grab my armlet with one hand. “I
didn’t do anything wrong. So you can torture me all you want, but it won’t
do you any good.”
Veturius clears his throat. “That’s not why you’re here.” He is rooted to
the stone floor, r egarding me as if I am a puzzle.
I glare back at him. “Why did that — that red - eyed thing bring me to this
cell, if I’m not to be interrogated?”
“Red - eyed thing.” He nods. “Good description.” He looks around the
chamber as if seeing it for the first time. “This isn’t a cell. It’s my room.”
I eye the narrow cot, the chair, the cold hearth, the ominous black
bureau, the hooks on the wall — for torture, I assumed. It’s bigger than my
quarters, though just as spare. “Why am I in your room?”
The Mask goes to the bur eau and rifles through it. I tense — what’s in
there?
“You’re a prize,” he says. “My victory prize for winning the Third
Trial.”
“A prize?” I say. “Why would I be — ”
The knowledge swe eps through me suddenly, and I shake my head — as
if that will make a difference. I’m keenly aware of the amount of skin
showing through my ripped dress, and I try to draw the remnants of cloth
together. I take a st ep back, straight into the chill, rough stone of the wall.
It’s as far away as I can get, but it won’t be far enough. I ’ve seen Veturius
fight. He is too fast, too big, too strong.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” He turns from the bureau, looking at me
with an odd sympathy in his eyes. “That’s not how I am.” He holds out a
clean, black cloak. “Take this — it’s freezing.”
I eye the cloak. I’m so cold. I’ve been cold since the Augur threw me in
here hours ago. But I can’t take what Veturius offers. There’s a trick in this.
There must be. Why would I have been chosen as his prize if not for that?
After a moment, he sets the cloak o n the cot. I can smell the rain on him,
and something darker. Death.
Silently, he starts a fire in the hearth. His hands tremble.
“You’re shaking,” I observe.
“I’m cold.”
The wood catches, and he feeds the fire patiently, absorbed in the task.
There are two scims strapped to his back, only a few feet away. I can grab
one if I’m fast enough.
Do it! Now, while he’s distracted! I lean forward, but just as I’m about to
lunge, he turns. I freeze, teetering ridiculously.
“Take this instead.” Veturius takes a dagger from his boot and tosses it to
me before turning back to the flames. “It’s clean, at least.”
The dagger’s warm heft is comforting in my hand, and I test the edge on
my thumb. Sharp. I sink back against the wall and eye him warily.
The fire eats away at the cold in the room. When it is burning brightly,
Veturius unstraps his scims and leans them against the wall, well within my
reach.
“I’ll be in there.” He nods to a closed door in the corner of the room, one
I’d assumed led to a torture chamber. “That cloak won’t bite, you know.
You’re stuck here until dawn. Might as well make yourself comfortable.”
He opens the door and disappears into the bathing chamber bey ond. A
moment later, I hear water pour into a tub.
The silk of my dress steams in the heat of the fire, and with one eye on
the bath door, I let its warmth se ep into me. Then I consider Veturius’s
cloak. My skirt is ripped to my thigh, and a sleeve of my shirt hangs by a
few threads. The laces of my bodice are torn, revealing far too much of me.
I look uneasily toward the bath. He’ll finish soon.
Eventually, I pick up the cloak and wrap it around myself. It is made of
thick, finely woven cloth that is softe r to the touch than I expect. I
recognize the smell — his smell — spice and rain. I inhale de eply before
jerking my nose away as the door rattles and Veturius emerges with his
bloodied armor and weapons.
He’s scrubbed the mud from his skin and changed into clean fatigues.
“You’ll get tired standing all night,” he says. “You can sit on the bed. Or
take the chair.” When I don’t move, he sighs. “You don’t trust me — I get it.
But if I wanted to hurt you, I’d already have done it. Please, sit down.”
“I’m ke eping the knife.”
“You can have a scim too. I have a pile of weapons I never want to see
again. Take them all.”
He drops into the chair and begins cleaning his greaves. I sit stiffly on
his bed, ready to bring up the knife if I have to. He is close enough to touch.
He says nothing for a long time, his movements heavy and tired.
Beneath the shadow of his mask, his full mouth seems harsh, his jaw
unyielding. But I remember his face from the festival. It’s a handsome face,
and even the mask can’t hide that. His diamond - shaped Blackcliff tattoo is a
dark shadow on the back of his neck, parts of it tinged silver where the
metal of his mask cleaves to his skin.
He looks up, sensing my gaze, and then glances quickly away. But not
before I see telltale redness in his eyes.
I loosen my white - knuckled grip on the knife. What could upset a Mask,
an Aspirant, enough to bring him to tears?
“What you told me about living in the Scholars’ Quarter,” he says,
breaking the quiet of the room, “with your grandparents and your brother.
That was true, once.”
“Until a few weeks ago. The Empire raided us. A Mask came. Killed my
grandparents. Took my brother.”
“And your parents?”
“Dead. A long time ago now. My brother’s the only one left. But he’s in
the death cells in Bekkar Prison.”
Veturiu s glances up at me. “Bekkar doesn’t have death cells.”
His comment is offhand and so unexpected that it takes a moment to
sink in. He looks back down at his work, blind to the impact his words have
had on me. “Who told you he was in a death cell? And who told you he was
in Bekkar?”
“I . . . heard a rumor.” Idiot, Laia. You walked into this. “From . . . a
friend.”
“Your friend’s wrong. Or confused. Serra’s only death cells are in
Central. Bekkar’s much smaller and usually filled with swindling Mercators
and Plebeian drunks. It’s no Kauf, that’s for sure. I would know. I’ve done
guard duty at both. “
“But if Blackcliff, say, got attacked . . . ” My mind races as I think of
what Mazen told me. “Isn’t it Bekkar that provides your . . . security?”
Veturius chuckles without smiling. “Bekkar, protecting Blackcliff? Don’t
let my mother hear. Blackcliff has three thousand students bred for war,
Laia. Some are young, but unless they’re green, they’re dangerous. The
school doesn’t need backup, least of all from a pack o f bored auxes who
spend their days taking bribes and racing roaches.”
Could I have misheard Mazen? No, he said Darin was in the death cells
in Bekkar and that the prison provided Blackcliff’s security backup, all of
which Veturius has just refuted. Is Mazen’s information bad, or is he lying
to me? Once, I’d have given him the benefit of the doubt, but Cook’s
suspicions . . . and Keenan’s . . . and my own weigh heavy on me. Why
would Mazen lie? Where is Darin, really? Is he even alive?
He is alive. He must b e. I’d know if my brother was dead. I’d feel it.
“I’ve upset you,” Veturius says. “I’m sorry. But if your brother’s in
Bekkar, he’ll be out soon. No one stays in there more than a few weeks.”
“Of course.” I clear my throat and try to wipe the confusion from my
face. Masks can smell a lie. They can sense deceit. I have to act as normal
as I can. “It was just a rumor.”
He gives me a swift look, and I hold my breath, thinking he is about to
question me further. But he just nods and raises his leather greaves, now
clean, to the firelight before hanging them from the hooks embedded into
the wall.
So that’s what those hooks are for.
Is it possible Veturius won’t hurt me? He’s pulled me from death so
many times. Why do that if he wishes violence upon me?
“Why did you help me?” I blurt out. “Down in the dunes after the
Commandant marked me, and at the Moon Festival, and when Marcus
attacked me — every time, you could have turned away. Why didn’t you?”
He looks up, thoughtful. “The first time, I felt bad. I let Marcus hurt you
the day I met you, outside the Commandant’s office. I wanted to make up
for it.”
I make a small noise of surprise. I didn’t even think he noticed me that
day.
“And then later — at the Moon Festival and with Marcus — ” He shrugs.
“My mother would have killed you. Marcus too. I couldn’t just let you die.”
“Plenty of Masks have stood and watched as Scholars died. You didn’t.”
“I don’t enjoy others’ pain,” he says. “Maybe that’s why I’ve always
hated Blackcliff. I was going to desert, you know.” His smile is sharp as a
scim and as joyless.
“I had it all planned out. I dug a path from that hearth” — he points — “to
the entrance of t he West Branch tunnel. The only secret entrance in the
whole of Blackcliff. Then I mapped my way out of here. I was going to use
tunnels the Empire thinks are caved in or flooded. I stole food, clothing,
supplies. I drained my inheritance so I could buy what I needed on the way.
I planned to es cape through the Tribal lands and take a ship south from
Sadh. I was going to be free — from the Commandant, Blackcliff, the
Empire. So stupid. As if I could ever be free of this place.”
I almost stop breathing as his w ords sink in. The only secret entrance in
the whole of Blackcliff.
Elias Veturius has just given me Darin’s freedom.
That is, if Mazen is telling the truth. I’m not so sure anymore. I want to
laugh at the absurdity of it — Veturius giving me the key to my brother’s
freedom, just as I realize that such information might not mean anything.
I’ve been silent too long. Say something.
“I thought being chosen for Blackcliff was an honor.”
“Not for me,” he says. “Coming to Blackcliff wasn’t a choice. The
Augurs broug ht me here when I was six.” He picks up his scim and slowly
wipes it clean. I recognize the intricate etchings on it — it’s a Teluman blade.
“I lived with the Tribes back then. I’d never met my mother. I’d never even
heard the name Veturius.”
“But how . . . ” Veturius as a child. I’ve never considered it. I’ve never
wondered if he knew his father, or if the Commandant raised him and loved
him. I’ve never wondered, because he’s never been anything more than a
Mask.
“I’m bastard - born,” Veturius says. “The only mistake Keris Veturia has
ever made. She bore me and then exposed me in the Tribal desert. It’s
where she was stationed. That would have been the end of me, but a Tribal
scouting party happened along. Tribesmen think baby boys are good luck,
even abandoned ones. Tribe Saif adopted me, raised me as one of their own.
Taught me their language and stories, dressed me in their clothes. They
even gave me my name. Ilyaas. My grandfather changed it when I came to
Blackcliff. Turned it into something more appropriate for a son of Gens
Veturia.”
The tension between Veturius and his mother is suddenly clear. The
woman never even wanted him. Her ruthlessness astounds me. I’d helped
Pop bring dozens of newborns into the world. What kind of person could
leav e something so small, so precious, to die of heat and starvation?
The same person who could carve a K into a girl for opening a letter.
The same person who would dash out a five - year - old’s eye with a poker.
“What do you remember from that time?” I ask. “From when you were a
child? From before Blackcliff?”
Veturius frowns and puts a hand to his temple. The mask shimmers
strangely at his touch, like a pool rippling beneath a drop of rain.
“I remember everything. The caravan was like a small city — Tribe Saif
is dozens of families strong. I was fostered by the tribe’s Kehanni, Mamie
Rila.”
He speaks for a long time, and his words weave a life before my eyes,
the life of a dark - haired, curious - eyed child who snuck out from lessons so
he could go adventuring, who waited eagerly at the edge of camp for the
men of the Tribe to return from their merchant forays. A boy who scrapped
with his foster brother one minute and laughed with him the next. A child
without fear, until the Augurs came for him and plunged him into a world
ruled by it. But for the Augurs, it could be Darin he is speaking of. It could
be me.
When he falls silent, it’s as if a warm, gold haze has been lifted from the
room. He has a Kehanni’s skill at storytelling. I look up at him, surprised to
see not the boy but the man he has become. Mask. Aspirant. Enemy.
“I’ve bored you,” he says.
“No. Not at all. You — you were like me. You were a child. A normal
child. And that was taken from you.”
“Does that bother you?”
“Well, it certainly makes you harder to hate .”
“Seeing the enemy as a human. A general’s ultimate nightmare.”
“The Augurs brought you to Blackcliff. How did it happen?”
This time, his pause is longer, heavy with the taint of a memory better
forgotten.
“It was autumn — the Augurs always bring a new crop of Yearlings in
when the desert winds are at their worst. The night they came to the Saif
encampment, the Tribe was happy. Our chief had just returned from a
successful trade, and we had new clothes and shoes — even books. The
cooks slaughtered two goats a nd spit - roasted them. The drums beat, the
girls sang, and stories poured from Mamie Rila for hours.
“We celebrated into the night, but finally, everyone sl ept. Everyone but
me. I’d had this strange sense for hours — that some darkness was closing
in. I saw shadows outside the wagon, shadows circling the camp. I looked
out of the wagon, where I was sle eping, and saw this . . . this man. Black
clothing and red eyes and skin without any color at all. An Augur. He said
my name. I remember thinking he must be part r eptile, because his voice
came out of him like a hiss. And that was it. I was chained to the Empire. I
was chosen.”
“Were you afraid?”
“Terrified. I knew he was there to t ake me away. And I didn’t know
where, or why. They brought me to Blackcliff. Cut off my hair, took my
clothes, and put me in a pen outside with the others for a culling. Soldiers
threw us moldy bread and jerky once a day, but back then, I wasn’t very
big, so I never got much. Midway through the third day, I was sure I would
die. So I snuck out of the pen and stole food from the guards. I shared it
with my lookout. Well . . . ” He looks up, considering. “I say share, but
really, she ate most of it. Anyway, a fter seven days, the Augurs opened the
pen, and those of us still alive were told that if we fought hard, we would be
the guardians of the Empire, and if we didn’t, we’d be dead.”
I can see it. The small bodies of those left behind. The fear in the eyes of
those who lived. Veturius as a boy, afraid and starved, determined not to
die.
“You survived.”
“I wish I hadn’t. If you’d seen the Third Trial — if you knew what I
did . . . ” He polishes the same spot on one of the scims over and over.
“What happened?” I a sk softly. He is silent for so long that I think I’ve
angered him, that I’ve crossed a line. Then he tells me. He pauses
frequently, and his voice goes from broken to flat. He ke eps working on the
scim, shining it, then sharpening it with a whetstone until it gleams.
When he is done speaking, he hangs the scim up. The streaks running
down his mask catch the firelight, and I understand, now, why he was
shaking when he walked in, why his eyes are so haunted.
“So you see,” he says, “I’m just like the Mask who killed your
grandparents. I’m just like Marcus. Worse, actually, because such men
consider it their duty to kill. I know better. And I did it anyway.”
“The Augurs didn’t give you a choice. You couldn’t find Aquilla to end
the Trial, and if you hadn’t fought, you’d have died.”
“Then I should have died.”
“Nan always said that as long as there is life, there is hope. If you’d
refused to give the order, your men would be dead right now — either at the
hands of the Augurs or on the blades of Aquilla’s platoon. Don ’t forget: She
chose life for herself and her men. Either way, you’d have blamed yourself.
Either way, people you cared about would have suffered.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“But it does matter. Of course it matters. Because you’re not evil.” The
knowledge is a revelation and one so staggering that I badly want him to
see it too. “You’re not like the others. You killed to save. You put others
first. Not — not like me.”
I can’t bring myself to look at Veturius. “When the Mask came, I ran.”
The words spill out of me, a tumbling river I’ve dammed up for too long.
“My grandparents were dead. The Mask had Darin, my brother. Darin told
me to run, even though he needed me. I should have helped him, but I
couldn’t. No.” I dig my fists into my thighs. “I didn’t. I chose not to stay. I
chose to run, like a coward. I still don’t unde rstand it. I should have stayed,
even if that meant dying.”
My eyes seek the floor in shame. But then his hand is on my chin,
tipping my face up. His clean scent washes over me.
“As you say, Laia” — he forces me to meet his eyes — “there’s hope in
life. If you hadn’t run, you’d be dead. And Darin too.” He lets me go and
sits back. “Masks don’t like defiance. He’d have made you pay for it.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Veturius smiles that knife’s - edge smile. “Look at us,” he says. “Scholar
slave and Mask, each trying to p ersuade the other that they’re not evil. The
Augurs do have a sense of humor, don’t they?”
My fingers are clenched around the hilt of the dagger Veturius gave me,
and a hot anger rises inside me — at the Augurs for letting me think I was to
be interrogated. At the Commandant for leaving her own child to die a
torturous death, and at Blackcliff for training that child to be a killer. At my
parents for dying and my brother for apprenticing himself to a Martial. At
Mazen for his demands and secrets. At the Empir e and its iron - fisted
control over every aspect of our lives.
I want to defy all of them — the Empire, the Commandant, the
Resistance. I wonder where such defiance comes from, and my armlet feels
hot suddenly. Perhaps there’s more of my mother in me than I thought.
“Maybe we don’t have to be Scholar slave and Mask.” I drop the dagger.
“For tonight, maybe we can just be Laia and Elias.”
Emboldened, I reach out and pull at the edge of his mask, which has
never seemed like a part of him. It resists, but now I wa nt it off. I want to
see the face of the boy I’ve been speaking to all night, not the Mask I
always thought he was. So I pull harder, and the mask falls into my hands
with a hiss. The back is bent into sharp spikes wet with blood. The tattoo on
his neck glistens with a dozen small wounds.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I didn’t realize . . . ”
He looks into my eyes, and something undefined burns in his gaze, a
flash of emotion that brings a different sort of fire to my skin.
“I’m glad you took it off.”
I should lo ok away. I cannot. His eyes are nothing like his mother’s.
Hers are the brittle gray of broken glass, but Elias’s, with their ring of dark
lashes, are a de eper hue, like the thick heart of a storm cloud. They draw me
in, mesmerize me, refuse to release me. I lift tentative fingers to his skin.
The stubble of his cheek is rough beneath my palm.
Keenan’s face flashes through my mind and fades as quickly. He is far
away, distant, dedicated utterly to the Resistance. Elias is here, before me,
warm and beautiful and broken.
He’s a Martial. A Mask.
But not here. Not tonight, in this room. Here, now, he is just Elias and I
am just Laia, and we are, both of us, drowning.
“Laia . . . ”
There is a plea in his voice, in his eyes. What does it mean? Does he
want me to back away? Does he want me to come closer?
I lift myself up on my toes, and his face comes down at the same time.
His lips are soft, softer than I could have imagined, but there is a hard
desperation behind them, a need. The kiss speaks. It begs. Let me forget,
forget, forget.
His cloak falls away from me, and my body is against his. He pulls me
to his chest, his hands running down my back, clasping my thigh, drawing
me closer, closer. I arch into him, reveling in his strength, his fire, the
alchemy between us twisting and burning and melding until it feels like
gold.
Then he breaks away, his han ds held out before him.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to. I’m a Mask and
you’re a slave, and I shouldn’t have — ”
“It’s all right.” My lips burn. “I’m the one who . . . started it.”
We stare at each other, and he looks so confused, so angry at himself that
I smile, sadness and embarrassment and desire coursing through me. He
picks his cloak up from the floor and holds it out to me, averting his eyes.
“Will you sit?” I ask tentatively, covering myself once more. “Tomorrow
I’ll be a slave a nd you’ll be a Mask, and we can hate each other like we’re
supposed to. But for now . . . ”
He eases down next to me, ke eping a careful distance between us. That
alchemy lures, beckons, burns. But his jaw is clenched, and his hands are
fisted together like each is a lifeline for the other. Reluctantly, I put a few
more inches between us.
“Tell me more,” I say. “What was it like as a Fiver? Were you happy to
leave Blackcliff?”
He relaxes a little, and I coax the memories from him like Pop used to
with fright ened patients. The night passes, filled with his stories of
Blackcliff and the Tribes, and my tales of patients and the Quarter. We do
not speak again of the raid or the Trials. We do not speak of the kiss or the
sparks still dancing between us.
Before I know it, the sky begins to lighten.
“Dawn,” he says. “Time to start hating each other again.”
He puts on his mask, his face going still as it digs into him, and then
pulls me to my feet. I stare at our hands, at my slim fingers entwined in his
larger ones, at the veined muscles of his forearm, the slight bones of my
wrist, the warmth of our skin meeting. It seems somehow significant, my
hand in his. I look up into his face, surprised at how near he is to me, at the
fire in his gaze, the life, and my pulse quickens. But then he drops my hand
and st eps away.
I offer him back his cloak, along with the dagger, but he shakes his head.
“Ke ep them. You still have to walk back through the school and — ” His
eyes drop to my ripped dress, my bare skin, and he jerks them up again.
“Ke ep the knife too. A Scholar girl should always carry a weapon, no
matter what the rules say.” He pulls a leather strap from his bureau. “Thigh
sheath. It’ll ke ep the blade safe and out of sight.”
I regard him anew, at last seeing him for what he is. “If you could just be
who you are in here” — I place my palm over his heart — “instead of who
they made you, then you would be a great Emperor.” I feel his pulse thud
against my fingers. “But they won’t let you, will they? They won’t let you
have compassion or kindness. They won’t let you ke ep your soul.”
“My soul’s gone.” He looks away. “I killed it dead on that battlefield
yesterday.”
I think of Spiro Teluman then. Of what he said to me the last time I saw
him. “There are two kinds of guilt,” I say softly. “The kind that’s a burden
and the kind that gives you purpose. Let your guilt be your fuel. Let it
remind you of who you want to be. Draw a line in your mind. Never cross it
again. You have a soul. It’s damaged, but it’s there. Don’t let them take it
from you, Elias.”
His eyes meet mine when I say his name, and I reach up a hand to touch
his mask. It is smooth and warm, like rock polished by water and then left
to heat in the sun.
I let my arm fall. Then I leave his room and walk to the doors of the
barracks and out into the rising sun.