Книга - A Torch Against the Night

A Torch Against the Night
Sabaa Tahir


‘Tahir spins a captivating, heart-pounding fantasy’ Us WeeklyThe sequel to the explosive New York Times bestselling debut AN EMBER IN THE ASHES, that’s captivated readers worldwide.A TORCH AGAINST THE NIGHT takes readers into the heart of the Empire as Laia and Elias fight their way north to liberate Laia’s brother from the horrors of Kauf Prison. Hunted by Empire soldiers, manipulated by the Commandant, and haunted by their pasts, Laia and Elias must outfox their enemies and confront the treacherousness of their own hearts.In the city of Serra, Helene Aquilla finds herself bound to the will of the Empire’s twisted new leader, Marcus. When her loyalty is questioned, Helene finds herself taking on a mission to prove herself—a mission that might destroy her, instead.






















Copyright (#uaaf1c7e8-d96f-57af-a4b5-6688cadf8500)


HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk (http://www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2016

Copyright © Sabaa Tahir 2016

Maps by Jonathan Roberts

Published by arrangement with Razorbill, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC

Sabaa Tahir asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008160340

Ebook Edition © June 2015 ISBN: 9780008160364

Version: 2018-06-14




Dedication (#uaaf1c7e8-d96f-57af-a4b5-6688cadf8500)


For my mother, my father, Mer, and Boon All that I am, I owe to you


Contents

Cover (#ueb5faa02-1034-53b3-b1de-8bc15b6b2fd4)

Title Page (#u3828c251-cb24-5c6a-b12c-1b6f6e83e38c)

Copyright

Dedication

Maps

Part One: Flight

Chapter One: Laia

Chapter Two: Elias

Chapter Three: Laia

Chapter Four: Elias

Chapter Five: Helene

Chapter Six: Laia

Chapter Seven: Elias

Chapter Eight: Helene

Chapter Nine: Laia

Chapter Ten: Elias

Chapter Eleven: Helene

Chapter Twelve: Laia

Chapter Thirteen: Elias

Chapter Fourteen: Helene

Chapter Fifteen: Laia

Chapter Sixteen: Elias

Chapter Seventeen: Laia

Chapter Eighteen: Elias

Chapter Nineteen: Helene

Chapter Twenty: Laia

Chapter Twenty-One: Elias

Chapter Twenty-Two: Laia

Chapter Twenty-Three: Elias

Chapter Twenty-Four: Helene

Part Two: North

Chapter Twenty-Five: Elias

Chapter Twenty-Six: Helene

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Laia

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Helene

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Laia

Chapter Thirty: Elias

Chapter Thirty-One: Helene

Chapter Thirty-Two: Laia

Part Three: The Dark Prison

Chapter Thirty-Three: Elias

Chapter Thirty-Four: Helene

Chapter Thirty-Five: Laia

Chapter Thirty-Six: Elias

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Laia

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Elias

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Helene

Chapter Forty: Laia

Chapter Forty-One: Elias

Chapter Forty-Two: Helene

Chapter Forty-Three: Laia

Chapter Forty-Four: Elias

Chapter Forty-Five: Laia

Part Four: Unmade

Chapter Forty-Six: Elias

Chapter Forty-Seven: Helene

Chapter Forty-Eight: Laia

Chapter Forty-Nine: Elias

Chapter Fifty: Helene

Chapter Fifty-One: Laia

Chapter Fifty-Two: Elias

Chapter Fifty-Three: Helene

Chapter Fifty-Four: Laia

Chapter Fifty-Five: Elias

Chapter Fifty-Six: Helene

Chapter Fifty-Seven: Laia

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Sabaa Tahir

About the Publisher (#u9ec204d8-12c8-5b78-bfc4-87b22fd73899)




Maps (#uaaf1c7e8-d96f-57af-a4b5-6688cadf8500)



























PART ONE (#uaaf1c7e8-d96f-57af-a4b5-6688cadf8500)




CHAPTER ONE (#uaaf1c7e8-d96f-57af-a4b5-6688cadf8500)

Laia (#uaaf1c7e8-d96f-57af-a4b5-6688cadf8500)


How did they find us so fast?

Behind me, the catacombs echo with angry shouts and the screech of metal. My eyes dart to the grinning skulls lining the walls. I think I hear the voices of the dead.

Be swift, be fleet, they seem to hiss. Unless you wish to join our ranks.

“Faster, Laia,” my guide says. His armor flashes as he hastens ahead of me through the catacombs. “We’ll lose them if we’re quick. I know an escape tunnel that leads out of the city. Once we’re there, we’re safe.”

We hear a scrape behind us, and my guide’s pale eyes flick past my shoulder. His hand is a gold-brown blur as it flies to the hilt of a scim slung across his back.

A simple movement full of menace. A reminder that he is not just my guide. He is Elias Veturius, heir to one of the Empire’s finest families. He is a former Mask—an elite soldier of the Martial Empire. And he is my ally—the only person who can help me save my brother, Darin, from a notorious Martial prison.

In one step, Elias is beside me. In another, he is in front, moving with unnatural grace for someone so big. Together, we peer down the tunnel we just passed through. My pulse thuds in my ears. Any elation I felt at destroying Blackcliff Academy or rescuing Elias from execution vanishes. The Empire hunts us. If it catches us, we die.

Sweat soaks through my shirt, but despite the rank heat of the tunnels, a chill runs across my skin and the hairs on the back of my neck rise. I think I hear a growl, like that of some sly, hungry creature.

Hurry, my instincts scream at me. Get out of here.

“Elias,” I whisper, but he brushes a finger against my lips—shh—and tugs a knife free from the half dozen strapped across his chest.

I pull a dagger from my belt and try to hear beyond the clicking of tunnel tarantulas and my own breathing. The prickling sense of being watched fades—replaced by something worse: the smell of pitch and flame; the rise and fall of voices drawing near.

Empire soldiers.

Elias touches my shoulder and points to his feet, then mine. Step where I step. So carefully that I fear to breathe, I mimic him as he turns and heads swiftly away from the voices.

We reach a fork in the tunnel and veer right. Elias nods to a deep, shoulder-high hole in the wall, hollow but for a stone coffin turned on its side.

“In,” he whispers, “all the way to the back.”

I slide into the crypt, suppressing a shudder at the loud crrrk of a resident tarantula. A scim that Darin forged hangs across my back, and its hilt clanks loudly against the stone. Stop fidgeting, Laia—no matter what’s crawling around in here.

Elias ducks into the crypt after me, his height forcing him into a half crouch. In the tight space, our arms brush, and he draws a sharp breath. But when I look up, his face is angled toward the tunnel.

Even in the dim light, the gray of his eyes and the sharp lines of his jaw are striking. I feel a jolt low in my stomach—I’m not used to his face. Only an hour ago, as we escaped the destruction I wrought at Blackcliff, his features were hidden by a silver mask.

He tilts his head, listening as the soldiers close in. They walk quickly, their voices echoing off the walls of the catacombs like the clipped calls of raptor birds.

“—probably went south. If he had half a brain, anyway.”

“If he had half a brain,” a second soldier says, “he’d have passed the Fourth Trial, and we wouldn’t be stuck with Plebeian scum as Emperor.”

The soldiers enter our tunnel, and one pokes his lantern into the crypt across from ours. “Bleeding hells.” He recoils quickly at the sight of whatever lurks within.

Our crypt is next. My belly twists, my hand shakes on my dagger.

Beside me, Elias releases another blade from its sheath. His shoulders are relaxed, his hands loose around the knives. But when I catch sight of his face—brows furrowed, jaw tight—my heart clenches. He meets my gaze, and for a breath, I see his anguish. He does not wish to deliver death to these men.

But if they see us, they will alert the other guards down here, and we’ll be neck-deep in Empire soldiers. I squeeze Elias’s forearm. He slides his hood over his head and pulls a black kerchief up to hide his face.

The soldier approaches, his footsteps heavy. I can smell him—sweat and iron and dirt. Elias’s grip on his knives tightens. His body is coiled like a wildcat waiting to strike. I clamp a hand onto my armlet—a gift from my mother. Beneath my fingers, the armlet’s familiar pattern is a balm.

The soldier reaches the edge of the crypt. He lifts his lantern—

Suddenly, further down the tunnel, a thud echoes. The soldiers spin, draw steel, and hurry to investigate. In seconds, the light from their lantern fades, the sound of their footsteps fainter and fainter.

Elias releases a pent breath. “Come on,” he says. “If that patrol was sweeping the area, there will be more. We need to get to the escape passage.”

We emerge from the crypt, and a tremor rumbles through the tunnels, shaking dust loose and sending bones and skulls clattering to the ground. I stumble, and Elias grabs my shoulder, backing me into the wall and flattening himself beside me. The crypt remains intact, but the ceiling of the tunnel cracks ominously.

“What in the skies was that?”

“It felt like a land tremor.” Elias takes a step away from the wall and eyes the ceiling. “Except Serra doesn’t have land tremors.”

We cut through the catacombs with new urgency. With every step I expect to hear another patrol, to see torches in the distance.

When Elias stops, it is so sudden that I barrel into his broad back. We’ve entered a circular burial chamber with a low, domed ceiling. Two tunnels branch out ahead of us. Torches flicker in one, almost too far away to make out. Crypts pock the chamber walls, each guarded by a stone statue of an armored man. Beneath their helmets, skulls glare out at us. I shiver, stepping closer to Elias.

But he does not look at the crypts, or the tunnels, or the distant torches.

He stares at the little girl in the center of the chamber.

She wears tattered clothing and her hand is pressed to a leaking wound in her side. Her fine features mark her as a Scholar, but when I try to see her eyes, she drops her head, dark hair falling into her face. Poor thing. Tears mark a path down her dirt-streaked cheeks.

“Ten hells, it’s getting crowded down here,” Elias mutters. He takes a step toward the girl, hands out, as if dealing with a scared animal. “You shouldn’t be here, love.” His voice is gentle. “Are you alone?”

She lets out a tiny sob. “Help me,” she whispers.

“Let me see that cut. I can bandage it.” Elias drops to one knee so he’s at her level, the way my grandfather did with his youngest patients. She shies away from him and looks toward me.

I step forward, my instincts urging caution. The girl watches. “Can you tell me your name, little one?” I ask.

“Help me,” she repeats. Something about the way she avoids my eyes makes my skin prickle. But then, she’s been ill-treated—likely by the Empire—and now she faces a Martial who is armed to the roots of his hair. She must be terrified.

The girl inches back, and I glance at the torch-lit tunnel. Torches mean we’re in Empire territory. It’s only a matter of time before soldiers happen by.

“Elias.” I nod at the torches. “We do not have time. The soldiers—”

“We can’t just leave her.” His guilt is plain as day. The deaths of his friends days ago in the Third Trial weigh on him; he doesn’t wish to cause another. And we will, if we leave the girl here alone to die of her wounds.

“Do you have family in the city?” Elias asks her. “Do you need—”

“Silver.” She tilts her head. “I need silver.”

Elias’s eyebrows shoot up. I cannot blame him. It is not what I expected either.

“Silver?” I say. “We don’t—”

“Silver.” She shuffles sideways like a crab. I think I see the too-quick flash of an eye through her limp hair. Strange. “Coins. A weapon. Jewelry.”

She glances at my neck, my ears, my wrists. With that look, she gives herself away.

I stare at the tar-black orbs where her eyes should be, and scrabble for my dagger. But Elias is already in front of me, scims glimmering in his hands.

“Back away,” he snarls at the girl, every inch a Mask.

“Help me.” The girl lets her hair fall into her face once more and puts her hands behind her back, a twisted caricature of a wheedling child. “Help.”

At my clear disgust, her lips curl in a sneer that looks obscene on her otherwise sweet face. She growls—the guttural sound I heard earlier. This is what I sensed watching us. This is the presence I felt in the tunnels.

“I know you have silver.” A rabid hunger underlies the creature’s little-girl voice. “Give it to me. I need it.”

“Get away from us,” Elias says. “Before I take off your head.”

The girl—or whatever it is—ignores Elias and fixes her eyes on me. “You don’t need it, little human. I’ll give you something in return. Something wonderful.”

“What are you?” I whisper.

She whips her arms out, her hands gleaming with a strange viridescence. Elias flies toward her, but she evades him and fastens her fingers on my wrist. I scream, and my arm glows for less than a second before she is flung backward, howling, clutching her hand as if it is on fire. Elias pulls me to my feet from the dirt where I am sprawled, pitching a dagger at the girl at the same time. She dodges it, still shrieking.

“Tricky girl!” She darts away as Elias lunges for her again, her eyes only for me. “Sly one! You ask what am I, but what are you?”

Elias swings at her, sliding one of his scims across her neck. He’s not fast enough.

“Murderer!” She whirls on him. “Killer! Death himself! Reaper walking! If your sins were blood, child, you would drown in a river of your own making.”

Elias reels back, shock etched into his eyes. Light flickers in the tunnel. Three torches bob swiftly toward us.

“Soldiers coming.” The creature whirls to face me. “I’ll kill them for you, honey-eyed girl. Lay their throats open. I already led away the others following you, back in the tunnel. I’ll do it again. If you give me your silver. He wants it. He’ll reward us if we bring it to him.”

Who in the skies is he? I don’t ask, only bring up my dagger in response.

“Stupid human!” The girl clenches her fists. “He’ll get it from you. He’ll find a way.” She turns toward the tunnel. “Elias Veturius!” I flinch. Her scream is so loud they probably heard her in Antium. “Elias Vetu—”

Her words die as Elias’s scim rips through her heart. “Efrit efrit of the cave,” he says. Her body slides off the weapon and lands with a solid thump, like a boulder falling. “Likes the dark but fears the blade.”

“Old rhyme.” He sheathes his scim. “Never realized how handy it was until recently.”

Elias grabs my hand, and we bolt into the unlit tunnel. Maybe through some miracle, the soldiers didn’t hear the girl. Maybe they didn’t see us. Maybe, maybe—

No such luck. I hear a shout and the thunder of bootsteps behind us.




CHAPTER TWO (#uaaf1c7e8-d96f-57af-a4b5-6688cadf8500)

Elias (#uaaf1c7e8-d96f-57af-a4b5-6688cadf8500)


Three auxes and four legionnaires, fifteen yards behind us. As I race ahead, I whip my head around to gauge their progress. Make that six auxes, five legionnaires, and twelve yards.

More of the Empire’s soldiers will pour into the catacombs with every second that passes. By now, a runner has carried the message to neighboring patrols, and the drums will spread the alert throughout Serra: Elias Veturius spotted in the tunnels. All squads respond. The soldiers don’t need to be sure of my identity; they will hunt us down regardless.

I take a sharp left down a side tunnel, pulling Laia with me, my mind careening from thought to thought. Shake them off quickly, while you still can. Otherwise …

No, the Mask within hisses. Stop and kill them. Only eleven of them. Easy. Could do it with your eyes closed.

I should have killed the efrit in the burial chamber straightaway. Helene would scoff if she knew I’d tried to help the creature instead of recognizing it for what it was.

Helene. I’d bet my blades she’s in an interrogation room by now. Marcus—or Emperor Marcus, as he’s now called—ordered her to execute me. She failed. Worse, she was my closest confidante for fourteen years. Neither of those sins will come without cost—not now that Marcus possesses absolute power.

She will suffer at his hands. Because of me. I hear the efrit again. Reaper walking!

Memories of the Third Trial jolt through my head. Tristas dying upon Dex’s sword. Demetrius falling. Leander falling.

A shout from ahead returns me to myself. The field of battle is my temple. My grandfather’s old mantra comes back to me when I need it most. The swordpoint is my priest. The dance of death is my prayer. The killing blow is my release.

Beside me, Laia pants, her body dragging. She is slowing me down. You could leave her, an insidious voice whispers. You’d move faster on your own. I crush the voice. Besides the obvious fact that I promised to help her in exchange for my freedom, I know that she’ll do anything to get to Kauf Prison—to her brother—including trying to make her way there alone.

In which case, she’d die.

“Faster, Laia,” I say. “They’re too close.” She surges forward. Walls of skulls, bones, crypts, and spiderwebs fade away on either side of us. We’re far south of where we should be. We’ve long since passed the escape tunnel in which I hid weeks’ worth of supplies.

The catacombs rumble and shake, knocking both of us down. The stench of fire and death filters through a sewer grate directly above us. Moments later, an explosion rips through the air. I don’t bother considering what it could be. All that matters is that the soldiers behind us have slowed, as wary of the unstable tunnels as we are. I use the opportunity to put another few dozen yards between us. I cut right into a side tunnel and then retreat into the deep shadow of a half-crumbled alcove.

“Will they find us, do you think?” Laia whispers.

“Hopefully no—”

Light flares from the direction we were headed, and I hear the staccato clomp of boots. Two soldiers turn into the tunnel, their torches illuminating us clearly. They halt for a second, bewildered, perhaps, by the presence of Laia, by my lack of a mask. Then they spot my armor and scims, and one of them releases a piercing whistle that will draw in every soldier who can hear it.

My body takes over. Before either of the soldiers can unsheathe their swords, I’ve impaled throwing knives into the soft flesh of their throats. They drop silently, their torches sputtering on the damp catacomb floor.

Laia emerges from the alcove, her hand over her mouth. “E-Elias—”

I lunge back to the alcove, pulling her with me and loosening my scims in their scabbards. I have four throwing knives left. Not enough.

“I’ll take out as many as I can,” I say. “Stay out of the way. No matter how bad it looks, don’t interfere, don’t try to help.”

The last word leaves my lips as the soldiers who were following us come into view from the tunnel to our left. Five yards away. Four. In my mind, the knives have already flown, already found their marks. I burst from the alcove and let them loose. The first four legionnaires go down quietly, one after the other, as easy as scything grain. The fifth drops with a sweep of my scim. Warm blood sprays, and I feel my bile rising. Don’t think. Don’t dwell. Just clear the way.

Six auxes appear behind the first five. One jumps onto my back, and I dispatch him with an elbow to his face. A moment later, another soldier rushes me. When he gets a knee to the teeth, he howls and claws at his broken nose and bloody mouth. Spin, kick, sidestep, strike.

Behind me, Laia screams. An aux hauls her out of the alcove by her neck and holds a knife to her throat. His leer turns into a howl. Laia’s shoved a dagger into his side. She yanks it out, and he staggers away.

I turn on the last three soldiers. They flee.

In seconds, I collect my knives. Laia’s whole body shakes as she takes in the carnage around us: Seven dead. Three injured, moaning and trying to rise.

When she looks at me, her eyes grow round in shock at my bloodied scims and armor. Shame floods me, so potent that I wish I could sink into the ground. She sees me now, down to the wretched truth at my core. Murderer! Death himself!

“Laia—” I begin, but a low groan rolls down the tunnel, and the ground trembles. Through the sewer grates I hear screams, shouts, and the deafening reverberation of an enormous explosion.

“What in the hells—”

“It’s the Scholar Resistance,” Laia shouts over the noise. “They’re revolting!”

I don’t get to ask how she happens to know this fascinating tidbit, because at that moment, telltale silver flashes from the tunnel to our left.

“Skies, Elias!” Laia’s voice is choked, her eyes wide. One of the Masks approaching is enormous, older than me by a dozen years and unfamiliar. The other is a small, almost diminutive figure. The calmness of her masked face belies the chilling rage that emanates from her.

My mother. The Commandant.

Boots thunder from our right as whistles draw even more soldiers. Trapped.

The tunnel groans again.

“Get behind me,” I snap at Laia. She doesn’t hear. “Laia, damn it, get—ooof—”

Laia dives straight into my stomach, a graceless, desperate leap so unexpected that I topple back into one of the wall crypts. I punch straight through the thick cobwebbing over the crypt and land on my back atop a stone coffin. Laia’s half on top of me, half wedged between the coffin and the crypt wall.

The combination of cobwebs, crypt, and warm girl throws me, and I’m barely even capable of stuttering, “Are you cra—”

BOOM. The ceiling of the tunnel we were just standing in collapses all at once, a thunderous rumble intensified by the roar of explosions from the city. I flip Laia under me, my arms on either side of her head to shield her from the blast. But it is the crypt that saves us. We cough from the wave of dust unleashed by the explosions, and I’m keenly aware that if not for Laia’s quick thinking, we’d both be dead.

The rumbling stops, and sunlight cuts through the dust. Screams echo from the city. Carefully, I lift myself away from Laia and turn toward the crypt entrance, which is half-blocked by chunks of rock. I peer out into what’s left of the tunnel. Which isn’t much. The cave-in is complete—not a Mask to be seen.

I scramble out of the crypt, half dragging, half carrying a still-coughing Laia over the debris. Dust and blood—not hers, I affirm—streak her face, and she paws at her canteen. I put it to her lips. After a few swallows, she pulls herself standing.

“I can—I can walk.”

Rocks obstruct the tunnel to our left, but a mailed hand shoves them away. The Commandant’s gray eyes and blonde hair flash through the dust.

“Come on.” I pull up my collar to hide the Blackcliff diamond tattoo on the back of my neck. We clamber out of the ruined catacombs and into the cacophonous streets of Serra.

Ten bleeding hells.

No one appears to have noticed the collapse of the street into the crypts—everyone is too busy staring at a column of fire rising into the hot blue sky: the governor’s mansion, lit up like a Barbarian funeral pyre. Around its blackening gates and in the immense square in front of it, dozens of Martial soldiers are locked in a pitched battle with hundreds of rebels dressed in black—Scholar Resistance fighters.

“This way!” I angle away from the governor’s mansion, knocking down two approaching rebel fighters as I go, and aim for the next street over. But fire rages there, spreading rapidly, and bodies litter the ground. I grab Laia’s hand and race toward another side street, only to find that it is as brutalized as the first.

Above the clang of weapons, the screams, and the roar of flames, Serra’s drum towers beat frenziedly, demanding backup troops in the Illustrian Quarter, the Foreign Quarter, the Weapons Quarter. Another tower reports my location near the governor’s mansion, ordering all available troops to join the hunt.

Just past the mansion, a pale blonde head emerges from the debris of the collapsed tunnel. Damn it. We stand near the middle of the square, beside an ash-coated fountain of a rearing horse. I back Laia against it and duck, desperately searching for an escape route before the Commandant or one of the Martials spots us. But it seems as if every building and every street adjoining the square is aflame.

Look harder! Any second now, the Commandant will dive into the fray in the square, using her terrifying skill to tear a path through the battle so she can find us.

I look back at her as she shakes the dust off her armor, unmoved by the chaos. Her serenity raises the hair on the back of my neck. Her school is destroyed, her son and foe escaped, the city an absolute disaster. And yet she is remarkably calm about it all.

“There!” Laia grabs my arm and points to an alley hidden behind an overturned vendor’s cart. We crouch down and race toward it, and I thank the skies for the tumult that keeps Scholars and Martials alike from noticing us.

In minutes, we reach the alley, and as we’re about to plunge into it, I chance a look back—once, just to make sure she hasn’t seen us.

I search the chaos—through a knot of Resistance fighters descending on a pair of legionnaires, past a Mask fighting off ten rebels at once, to the rubble of the tunnel, where my mother stands. An old Scholar slave trying to escape the havoc makes the mistake of crossing her path. She plunges her scim into his heart with a casual brutality. When she yanks the blade out, she doesn’t look at the slave. Instead, she stares at me. As if we are connected, as if she knows my every thought, her gaze slices across the square.

She smiles.




CHAPTER THREE (#uaaf1c7e8-d96f-57af-a4b5-6688cadf8500)

Laia (#uaaf1c7e8-d96f-57af-a4b5-6688cadf8500)


The Commandant’s smile is a bloated, pale worm. Though I see her for only a moment before Elias urges me away from the bloodshed of the square, I find myself unable to speak.

I skid, my boots still coated in blood from the butchery in the tunnels. At the thought of Elias’s face afterward—the loathing in his eyes—I shudder. I wanted to tell him that he did what he had to do to save us. But I couldn’t get the words out. It was all I could do not to retch.

Sounds of suffering rend the air—Martial and Scholar, adult and child, mingled into one cacophonous scream. I hardly hear it, focused as I am on avoiding the broken glass and burning buildings collapsing into the streets. I look over my shoulder a dozen times, expecting to see the Commandant on our heels. Suddenly, I feel like the girl I was a month ago. The girl who abandoned her brother to Empire imprisonment, the girl who whimpered and sobbed after being whipped. The girl with no courage.

When the fear takes over, use the only thing more powerful, more indestructible, to fight it: your spirit. Your heart. I hear the words spoken to me yesterday by the blacksmith Spiro Teluman, my brother’s friend and mentor.

I try to transform my fear into fuel. The Commandant is not infallible. She might not have even seen me—her attention was so fixed on her son. I escaped her once. I’ll escape her again.

Adrenaline surges through me, but as we turn from one street to the next, I stumble over a small pyramid of masonry and sprawl onto the soot-blackened cobblestones.

Elias lifts me back to my feet as easily as if I’m made of feathers. He gazes ahead, behind, to the windows and rooftops nearby, as if he too expects his mother to appear at any second.

“We have to keep going.” I yank at his hand. “We have to get out of the city.”

“I know.” Elias angles us into a dusty, dead orchard bound by a wall. “But we can’t do that if we’re exhausted. It won’t hurt to rest for a minute.”

He sits, and I kneel beside him unwillingly. The air of Serra feels strange and tainted, the tang of scorched wood mingling with something darker—blood, burning bodies, and unsheathed steel.

“How are we going to get to Kauf, Elias?” This is the question that’s plagued me since the moment we slipped into the tunnels from his barracks at Blackcliff. My brother allowed himself to be taken by Martial soldiers so that I’d have a chance to escape. I will not let him die for his sacrifice—he’s the only family I have left in this blasted Empire. If I don’t save him, no one will. “Will we hide out in the country? What’s the plan?”

Elias regards me steadily, his gray eyes opaque.

“The escape tunnel would have put us west of the city,” he says. “We’d have taken the mountain passes north, robbed a Tribal caravan, and posed as traders. The Martials wouldn’t have been looking for both of us—and they wouldn’t have been looking north. But now …” He shrugs.

“What’s that supposed to mean? Do you even have a plan?”

“I do. We get out of the city. We escape the Commandant. That’s the only plan that matters.”

“What about after?”

“One thing at a time, Laia. This is my mother we’re dealing with.”

“I’m not afraid of her,” I say, lest he think that I’m the same mouse of a girl he met at Blackcliff weeks ago. “Not anymore.”

“You should be,” Elias says dryly.

The drums boom out, a barrage of bone-shaking sound. My head pounds with their echo.

Elias cocks his head. “They’re relaying our descriptions,” he says. “Elias Veturius: gray eyes, six foot four, fifteen stone, black hair. Last seen in tunnels south of Blackcliff. Armed and dangerous. Traveling with Scholar female: gold eyes, five foot six, nine stone, black hair—” He stops. “You get the point. They’re hunting us, Laia. She is hunting us. We don’t have a way out of the city. Fear is the wise course right now—it will keep us alive.”

“The walls—”

“Heavily guarded because of the Scholar revolt,” Elias says. “Worse now, no doubt. She’ll have sent messages across the city that we haven’t yet cleared the walls. The gates will be doubly fortified.”

“Could we—you—fight our way through? Maybe at one of the smaller gates?”

“We could,” Elias says. “But it would lead to a lot of killing.”

I understand why he looks away, though the hard, cold part of me born in Blackcliff wonders what difference a few more dead Martials make. Especially in the face of how many he has already killed, and especially when I think of what they’re going to do to the Scholars when the rebel revolution is inevitably crushed.

But the better part of me recoils at such callousness. “The tunnels then?” I say. “The soldiers won’t expect it.”

“We don’t know which ones have collapsed, and there’s no point going down there if we’ll just hit a dead end. The docks, maybe. We could swim the river—”

“I can’t swim.”

“Remind me to remedy that when we have a few days.” He shakes his head—we’re running out of options. “We could lie low until the revolution dies down. Then slip into the tunnels after the explosions have stopped. I know a safe house.”

“No,” I say quickly. “The Empire shipped Darin to Kauf three weeks ago. And those prisoner frigates are fast, are they not?”

Elias nods. “They’d reach Antium in less than a fortnight. From there, it’s a ten-day journey overland to Kauf if they don’t run into bad weather. He might already have reached the prison.”

“How long will it take us to get there?”

“We have to go overland and avoid detection,” Elias says. “Three months, if we’re swift. But only if we make it to the Nevennes Range before the winter snows. If we don’t, we won’t get through until spring.”

“Then we cannot delay,” I say. “Not even by a day.”

I look over my shoulder again, trying to suppress a growing sense of dread. “She didn’t follow us.”

“Not obviously,” Elias says. “She’s too damned clever for that.”

He ponders the dead trees around us, turning a blade over and over in his hand.

“There’s an abandoned storage building near the river, up against the city walls,” he finally says. “Grandfather owns the building—showed it to me years ago. A door in the back courtyard leads out of the city. But I haven’t been back in a while. It might not be there anymore.”

“Does the Commandant know of it?”

“Grandfather would never have told her.”

I think of Izzi, my fellow slave at Blackcliff, warning me about the Commandant when I first arrived at the school. She knows things, Izzi had said. Things she shouldn’t.

But we have to get out of the city, and I have no better plan to offer.

We set out, passing swiftly through neighborhoods untouched by the revolution, sneaking painstakingly through those areas where fighting and fire rage. Hours pass, and the afternoon fades to evening. Elias is a calm presence beside me, seemingly unmoved by the sight of so much destruction.

Strange to think that a month ago, my grandparents were alive, my brother was free, and I’d never heard the name Veturius.

Everything that has happened since then is like a nightmare. Nan and Pop murdered. Darin dragged away by soldiers, screaming at me to run.

And the Scholar Resistance offering to help me save my brother, only to betray me.

Another face flashes in my mind, dark-eyed, handsome, and grim—always so grim. It made his smiles more precious. Keenan, the fire-haired rebel who defied the Resistance to secretly give me a way out of Serra. A way out that I, in turn, gave to Izzi.

I hope he’s not angry. I hope he’ll understand why I could not accept his help.

“Laia,” Elias says as we reach the eastern edge of the city. “We’re close.”

We emerge from the warren of Serra’s streets near a Mercator depot. The lonely spire of a brick kiln casts the warehouses and storage yards into deep shadow. During the day, this place must bustle with wagons, merchants, and stevedores. But at this time of night, it’s abandoned. An evening chill hints at the changing season, and a steady wind blows from the north. Nothing moves.

“There.” Elias points to a structure built into the walls of Serra, similar to those on either side but for a weed-choked courtyard visible behind it. “That’s the place.”

He observes the depot for long minutes. “The Commandant wouldn’t be able to hide a dozen Masks in there,” he says. “But I doubt she’d come without them. She wouldn’t want to risk me escaping.”

“Are you sure she wouldn’t come alone?” The wind blows harder, and I cross my arms and shiver. The Commandant alone is terrifying enough. I’m not sure she needs soldiers to back her up.

“Not positive,” he admits. “Wait here. I’ll make sure it’s clear.”

“I think I should come.” I am immediately nervous. “If something happens—”

“Then you’ll survive, even if I don’t.”

“What? No!”

“If it’s safe for you to join me, I’ll whistle one note. If there are soldiers, two notes. If the Commandant is waiting, three notes repeated twice.”

“And if it is her? What then?”

“Then sit tight. If I survive, I’ll come back for you,” Elias says. “If not, you’ll need to get out of here.”

“Elias, you idiot, I need you if I want to get Darin—”

He puts a finger on my lips, drawing my gaze to his.

Ahead of us, the depot is silent. Behind, the city burns. I remember the last time I looked at him like this—just before we kissed. From the taut breath that escapes him, I think he remembers too.

“There’s hope in life,” he says. “A brave girl once told me that. If something happens to me, don’t fear. You’ll find a way.”

Before my doubts creep up again, he drops his hand and flits across the depot as lightly as the dust clouds rising from the brick kiln.

I follow his movements, painfully aware of the flimsiness of this plan. Everything that has happened so far is the result of willpower or sheer, dumb luck. I have no idea how to get safely north, beyond trusting Elias to guide me. I have no sense of what it will take to break into Kauf, beyond hoping that Elias will know what to do. All I have is a voice inside telling me I must save my brother, and Elias’s promise that he will help me do so. The rest is just wishes and hope, the most fragile of things.

Not enough. It’s not enough. The wind whips my hair about, colder than it should be this late in the summer. Elias disappears into the courtyard of the storage building. My nerves crackle, and though I inhale deeply, I feel as if I cannot get enough air. Come on. Come on. The wait for his signal is excruciating.

Then I hear it. So quick that I think for a second that I’m mistaken. I hope that I am. But the sound comes again.

Three quick notes. Sharp, sudden, and filled with warning.

The Commandant has found us.




CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_0c31c0f8-c890-5ced-bcd6-f50cc445ed32)

Elias (#ulink_0c31c0f8-c890-5ced-bcd6-f50cc445ed32)


My mother hides her anger with practiced cunning. She wraps it in calm and buries it deep. She tramples the soil on top, puts a gravestone on it, and pretends it’s dead.

But I see it in her eyes. Smoldering at the fringes, like the corners of paper blackening just before they burst into flame.

I hate that I share her blood. Would that I could scrub it from my body.

She stands against the dark, high wall of the city, another shadow in the night but for the silver glint of her mask. Beside her is our escape route, a wooden door so covered in dried vines that it’s impossible to see. Though she holds no weapons in her hands, her message is clear. If you wish to leave, you go through me.

Ten hells. I hope Laia heard my warning whistle. I hope she stays away.

“You took long enough,” the Commandant says. “I’ve waited hours.”

She launches herself at me, a long knife appearing so swiftly in her palm that it’s as if it popped out of her skin. I dodge her—barely—before lashing out at her with my scims. She dances away from my attack without bothering to cross blades, then flings a throwing star. It misses me by a hair. Before she reaches for another, I rush her, landing a kick to her chest that sends her sprawling.

As she scrambles up, I scan the area for soldiers. The city walls are empty, the rooftops around us bare. Not a sound comes from Grandfather’s storage building. Yet I cannot believe that she doesn’t have assassins lurking close by.

I hear shuffling to my right, and I lift my scims, expecting an arrow or spear. But it’s the Commandant’s horse, tethered to a tree. I recognize the Gens Veturia saddle—one of Grandfather’s stallions.

“Jumpy.” The Commandant raises a silver eyebrow as she scrambles back to her feet. “Don’t be. I came alone.”

“And why would you do that?”

The Commandant flings more throwing stars at me. As I duck, she darts around a tree and out of range of the knives I send hurtling back at her.

“If you think I need an army to destroy you, boy,” she says, “you are mistaken.”

She flicks opens the neck of her uniform, and I grimace at the sight of the living metal shirt beneath, impenetrable to edged weapons.

Hel’s shirt.

“I took it from Helene Aquilla.” The Commandant draws scims and engages my assault with graceful ease. “Before I gave her to a Black Guard for interrogation.”

“She doesn’t know anything.” I dodge my mother’s blows while she dances around me. Get her on the defensive. Then a quick blow to her head to knock her out. Steal the horse. Run.

A bizarre noise comes from the Commandant as our scims clash, their strange music filling the silence of the depot. After a moment, I realize it is a laugh.

I’ve never heard my mother laugh. Never.

“I knew you’d come here.” She flies at me with her scims, and I drop beneath her, feeling the wind of her blades centimeters from my face. “You’d have considered escaping through a city gate. Then the tunnels, the river, the docks. In the end, they were all too troublesome, especially with your little friend tagging along. You remembered this place and assumed I wouldn’t know about it. Stupid.

“She’s here, you know.” The Commandant hisses in irritation when I block her attack and nick her on the arm. “The Scholar slave. Lurking in the building. Watching.” The Commandant snorts and raises her voice. “Tenaciously clinging to life like the roach that you are. The Augurs saved you, I presume? I should have crushed you more thoroughly.”

Hide, Laia! I scream it in my head, but don’t call out, lest she find one of my mother’s stars embedded in her chest.

The storage building is at the Commandant’s back now. She pants lightly, and murder glimmers in her eyes. She wants this finished.

The Commandant feints with her knife, but when I block, she swipes my feet out from under me, and her blade comes down. I roll away, narrowly avoiding death by impalement, but two more throwing stars whistle toward me, and though I deflect one, the other cuts into my bicep.

Gold skin flashes in the gloom behind my mother. No, Laia. Stay away.

My mother drops her scims and draws two daggers, determined to finish me. She vaults toward me with full force, using darting strokes to wound me so that I won’t notice until I’m breathing my last.

I deflect her too slowly. A blade bites into my shoulder, and I rear back, but not fast enough to avoid a vicious kick to my face that drops me to my knees. Suddenly, there are two Commandants and four blades. You’re dead, Elias. Gasps echo in my head—my own breaths, shallow and pained. I hear her cold chuckle, like rocks breaking glass. She comes in for the kill. It is only Blackcliff’s training, her training, that allows me to instinctively lift my scim and block her. But my strength is gone. She knocks my scims from my hands, one by one.

From the corner of my eye, I spot Laia approaching, dagger in hand. Stop, damn it. She’ll kill you in a second.

But then I blink, and Laia is gone. I think I must have imagined her—that the kick has rattled my mind, but Laia appears again, sand flying from her hand and into my mother’s eyes. The Commandant jerks her head away, and I scramble for my scims in the dirt. I bring one up as my mother meets my eyes.

I expect her gauntleted wrist to come up and block the sword. I expect to die bathed in her gloating triumph.

Instead, her eyes flash with an emotion I cannot identify.

Then the scim hits her temple with a blow that will have her sleeping for at least an hour. She drops to the ground like a sack of flour.

Rage and confusion grip me as Laia and I stare down at her. What crime has my mother not committed? She has whipped, killed, tortured, enslaved. Now she lies before us, helpless. It would be so easy to kill her. The Mask within urges me to do it. Don’t falter now, fool. You’ll regret it.

The thought repulses me. Not my own mother, not like this, no matter what kind of monster she is.

I see a flash of movement. A figure skulks in the shadows of the depot. A soldier? Perhaps—but one too cowardly to come out and fight. Maybe he has seen us, maybe not. I won’t wait to find out.

“Laia.” I grab my mother by the legs and drag her into the house. She’s so light. “Get the horse.”

“Is—is she—” She looks down at the Commandant’s body, and I shake my head.

“The horse,” I say. “Untether him and take him to the door.” As she does so, I cut a length of rope from the coil in my pack and bind my mother, ankle and wrist. After she wakes it won’t hold her long. But combined with the blow to her head, it should give us time to get well away from Serra before she sends soldiers after us.

“We have to kill her, Elias.” Laia’s voice shakes. “She’ll come after us as soon as she wakes up. We’ll never make it to Kauf.”

“I’m not going to kill her. If you want to, then hurry. We’re out of time.”

I turn away from her to scan the gloom behind us again. Whoever was watching us is gone. We have to assume the worst: that it was a soldier and that he’ll sound the alarm.

No troops patrol the top of Serra’s ramparts. Finally, some luck. The vine-covered door opens after a few sturdy pulls, its hinges creaking loudly. In seconds, we are through the thick city wall. For a moment, my vision doubles. That damned blow to the head.

Laia and I creep through an immense apricot grove, the horse clopping beside us. She leads the beast, and I walk ahead of her, my scims out.

The Commandant chose to face me alone. Perhaps it was her pride—her desire to prove to herself and me that she could destroy me single-handedly. Whatever the reason, she’d station at least a few squads of soldiers out here to catch us if we broke through. If there’s one thing I know about my mother, it’s that she always has a backup plan.

I’m thankful for the inky night. If the moon were out, a skilled bowman could pick us off easily from the walls. As it is, we blend in with the trees. Still, I don’t trust the darkness. I wait for the crickets and night creatures to go quiet, for my skin to go cold, for the scrape of boot or creak of leather.

But as we make our way through the orchard, there is no sign of the Empire.

I slow our pace as we approach the tree line. A tributary of the Rei rushes nearby. The only points of light in the desert are two garrisons, miles from us and from each other. Drum messages echo between them, referring to troop movements within Serra. Distantly, horses’ hooves pound, and I tense—but the sound moves away from us.

“Something’s not right,” I tell Laia. “My mother should have put patrols out here.”

“Maybe she thought that she wouldn’t need them.” Laia’s whisper is uncertain. “That she would kill us.”

“No,” I say. “The Commandant always has a backup plan.” I wish, suddenly, that Helene were here. I can practically see her silver brows furrowed, her mind carefully, patiently untangling the facts.

Laia cocks her head at me. “The Commandant makes mistakes, Elias,” she says. “She underestimated both of us.”

True, and yet the niggling feeling in my gut won’t go away. Hells, my head aches. I feel like retching. Like sleeping. Think, Elias. What was that in my mother’s eyes just before I knocked her out? An emotion. Something she wouldn’t normally express.

After a moment, it hits me. Satisfaction. The Commandant was pleased.

But why would she be satisfied that I’d knocked her senseless after she tried to kill me?

“She didn’t make a mistake, Laia.” We step out into the open land beyond the orchard, and I survey the storm building over the Serran Mountain Range, a hundred miles away. “She let us go.”

What I don’t understand is why.




CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_813cc157-ce87-5365-af59-eaad9e47a6b6)

Helene (#ulink_813cc157-ce87-5365-af59-eaad9e47a6b6)


Loyal to the end.

The motto of Gens Aquilla, whispered into my ear by my father moments after I was born. I’ve spoken those words a thousand times. I’ve never questioned. Never doubted.

I think of those words now, as I sag between two legionnaires in the dungeons below Blackcliff. Loyal to the end.

Loyal to whom? My family? The Empire? My own heart?

Damn my heart to the hells. My heart is what landed me here in the first place.

“How did Elias Veturius escape?”

My interrogator cuts through my thoughts. His voice is as unfeeling as it was hours ago, when the Commandant threw me into this pit with him. She cornered me outside Blackcliff’s barracks, backed by a squad of Masks. I surrendered quietly; she knocked me unconscious anyway. And somehow between then and now, she stripped me of the silver shirt gifted to me by the Empire’s holy men, the Augurs. A shirt that made me near invincible after it sunk into my skin.

Perhaps I should be surprised that she managed to get it off me. But I’m not. Unlike the rest of the bleeding Empire, I’ve never made the mistake of underestimating the Commandant.

“How did he escape?” The interrogator is back at it. I suppress a sigh. I’ve answered the question a hundred times.

“I don’t know. One moment I was supposed to be chopping his head off, and the next, all I could hear was my ears ringing. When I looked on the execution dais, he was gone.”

The interrogator nods to the two legionnaires holding me. I gird myself.

Tell them nothing. No matter what. When Elias escaped, I promised I’d cover for him one last time. If the Empire learns that he got away through the tunnels, or that he’s traveling with a Scholar, or that he gave me his mask, the soldiers will track him more easily. He’ll never leave the city alive.

The legionnaires shove my head back into a bucket of foul water. I seal my lips, close my eyes, and keep my body loose, though every part of me wants to fight off my captors. I hold on to one image, the way the Commandant taught us during interrogation training.

Elias escaping. Smiling in some distant, sun-drenched land. Finding the freedom he’d sought for so long.

My lungs strain and burn. Elias escaping. Elias free. I drown, die. Elias escaping. Elias free.

The legionnaires yank my head from the bucket, and I draw a deep gulp of air.

The interrogator tips my face up with a firm hand, forcing me to look into green eyes that glimmer pale and unfeeling against the silver of his mask. I expect to see a hint of anger—frustration, at least, after hours of asking the same questions and hearing the same answers. But he is calm. Almost placid.

In my head, I call him the Northman for his brown skin, hollow cheeks, and angular eyes. He is a few years out of Blackcliff, young to be in the Black Guard, let alone as an interrogator.

“How did he escape?”

“I just told you—”

“Why were you in the Skulls’ barracks after the explosion?”

“Thought I saw him. But I lost him.” A version of the truth. I did lose him, in the end.

“How did he set the charges in the explosives?” The Northman releases my face and paces around me slowly, blending into the shadows but for the red patch on his fatigues—a screaming bird. It is the symbol of the Black Guard, the Empire’s internal enforcers. “When did you help him?”

“I didn’t help him.”

“He was your ally. Your friend.” The Northman pulls something from his pocket. It clinks, but I can’t see what it is. “The moment he was to be executed, a series of explosions nearly leveled the school. Do you expect anyone to believe that was a coincidence?”

At my silence, the Northman motions for the legionnaires to dunk me again. I breathe deep, locking everything else out of my mind but that image of him free.

And then, just as I go under, I think of her.

The Scholar girl. All that dark hair and those curves and her damned gold eyes. How he held her hand as they fled through the courtyard. The way she said his name and how, on her lips, it sounded like a song.

I swallow a mouthful of water. It tastes of death and piss. I kick out and fight the legionnaires holding me. Calm down. This is how interrogators destroy their prisoners. One crack, and he’ll drive a wedge into it and hammer until I split open.

Elias escaping. Elias free. I try to see it in my mind, but the image is replaced by the two of them together, entwined.

Maybe drowning wouldn’t be so horrible.

The legionnaires pull me up as my world goes dark. I spit out a mouthful of water. Shore up, Aquilla. This is when he breaks you.

“Who’s the girl?”

The question is so unexpected that for one damning moment, I’m unable to wipe the shock—or the recognition—from my face.

Half of me curses Elias for being stupid enough to be seen with the girl. The other half tries to quash the dread blooming in my gut. The interrogator watches the emotions play out in my eyes.

“Very good, Aquilla.” His words are deadly quiet. Immediately, I think of the Commandant. The softer she spoke, Elias once said, the more dangerous she was. I can finally see what the Northman pulled from his fatigues. Two sets of joined, metal rings that he slips onto his fingers. Brass beaters. A brutal weapon that transforms a simple beating into a slow, bloody death.

“Why don’t we begin there?”

“Begin?” I’ve been in this hellhole for hours. “What do you mean, begin?”

“This”—he gestures to the bucket of water and my bruised face—“was me getting to know you.”

Ten bleeding hells. He’s been holding back. He’s ratcheted up the pain little by little, weakening me, waiting for a way in, for me to give something up. Elias escaping. Elias free. Elias escaping. Elias free.

“But now, Blood Shrike.” The Northman’s words, though quietly delivered, cut through the chant in my head. “Now, we’ll see what you’re made of.”

«««

Time blurs. Hours go by. Or is it days? Weeks? I can’t tell. Down here, I don’t see the sun. I can’t hear the drums or the belltower.

A little longer, I tell myself after a particularly vicious beating. Another hour. Hold out for another hour. Another half hour. Five minutes. One minute. Just one.

But every second is pain. I’m losing this battle. I feel it in the blocks of time that disappear, in the way my words jumble and trip over one another.

The dungeon door opens, closes. Messengers arrive, confer. The Northman’s questions change, but they never end.

“We know that he escaped with the girl through the tunnels.” One of my eyes is swollen shut, but as the Northman speaks, I glare at him through the other. “Murdered half a platoon down there.”

Oh, Elias. He’ll torment himself about those deaths, not seeing them as a necessity but as a choice—the wrong choice. He’ll keep that blood on his hands long after it would have washed off mine.

But some part of me is relieved that the Northman knows how Elias escaped. At least I don’t have to lie anymore. When the Northman asks me about Laia and Elias’s relationship, I can honestly say that I know nothing.

I just have to survive long enough for the Northman to believe me.

“Tell me about them—it’s not so hard, is it? We know the girl was affiliated with the Resistance. Had she turned Elias to their cause? Were they lovers?”

I want to laugh. Your guess is as good as mine.

I try to answer him, but I’m in too much pain to do more than moan. The legionnaires dump me on the floor. I lay curled in a ball, a pathetic attempt to protect my broken ribs. My breath escapes in a wheeze. I wonder if death is close.

I think of the Augurs. Do they know where I am? Do they care?

They must know. And they’ve done nothing to help me.

But I’m not dead yet. And I haven’t given the Northman what he wants. If he’s still asking questions, then Elias is free, and the girl with him.

“Aquilla.” The Northman sounds … different. Tired. “You’re out of time. Tell me about the girl.”

“I don’t—”

“Otherwise, I have orders to beat you to death.”

“Emperor’s orders?” I wheeze. I’m surprised. I thought Marcus would visit all sorts of horrors upon me himself before killing me.

“Doesn’t matter whom the orders come from,” the Northman says. He crouches down. His green eyes meet mine. For once, they are less than calm.

“He’s not worth it, Aquilla,” he says. “Tell me what I need to know.”

“I—I don’t know anything.”

The Northman waits a moment. Watches. When I remain silent, he stands and pulls on the brass beaters.

I think of Elias, in this very dungeon not long ago. What went through his head as he faced death? He seemed so serene when he came to the execution podium. Like he’d made his peace as he faced his fate.

I wish I could borrow some of that peace now. Goodbye, Elias. I hope you find your freedom. I hope you find joy. Skies know none of the rest of us will.

Behind the Northman, the dungeon door clanks open. I hear a familiar, hated gait.

Emperor Marcus Farrar. Come to kill me himself.

“My lord Emperor.” The Northman salutes. The legionnaires drag me to my knees and slant my head downward in a semblance of respect.

In the dim light of the dungeon—and with limited ability to see—I can’t make out Marcus’s expression. But I can make out the identity of the tall, pale-haired figure behind him.

“Father?” What in the bleeding hells is he doing here? Is Marcus using him as leverage? Planning to torture him until I give up information?

“Your Majesty.” My father’s voice as he addresses Marcus is smooth as glass, so uninflected as to be uncaring. But his eyes flick to me, horror-filled. With the little strength I have left in me, I glare at him. Don’t let him see, Father. Don’t let him know what you feel.

“A moment, Pater Aquillus.” Marcus waves my father off and looks, instead, to the Northman. “Lieutenant Harper,” he says. “Anything?”

“She knows nothing about the girl, your Majesty. Nor did she assist in the destruction of Blackcliff.”

So he did believe me.

The Snake waves away the legionnaires holding me. I order myself not to collapse. Marcus takes me by my hair and jerks me to my feet. The Northman watches, stone-faced. I grit my teeth and square my shoulders. I push myself into the hurt, expecting—no, hoping—that Marcus’s eyes will hold nothing but hate.

But he regards me with that eerie tranquility he sometimes has. Like he knows my fears as well as his own.

“Really, Aquilla?” Marcus says, and I look away from him. “Elias Veturius, your one true love”—the words are filthy when he speaks them—“escapes from under your nose with a Scholar wench, and you know nothing about her? Nothing about how she survived the Fourth Trial, for instance? Or her role in the Resistance? Are Lieutenant Harper’s threats ineffective? Maybe I can think of something better.”

Behind Marcus, Father’s face pales further. “Your Majesty, please—”

Marcus ignores him, shoves my back against the dank dungeon wall, and presses his body against mine. He dips his lips close to my ear, and I close my eyes, wishing more than anything that Father wasn’t witnessing this.

“Shall I find someone for us to torment?” Marcus murmurs. “Someone in whose blood we can bathe? Or shall I have you do other things? I do hope you paid attention to Harper’s methods. You’ll be using them frequently as Blood Shrike.”

My nightmares—the ones he somehow knows of—rear before me with terrifying clarity: broken children, hollowed-out mothers, houses crumbling to ash. Me at his side, his loyal commander, his supporter, his lover. Reveling in it. Wanting it. Wanting him.

Just nightmares.

“I know nothing,” I croak. “I’m loyal to the Empire. I have always been loyal to the Empire.” Don’t torture my father, I want to add, but I force myself not to beg.

“Your Majesty.” My father is more forceful this time. “Our arrangement?”

Arrangement?

“A moment, Pater,” Marcus purrs. “I’m still playing.” He presses closer before a strange look crosses his face—surprise, or perhaps irritation. He flicks his head, like a horse shaking off a fly, before stepping back.

“Unchain her,” he says to the legionnaires.

“What is this?” I try to stand. My legs fail. Father catches me before I fall, draping my arm across his wide shoulders.

“You’re free to go.” Marcus keeps his gaze fixed on me. “Pater Aquillus, report to me tomorrow at tenth bell. You know where to find me. Blood Shrike, you will come with him.” He pauses before leaving, and slowly runs a finger across the blood coating my face. There’s a hunger in his eyes as he brings it to his mouth, licks it off. “I have a mission for you.”

Then he is gone, followed by the Northman and the legionnaires. It is only when their footsteps fade up the staircase leading out of the dungeon that I let my head drop. Exhaustion, pain, and disbelief rob me of my strength.

I didn’t betray Elias. I survived the interrogation.

“Come, daughter.” My father holds me as gently as if I were a newborn. “Let’s get you home.”

“What did you trade for this?” I ask. “What did you trade for me?”

“Nothing of consequence.” Father tries to take more of my weight. I do not let him. Instead, I bite my lip hard enough to draw blood. As we inch out of the cell, I hone in on that pain instead of the weakness in my legs and the burning in my bones. I am Blood Shrike of the Martial Empire. I will leave this dungeon on my own two feet.

“What did you give him, Father? Money? Land? Are we ruined?”

“Not money. Influence. He is Plebeian. He has no Gens, no family, to back him.”

“The Gens are all turning on him?”

My father nods. “They call for his resignation—or assassination. He has too many enemies, and he cannot jail or kill them all. They are too powerful. He needs influence. I gave it to him. In exchange for your life.”

“But how? Will you advise him? Lend him men? I don’t understand—”

“It doesn’t matter right now.” Father’s blue eyes are fierce, and I find I cannot look into them without a lump rising in my throat. “You are my daughter. I would have given him the skin off my back if he asked it of me. Lean on me now, my girl. Save your strength.”

Influence can’t be all Marcus squeezed out of Father. I want to demand that he explain everything, but as we go up the stairs, dizziness surges through me. I’m too broken to challenge him. I let him help me out of the dungeon, unable to rid myself of the unsettling feeling that whatever price he paid for me, it was too high.





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