AN EMBER IN THE ASHES
SABAA TAHIR

Copyright

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2015

Copyright © Sabaa Tahir 2015

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

Cover design and illustration by Micaela Alcaino © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Cover illustrations © Shutterstock.com (background, cat)

Maps by Jonathan Roberts

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: 9780007593262

Ebook Edition © June 2015 ISBN: 9780008125073

Version: 2018-07-03

Praise for An Ember in the Ashes

‘Game of Thrones fans will relish Tahir’s debut set in a brutal Rome-inspired empire’ Independent

‘The writing is as smooth as silk and keeps one reading long after the lights should have been out’ Robin Hobb

‘Sabaa Tahir shows us light in darkness, hope in a world of despair, and the human spirit reaching for greatness in difficult times’ Brandon Sanderson

‘Blew me away … This book is dark, complex, vivid, and romantic – expect to be completely transported’ MTV.com

‘Perfect for fans of … Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass series … The book is already set to be a film, which will be EPIC!’ TeenVogue.com

‘A heart-pounding story of love and loss, with the most original worldbuilding I’ve read all year … I could not put it down’ Margaret Stohl

‘Tahir spins a captivating, heart-pounding fantasy’ Us Weekly

Dedication

For Kashi,

who taught me that my spirit is stronger than my fear

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Maps

Part One: The Raid

Chapter One: Laia

Chapter Two: Elias

Chapter Three: Laia

Chapter Four: Elias

Chapter Five: Laia

Chapter Six: Elias

Chapter Seven: Laia

Chapter Eight: Elias

Chapter Nine: Laia

Chapter Ten: Elias

Chapter Eleven: Laia

Chapter Twelve: Elias

Chapter Thirteen: Laia

Part Two: The Trials

Chapter Fourteen: Elias

Chapter Fifteen: Laia

Chapter Sixteen: Elias

Chapter Seventeen: Laia

Chapter Eighteen: Elias

Chapter Nineteen: Laia

Chapter Twenty: Elias

Chapter Twenty-One: Laia

Chapter Twenty-Two: Elias

Chapter Twenty-Three: Laia

Chapter Twenty-Four: Elias

Chapter Twenty-Five: Laia

Chapter Twenty-Six: Elias

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Laia

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Elias

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Laia

Chapter Thirty: Elias

Chapter Thirty-One: Laia

Chapter Thirty-Two: Elias

Chapter Thirty-Three: Laia

Chapter Thirty-Four: Elias

Chapter Thirty-Five: Laia

Chapter Thirty-Six: Elias

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Laia

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Elias

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Laia

Chapter Forty: Elias

Chapter Forty-One: Laia

Chapter Forty-Two: Elias

Chapter Forty-Three: Laia

Chapter Forty-Four: Elias

Part Three: Body And Soul

Chapter Forty-Five: Laia

Chapter Forty-Six: Elias

Chapter Forty-Seven: Laia

Chapter Forty-Eight: Elias

Chapter Forty-Nine: Laia

Chapter Fifty: Elias

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE
Laia

My big brother reaches home in the dark hours before dawn, when even ghosts take their rest. He smells of steel and coal and forge. He smells of the enemy.

He folds his scarecrow body through the window, bare feet silent on the rushes. A hot desert wind blows in after him, rustling the limp curtains. His sketchbook falls to the floor, and he nudges it under his bunk with a quick foot, as if it’s a snake.

Where have you been, Darin? In my head, I have the courage to ask the question, and Darin trusts me enough to answer. Why do you keep disappearing? Why, when Pop and Nan need you? When I need you?

Every night for almost two years, I’ve wanted to ask. Every night, I’ve lacked the courage. I have one sibling left. I don’t want him to shut me out like he has everyone else.

But tonight’s different. I know what’s in his sketchbook. I know what it means.

‘You shouldn’t be awake.’ Darin’s whisper jolts me from my thoughts. He has a cat’s sense for traps – he got it from our mother. I sit up on the bunk as he lights the lamp. No use pretending to be asleep.

‘It’s past curfew, and three patrols have gone by. I was worried.’

‘I can avoid the soldiers, Laia. Lots of practice.’ He rests his chin on my bunk and smiles Mother’s sweet, crooked smile. A familiar look – the one he gives me if I wake from a nightmare or we run out of grain. Everything will be fine, the look says.

He picks up the book on my bed. ‘Gather in the Night,’ he reads the title. ‘Spooky. What’s it about?’

‘I just started it. It’s about a jinn—’ I stop. Clever. Very clever. He likes hearing stories as much as I like telling them. ‘Forget that. Where were you? Pop had a dozen patients this morning.’

And I filled in for you because he can’t do so much alone. Which left Nan to bottle the trader’s jams by herself. Except she didn’t finish. Now the trader won’t pay us, and we’ll starve this winter, and why in the skies don’t you care?

I say these things in my head. The smile’s already dropped off Darin’s face.

‘I’m not cut out for healing,’ he says. ‘Pop knows that.’

I want to back down, but I think of Pop’s slumped shoulders this morning. I think of the sketchbook.

‘Pop and Nan depend on you. At least talk to them. It’s been months.’

I wait for him to tell me that I don’t understand. That I should leave him be. But he just shakes his head, drops down into his bunk, and closes his eyes like he can’t be bothered to reply.

‘I saw your drawings.’ The words tumble out in a rush, and Darin’s up in an instant, his face stony. ‘I wasn’t spying,’ I say. ‘One of the pages was loose. I found it when I changed the rushes this morning.’

‘Did you tell Nan and Pop? Did they see?’

‘No, but—’

‘Laia, listen.’ Ten hells, I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to hear his excuses. ‘What you saw is dangerous,’ he says. ‘You can’t tell anyone about it. Not ever. It’s not just my life at risk. There are others—’

‘Are you working for the Empire, Darin? Are you working for the Martials?’

He is silent. I think I see the answer in his eyes, and I feel ill. My brother is a traitor to his own people? My brother is siding with the Empire?

If he hoarded grain, or sold books, or taught children to read, I’d understand. I’d be proud of him for doing the things I’m not brave enough to do. The Empire raids, jails, and kills for such ‘crimes’, but teaching a six-year-old her letters isn’t evil – not in the minds of my people, the Scholar people.

But what Darin has done is sick. It’s a betrayal.

‘The Empire killed our parents,’ I whisper. ‘Our sister.’

I want to shout at him, but I choke on the words. The Martials conquered Scholar lands five hundred years ago, and since then, they’ve done nothing but oppress and enslave us. Once, the Scholar Empire was home to the finest universities and libraries in the world. Now, most of our people can’t tell a school from an armoury.

‘How could you side with the Martials? How, Darin?’

‘It’s not what you think, Laia. I’ll explain everything, but—’

He pauses suddenly, his hand jerking up to silence me when I ask for the promised explanation. He cocks his head towards the window.

Through the thin walls, I hear Pop’s snores, Nan shifting in her sleep, a mourning dove’s croon. Familiar sounds. Home sounds.

Darin hears something else. The blood drains from his face, and dread flashes in his eyes. ‘Laia,’ he says. ‘Raid.’

‘But if you work for the Empire—’ Then why are the soldiers raiding us?

‘I’m not working for them.’ He sounds calm. Calmer than I feel. ‘Hide the sketchbook. That’s what they want. That’s what they’re here for.’

Then he’s out the door, and I’m alone. My bare legs move like cold molasses, my hands like wooden blocks. Hurry, Laia!

Usually, the Empire raids in the heat of the day. The soldiers want Scholar mothers and children to watch. They want fathers and brothers to see another man’s family enslaved. As bad as those raids are, the night raids are worse. The night raids are for when the Empire doesn’t want witnesses.

I wonder if this is real. If it’s a nightmare. It’s real, Laia. Move.

I drop the sketchbook out the window into a hedge. It’s a poor hiding place, but I have no time. Nan hobbles into my room. Her hands, so steady when she stirs vats of jam or braids my hair, flutter like frantic birds, desperate for me to move faster.

She pulls me into the hallway. Darin stands with Pop at the back door. My grandfather’s white hair is scattered as a haystack and his clothes are wrinkled, but there’s no sleep in the deep grooves of his face. He murmurs something to my brother, then hands him Nan’s largest kitchen knife. I don’t know why he bothers. Against the Serric steel of a Martial blade, the knife will only shatter.

‘You and Darin leave through the backyard,’ Nan says, her eyes darting from window to window. ‘They haven’t surrounded the house yet.’

No. No. No. ‘Nan,’ I breathe her name, stumbling when she pushes me towards Pop.

‘Hide in the east end of the Quarter—’ Her sentence ends in a choke, her eyes on the front window. Through the ragged curtains, I catch a flash of a liquid silver face. My stomach clenches.

‘A Mask,’ Nan says. ‘They’ve brought a Mask. Go, Laia. Before he gets inside.’

‘What about you? What about Pop?’

‘We’ll hold them off.’ Pop shoves me gently out the door. ‘Keep your secrets close, love. Listen to Darin. He’ll take care of you. Go.’

Darin’s lean shadow falls over me, and he grabs my hand as the door closes behind us. He slouches to blend into the warm night, moving silently across the loose sand of the backyard with a confidence I wish I felt. Although I am seventeen and old enough to control my fear, I grip his hand like it’s the only solid thing in this world.

I’m not working for them, Darin said. Then whom is he working for? Somehow, he got close enough to the forges of Serra to draw, in detail, the creation process of the Empire’s most precious asset: the unbreakable, curved scims that can cut through three men at once.

Half a millennium ago, the Scholars crumbled beneath the Martial invasion because our blades broke against their superior steel. Since then, we have learned nothing of steelcraft. The Martials hoard their secrets the way a miser hoards gold. Anyone caught near our city’s forges without good reason – Scholar or Martial – risks execution.

If Darin isn’t with the Empire, how did he get near Serra’s forges? How did the Martials find out about his sketchbook?

On the other side of the house, a fist pounds on the front door. Boots shuffle, steel clinks. I look around wildly, expecting to see the silver armour and red capes of Empire legionnaires, but the backyard is still. The fresh night air does nothing to stop the sweat rolling down my neck. Distantly, I hear the thud of drums from Blackcliff, the Mask training school. The sound sharpens my fear into a hard point stabbing at my centre. The Empire doesn’t send those silver-faced monsters on just any raid.

The pounding on the door sounds again.

‘In the name of the Empire,’ an irritated voice says, ‘I demand you open this door.’

As one, Darin and I freeze.

‘Doesn’t sound like a Mask,’ Darin whispers. Masks speak softly with words that cut through you like a scim. In the time it would take a legionnaire to knock and issue an order, a Mask would already be in the house, weapons slicing through anyone in his way.

Darin meets my eyes, and I know we’re both thinking the same thing. If the Mask isn’t with the rest of the soldiers at the front door, then where is he?

‘Don’t be afraid, Laia,’ Darin says. ‘I won’t let anything happen to you.’

I want to believe him, but my fear is a tide tugging at my ankles, pulling me under. I think of the couple that lived next door: raided, imprisoned, and sold into slavery three weeks ago. Book smugglers, the Martials said. Five days after that, one of Pop’s oldest patients, a ninety-three-year-old man who could barely walk, was executed in his own home, his throat slit from ear to ear. Resistance collaborator.

What will the soldiers do to Nan and Pop? Jail them? Enslave them?

Kill them?

We reach the back gate. Darin stands on his toes to unhook the latch when a scrape in the alley beyond stops him short. A breeze sighs past, sending a cloud of dust into the air.

Darin pushes me behind him. His knuckles are white around the knife handle as the gate swings open with a moan. A finger of terror draws a trail up my spine. I peer over my brother’s shoulder into the alley.

There is nothing out there but the quiet shifting of sand. Nothing but the occasional gust of wind and the shuttered windows of our sleeping neighbours.

I sigh in relief and step around Darin.

That’s when the Mask emerges from the darkness and walks through the gate.

CHAPTER TWO
Elias

The deserter will be dead before dawn.

His tracks zigzag like a struck deer’s in the dust of Serra’s catacombs. The tunnels have done him in. The hot air is too heavy down here, the smells of death and rot too close.

The tracks are more than an hour old by the time I see them. The guards have his scent now, poor bastard. If he’s lucky, he’ll die in the chase. If not …

Don’t think about it. Hide the backpack. Get out of here.

Skulls crunch as I shove a pack loaded with food and water into a wall crypt. Helene would give me hell if she could see how I’m treating the dead. But then, if Helene finds out why I’m down here in the first place, desecration will be the least of her complaints.

She won’t find out. Not until it’s too late. Guilt pricks at me, but I shove it away. Helene’s the strongest person I know. She’ll be fine without me.

For what feels like the hundredth time, I look over my shoulder. The tunnel is quiet. The deserter led the soldiers in the opposite direction. But safety’s an illusion I know never to trust. I work quickly, piling bones back in front of the crypt to cover my trail, my senses primed for anything out of the ordinary.

One more day of this. One more day of paranoia and hiding and lying. One day until graduation. Then I’ll be free.

As I rearrange the crypt’s skulls, the hot air shifts like a bear waking from hibernation. The smells of grass and snow cut through the fetid breath of the tunnel. Two seconds is all I have to step away from the crypt and kneel, examining the ground as if there might be tracks here. Then she is at my back.

‘Elias? What are you doing down here?’

‘Didn’t you hear? There’s a deserter loose.’ I keep my attention fixed on the dusty floor. Beneath the silver mask that covers me from forehead to jaw, my face should be unreadable. But Helene Aquilla and I have been together nearly every day of the fourteen years we’ve been training at Blackcliff Military Academy; she can probably hear me thinking.

She comes around me silently, and I look up into her eyes, as blue and pale as the warm waters of the southern islands. My mask sits atop my face, separate and foreign, hiding my features as well as my emotions. But Hel’s mask clings to her like a silvery second skin, and I can see the slight furrow in her brow as she looks down at me. Relax, Elias, I tell myself. You’re just looking for a deserter.

‘He didn’t come this way,’ Hel says. She runs a hand over her hair, braided, as always, into a tight, silver-blonde crown. ‘Dex took an auxiliary company off the north watchtower and into the East Branch tunnel. You think they’ll catch him?’

Aux soldiers, though not as highly trained as legionnaires and nothing compared to Masks, are still merciless hunters. ‘Of course they’ll catch him.’ I fail to keep the bitterness out of my voice, and Helene gives me a hard look. ‘The cowardly scum,’ I add. ‘Anyway, why are you awake? You weren’t on watch this morning.’ I made sure of it.

‘Those bleeding drums.’ Helene looks around the tunnel. ‘Woke everyone up.’

The drums. Of course. Deserter, they’d thundered in the middle of the graveyard watch. All active units to the walls. Helene must have decided to join the hunt. Dex, my lieutenant, would have told her which direction I’d gone. He’d have thought nothing of it.

‘I thought the deserter might have come this way.’ I turn from my hidden pack to look down another tunnel. ‘Guess I was wrong. I should catch up to Dex.’

‘Much as I hate to admit it, you’re not usually wrong.’ Helene cocks her head and smiles at me. I feel that guilt again, wrenching as a fist to the gut. She’ll be furious when she learns what I’ve done. She’ll never forgive me. Doesn’t matter. You’ve decided. Can’t turn back now.

Hel traces the dust on the ground with a fair, practised hand. ‘I’ve never even seen this tunnel before.’

A drop of sweat crawls down my neck. I ignore it.

‘It’s hot, and it reeks,’ I say. ‘Like everything else down here.’ Come on, I want to add. But doing so would be like tattooing ‘I am up to no good’ on my forehead. I keep quiet and lean against the catacomb wall, arms crossed.

The field of battle is my temple. I mentally chant a saying my grandfather taught me the day he met me, when I was six. He insists it sharpens the mind the way a whetstone sharpens a blade. The swordpoint is my priest. The dance of death is my prayer. The killing blow is my release.

Helene peers at my blurred tracks, following them, somehow, to the crypt where I stowed my pack, to the skulls piled there. She’s suspicious, and the air between us is suddenly tense.

Damn it.

I need to distract her. As she looks between me and the crypt, I run my gaze lazily down her body. She stands two inches shy of six feet – a half-foot shorter than me. She’s the only female student at Blackcliff; in the black, close-fitting fatigues all students wear, her strong, slender form has always drawn admiring glances. Just not mine. We’ve been friends too long for that.

Come on, notice. Notice me leering and get mad about it.

When I meet her eyes, brazen as a sailor fresh into port, she opens her mouth, as if to rip into me. Then she looks back at the crypt.

If she sees the pack and guesses what I’m up to, I’m done for. She might hate doing it, but Empire law would demand she report me, and Helene’s never broken a law in her life.

‘Elias—’

I prepare my lie. Just wanted to get away for a couple of days, Hel. Needed some time to think. Didn’t want to worry you.

BOOM-BOOM-boom-BOOM.

The drums.

Without thought, I translate the disparate beats into the message they are meant to convey. Deserter caught. All students report to central courtyard immediately.

My stomach sinks. Some naïve part of me hoped the deserter would at least make it out of the city. ‘That didn’t take long,’ I say. ‘We should go.’

I make for the main tunnel. Helene follows, as I knew she would. She would stab herself in the eye before she disobeyed a direct order. Helene is a true Martial, more loyal to the Empire than to her own mother. Like any good Mask-in-training, she takes Blackcliff’s motto to heart: Duty first, unto death.

I wonder what she would say if she knew what I’d really been doing in the tunnels.

I wonder how she’d feel about my hatred for the Empire.

I wonder what she would do if she found out her best friend is planning to desert.

CHAPTER THREE
Laia

The Mask saunters through the gate, big hands loose at his sides. The strange metal of his namesake clings to him from forehead to jaw like silver paint, revealing every feature of his face, from the thin eyebrows to the hard angles of his cheekbones. His copper-plated armour moulds to his muscles, emphasizing the power in his body.

A passing wind billows his black cape, and he looks around the backyard like he’s arrived at a garden party. His pale eyes find me, slide up my form, and settle on my face with a reptile’s flat regard.

‘Aren’t you a pretty one,’ he says.

I yank at the ragged hem of my shift, wishing desperately for the shapeless, ankle-length skirt I wear during the day. The Mask doesn’t even twitch. Nothing in his face tells me what he’s thinking. But I can guess.

Darin steps in front of me and glances at the fence, as if gauging the time it will take to reach it.

‘I’m alone, boy.’ The Mask addresses Darin with all the emotion of a corpse. ‘The rest of the men are in your house. You can run if you like.’ He moves away from the gate. ‘But I insist you leave the girl.’

Darin raises the knife.

‘Chivalrous of you,’ the Mask says.

Then he strikes, a flash of copper and silver lightning out of an empty sky. In the time it takes me to gasp, the Mask has shoved my brother’s face into the sandy ground and pinned his writhing body with a knee. Nan’s knife falls to the dirt.

A scream erupts from me, lonely in the still summer night. Seconds later, a scimpoint pricks my throat. I didn’t even see the Mask draw the weapon.

‘Quiet,’ he says. ‘Arms up. Now get inside.’

The Mask uses one hand to yank Darin up by the neck and the other to prod me on with his scim. My brother limps, face bloodied, eyes dazed. When he struggles, a fish on a hook, the Mask tightens his grip.

The back door of the house opens, and a red-caped legionnaire comes out.

‘The house is secure, Commander.’

The Mask shoves Darin at the soldier. ‘Bind him up. He’s strong.’

Then he grabs me by the hair, twisting until I cry out.

‘Mmm.’ He bends his head to my ear, and I cringe, my terror caught in my throat. ‘I’ve always loved dark-haired girls.’

I wonder if he has a sister, a wife, a woman. But it wouldn’t matter if he did. To him, I’m not someone’s family. I’m just a thing to be subdued, used, and discarded. The Mask drags me down the hallway to the front room as casually as a hunter drags his kill. Fight, I tell myself. Fight. But as if he senses my pathetic attempts at bravery, his hand squeezes, and pain lances through my skull. I sag and let him pull me along.

Legionnaires stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the front room amid upturned furniture and broken bottles of jam. Trader won’t get anything now. So many days spent over steaming kettles, my hair and skin smelling of apricot and cinnamon. So many jars, steamed and dried, filled and sealed. Useless. All useless.

The lamps are lit, and Nan and Pop kneel in the middle of the floor, their hands bound behind their backs. The soldier holding Darin shoves him to the ground beside them.

‘Shall I tie up the girl, sir?’ Another soldier fingers the rope at his belt, but the Mask leaves me between two burly legionnaires.

‘She’s not going to cause any trouble.’ He stabs at me with those eyes. ‘Are you?’ I shake my head and shrink back, hating myself for being such a coward. I reach for my mother’s tarnished armlet, wrapped around my bicep, and touch the familiar pattern for strength. I find none. Mother would have fought. She’d have died rather than face this humiliation. But I can’t make myself move. My fear has ensnared me.

A legionnaire enters the room, his face more than a little nervous. ‘It’s not here, Commander.’

The Mask looks down at my brother. ‘Where’s the sketchbook?’

Darin stares straight ahead, silent. His breath is low and steady, and he doesn’t seem dazed anymore. In fact, he’s almost composed.

The Mask gestures, a small movement. One of the legionnaires lifts Nan by her neck and slams her frail body against a wall. Nan bites her lip, her eyes sparking blue. Darin tries to rise, but another soldier forces him down.

The Mask scoops up a shard of glass from one of the broken jars. His tongue flickers out like a snake’s as he tastes the jam.

‘Shame it’s all gone to waste.’ He caresses Nan’s face with the edge of the shard. ‘You must have been beautiful once. Such eyes.’ He turns to Darin. ‘Shall I carve them out of her?’

‘It’s outside the small bedroom window. In the hedge.’ I can’t manage more than a whisper, but the soldiers hear. The Mask nods, and one of the legionnaires disappears into the hallway. Darin doesn’t look at me, but I feel his dismay. Why did you tell me to hide it, I want to cry out. Why did you bring the cursed thing home?

The legionnaire returns with the book. For unending seconds, the only sound in the room is the rustling of pages as the Mask flips through the sketches. If the rest of the book is anything like the page I found, I know what the Mask will see: Martial knives, swords, scabbards, forges, formulas, instructions – things no Scholar should know of, let alone re-create on paper.

‘How did you get into the Weapons Quarter, boy?’ The Mask looks up from the book. ‘Has the Resistance been bribing some Plebeian drudge to sneak you in?’

I stifle a sob. Half of me is relieved Darin’s no traitor. The other half wants to rage at him for being such a fool. Association with the Scholars’ Resistance carries a death sentence.

‘I got myself in,’ my brother says. ‘The Resistance had nothing to do with it.’

‘You were seen entering the catacombs last night after curfew’ – the Mask almost sounds bored – ‘in the company of known Scholar rebels.’

‘Last night, he was home well before curfew,’ Pop speaks up, and it is strange to hear my grandfather lie. But it makes no difference. The Mask’s eyes are for my brother alone. The man doesn’t blink as he reads Darin’s face the way I’d read a book.

‘Those rebels were taken into custody today,’ the Mask says. ‘One of them gave up your name before he died. What were you doing with them?’

‘They followed me.’ Darin sounds so calm. Like he’s done this before. Like he’s not afraid at all. ‘I’d never met them before.’

‘And yet they knew of your book here. Told me all about it. How did they learn of it? What did they want from you?’

‘I don’t know.’

The Mask presses the shard of glass deep into the soft skin below Nan’s eye, and her nostrils flare. A trickle of blood traces a wrinkle down her face.

Darin draws a sharp breath, the only sign of strain. ‘They asked for my sketchbook,’ he says. ‘I said no. I swear it.’

‘And their hideout?’

‘I didn’t see. They blindfolded me. We were in the catacombs.’

‘Where in the catacombs?’

‘I didn’t see. They blindfolded me.’

The Mask eyes my brother for a long moment. I don’t know how Darin can remain unruffled beneath that gaze.

‘You’re prepared for this.’ The smallest bit of surprise creeps into the Mask’s voice. ‘Straight back. Deep breathing. Same answers to different questions. Who trained you, boy?’

When Darin doesn’t answer, the Mask shrugs. ‘A few weeks in prison will loosen your tongue.’ Nan and I exchange a frightened glance. If Darin ends up in a Martial prison, we’ll never see him again. He’ll spend weeks in interrogation, and after that they’ll either sell him as a slave or kill him.

‘He’s just a boy,’ Pop speaks slowly, as if to an angry patient. ‘Please—’

Steel flashes, and Pop drops like a stone. The Mask moves so swiftly that I don’t understand what he has done. Not until Nan rushes forward. Not until she lets out a shrill keen, a shaft of pure pain that brings me to my knees.

Pop. Skies, not Pop. A dozen vows sear themselves into my mind. I’ll never disobey again, I’ll never do anything wrong, I’ll never complain about my work, if only Pop lives.

But Nan tears her hair and screams, and if Pop was alive, he’d never let her go on like that. He wouldn’t have been able to bear it. Darin’s calm is sheared away as if by a scythe, his face blanched with a horror I feel down to my bones.

Nan stumbles to her feet and takes one tottering step towards the Mask. He reaches out to her, as if to put his hand on her shoulder. The last thing I see in my grandmother’s eyes is terror. Then the Mask’s gauntleted wrist flashes once, leaving a thin red line across Nan’s throat, a line that grows wider and redder as she falls.

Her body hits the floor with a thud, her eyes still open and shining with tears as blood pours from her neck and into the rug we knotted together last winter.

‘Sir,’ one of the legionnaires says. ‘An hour until dawn.’

‘Get the boy out of here.’ The Mask doesn’t give Nan a second glance. ‘And burn this place down.’

He turns to me then, and I wish I could fade like a shadow into the wall behind me. I wish for it harder than I’ve ever wished for anything, knowing all the while how foolish it is. The soldiers flanking me grin at each other as the Mask takes a slow step in my direction. He holds my gaze as if he can smell my fear, a cobra enthralling its prey.

No, please, no. Disappear, I want to disappear.

The Mask blinks, some foreign emotion flickering across his eyes – surprise or shock, I can’t tell. It doesn’t matter. Because in that moment, Darin leaps up from the floor. While I cowered, he loosened his bindings. His hands stretch out like claws as he lunges for the Mask’s throat. His rage lends him a lion’s strength, and for a second he is every inch our mother, honey hair glowing, eyes blazing, mouth twisted in a feral snarl.

The Mask backs into the blood pooled near Nan’s head, and Darin is on him, knocking him to the ground, raining down blows. The legionnaires stand frozen in disbelief and then come to their senses, surging forward, shouting and swearing. Darin pulls a dagger free from the Mask’s belt before the legionnaires tackle him.

‘Laia!’ my brother shouts. ‘Run—’

Don’t run, Laia. Help him. Fight.

But I think of the Mask’s cold regard, of the violence in his eyes. I’ve always loved dark-haired girls. He will rape me. Then he will kill me.

I shudder and back into the hallway. No one stops me. No one notices.

‘Laia!’ Darin cries out, sounding like I’ve never heard him. Frantic. Trapped. He told me to run, but if I screamed like that, he would come. He would never leave me. I stop.

Help him, Laia, a voice orders in my head. Move.

And another voice, more insistent, more powerful.

You can’t save him. Do what he says. Run.

Flame flickers at the edge of my vision, and I smell smoke. One of the legionnaires has started torching the house. In minutes, fire will consume it.

‘Bind him properly this time and get him into an interrogation cell.’ The Mask removes himself from the fray, rubbing his jaw. When he sees me backing down the hallway, he goes strangely still. Reluctantly, I meet his eyes, and he tilts his head.

‘Run, little girl,’ he says.

My brother is still fighting, and his screams slice right through me. I know then that I will hear them over and over again, echoing in every hour of every day until I am dead or I make it right. I know it.

And still, I run.

* * *

The cramped streets and dusty markets of the Scholars’ Quarter blur past me like the landscape of a nightmare. With each step, part of my brain shouts at me to turn around, to go back, to help Darin. With each step, it becomes less likely, until it isn’t a possibility at all, until the only word I can think is run.

The soldiers come after me, but I’ve grown up among the squat, mud-brick houses of the Quarter, and I lose my pursuers quickly.

Dawn breaks, and my panicked run turns to a stumble as I wander from alley to alley. Where do I go? What do I do? I need a plan, but I don’t know where to start. Who can offer me help or comfort? My neighbours will turn me away, fearing for their own lives. My family is dead or imprisoned. My best friend, Zara, disappeared in a raid last year, and my other friends have their own troubles.

I’m alone.

As the sun rises, I find myself in an empty building deep in the oldest part of the Quarter. The gutted structure crouches like a wounded animal amid a labyrinth of crumbling dwellings. The stench of refuse taints the air.

I huddle in the corner of the room. My hair has slipped free of its braid and lays in hopeless tangles. The red stitches along the hem of my shift are ripped, the bright yarn limp. Nan sewed those hems for my seventeenth year-fall, to brighten up my otherwise drab clothing. It was one of the few gifts she could afford.

Now she’s dead. Like Pop. Like my parents and sister, long ago.

And Darin. Taken. Dragged to an interrogation cell where the Martials will do who-knows-what to him.

Life is made of so many moments that mean nothing. Then one day, a single moment comes along to define every second that comes after. The moment Darin called out – that was such a moment. It was a test of courage, of strength. And I failed it.

Laia! Run!

Why did I listen to him? I should have stayed. I should have done something. I moan and grasp my head. I keep hearing him. Where is he now? Have they begun the interrogation? He’ll wonder what happened to me. He’ll wonder how his sister could have left him.

A flicker of furtive movement in the shadows catches my attention, and the hair on my nape rises. A rat? A crow? The shadows shift, and within them, two malevolent eyes flash. More sets of eyes join the first, baleful and slitted.

Hallucinations, I hear Pop in my head, making a diagnosis. A symptom of shock.

Hallucinations or not, the shadows look real. Their eyes glow with the fire of miniature suns, and they circle me like hyenas, growing bolder with each pass.

‘We saw,’ they hiss. ‘We know your weakness. He’ll die because of you.’

‘No,’ I whisper. But they are right, these shadows. I left Darin. I abandoned him. The fact that he told me to go doesn’t matter. How could I have been so cowardly?

I grasp my mother’s armlet, but touching it makes me feel worse. Mother would have outfoxed the Mask. Somehow, she’d have saved Darin and Nan and Pop.

Even Nan was braver than me. Nan, with her frail body and burning eyes. Her backbone of steel. Mother inherited Nan’s fire, and after her, Darin.

But not me.

Run, little girl.

The shadows inch closer, and I close my eyes against them, hoping they’ll disappear. I grasp at the thoughts ricocheting through my mind, trying to corral them.

Distantly, I hear shouts and the thud of boots. If the soldiers are still looking for me, I’m not safe here.

Maybe I should let them find me and do what they will. I abandoned my blood. I deserve punishment.

But the same instinct that urged me to escape the Mask in the first place drives me to my feet. I head into the streets, losing myself in the thickening morning crowds. A few of my fellow Scholars look twice at me, some with wariness, others with sympathy. But most don’t look at all. It makes me wonder how many times I walked right past someone in these streets who was running, someone who had just had their whole world ripped from them.

I stop to rest in an alley slick with sewage. Thick black smoke curls up from the other side of the Quarter, paling as it rises into the hot sky. My home, burning. Nan’s jams, Pop’s medicines, Darin’s drawings, my books, gone. Everything I am. Gone.

Not everything, Laia. Not Darin.

A grate squats in the centre of the alley, just a few feet away from me. Like all grates in the Quarter, it leads down into the Serra’s catacombs: home to skeletons, ghosts, rats, thieves … and possibly the Scholars’ Resistance.

Had Darin been spying for them? Had the Resistance got him into the Weapons Quarter? Despite what my brother told the Mask, it’s the only answer that makes sense. Rumour has it that the Resistance fighters have been getting bolder, recruiting not just Scholars, but Mariners, from the free country of Marinn, to the north, and Tribesmen, whose desert-territory is an Empire protectorate.

Pop and Nan never spoke of the Resistance in front of me. But late at night, I heard them murmuring of how the rebels freed Scholar prisoners while striking out at the Martials. Of how fighters raided the caravans of the Martial merchant class, the Mercators, and assassinated members of their upper class, the Illustrians. Only the rebels stand up to the Martials. Elusive as they are, they are the only weapon the Scholars have. If anyone can get near the forges, it’s them.

The Resistance, I realize, might help me. My home was raided and burned to the ground, my family killed because two of the rebels gave Darin’s name to the Empire. If I can find the Resistance and explain what happened, maybe they can help me break Darin free from prison – not just because they owe me, but because they live by Izzat, a code of honour as old as the Scholar people. The rebel leaders are the best of the Scholars, the bravest. My parents taught me that before the Empire killed them. If I ask for aid, the Resistance won’t turn me away.

I step towards the grate.

I’ve never been in Serra’s catacombs. They snake beneath the entire city, hundreds of miles of tunnels and caverns, some packed with centuries’ worth of bones. No one uses the crypts for burial anymore, and even the Empire hasn’t mapped out the catacombs entirely. If the Empire, with all its might, can’t hunt out the rebels, then how will I find them?

You won’t stop until you do. I lift the grate and stare into the black hole below. I have to go down there. I have to find the Resistance. Because if I don’t, my brother doesn’t stand a chance. If I don’t find the fighters and get them to help, I’ll never see Darin again.

CHAPTER FOUR
Elias

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 sleepy 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 punishments 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 keep my expression emotionless. Blackcliff’s subject masters, the Centurions, will be watching. Drawing their ire when I’m so close to escaping 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 biggest, 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 keep your mouth shut.

Behind the Yearlings sits an empty space in honour 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 arrival 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, moulding 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, but 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 older 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 with 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 school 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 feel 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 grey 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, Demetrius tenses. The rumours 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 towards 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 keep 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 thirty-six hours. It could be me up there in two days. Bloodied. Broken.

‘Let 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 down 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 clamour, 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. He 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 breathing. 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 students 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 reply. ‘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 broad-shouldered and well over six feet, while she is smaller than a Scholar woman, even, with a deceptively 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 grey 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 report 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 except 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.

CHAPTER FIVE
Laia

The silence of the catacombs is as vast as a moonless night, and as eerie. Which isn’t to say that the tunnels are empty; as soon as I drop through the grate, a rat skitters across my bare feet, and a clear, fist-sized spider descends on a thread inches from my face. I bite my hand so I don’t scream.

Save Darin. Find the Resistance. Save Darin. Find the Resistance.

Sometimes I whisper the words. Mostly I chant them in my head. They keep me moving, a charm to ward off the fear nipping at my mind.

I’m not sure, really, what I should be looking for. A camp? A hideout? Any sign of life that isn’t rodent in nature?

Since most of the Empire’s garrisons are located east of the Scholars’ Quarter, I head west. Even in this skies-forsaken place, I can point unfailingly to where the sun rises and where it sets, to the Empire’s capital in the north, Antium, and to Navium, its main port due south. It’s a sense I’ve had for as long as I can remember. When I was a child and Serra should have seemed vast to me, I was always able to find my way.

I take heart from it – at least I won’t be wandering in circles.

For a time, sunshine trickles into the tunnels through the catacomb grates, weakly lighting the floor. I hug the crypt-pocked walls, swallowing my revulsion at the reek of rotting bones. A crypt is a good place to hide if a Martial patrol gets too close. Bones are just bones, I tell myself. A patrol will kill you.

In the daylight, it’s easier to push away my doubts and convince myself that I’ll find the Resistance. But I wander for hours, and eventually, the light fades and night falls, dropping like a curtain over my eyes. With it, fear comes rushing into my mind, a river that’s broken a dam. Every thump is a murderous aux soldier, every scritch a horde of rats. The catacombs have swallowed me as a python swallows a mouse. I shudder, knowing that I have a mouse’s chance of survival down here.

Save Darin. Find the Resistance.

Hunger gathers into a knot in my stomach, and thirst burns my throat. I spot a torch flickering in the distance, and feel a mothlike urge to head towards it. But the torches mark Empire territory, and the aux soldiers who get tunnel duty are probably Plebeians, the most lowborn of the Martials. If a group of Plebes catches me down here, I don’t want to think of what they’ll do.

I feel like a hunted, craven animal, which is exactly how the Empire sees me – how it sees all Scholars. The Emperor says that we are a free people who live under his benevolence. But that’s a joke. We can’t own property or attend schools, and even the mildest transgression results in enslavement.

No one else suffers such harshness. Tribesmen are protected under a treaty; during the invasion, they accepted Martial rule in exchange for free movement for their people. Mariners are protected by geography and the vast amounts of spices, meat, and iron they trade.

In the Empire, only Scholars are treated like trash.

Then defy the Empire, Laia, I hear Darin’s voice. Save me. Find the Resistance.

The darkness slows my footsteps until I’m practically crawling. The tunnel I’m in narrows, the walls crowding closer. Sweat pours down my back, and my whole body quakes – I hate small spaces. My breath echoes raggedly. Somewhere ahead, water falls in a lonely drip. How many ghosts haunt this place? How many vengeful spirits roam these tunnels?

Stop, Laia. No such things as ghosts. As a child, I spent hours listening to Tribal tale-spinners weave their legends of the mythical fey: the Nightbringer and his fellow jinn; ghosts, efrits, wraiths, and wights.

Sometimes the tales spilled into my nightmares. When they did, it was Darin who calmed my fears. Unlike Tribesmen, Scholars are not superstitious, and Darin has always had a Scholar’s healthy scepticism. No ghosts here, Laia. I hear his voice in my mind and close my eyes, pretending he’s beside me, allowing myself to be reassured by his steady presence. No wraiths either. There’s no such thing.

My hand goes to my armlet, as it always does when I need strength. It’s nearly black with tarnish, but I prefer it that way; it draws less attention. I trace the pattern in the silver, a series of connecting lines that I know so well I see it in my dreams.

Mother gave me the armlet the last time I saw her, when I was five. It’s one of the few clear memories I have of her – the cinnamon scent of her hair, the sparkle in her storm-sea eyes.

‘Keep it safe for me, little cricket. Just for a week. Just until I come back.’

What would she say now, if she knew I’d kept the armlet safe but lost her only son? That I’d saved my own neck and sacrificed my brother’s?

Set it right. Save Darin. Find the Resistance. I release the armlet and stumble on.

Soon after, I hear the first sounds behind me.

A whisper. The scrape of a boot on stone. If the crypts weren’t silent, I doubt I’d have noticed, the sounds are so quiet. Too quiet for an aux soldier. Too furtive for the Resistance. A Mask?

My heart thumps, and I whirl, searching the tarry blackness. Masks can prowl through darkness like this as easily as if they are part wraith. I wait, frozen, but the catacombs fall silent again. I don’t move. I don’t breathe. I hear nothing.

Rat. It’s just a rat. A really big one, maybe …

When I dare to take another step, I catch a whiff of leather and woodsmoke – human smells. I drop and search the floor with my hands for a weapon – a rock, a stick, a bone – anything to fight off whoever is stalking me. Then tinder hits flint, a hiss splits the air, and a moment later, a torch catches fire with a whoosh.

I stand, shielding my face with my hands, the impression of the flame pulsing behind my lids. When I force my eyes open, I make out a half-dozen hooded figures in a circle around me, all with loaded bows pointed at my heart.

‘Who are you?’ one of the figures says, stepping forward. Though his voice is cool and flat as a legionnaire’s, he doesn’t have the breadth and height of a Martial. His bare arms are hard with muscle, and he moves with fluid grace. A knife rests in one hand like it’s an extension of his body, and he holds the torch in his other. I try to find his eyes, but they’re hidden beneath the hood. ‘Speak.’

‘I—’ After hours of silence, I can barely manage a croak. ‘I’m looking for …’

Why didn’t I think this through? I can’t tell them I’m looking for the Resistance. No one with half a brain would admit to seeking out the rebels.

‘Check her,’ the man says when I don’t go on.

Another of the figures, slight and womanly, slings her bow on her back. The torch sputters behind her, casting her face into deep shadow. She looks too small to be a Martial, and the skin of her hands doesn’t have the dark hue of a Mariner’s. She’s probably either a Scholar or a Tribeswoman. Maybe I can reason with her.

‘Please,’ I say. ‘Let me—’

‘Shut it,’ the man who’d spoken before says. ‘Sana, anything?’

Sana. A Scholar name, short and simple. If she were Martial, her name would have been Agrippina Cassius or Chrysilla Aroman or something equally long and pompous.

But just because she’s a Scholar doesn’t mean I’m safe. I’ve heard rumours of Scholar thieves lurking in the catacombs, popping through grates to grab, raid, and usually kill whoever is nearby before dropping back into their lair.

Sana runs her hands over my legs and arms. ‘An armlet,’ she says. ‘Might be silver. I can’t tell.’

‘You’re not taking that!’ I jerk away from her, and the thieves’ bows, which had dropped a notch, come back up. ‘Please, let me go. I’m a Scholar. I’m one of you.’

‘Get it done,’ the man says. Then he signals to the rest of his band, and they begin to slip back into the tunnels.

‘Sorry about this.’ Sana sighs, but she has a dagger in her hand now. I retreat a step.

‘Don’t. Please.’ I knot my fingers together to hide their tremor. ‘It was my mother’s. It’s the only thing I have left of my family.’

Sana lowers the knife, but then the leader of the thieves calls to her and, seeing her hesitation, stalks towards us. As he does, one of his men signals to him. ‘Keenan, heads up. Aux patrol.’

‘Pair and scatter.’ Keenan lowers his torch. ‘If they follow, lead them away from base, or you’ll answer for it. Sana, get the girl’s silver and let’s go.’

‘We can’t leave her,’ Sana says. ‘They’ll find her. You know what they’ll do.’

‘Not our problem.’

Sana doesn’t move, and Keenan shoves the torch into her hands. When he takes me by the arm, Sana gets between us. ‘We need silver, yes,’ she says. ‘But not from our own people. Leave her.’

The unmistakable, clipped cadence of Martial voices carries down the tunnel. They haven’t seen the torchlight yet, but they will in just a few seconds.

‘Damn it, Sana.’ Keenan tries to go around the woman, but she shoves him away with surprising force, and her hood falls back. As the torchlight illuminates her face, I gasp. Not because she’s older than I thought or because of her fierce animosity, but because on her neck, I see a tattoo of a closed fist raised high with a flame behind it. Beneath it, the word Izzat.

‘You – you’re—’ I can’t get the words out. Keenan’s eyes fall on the tattoo, and he swears.

‘Now you’ve done it,’ he says to Sana. ‘We can’t leave her. If she tells them she saw us, they’ll flood these tunnels until they find us.’

He puts out the torch with brute swiftness and grabs my arm, pulling me after him. When I stumble into his hard back, he jerks his head around, and for a second, I catch the angry shine of his eyes. His scent, sharp and smoky, wafts over me.

‘I’m sorr—’

‘Keep quiet and watch your step.’ He’s closer than I realized, his breath warm against my ear. ‘Or I’ll knock you senseless and leave you in one of the crypts. Now move.’ I bite my lip and follow, trying to ignore his threat and instead focus on Sana’s tattoo.

Izzat. It’s Old Rei, the language spoken by Scholars before the Martials invaded and forced everyone to speak Serran. Izzat means many things. Strength, honour, pride. But in the past century, it’s come to mean something specific: freedom.

This is no band of thieves. It’s the Resistance.

CHAPTER SIX
Elias

Barrius’s screams blister my brain for hours. I see his body fall, hear the rasp of his last breath, smell the taint of his blood on the flagstones.

Student deaths don’t usually hit me this way. They shouldn’t – the Reaper’s an old friend. He’s walked with all of us at Blackcliff at some point. But watching Barrius die was different. For the rest of the day, I’m short-tempered and distracted.

My odd mood doesn’t go unnoticed. As I trudge to combat training with a group of other Senior Skulls, I realize Faris has just asked me a question for a third time.

‘You look like your favourite whore’s caught the pox,’ he says when I mutter an apology. ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’

‘Nothing.’ I realize too late how angry I sound, how unlike a Skull on the verge of Maskhood. I should be excited – bursting with anticipation.

Faris and Dex trade a sceptical glance, and I stifle a curse.

‘You sure?’ Dex asks. He’s a rule-follower, Dex. Always has been. Every time he looks at me, I know he’s wondering why my mask hasn’t joined with me yet. Piss off, I want to say to him. Then I remind myself that he’s not prying. He’s my friend, and he’s genuinely worried. ‘This morning,’ he says, ‘at the whipping, you were—’

‘Hey, leave the poor man be.’ Helene strolls up behind us, flashing a smile at Dex and Faris and throwing a careless arm around my shoulders as we enter the armoury. She nods at a rack of scims. ‘Go on, Elias, pick your weapon. I challenge you, best of three.’

She turns to the others and murmurs something as I walk away. I lift a blunted practice scim, checking its balance. A moment later, I feel her cool presence beside me.

‘What did you tell them?’ I ask her.

‘That your grandfather’s been hounding you.’

I nod. The best lies come from the truth. Grandfather is a Mask, and like most Masks, he’s never satisfied with anything less than perfection.

‘Thanks, Hel.’

‘You’re welcome. Repay me by pulling yourself together.’ She crosses her arms at my frown. ‘Dex is your platoon lieutenant, and you didn’t commend him after he caught a deserter. He noticed. Your entire platoon noticed. And at the whipping, you weren’t … with us.’

‘If you’re saying that I wasn’t baying for the blood of a ten-year-old, you’d be right.’

Her eyes tighten, enough for me to know that some part of her sympathizes with me, even if she’ll never admit it.

‘Marcus saw you stay behind after the whipping. He and Zak are telling everyone that you thought the punishment was too harsh.’

I shrug. As if I care what the Snake and Toad say about me.

‘Don’t be an idiot. Marcus would love to sabotage the heir to Gens Veturia a day before graduation.’ She refers to my familial house, one of the oldest and most respected in the Empire, by its formal title. ‘He’s all but accusing you of sedition.’

‘He accuses me of sedition every other week.’

‘But this time, you did something to earn it.’

My eyes jerk to hers, and for one tense moment, I think she knows everything. But there’s no anger or judgment in her expression. Only concern.

She counts off my sins on her fingers. ‘You’re squad leader of the platoon on watch, yet you don’t bring Barrius in yourself. Your lieutenant does it for you, and you don’t commend him. You barely contain your disapproval when the deserter’s punished. Not to mention the fact that it’s the day before graduation, and your mask has only just begun to meld with you.’

She waits for a response, and when I give none, she sighs.

‘Unless you’re stupider than you look, even you can see how this appears, Elias. If Marcus reports you to the Black Guard, they might have enough evidence to pay you a visit.’

A prickle of unease creeps down my neck. The Black Guard is tasked with ensuring the loyalty of the military. They wear the emblem of a bird, and their leader, once picked, gives up his name and is known simply as the Blood Shrike. He’s the right hand of the Emperor and the second most powerful man in the Empire. The current Blood Shrike has a habit of torturing first and asking questions later. A midnight visit from those black-armoured bastards will land me in the infirmary for weeks. My entire plan will be ruined.

I try not to glare at Helene. Must be nice to believe so fervently in what the Empire spoon-feeds us. Why can’t I just be like her – like everyone else? Because my mother abandoned me? Because I spent the first six years of my life with Tribesmen who taught me mercy and compassion instead of brutality and hatred? Because my playfellows were Tribeschildren, Mariners, and Scholars instead of other Illustrians?

Hel hands me a scim. ‘Fall in,’ she says. ‘Please, Elias. Just for a day. Then we’re free.’

Right. Free to report for duty as full-fledged servants of the Empire, after which we’ll lead men to their deaths in the never-ending border wars with Wildmen and Barbarians. Those of us not ordered to the border will be given city commands, where we’ll hunt down Resistance fighters or Mariner spies. We’ll be free, all right. Free to laud the Emperor. Free to rape and kill.

Funny how that doesn’t seem like freedom.

I keep quiet. Helene’s right. I’m drawing too much attention to myself, and Blackcliff is the worst place to do so. Students here are like starving sharks when it comes to sedition. One whiff of it, and they swarm.

For the rest of the day, I do my best to act like a Mask on the verge of graduation – smug, brutish, violent. It’s like covering myself in filth.

When I return to my cell-like quarters in the evening for a precious few minutes of free time, I tear off my mask and toss it on my cot, sighing when the liquid metal releases its hold.

At the sight of my reflection in the mask’s polished surface, I grimace. Even with the thick black lashes that Faris and Dex love to mock, my eyes are so much my mother’s that I hate seeing them. I don’t know who my father is, and I no longer care, but for the hundredth time, I wish that he’d at least given me his eyes.

Once I escape the Empire, it won’t matter. People will see my eyes and think Martial instead of Commandant. Plenty of Martials roam the south as merchants, mercenaries, and craftsmen. I’ll be one among hundreds.

Outside, the belltower tolls eight. Twelve hours until graduation. Thirteen until the ceremony is done. Another hour for pleasantries. Gens Veturia is a distinguished house, and Grandfather will want me to shake dozens of hands. But eventually, I’ll beg off and then …

Freedom. At last.

No student has ever deserted after graduating. Why would they? It’s the hell of Blackcliff that drives its students to run. But after we’re out, we get our own commands, our own missions. We get money, status, respect. Even the lowest-born Plebeian can marry high, if he becomes a Mask. No one with any sense would turn his back on that, especially after nearly a decade and a half of training.

Which is what makes tomorrow the perfect time to run. The two days after graduation are madness – parties, dinners, balls, banquets. If I disappear, no one will think to look for me for at least a day. They’ll assume I’ve drunk myself into a stupor at a friend’s house.

The passageway that leads from below my hearth into Serra’s catacombs pulses at the edge of my vision. It took me three months to dig out that damn tunnel. Another two months to fortify and hide it from the prying eyes of aux patrols. And two more months to map out the route through the catacombs and out of the city.

Seven months of sleepless nights and peering over my shoulder and trying to act normal. If I escape, it will all have been worth it.

The drums beat, signalling the start of the graduation banquet. Seconds later, a knock comes at my door. Ten hells. I was supposed to meet Helene outside the barracks, and I’m not even dressed yet.

Helene knocks again. ‘Elias, stop curling your eyelashes and get out here. We’re late.’

‘Hang on,’ I say. As I pull off my fatigues, the door opens and Helene marches in. A blush blooms up her neck at my undressed state, and she looks away. I raise an eyebrow. Helene has seen me naked dozens of times – when wounded, or ill, or suffering through one of the Commandant’s cruel strength-training exercises. By now, seeing me stripped shouldn’t cause her to do anything more than roll her eyes and throw me a shirt.

‘Hurry up, would you?’ She fumbles to break the silence that’s descended. I grab my dress uniform off a hook and button it on quickly, edgy at her awkwardness. ‘The guys already went ahead. Said they’d save us seats.’

Helene rubs the Blackcliff tattoo on the back of her neck – a four-sided black diamond with curved sides that is inked into every student upon arrival at the school. Helene took it better than most of our class fellows, stoic and tearless while the rest of us whimpered.

The Augurs have never explained why they only choose one girl per generation for Blackcliff. Not even to Helene. Whatever the reason, it’s clear they don’t select at random. Helene might be the only girl here, but there’s a reason she’s ranked third in our class. It’s the same reason that bullies learned early on to leave her alone. She’s clever, swift, and ruthless.

Now, in her black uniform, with her shining braid encircling her head like a crown, she’s as beautiful as winter’s first snow. I watch her long fingers at her nape, watch her lick her lips. I wonder what it would be like to kiss that mouth, to push her to the window and press my body against hers, to pull out the pins in her hair, to feel its softness between my fingers.

‘Uh … Elias?’

‘Hmm …’ I realize I’ve been staring and snap out of it. Fantasizing about your best friend, Elias. Pathetic. ‘Sorry. Just … tired. Let’s go.’

Hel gives me a strange look and nods at my mask, still sitting on the bed. ‘You might need that.’

‘Right.’ Appearing without one’s mask is a whipping offence. I haven’t seen any Skull maskless since we were fourteen. Other than Hel, none of them have seen my face, either.

I put the mask on, trying not to shudder at the eagerness with which it attaches to me. One day left. Then I’ll take it off forever.

The sunset drums thunder as we emerge from the barracks. The blue sky deepens to violet, and the searing desert air cools. Evening’s shadows blend with the dark stones of Blackcliff, making the blockish buildings appear unnaturally large. My eyes rove the shadows, seeking out threats, a habit from my years as a Fiver. I feel, for an instant, as if the shadows are looking back at me. But then the sensation fades.

‘Do you think the Augurs will attend graduation?’ Hel asks.

No, I want to say. Our holy men have better things to do, like locking themselves up in caves and reading sheep entrails.

‘Doubt it,’ is all I say.

‘I guess it would get tedious after five hundred years.’ Helene says this without a trace of irony, and I wince at the sheer idiocy of the idea. How can someone as intelligent as Helene actually think the Augurs are immortal?

But then, she’s not the only one. Martials believe that the Augurs’ ‘power’ comes from being possessed by the spirits of the dead. Masks, in particular, revere the Augurs, for it is the Augurs who decide which Martial children will attend Blackcliff. It is the Augurs who give us our masks. And we’re taught that it was the Augurs who raised Blackcliff in a single day, five centuries ago.

There are only fourteen of the red-eyed bastards, but on the rare occasions that they appear, everyone defers to them. Many of the Empire’s leaders – generals, the Blood Shrike, even the Emperor – make a yearly pilgrimage to the Augurs’ mountain lair, seeking counsel on matters of state. And though it’s clear to anyone with an ounce of logic that they are a pack of charlatans, they’re lionized throughout the Empire not just as immortal, but as oracles and mind-readers.

Most Blackcliff students only see the Augurs twice in our lives: when we’re chosen for Blackcliff and when we’re given our masks. But Helene has always had a particular fascination with the holy men – it’s no surprise that she hoped they’d come to graduation.

I respect Helene, but on this, we don’t agree. Martial myths are as believable as Tribal fables of jinn and the Nightbringer.

Grandfather is one of the few Masks who doesn’t believe in Augur rubbish, and I repeat his mantra in my head. The field of battle is my temple. The swordpoint is my priest. The dance of death is my prayer. The killing blow is my release. The mantra is all I’ve ever needed.

It takes all my control to hold my tongue. Helene notices.

‘Elias,’ she says. ‘I’m proud of you.’ Her tone is strangely formal. ‘I know you’ve struggled. Your mother …’ She glances around and drops her voice. The Commandant has spies everywhere. ‘Your mother’s been harder on you than on any of the rest of us. But you showed her. You worked hard. You did everything right.’

Her voice is so sincere that for a moment, I waver. In two days, she won’t think such things. In two days, she will hate me.

Remember Barrius. Remember what you’ll be expected to do after graduation.

I jostle her shoulder. ‘Are you turning sappy and girly on me?’

‘Forget it, swine.’ She punches me on the arm. ‘I was just trying to be nice.’

My laugh is falsely hearty. They’ll send you to hunt me down when I run. You and the others, the men I call brothers.

We reach the mess hall, and the cacophony within hits us like a wave – laughter and boasts and the raucous talk of three thousand young men on the verge of leave or graduation. It’s never this loud when the Commandant is in attendance, and I relax marginally, glad to avoid her.

Hel pulls me to one of the dozens of long tables, where Faris is regaling the rest of our friends with a tale of his latest escapade at the riverside brothels. Even Demetrius, ever haunted by his dead brother, cracks a smile.

Faris leers, glancing between us suggestively. ‘You two took your time.’

‘Veturius was making himself pretty just for you.’ Hel shoves Faris’s boulder-like body over, and we sit. ‘I had to drag him away from his mirror.’

The rest of the table hoots, and Leander, one of Hel’s soldiers, calls for Faris to finish his story. Beside me, Dex is arguing with Hel’s second lieutenant, Tristas. He’s an earnest, dark-haired boy with a deceptively innocent look to his wide blue eyes, and his fiancée’s name, AELIA, tattooed in block letters on his bicep.

Tristas leans forward. ‘The Emperor’s nearly seventy, and he has no male issue. This year might be the year. The year the Augurs choose a new Emperor. A new dynasty. I was talking to Aelia about it—’

‘Every year, someone thinks it’s the year.’ Dex rolls his eyes. ‘Every year, it’s not. Elias, tell him. Tell Tristas he’s an idiot.’

‘Tristas, you’re an idiot.’

‘But the Augurs say—’

I snort quietly, and Helene gives me a sharp look. Keep your doubts to yourself, Elias. I busy myself with piling food on two plates and shove one toward her. ‘Here,’ I say. ‘Have some slop.’

‘What is it, anyway?’ Hel pokes at the mash and takes a tentative sniff. ‘Cow dung?’

‘No whining,’ Faris says through a mouthful of food. ‘Pity the Fivers. They have to come back to this after four years of happily robbing farmhouses.’

‘Pity the Yearlings,’ Demetrius counters. ‘Can you imagine another twelve years? Thirteen?’

Across the hall, most of the Yearlings smile and laugh like everyone else. But some watch us, the way starving foxes might watch a lion – hungry for what we have.

I imagine half of them gone, half the laughter silenced, half the bodies cold. For that is what will happen in the years of deprivation and torment ahead of them. And they will face it either by living or dying, either by accepting or questioning. The ones who question are usually the ones who die.

‘They don’t seem to care much about Barrius.’ The words are out of my mouth before I can help myself. Beside me, Helene’s body stiffens like water freezing into ice. Dex frowns in disapproval, a comment dying on his lips, and silence falls across our table.

‘Why would they be upset?’ Marcus, sitting one table away with Zak and a knot of cronies, speaks up. ‘That scum got what he deserved. I only wished he’d lasted longer so he could have suffered more.’

‘No one asked what you think, Snake,’ Helene says. ‘Anyway, kid’s dead now.’

‘Lucky him.’ Faris picks up a forkful of food and lets it plop unappetizingly back onto his steel plate. ‘At least he doesn’t have to eat this swill anymore.’

A low chuckle runs up and down the table, and conversation picks up again. But Marcus smells blood, and his malevolence taints the air. Zak turns his gaze to Helene and mutters something to his brother. Marcus ignores him, fixing his hyena eyes on me. ‘You were damn broken up over that traitor this morning, Veturius. Was he a friend?’

‘Piss off, Marcus.’

‘Been spending a lot of time down in the catacombs too.’

‘What is that supposed to mean?’ Helene’s hand is on her weapon, and Faris grabs her arm.

Marcus ignores her. ‘You gonna do a runner, Veturius?’

My head comes up slowly. It’s a guess. He’s guessing. There’s no way he could know. I’ve been careful, and careful at Blackcliff translates to paranoid for most people.

Silence falls at my table, at Marcus’s. Deny it, Elias. They’re waiting.

‘You were squad leader on watch this morning, weren’t you?’ Marcus says. ‘You should have been thrilled to see that traitor go down. You should have brought him in. Say he deserved it, Veturius. Say Barrius deserved what he got.’

It should be easy. I don’t believe it, and that’s what matters. But my mouth won’t move. The words won’t come. Barrius didn’t deserve to be whipped to death. He was a child, a boy so afraid of staying at Blackcliff that he’d risked everything to escape it.

The silence spreads. A few Centurions look up from the head table. Marcus stands, and, quick as a flood, the mood of the hall changes, turning curious and expectant.

Son of a whore.

‘Is this why your mask hasn’t joined with you?’ Marcus says. ‘Because you’re not one of us? Say it, Veturius. Say the traitor deserved his fate.’

‘Elias,’ Helene whispers. Her eyes plead. Fall in. Just for one more day.

‘He—’ Say it, Elias. Doesn’t change anything if you do. ‘He deserved it.’

I meet Marcus’s eyes coolly, and he grins, like he knows how much the words cost.

‘Was that so hard, bastard?’

I’m relieved when he insults me. It gives me the excuse I’ve wanted so badly. I spring toward him fists-first.

But my friends are expecting it. Faris, Demetrius, and Helene are on their feet, holding me back, an irritating wall of black and blond keeping me from beating that damn grin off Marcus’s face.

‘No, Elias,’ Helene says. ‘The Commandant will whip you for starting a fight. Marcus isn’t worth that.’

‘He’s a bastard—’

‘That’d be you, actually,’ Marcus says. ‘At least I know who my father is. I wasn’t raised by a pack of camel-stroking Tribesmen.’

‘You Plebeian trash—’

‘Senior Skulls.’ The Scim Centurion has made his way to the foot of the table. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘No, sir,’ Helene says. ‘Go, Elias,’ she murmurs. ‘Go get some air. I’ll handle this.’

My blood still burning, I shove through the mess doors and find myself in the belltower courtyard before I even know where I’m going.

How the hell did Marcus figure out that I’m going to desert? How much does he know? Not too much, or I’d have been called to the Commandant’s office by now. Damn him, I’m close. So close.

I pace the courtyard, trying to calm myself. The desert heat has faded, and a crescent moon hangs low on the horizon, thin and red as a cannibal’s smile. Through the arches, Serra’s lights glow dully, tens of thousands of oil lamps dwarfed by the vast darkness of the surrounding desert. To the south, a pall of smoke mutes the shine of the river. The smell of steel and forge wafts past, ever-present in a city known solely for its soldiers and weaponry.

I wish I could have seen Serra before all this, when it was capital of the Scholar Empire. Under the Scholars, the great buildings were libraries and universities instead of barracks and training halls. The Street of Storytellers was filled with stages and theatres instead of an arms market where the only stories told now are of war and death.

It’s a stupid wish, like wanting to fly. For all their knowledge of astronomy and architecture and mathematics, the Scholars crumbled beneath the Empire’s invasion. Serra’s beauty is long gone. It’s a Martial city now.

Above, the heavens glow, the sky pale with starlight. Some long-buried part of me understands that this is beauty, but I am unable to wonder at it, the way I did when I was a boy. Back then, I clambered up spiky Jack trees to get closer to the stars, sure that a few feet of height would help me see them better. Back then, my world had been sand and sky and the love of Tribe Saif, who saved me from exposure. Back then, everything was different.

‘All things change, Elias Veturius. You are no boy now, but a man, with a man’s burden upon your shoulders and a man’s choice ahead of you.’

My knife is in my hands, though I don’t remember drawing it, and I hold it to the throat of the hooded man beside me. Years of training keep my arm steady as a rock, but my mind races. Where had the man come from? I’d swear on the lives of everyone in my platoon that he hadn’t been standing there a moment ago.

‘Who the hell are you?’

He pulls down his hood, and I have my answer.

Augur.

CHAPTER SEVEN
Laia

We race through the catacombs, Keenan ahead of me, Sana at my heels. When Keenan is convinced we’ve left the aux patrol behind, he slows our pace and barks at Sana to blindfold me.

I flinch at the harshness in his tone. This is what’s become of the Resistance? This band of thugs and thieves? How did it happen? Only twelve years ago, the rebels were at the height of their power, allying themselves with the Tribes and the king of Marinn. They’d lived their code – Izzat – fighting for freedom, protecting the innocent, elevating loyalty to their own people above all else.

Does the Resistance remember that code anymore? On the off chance that they do, will they help me? Can they help me?

You’ll make them help you. Darin’s voice again, confident and strong, like when he taught me to climb a tree, like when he taught me to read.

‘We’re here,’ Sana whispers after what feels like hours. I hear a series of knocks and the scrape of a door opening.

Sana guides me forward, and a burst of cool air washes over me, fresh as spring after the stench of the catacombs. Light creeps through the edges of my blindfold. The rich green smell of tobacco curls up into my nose, and I think of my father, smoking a pipe as he drew pictures of efrits and wights for me. What would he say if he saw me now, in a Resistance hideout?

Voices mutter and murmur. Warm fingers tangle in my hair, and a moment later, my blindfold falls away. Keenan is right behind me.

‘Sana,’ he says. ‘Give her some neem leaf and get her out of here.’ He turns to another fighter, a girl a few years older than me who flushes when he speaks to her. ‘Where’s Mazen? Have Raj and Navid reported yet?’

‘What’s neem leaf?’ I ask Sana when I’m sure Keenan can’t hear. I’ve never heard of it, and I know most herbs from working with Pop.

‘It’s an opiate. It’ll make you forget the last few hours.’ At my widening eyes, she shakes her head. ‘I won’t give it to you. Not yet, anyway. Have a seat. You look a mess.’

The cavern we’re in is so dark, it’s hard to tell how big it is. Blue-fire lanterns, usually found in the finest Illustrian neighbourhoods, glow here and there, with pitch torches flickering between them. Clean night air flows through a constellation of gaps in the rock ceiling, and I can barely make out the stars. I must have been in the catacombs for nearly a day.

‘It’s draughty.’ Sana pulls off her cloak, and her short, dark hair tufts out like a disgruntled bird’s. ‘But it’s home.’

‘Sana. You’re back.’ A stocky, brown-haired man approaches, looking at me curiously.

‘Tariq,’ Sana greets him. ‘We ran into a patrol. Picked up someone on the way. Grab her some food, would you?’ Tariq disappears, and Sana gestures for me to sit on a nearby bench, ignoring the stares coming our way from the dozens of people moving about the cavern.

There are an equal number of men and women here, most in dark, close-fitting clothing and nearly all dripping with knives and scims, as if expecting an Empire raid any moment. Some sharpen weapons, others watch over cook fires. A few older men smoke pipes. The bunks along the cavern wall are filled with sleeping bodies.

As I look around, I push a hank of hair out of my face. Sana’s eyes narrow when she takes in my features. ‘You look … familiar,’ she says.

I allow my hair to fall forward again. Sana’s old enough to have been in the Resistance for quite some time. Old enough to have known my parents.

‘I used to sell Nan’s jams at market.’

‘Right.’ She’s still staring. ‘You live in the Quarter? Why were you—’

‘Why is she still here?’ Keenan, who’s been busy with a group of fighters in the corner, approaches, pulling back his hood. He’s far younger than I expected, closer to my age than Sana’s – which might explain why she bristles at his tone. Flame-red hair spills over his forehead and into his eyes, so dark at the roots it’s almost black. He is only a few inches taller than me, but lean and strong, with a Scholar’s even, fine features. A hint of ginger stubble shadows his jaw, and freckles spatter his nose. Like the other fighters, he wears nearly as many weapons as a Mask.

I realize I’m staring and glance away, heat rising in my cheeks. Suddenly, the looks he’s been getting from the younger women in the cavern make sense.

‘She can’t stay,’ he says. ‘Get her out of here, Sana. Now.’

Tariq returns and, overhearing Keenan, slams a plate of food onto the table behind me. ‘You don’t tell her what to do. Sana’s not some besotted recruit, she’s the head of our faction, and you—’

‘Tariq.’ Sana puts a hand on the man’s arm, but the look she gives Keenan could wither stone. ‘I was giving the girl some food. I wanted to find out what she was doing in the tunnels.’

‘I was looking for you,’ I say. ‘For the Resistance. I need your help. My brother was taken in a raid yesterday—’

‘We can’t help,’ Keenan says. ‘We’re stretched thin as it is.’

‘But—’

‘We. Can’t. Help.’ He speaks slowly, as if I’m a child. Maybe before the raid, the chill in his eyes would have silenced me. But not now. Not when Darin needs me.

‘You don’t lead the Resistance,’ I say.

‘I’m second-in-command.’

He’s higher up than I expected. But not high enough. I shake my hair out of my face and stand.

‘Then it’s not up to you, whether I stay or not. It’s up to your leader.’ I try to sound brave, although if Keenan disagrees, I don’t know what I’ll do. Start begging, maybe.

Sana’s smile is sharp as a knife. ‘Girl’s got a point.’

Keenan moves towards me until he’s standing uncomfortably close. He smells of lemon and wind and something smoky, like cedar. He takes me in from head to toe, and the look would be shameless if it wasn’t for the slight puzzlement in his face, like he’s seeing something he doesn’t quite understand. His eyes are a dark secret, black or brown or blue – I can’t tell. It feels as if they can see right through me to my weak, cowardly soul. I cross my arms and look away, embarrassed of my tattered shift, of the dirt, the cuts, the damage.

‘That’s an unusual armlet.’ He reaches out a hand to touch it. The tip of his finger grazes my arm, sending a spark skittering across my skin, and I jerk away. He doesn’t react. ‘So tarnished, I might not have noticed it. It’s silver, isn’t it?’

‘I didn’t steal it, all right?’ My body aches and my head spins, but I bunch my fists, afraid and angry all at once. ‘And if you want it, you’ll – you’ll have to kill me to get it.’

He meets my eyes coolly, and I hope he doesn’t call my bluff. He and I both know that killing me wouldn’t be particularly difficult.

‘I expect I would,’ he says. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Laia.’ He doesn’t ask for a family name – Scholars rarely take them.

Sana looks between us, bemused. ‘I’ll go get Maz—’

‘No.’ Keenan’s already walking away. ‘I’ll find him.’

I sit back down, and Sana keeps glancing at my face, trying to puzzle out why I look familiar. If she’d seen Darin, she’d have known right away. He’s the spitting image of our mother – and no one could forget Mother. Father was different – always in the background, drawing, planning, thinking. He gave me his unruly midnight hair and gold eyes, his high cheekbones and full, unsmiling lips.

In the Quarter, no one knew my parents. No one looked twice at Darin or me. But a Resistance camp is different. I should have realized that.

I find myself staring at Sana’s tattoo, and my stomach lurches at the sight of the fist and flame. Mother had one just like it, above her heart. Father spent months perfecting it before inking it into her skin.

Sana sees me staring. ‘When I got this tattoo, the Resistance was different,’ she explains without my asking. ‘We were better. But things changed. Our leader, Mazen, told us we needed to be bolder, to go on the attack. Most of the young fighters, the ones Mazen trains, tend to agree with that philosophy.’

It’s clear Sana’s not happy about this. I’m waiting for her to say more when a door opens on the far side of the cavern to admit Keenan and a limping, silver-haired man.

‘Laia,’ Keenan says. ‘This is Mazen, he’s—’

‘Leader of the Resistance.’ I know his name because my parents spoke it often when I was a child. And I know his face because it’s on wanted signs all over Serra.

‘So, you’re our orphan of the day.’ The man comes to a stop before me, waving me back down when I rise to greet him. He has a pipe clenched in his teeth, and the smoke blurs his ravaged face. The Resistance tattoo, faded but still visible, is a blue-green shadow on the skin below his throat. ‘What is it you want?’

‘My brother Darin’s been taken by a Mask.’ I watch Mazen’s face carefully to see if he recognizes my brother’s name, but he gives nothing away. ‘Last night, in a raid at our house. I need your help to get him back.’

‘We don’t rescue strays.’ Mazen turns to Keenan. ‘Don’t waste my time again.’

I try to quash my desperation. ‘Darin’s no stray. He wouldn’t have even been taken if it wasn’t for your men.’

Mazen swings around. ‘My men?’

‘Two of your fighters were interrogated by the Martials. They gave Darin’s name to the Empire before they died.’

When Mazen looks at Keenan for confirmation, the younger man fidgets.

‘Raj and Navid,’ he says after a pause. ‘New recruits. Said they were working on something big. Eran found their bodies in the west end of the Scholars’ Quarter this morning. I heard a few minutes ago.’

Mazen swears and turns back to me. ‘Why would my men give the Empire your brother’s name? How do they know him?’

If Mazen doesn’t know about the sketchbook, I’m not about to tell him. I don’t understand what it means myself. ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Maybe they wanted him to join. Maybe they were friends. Whatever the reason, they led the Empire to us. The Mask who killed them came for Darin last night. He—’ My voice fails, but I clear my throat and force myself to keep talking. ‘He killed my grandparents. He took Darin to jail. Because of your men.’

Mazen takes a long draw on his pipe, contemplating me, before shaking his head. ‘I’m sorry for your loss. Truly. But we can’t help you.’

‘You – you owe me a blood debt. Your men gave up Darin—’

‘And paid for it with their lives. You can’t ask for more than that.’ The little interest Mazen took in me disappears. ‘If we helped every Scholar taken by the Martials, there’d be nothing left of the Resistance. Maybe if you were one of our own …’ He shrugs. ‘But you’re not.’

‘What about Izzat?’ I grab his arm, and he pulls away, anger flashing in his eyes. ‘You’re bound to the code. Bound to aid any who—’

‘The code applies to our own. Members of the Resistance. Their families. Those who have given everything for our survival. Keenan, give her the leaf.’

Keenan takes one of my arms, holding on tightly even when I try to throw him off.

‘Wait,’ I say. ‘You can’t do this.’ Another fighter comes to restrain me. ‘You don’t understand. If I don’t get him out of prison, they’ll torture him – they’ll sell him or kill him. He’s all I have – he’s the only one left!’

Mazen keeps walking.

CHAPTER EIGHT
Elias

The whites of the Augur’s eyes are demon-red, vivid against his jet irises. His skin stretches across the bones of his face like a tortured body on the rack. Other than his eyes, he has no more colour to him than the translucent spiders that lurk in Serra’s catacombs.

‘Nervous, Elias?’ The Augur pushes my knife away from his throat. ‘Why? You needn’t fear me. I’m only a cave-dwelling charlatan. A reader of sheep’s entrails, yes?’

Burning, bleeding skies. How does he know I’d thought such things? What else does he know? Why is he even here?

‘That was a joke,’ I say hastily. ‘A stupid, stupid joke—’

‘Your plan to desert. Is that a joke also?’

My throat tightens. All I can think is how does he – who told him – I’ll kill them—

‘The ghosts of our misdeeds seek vengeance,’ the Augur says. ‘But the cost will be high.’

‘The cost …’ It takes me a second to understand. He’s going to make me pay for what I was planning to do. The night air is colder suddenly, and I remember the din and stench of Kauf Prison, where the Empire sends defectors to suffer at the hands of its most ruthless interrogators. I remember the Commandant’s whip and Barrius’s blood staining the courtyard stones. My adrenaline surges, my training kicking in, telling me to attack the Augur, to rid myself of this threat. But common sense overrules instinct. The Augurs are so highly respected that killing one isn’t an option. Grovelling, however, might not hurt.

‘I understand,’ I say. ‘I will humbly accept any punishment you deem—’

‘I am not here to punish you. In any case, your future is punishment enough. Tell me, Elias. Why are you here? Why are you at Blackcliff?’

‘To carry out the will of the Emperor.’ I know these words better than my own name, I’ve said them so many times. ‘To keep away threats, internal and external. To protect the Empire.’

The Augur turns to the diamond-patterned belltower. The words emblazoned in the tower’s bricks are so familiar I hardly notice them anymore.

From among the battle-hardened youth there shall rise the Foretold, the Greatest Emperor, scourge of our enemies, commander of a host most devastating. And the Empire shall be made whole.

‘The foretelling, Elias,’ the Augur says. ‘The future given to the Augurs in visions. That is the reason we built this school. That is the reason you are here. Do you know the story?’

The story of Blackcliff’s origin was the first thing I learned as a Yearling: Five hundred years ago, a warrior brute named Taius united the fractured Martial clans and swept down from the north, crushing the Scholar Empire and taking over most of the continent. He named himself Emperor and established his dynasty. He was called the Masked One, for the unearthly silver mask he wore to scare the hell out of his enemies.

But the Augurs, considered holy even then, saw in their visions that Taius’s line would one day fail. When that day came, the Augurs would choose a new Emperor through a series of physical and mental tests: the Trials. For obvious reasons, Taius didn’t appreciate this prediction, but the Augurs must have threatened to strangle him with sheep gut, because he didn’t make a peep when they raised Blackcliff and began training students here.

And here we all are, five centuries later, masked just like Taius the First, waiting for the old devil’s line to fail so one of us can become the shiny new Emperor.

I’m not holding my breath. Generations of Masks have trained and served and died without a whisper of the Trials. Blackcliff may have started out as a place to prepare the future Emperor, but now it’s just a training ground for the Empire’s deadliest asset.

‘I know the story,’ I say in response to the Augur’s question. But I don’t believe a word of it, since it’s mythical horse dung.

‘Neither mythical nor horse dung, I’m afraid,’ the Augur says soberly.

It becomes harder to breathe suddenly. I haven’t felt fear in so long that it takes me a second to recognize it. ‘You can read minds.’

‘A simplistic statement for a complex endeavour. But, yes. We can.’

Then you know everything. My plan to escape, my hopes, my hates. Everything. No one turned me in to the Augur. I turned myself in.

‘It’s a good plan, Elias,’ the Augur confirms. ‘Nearly foolproof. If you wish to carry it out, I will not stop you.’

TRICK! my mind screams. But I look into the Augur’s eyes and see no lie there. What game is he playing? How long have the Augurs known that I want to desert?

‘We’ve known for months. But it wasn’t until you hid your supplies in the tunnel this morning that we understood you had committed yourself. We knew then we had to speak with you.’ The Augur nods to the path that leads to the eastern watchtower. ‘Walk with me.’

I’m too numb to do anything but follow. If the Augur isn’t trying to keep me from deserting, then what does he want? What did he mean when he said my future would be punishment enough? Is he telling me I’ll be caught?

We reach the watchtower, and the sentries stationed there turn and walk away, as if following a silent order. The Augur and I are alone, looking out over darkened sand dunes that stretch all the way to the Serran Mountain Range.

‘When I hear your thoughts, I’m reminded of Taius the First,’ the Augur says. ‘Like you, soldiering was in his blood. And like you, he struggled with his destiny.’ The Augur smiles at my stare of disbelief. ‘Oh, yes. I knew Taius. I knew his forefathers. My kindred and I have walked this land for a thousand years, Elias. We chose Taius to create the Empire, just as we chose you, five hundred years later, to serve it.’

Impossible, my logical mind insists.

Shut it, logical mind. If this man can read minds, then immortality seems like the next reasonable step. Does this mean all that drivel about the Augurs being possessed by spirits of the dead is true? If only Helene could see me. How she’d gloat.

I watch the Augur out of the corner of my eye. As I take in his profile, I find that it’s suddenly, oddly familiar.

‘My name is Cain, Elias. I brought you to Blackcliff. I chose you.’

Condemned me, more like. I try not to think of the dark morning the Empire claimed me, but it haunts my dreams still. The soldiers surrounding the Saif caravan, dragging me from my bed. Mamie Rila, my foster mother, shrieking at them until her brothers pulled her back. My foster brother, Shan, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, bewildered, asking when I would return. And this man, this thing, pulling me to a waiting horse with the barest explanation. You’ve been chosen. You will come with me.

In my terrified child’s mind, the Augur seemed larger, more menacing. Now, he comes to my shoulder and looks as if a stiff wind could knock him into the grave.

‘I imagine you’ve chosen thousands of children over the years.’ I take care to keep my tone respectful. ‘That’s your job, isn’t it?’

‘But you are the one I remember best. For the Augurs dream the future: all outcomes, all possibilities. And you are woven through every dream. A thread of silver in a tapestry of night.’

‘And here I thought you drew my name out of a hat.’

‘Hear me, Elias Veturius.’ The Augur ignores my barb, and though his voice is no louder than it was a moment ago, his words are wrapped in iron, weighted down in certainty. ‘The Foretelling is truth. A truth you will soon face. You seek to run. You seek to abandon your duty. But you cannot escape your destiny.’

‘Destiny?’ I laugh, a bitter thing. ‘What destiny?’

Everything here is blood and violence. After I graduate tomorrow, nothing will change. The missions, the rote viciousness, will wear me down until there’s nothing left of the boy the Augurs stole fourteen years ago. Maybe that’s a type of destiny. But it’s not one I’d choose for myself.

‘This life is not always what we think it will be,’ Cain says. ‘You are an ember in the ashes, Elias Veturius. You will spark and burn, ravage and destroy. You cannot change it. You cannot stop it.’

‘I don’t want—’

‘What you want doesn’t matter. Tomorrow you must make a choice. Between deserting and doing your duty. Between running from your destiny and facing it. If you desert, the Augurs will not stop you. You will escape. You will leave the Empire. You will live. But you will find no solace in doing so. Your enemies will hunt you. Shadows will bloom in your heart, and you will become everything you hate – evil, merciless, cruel. You will be chained to the darkness within yourself as surely as if chained to the walls of a prison cell.’

He moves towards me, his black eyes pitiless. ‘But if you stay, if you do your duty, you have a chance to break the bonds between you and the Empire forever. You have a chance at greatness you cannot conceive. You have a chance at true freedom – of body and of soul.’

‘What do you mean, if I stay and do my duty? What duty?’

‘You’ll know when the time comes, Elias. You must trust me.’

‘How can I trust you when you won’t explain what you mean? What duty? My first mission? My second? How many Scholars will I have to torment? How much evil will I commit before I’m free?’

Cain’s eyes are fixed on my face as he takes one step away from me and then another.

‘When can I leave the Empire? In a month? A year? Cain!’

He fades as quickly as a star into the dawn. I reach out to grab him, to force him to stay and answer me. But my hand finds only air.

CHAPTER NINE
Laia

Keenan pulls me to a cavern door, and I hang limp, my breath gone from my body. His mouth moves, but I can’t hear what he’s saying. All I can hear are Darin’s screams echoing in my ears.

I’ll never see my brother again. The Martials will sell him if he’s lucky and kill him if he’s not. Either way, there’s nothing I can do about it.

Tell them, Laia. Darin whispers in my head. Tell them who you are.

They might kill me, I argue back. I don’t know if I can trust them.

If you don’t tell them, I’ll die, Darin’s voice says. Don’t let me die, Laia.

‘The tattoo on your neck,’ I shout at Mazen’s retreating back. ‘The fist and flame. My father put it there. You were the second person he tattooed, after my mother.’

Mazen stops.

‘His name was Jahan. You called him Lieutenant. My sister’s name was Lis. You called her the Little Lioness. My—’ For a second, I falter, and Mazen turns around, a muscle in his jaw jumping. Speak, Laia. He’s actually listening. ‘My mother’s name was Mirra. But you – everyone – called her the Lioness. Leader. Head of the Resistance.’

Keenan releases me as quickly as if my skin has turned to ice. Sana’s gasp echoes in the sudden silence of the cavern. She’ll know now why she’d found me familiar.

I glance around at the shocked faces uneasily. My parents were betrayed from within the Resistance. Nan and Pop never learned who it was.

Mazen says nothing.

Please don’t let him be the traitor. Let him be one of the good ones.

If Nan could see me, she’d throttle me. I’ve kept the secret of my parents’ identities all my life. Telling it makes me feel hollow inside. And what happens now? All of these rebels, many of whom fought alongside my parents, suddenly know whose child I am. They’ll want me to be fearless and charismatic, like Mother. They’ll want me to be brilliant and serene, like Father.

But I’m not any of those things.

‘You served with my parents for twenty years,’ I say to Mazen. ‘In Marinn and then here, in Serra. You joined up the same time as my mother. You rose to the top with her and my father. You were third-in-command.’

Keenan’s eyes flash between Mazen and me, the rest of his face still. Work in the cavern halts, and fighters whisper to each other as they gather around us.

‘Mirra and Jahan had one child.’ Mazen limps towards me. His eyes go from my hair to my eyes to my lips as he remembers, compares. ‘She died when they did.’

‘No.’ I’ve held this in for so long that it feels wrong to speak of it. But I have to. It is the only thing I can say that might make a difference.

‘My parents left the Resistance when Lis was four. They were expecting Darin. They wanted a normal life for their children. They disappeared. No trace. No trail.

‘Darin was born. Then, two years later, I arrived. But the Empire was coming down hard on the Resistance. Everything my parents worked for was crumbling. They couldn’t sit by and watch. They wanted to fight. Lis was old enough to stay with them. But Darin and I were too young. They left us with Mother’s parents. Darin was six. I was four. They died a year later.’

‘You tell a good tale, girl,’ Mazen says. ‘But Mirra didn’t have parents. She was an orphan, like me. Like Jahan.’

‘I’m not telling tales.’ I pitch my voice low so it doesn’t shake. ‘Mother left home when she was sixteen. Nan and Pop didn’t want her to go. After she left, she cut off all contact. They didn’t even know she was alive until she knocked on their door asking them to take us in.’

‘You’re nothing like her.’

He might as well have slapped me. I know I’m not like her, I want to say. I cried and cringed instead of standing and fighting. I abandoned Darin instead of dying for him. I’m weak in a way she never was.

‘Mazen,’ Sana whispers, like I’ll disappear if she speaks too loudly. ‘Look at her. She has Jahan’s eyes, his hair. Ten hells, she has his face.’

‘I swear it’s true. This armlet—’ I lift my hand, and it glints in the cavern’s light. ‘It was hers. She gave it to me a week before the Empire caught her.’

‘I’d wondered what she’d done with it.’ The stiffness in Mazen’s face dissolves, and the light of an old memory flares in his eyes. ‘Jahan gave it to her when they got married. I never saw her without it. Why didn’t you come to us before? Why didn’t your grandparents contact us? We’d have trained you up the way Mirra would have wanted.’

The answer dawns on his face before I can say it.

‘The traitor,’ he says.

‘My grandparents didn’t know who to trust. They decided not to trust anyone.’

‘And now they’re dead, your brother is in jail, and you want our help.’ Mazen brings his pipe back to his mouth.

‘We must give her aid.’ Sana is beside me, her hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s our duty. She’s, as you say, one of our own.’

Tariq stands behind her, and I notice that the fighters have divided into two groups. The ones backing Mazen are closer to Keenan’s age. The rebels clustered behind Sana are older. She’s the head of our faction, Tariq had said. Now I realize what he meant: the Resistance is divided. Sana leads the older fighters. And, as she’d hinted at before, Mazen leads the younger ones – and serves as overall leader.

Many of the older fighters stare at me, perhaps searching my face for evidence of Mother and Father. I don’t blame them. My parents were the greatest leaders in the Resistance’s five-hundred-year history.

Then they’d been betrayed by one of their own. Caught. Tortured. Executed along with my sister, Lis. The Resistance collapsed and never recovered.

‘If the Lioness’s son is in trouble, we owe it to her to help,’ Sana says to those gathered behind her. ‘How many times did she save your life, Mazen? How many times did she save all of us?’

Suddenly, everyone is talking.

‘Mirra and I set fire to an Empire garrison—’

‘She could cut right to your soul with her eyes, the Lioness—’

‘Saw her fend off a dozen auxes once – not a bit of fear in her—’

I have stories of my own. She wanted to leave us. She wanted to abandon her children for the Resistance, but Father wouldn’t let her. When they fought, Lis took me and Darin into the forest and sang so we wouldn’t hear them. That’s my first memory – Lis singing me a song while the Lioness raged a few yards away.

After my parents left us with Nan and Pop, it took weeks for me to stop feeling jumpy, to get used to living with two people who actually seemed to love each other.

I say none of this, instead knotting my fingers together as the fighters tell their stories. I know they want me to be brave and charming, like Mother. They want me to listen, really listen, like Father.

If they learn what I truly am, they’ll throw me out of here without a thought. The Resistance doesn’t tolerate weaklings.

‘Laia.’ Mazen speaks over them, and they quiet down. ‘We don’t have the manpower to break into a Martial prison. We’d risk too much.’

I don’t get the chance to protest because Sana’s speaking for me.

‘The Lioness would have done it for you without a second thought.’

‘We have to bring down the Empire,’ a blond man behind Mazen says. ‘Not waste our time saving some boy.’

‘We don’t abandon our own!’

‘We’ll be the ones doing all the fighting,’ another of Mazen’s men calls from the back of the crowd, ‘while you old-timers sit around taking all the credit.’

Tariq shoves past Sana, his face dark. ‘You mean while we plan and prepare to make sure you young fools don’t get ambushed—’

‘Enough. Enough!’ Mazen raises his hands. Sana pulls Tariq back, and the other fighters fall silent. ‘We won’t solve this by shouting at each other. Keenan, find Haider and bring him to my chambers. Sana, get Eran and join us. We’ll decide this privately.’

Sana hurries away but Keenan doesn’t move. I flush beneath his stare, not sure what to say. His eyes are almost black in the cavern’s dim light.

‘I see it now,’ he murmurs, as if to himself. ‘I can’t believe I almost missed it.’

He can’t have known my parents. He doesn’t look much older than me. I wonder how long he’s been in the Resistance, but before I can ask, he disappears into the tunnels, leaving me to stare after him.

Hours later, after I’ve forced food down my throat and pretended to sleep on a rock-hard bunk, after the stars have faded and the sun has risen, one of the cavern doors swings open.

Mazen enters, followed by Keenan, Sana, and two younger men. The Resistance leader limps to a table where Tariq is sitting and gestures me over. I try to read Sana’s face as I join them, but her expression is carefully neutral. The other fighters gather around, as interested as I am to see what my fate will be.

‘Laia,’ Mazen says. ‘Keenan here thinks we should keep you in camp. Safe.’ Mazen infuses the word with scorn. Beside me, Tariq looks askance at Keenan.

‘She’ll cause less trouble here.’ The red-haired fighter’s eyes flash. ‘Breaking her brother out will cost men – good men—’ He stops at a look from Mazen and clamps his mouth shut. And though I hardly know Keenan, I’m stung at how violently he’s opposing me. What have I ever done to him?

‘It will cost good men,’ Mazen says. ‘Which is why I’ve decided that if Laia wants our help, she has to be willing to give us something in return.’ Fighters from both factions eye their leader warily. Mazen turns to me. ‘We’ll help you, if you help us.’

‘What could I possibly do for the Resistance?’

‘You can cook, yes?’ Mazen asks. ‘And clean? Dress hair, press clothing—’

‘Make soap, wash dishes, barter – yes. You’ve just described every freewoman in the Scholars’ Quarter.’

‘You can read too,’ Mazen says. When I begin to deny the charge, he shakes his head. ‘Empire rules be damned. You forget I knew your parents.’

‘What does any of that have to do with helping the Resistance?’

‘We’ll break your brother out of prison if you spy for us.’

For a moment, I don’t speak, though I feel a tug of curiosity. This is the last thing I expected. ‘Who do you want me to spy on?’

‘The Commandant of Blackcliff Military Academy.’

CHAPTER TEN
Elias

The morning after the Augur’s visit, I stumble to the mess hall like a Cadet suffering his first hangover, cursing the overly bright sun. What little sleep I got was sabotaged by a familiar nightmare, one in which I wander through a stinking, body-strewn battlefield. In the dream, screams rend the air and somehow I know that the pain and suffering are my fault, that the dead have fallen by my hand.

Not the best way to start a day. Especially graduation day.

I run into Helene as she, Dex, Faris, and Tristas leave mess. She stuffs a rock-hard biscuit into my hand, ignoring my protests, and pulls me away from the hall.

‘We’re late.’ I barely hear her over the ceaseless beating of the drums, which are ordering all graduates to the armoury to pick up our ceremonials – the armour of a full Mask. ‘Demetrius and Leander already left.’

Helene chatters about how thrilling it will be to put on our ceremonials. Dimly, I listen to her and the others, nodding at appropriate times, exclaiming when necessary. All the while, I’m thinking of what Cain said to me last night. You will escape. You will leave the Empire. You will live. But you will find no solace in doing so.

Do I trust the Augur? He could be trying to trap me here, hoping I’ll stay a Mask long enough to decide that a soldier’s life is better than an exile’s. I think of how the Commandant’s eyes shine when she whips a student, how Grandfather boasts of his body count. They are my kin; their blood is my blood. What if their lusts for war and glory and power are mine too and I just don’t know it? Could I learn to revel in being a Mask? The Augur read my thoughts. Does he see something evil inside me that I’m too blind to face?

But then, Cain seemed convinced that I’d meet the same fate if I deserted. Shadows will bloom in your heart, and you will become everything you hate.

So my choices are to stay and be evil or to run and be evil. Wonderful.

When we are halfway to the armoury, Hel finally notices my silence, taking in the rumpled clothing, the bloodshot eyes.

‘You all right?’ she asks.

‘Fine.’

‘You look like hell.’

‘Rough night.’

‘What happ—’

Faris, walking ahead with Dex and Tristas, drops back. ‘Leave him alone, Aquilla. The man’s tuckered out. Snuck down to the docks to celebrate a bit early, eh, Veturius?’ He claps me on the shoulder with a big hand and laughs. ‘Could have invited a fellow along.’

‘Don’t be disgusting,’ Helene says.

‘Don’t be a prude,’ Faris retorts.

A full-scale argument ensues, during which Helene’s disapproval of prostitutes is vehemently shouted down by Faris while Dex argues that leaving school grounds to visit a brothel isn’t strictly forbidden. Tristas points to the tattoo of his fiancée’s name and declares neutrality.

Amid the swiftly flung insults, Helene’s gaze slides to me repeatedly. She knows I don’t frequent the docks. I avoid her eyes. She wants an explanation, but where would I even begin? Well, you see, Hel, I wanted to desert today, but this damned Augur showed up and now …

When we arrive at the armoury, students spill out the front doors, and Faris and Dex disappear into the crush. I’ve never seen the Senior Skulls so … happy. With liberation just a few minutes away, everyone is smiling. Skulls I barely ever speak to greet me, clap me on the back, joke with me.

‘Elias, Helene.’ Leander, his nose crooked from the time Helene broke it, calls us over. Demetrius stands beside him, grim as always. I wonder if he feels any joy today. Maybe he’s just relieved to leave the place where he watched his brother die.

When he sees Helene, Leander self-consciously runs his hand over his curly hair – which sticks up all over the place no matter how short he cuts it. I try not to smile. He’s liked her for ages, though he pretends not to. ‘Armourer already called your names.’ Leander nods to two stacks of armour and weaponry behind him. ‘We grabbed your ceremonials for you.’

Helene goes for hers like a jewel thief for rubies, holding the bracers to the light, exclaiming at how Blackcliff’s diamond symbol is seamlessly hammered into the shield. The close-fitting armour is forged by the Teluman smithy – one of the oldest in the Empire – and is strong enough to turn away all but the finest blades. Blackcliff’s final gift to us.

Once the armour is on, I strap on my weaponry: scims and daggers of Serric steel, razor-sharp and graceful, especially compared to the dull, utilitarian weapons we’ve used until now. The last piece is a black cape held in place by a chain. When I’m done, I look up to see Helene staring at me.

‘What?’ I say. Her expression is so intent that I glance down, assuming I’ve put my chest plate on backwards. But everything is where it should be. When I look back up, she’s standing before me, adjusting my cape, her long fingers brushing my neck.

‘It wasn’t straight.’ She dons her helmet. ‘How do I look?’

If the Augurs made my armour to accentuate my body’s power, they made Hel’s to accentuate her beauty.

‘You look …’ Like a warrior goddess. Like a jinni of air come to bring us all to our knees. Skies, what the hell is wrong with me? ‘Like a Mask,’ I say.

She laughs, girlish and preposterously alluring, drawing the attention of other students: Leander, who jerks his gaze away and rubs his crooked nose guiltily when I catch him looking, Faris, who grins and mutters something to an appraising Dex. Across the room, Zak stares too, the expression on his face something between longing and puzzlement. Then I see Marcus beside Zak, watching his brother as his brother watches Hel.

‘Look, boys,’ Marcus says. ‘A bitch in armour.’

My scim is half-drawn when Hel puts a hand on my arm, her eyes flashing fire at me. My fight. Not yours.

‘Go to hell, Marcus.’ Helene finds her cape a few feet away and dons it. The Snake ambles over, his eyes creeping down her body, leaving no doubt as to what he’s thinking.

‘Armour doesn’t suit you, Aquilla,’ he says. ‘I’d prefer you in a dress. Or nothing at all.’ He lifts a hand to her hair, wrapping a loose tendril gently around his finger before yanking it hard, pulling her face towards his.

It takes me a second to recognize the snarl that splits the air as my own. I’m a foot from Marcus, my fists hungry for his flesh, when two of his toadies, Thaddius and Julius, grab me from behind, wrenching my arms back. Demetrius is beside me in a second, his sharp elbow jutting into Thaddius’s face, but Julius aims a kick at Demetrius’s back, and he goes down.

Then, in a flash of silver, Helene’s holding one knife to Marcus’s neck and the other to his groin.

‘Let go of my hair,’ she says. ‘Or I’ll relieve you of your manhood.’

Marcus releases the ice-blonde curl and whispers something in Helene’s ear. And just like that, her confident air dissolves, the knife at Marcus’s throat falters, and he grabs her face in his hands and kisses her.

I’m so disgusted that for a moment all I can do is gape and try not to vomit. Then a muffled scream erupts from Helene, and I tear my arms from Thaddius and Julius. In a second, I’m past them both, shoving Marcus away from Helene, landing blow after satisfying blow on his face.

Between my punches, Marcus is laughing, and Helene is wiping at her mouth frenziedly. Leander pulls at my shoulders, rabidly demanding a turn at the Snake.

Behind me, Demetrius is back on his feet trading punches with Julius, who overpowers him, shoving his pale head to the ground. Faris comes hurtling out of the crowd, his giant body thudding into Julius and knocking him down, a bull ramming through a fence. I spot Tristas’s tattoo and Dex’s dark skin, and all hell breaks loose.

Then someone hisses ‘Commandant!’ Faris and Julius lurch to their feet, I shove away from Marcus, and Helene stops clawing at her face. The Snake staggers up slowly, his eyes darkening into twin pools of bruise.

My mother cuts through the Skulls, coming straight for Helene and me.

‘Veturius. Aquilla.’ She spits our names like fruit gone bad. ‘Explain.’

‘No explanation, Commandant, sir,’ Helene and I say at the same time.

I look past her, into the distance as I’ve been trained to, and her cold glare bores into me with the delicacy of a blunt knife. From his spot behind the Commandant, Marcus smirks, and I clench my jaw. If Helene is whipped because of his depravity, I’ll hold off on deserting just so I can kill him.

‘Eighth bell is minutes away.’ The Commandant turns her gaze to the rest of the armoury. ‘You will compose yourselves and report to the amphitheatre. Any more incidents like this and those involved will be shipped to Kauf, forthwith. Understood?’

‘Yes, sir!’

The Skulls file out quietly. As Fivers, we all did six months’ guard duty at Kauf Prison, far to the north. None of us would risk being sent there for something as stupid as a graduation-day brawl.

‘Are you all right?’ I ask Hel when the Commandant’s out of earshot.

‘I want to rip my face off and replace it with one that’s never been touched by that swine.’

‘You need someone else to kiss you is all,’ I say, before realizing how that sounds. ‘Not … uh … not that I’m volunteering. I mean—’

‘Yeah, I got it.’ Helene rolls her eyes. Her jaw goes tight, and I wish I’d kept my mouth shut about the kissing. ‘Thanks, by the way,’ she says. ‘For punching him.’

‘I’d have killed him if the Commandant hadn’t shown up.’

Her eyes are warm when she looks at me, and I’m about to ask her what Marcus whispered in her ear when Zak passes us. He fiddles with his brown hair and slows, as if he wants to say something. But I look at him with murder in my eyes, and after a few seconds, he turns away.

Minutes later, Helene and I join the Senior Skulls lining up outside the amphitheatre’s entrance, and the armoury brawl is forgotten. We march into the amphitheatre to the applause of family, students, city officials, the Emperor’s emissaries, and an honour guard of nearly two hundred legionnaires.

I meet Helene’s eyes and see my own astonishment mirrored there. It is surreal to be here on the field instead of watching enviously from the stands. The sky above burns brilliant and clean without a single cloud from horizon to horizon. Flags festoon the theatre’s heights, the red-and-gold pennant of Gens Taia snapping in the wind beside the black, diamond-emblazoned standard of Blackcliff.

My grandfather, General Quin Veturius, head of Gens Veturia, sits in a shaded box in the front row. About fifty of his closest relatives – brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews – are arrayed around him. I don’t have to see his eyes to know he’s taking my measure, checking the angle of my scim, scrutinizing the fit of my armour.

After I was chosen for Blackcliff, Grandfather took one look at my eyes and recognized his daughter in them. He brought me into his home when Mother refused to bring me into hers. No doubt she was enraged that I had survived when she assumed she was rid of me.

I spent every leave training with Grandfather, enduring beatings and harsh discipline but gaining, in return, a distinct edge over my classmates. He knew I would need that edge. Few of Blackcliff’s students have uncertain parentage, and none had ever been raised among the Tribes. Both facts made me an object of curiosity – and ridicule. But if anyone dared treat me poorly because of my background, Grandfather put them in their place, usually with the point of his sword – and quickly taught me to do the same. He can be as heartless as his daughter, but he’s the only relative I have who treats me like family.

Though it’s not regulation, I lift my hand in salute as I pass him, gratified when he nods in return.

After a series of formation drills, the graduates march to the wooden benches at the centre of the field and draw scims, holding them high. A low rumble starts up, growing until it sounds like a thunderstorm has been unleashed in the amphitheatre. It’s the other Blackcliff students, pounding on their stone seats and roaring with a mix of pride and envy. Beside me, Helene and Leander both fail to suppress grins.

Amid the noise, silence descends in my head. It’s a strange silence, infinitely small, infinitely large, and I’m locked inside it, pacing, circling the question. Do I run? Do I desert? Far away, like a voice heard underwater, the Commandant orders us to return scims and sit. She delivers a terse speech from a raised dais, and when it comes time to take our oaths to the Empire, I only know to stand because everyone around me does.

Stay or run? I ask myself. Stay or run?

I think my mouth moves along with everyone else’s as they vow their blood and bodies to the Empire. The Commandant graduates us, and the cheer that erupts out of the new Masks, raw and relieved, is what wrenches me from my thoughts. Faris rips off his school tags and throws them into the sky, followed by the rest of us. They fly into the air, catching the sun like a flock of silver birds.

Families chant their graduates’ names. Helene’s parents and sisters call out Aquilla! Faris’s family calls out Candelan! I hear Vissan! Tullius! Galerius! And then I hear a voice rising above all the rest. Veturius! Veturius! Grandfather stands in his box, backed by the rest of the family, reminding everyone here that one of the Empire’s most powerful gens has seen a son graduate today.

I find his eyes, and for once, there’s no criticism there, only a fierce pride. He grins at me, wolfish and white against the silver of his mask, and I find myself smiling back before confusion floods me and I look away. He won’t be smiling if I desert.

‘Elias!’ Helene throws her arms around me, eyes shining. ‘We did it! We—’

We spot the Augurs in the same moment, and her arms fall away. I’ve never seen all fourteen at once, and my stomach dips. Why are they here? Their hoods are thrown back, revealing their unsettlingly stark features, and, led by Cain, they ghost across the grass and form a half circle around the Commandant’s dais.

The cheers of the audience fade into a questioning hum. My mother watches, her hand idle on her scim hilt. When Cain mounts the dais, she steps aside as if she expected him.

Cain raises his hand for silence, and in seconds, the crowd goes mute. From where I sit on the field, he’s a bizarre spectre, so frail and ashen. But when he speaks, his voice rings out across the amphitheatre with a force that makes everyone sit up.

‘From among the battle-hardened youth there shall rise the Foretold,’ he says. ‘The Greatest Emperor, scourge of our enemies, commander of a host most devastating. And the Empire shall be made whole.

‘So the Augurs foretold five hundred years ago as we drew the stones of this school from the shuddering earth. And so the foretelling shall come to pass. The line of Emperor Taius XXI will fail.’

A near-mutinous buzz rolls through the crowd. If anyone but an Augur had questioned the Emperor’s line, he’d have already been struck down. The legionnaires of the honour guard bristle, hands on their weapons, but at one look from Cain, they settle back, a pack of barely cowed dogs.

‘Taius XXI shall have no direct male issue,’ Cain says. ‘Upon his death, the Empire will fall unless a new Warrior Emperor is chosen.

‘Taius the First, Father of our Empire and Pater of Gens Taia, was the finest fighter of his time. He was tested, tempered, and tried before he was deemed fit to rule. The people of the Empire expect no less of their new leader.’

Bleeding, burning skies. Behind me, Tristas elbows an open-mouthed Dex triumphantly. We all know what Cain will say next. But I still don’t believe what I’m hearing.

‘Thus, the time for the Trials has come.’

The amphitheatre explodes. Or at least it sounds like it’s exploded because I’ve never heard anything so loud. Tristas bellows, ‘I told you!’ at Dex, who looks as if someone’s smashed him over the head with a hammer. Leander shouts, ‘Who? Who?’ Marcus laughs, a smug cackle that makes me yearn to stab him. Helene has a hand clapped over her mouth, her eyes comically wide as she grasps for words.

Cain’s hand comes up again, and again, the crowd falls deathly silent.

‘The Trials are upon us,’ he says. ‘To ensure the future of the Empire, the new Emperor must be at the peak of his strength, as Taius was when he took the throne. Thus do we turn to our battle-hardened youth, our newest Masks. But not all shall vie for this great honour. Only the greatest of our graduates are worthy, the strongest. Only four. Of these four Aspirants, one will be named the Foretold. One will swear fealty and serve as the Blood Shrike. The others will be lost, as leaves on the wind. This, too, we have seen.’

My blood begins to pound in my ears.

‘Elias Veturius, Marcus Farrar, Helene Aquilla, Zacharias Farrar.’ He calls our names in the order we’re ranked. ‘Rise and come forward.’

The amphitheatre is dead quiet. Numbly, I stand, shutting out the searching looks of my classmates, the glee on Marcus’s face, the indecision on Zak’s. The field of battle is my temple. The swordpoint is my priest …

Helene’s back is ramrod straight, but she looks to me, to Cain, to the Commandant. At first, I think she’s frightened. Then I notice the shine in her eyes, the spring in her step.

When Hel and I were Fivers, a Barbarian raiding party took us prisoner. I was trussed like a festival-day goat, but they tied Helene’s hands in front of her with twine and propped her on the back of a pony, assuming she was harmless. That night, she used the twine to garrotte three of our jailers and broke the necks of the other three with her bare hands.

‘They always underestimate me,’ she said afterwards, sounding puzzled. She was right, of course. It’s a mistake even I make. Hel’s not frightened, I realize. She’s euphoric. She wants this.

The walk to the stage takes too little time. In seconds, I’m standing in front of Cain with the others.

‘To be chosen as an Aspirant for the Trials is to be granted the greatest honour the Empire has to offer.’ Cain looks at each one of us, but it seems like his gaze lingers longest on me. ‘In exchange for this great gift, the Augurs require an oath: that as Aspirants, you will see the Trials through until the Emperor is named. The penalty for breaking this oath is death.

‘You must not undertake this oath lightly,’ Cain says. ‘If you wish, you may turn and leave this podium. You will remain a Mask, with all the respect and honour accorded to those of that title. Another will be chosen in your place. It is, in the end, your choice.’

Your choice. Those two words shake me to my marrow. Tomorrow you will have to make a choice. Between deserting and doing your duty. Between running from your destiny and facing it.

Cain doesn’t mean doing my duty as a Mask. He wants me to choose between taking the Trials and deserting.

You devious, red-eyed devil. I want to be free of the Empire. But how can I find freedom if I take the Trials? If I win and become Emperor, I’ll be tied to the Empire for life. And if I swear fealty, I’ll be chained to the Emperor as the second-in-command – the Blood Shrike.

Or I’ll be a leaf lost in the wind, which is just a fancy Augur way of saying dead.

Reject him, Elias. Run. By this time tomorrow, you’ll be miles away.

Cain watches Marcus, and the Augur’s head is tilted as if he’s listening to something beyond our ken.

‘Marcus Farrar. You are ready.’ It’s not a question. Marcus kneels and draws his sword, offering it up to the Augur, his eyes glinting with a strangely exultant zeal, as if he’s already been named Emperor.

‘Repeat after me,’ Cain says. ‘I, Marcus Farrar, swear by blood and by bone, by my honour and the honour of Gens Farrar, that I will dedicate myself to the Trials, that I will see them through until the Emperor is named or my body lies cold.’

Marcus repeats the vow, his voice echoing in the breathless silence of the amphitheatre. Cain closes Marcus’s hands over his blade, pressing until blood drips from his palms. A moment later, Helene kneels, offering her sword, repeating the vow, her voice singing out across the field as clearly as a bell at dawn.

The Augur turns to Zak, who looks at his brother for a long moment before nodding and taking the oath. Suddenly, I’m the only one of the four Aspirants still standing, and Cain is before me, awaiting my decision.

Like Zak, I hesitate. Cain’s words come back to me: You are woven through our dreams. A thread of silver in a tapestry of night. Is becoming Emperor my destiny, then? How can such a destiny lead to freedom? I have no desire to rule – the very idea of doing so is repellent to me.

But then my future as a deserter is no more appealing. You will become everything you hate – evil, merciless, cruel.

Do I trust Cain when he says I will find freedom if I take the Trials? At Blackcliff we learn to classify people: civilian, combatant, enemy, ally, informer, defector. Based on that, we decide our next steps. But I have no understanding of the Augur. I don’t know his motivations, his desires. The only thing I have is my instinct, which tells me that in this matter, at least, Cain wasn’t lying. Whether his prediction is true or not, he trusts that it is. And since my gut tells me to trust him, albeit grudgingly, there’s only one decision that makes sense.

My eyes never leaving Cain’s, I drop to my knees, draw my sword, and run the blade across my palm. My blood falls to the dais in a rapid drip.

‘I, Elias Veturius, swear, by blood and by bone …’

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Laia

The Commandant of Blackcliff Military Academy.

My curiosity for the spy mission withers. The Empire trains the Masks at Blackcliff – Masks like the one who murdered my family and stole my brother. The school sprawls atop Serra’s eastern cliffs like a colossal vulture, a jumble of austere buildings enclosed by a black granite wall. No one knows what happens behind that wall, how the Masks train, how many there are, how they are chosen. Every year, a new class of Masks leaves Blackcliff, young, savage, and deadly. For a Scholar – especially a girl – Blackcliff is the most dangerous place in the city.

Mazen goes on. ‘She lost her personal slave—’

‘The girl threw herself off the cliffs a week ago,’ Keenan retorts, defying Mazen’s glare. ‘She’s the third slave to die in the Commandant’s service this year.’

‘Quiet,’ Mazen says. ‘I won’t lie to you, Laia. The woman’s unpleasant—’

‘She’s insane,’ Keenan says. ‘They call her the Bitch of Blackcliff. You won’t survive the Commandant. The mission will fail.’

Mazen’s fist comes down on the table. Keenan doesn’t flinch.

‘If you can’t keep your mouth shut,’ the Resistance leader growls, ‘then leave.’

Tariq’s jaw drops as he looks between the two men. Sana, meanwhile, watches Keenan with a thoughtful expression. Others in the cavern stare too, and I get the feeling that Keenan and Mazen don’t disagree very often. Keenan scrapes his chair back and leaves the table, disappearing into the muttering crowd behind Mazen.

‘You’re perfect for the job, Laia,’ Mazen says. ‘You have all the skills the Commandant would expect from a house slave. She’ll assume you’re illiterate. And we have the means to get you in.’

‘What happens if I’m caught?’

‘You’re dead.’ Mazen looks me straight in the eye, and I feel a bitter appreciation for his honesty. ‘Every spy we’ve sent to Blackcliff has been discovered and killed. This isn’t a mission for the fainthearted.’

I almost want to laugh. He couldn’t have picked a worse person for it. ‘You’re not doing a very good job selling it.’

‘I don’t have to sell it,’ Mazen says. ‘We can find your brother and break him out. You can be our eyes and ears in Blackcliff. A simple exchange.’

‘You trust me to do this?’ I ask. ‘You hardly know me.’

‘I knew your parents. That’s enough for me.’

‘Mazen.’ Tariq speaks up. ‘She’s just a girl. Surely we don’t need to—’

‘She invoked Izzat,’ Mazen says. ‘But Izzat means more than freedom. It means more than honour. It means courage. It means proving yourself.’

‘He’s right,’ I say. If the Resistance is going to help me, I can’t have the fighters thinking I’m weak. A glimmer of red catches my eye, and I look across the cavern to where Keenan leans against a bunk watching me, his hair like fire in the torchlight. He doesn’t want me to take this mission because he doesn’t want to risk the men to save Darin. I put a hand to my armlet. Be brave, Laia.

I turn to Mazen. ‘If I do this, you’ll find Darin? You’ll break him out of jail?’

‘You have my word. It won’t be hard to locate him. He’s not a Resistance leader, so it’s not as if they’ll send him to Kauf.’ Mazen snorts, but mention of the infamous northern prison sends a chill across my skin. Kauf’s interrogators have one goal: to make inmates suffer as much as possible before they die.

My parents died in Kauf. My sister, only twelve at the time, died there too.

‘By the time you make your first report,’ Mazen says, ‘I’ll be able to tell you where Darin is. When your mission is complete, we’ll break him out.’

‘And after?’

‘We prise your slaves’ cuffs off and pull you out of the school. We can make it look like a suicide, so you’re not hunted. You can join us, if you like. Or we can arrange passage to Marinn for you both.’

Marinn. The free lands. What I wouldn’t give to escape there with my brother, to live in a place with no Martials, no Masks, no Empire.

But first I have to survive a spy mission. I have to survive Blackcliff.

Across the cavern, Keenan shakes his head. But the fighters around me nod. This is Izzat, they seem to say. I fall silent, as if considering, but my decision is made the second I realize that going to Blackcliff is the only way to get Darin back.

‘I’ll do it.’

‘Good.’ Mazen doesn’t sound surprised, and I wonder if he knew all along that I would say yes. He raises his voice so it carries. ‘Keenan will be your handler.’

At this, the younger man’s face goes, if possible, even darker. He presses his lips together as if to keep from speaking.

‘Her hands and feet are cut up,’ Mazen says. ‘See to her injuries, Keenan, and tell her what she needs to know. She leaves for Blackcliff tonight.’

Mazen leaves, trailed by members of his faction, while Tariq claps me on the shoulder and wishes me luck. His allies pepper me with advice: Never go looking for your handler. Don’t trust anyone. They only wish to help, but it’s overwhelming, and when Keenan cuts through the crowd to retrieve me, I’m almost relieved.

Almost. He jerks his head to a table in the corner of the cavern and walks off without waiting for me.

A glint of light near the table turns out to be a small spring. Keenan fills two tubs with water and a powder I recognize as tanroot. He sets one tub on the table and one on the floor.

I scrub my hands and feet clean, wincing as the tanroot sinks into the scrapes I picked up in the catacombs. Keenan watches silently. Beneath his scrutiny, I am ashamed at how quickly the water turns black with muck – and then angry at myself for being ashamed.

When I’m done, Keenan sits at the table across from me and takes my hands. I’m expecting him to be brusque, but his hands are – not gentle, exactly, but not callous, either. As he examines my cuts, I think of a dozen questions I could ask him, none of which will make him think that I’m strong and capable instead of childish and petty. Why do you seem to hate me? What did I do to you?

‘You shouldn’t be doing this.’ He rubs a numbing ointment on one of the deeper cuts, keeping his attention fixed on my wounds. ‘This mission.’

You’ve made that clear, you jackass. ‘I won’t let Mazen down. I’ll do what I have to.’

‘You’ll try, I’m sure.’ I’m stung at his bluntness, though by now it should be clear that he has no faith in me. ‘The woman’s a savage. The last person we sent in—’

‘Do you think I want to spy on her?’ I burst out. He looks up, surprise in his eyes. ‘I don’t have a choice. Not if I want to save the only family I have left. So just—’ Shut it, I want to say. ‘Just don’t make this harder.’

Something like embarrassment crosses his face, and he regards me with a tiny bit less scorn. ‘I’m … sorry.’ His words are reluctant, but a reluctant apology is better than none at all. I nod jerkily and realize that his eyes are not blue or green but a deep chestnut brown. You’re noticing his eyes, Laia. Which means you’re staring into them. Which means you need to stop. The smell of the salve stings my nostrils, and I wrinkle my nose.

‘Are you using twin-thistle in this salve?’ I ask. At his shrug, I pull the bottle from him and take another sniff. ‘Try ziberry next time. It doesn’t smell like goat dung, at least.’

Keenan raises a fiery eyebrow and wraps one of my hands with gauze. ‘You know your remedies. Useful skill. Your grandparents were healers?’

‘My grandfather.’ It hurts to speak of Pop, and I pause a long while before going on. ‘He started training me formally a year and a half ago. I mixed his remedies before that.’

‘Do you like it? Healing?’

‘It’s a trade.’ Most Scholars who aren’t enslaved work menial jobs – as farmhands or cleaners or stevedores – backbreaking labour for which they’re paid next to nothing. ‘I’m lucky to have one. Though, when I was little, I wanted to be a Kehanni.’

Keenan’s mouth curves into the barest smile. It is a small thing, but it transforms his entire face and lightens the weight on my chest.

‘A Tribal tale-spinner?’ he says. ‘Don’t tell me you believe in myths of jinn and efrits and wraiths that kidnap children in the night?’

‘No.’ I think of the raid. Of the Mask. My lightness melts away. ‘I don’t need to believe in the supernatural. Not when there’s worse that roams the night.’

He goes still, a sudden stillness that draws my eyes up and into his. My breath hitches at what I see laid bare in his gaze: a wrenching knowledge, a bitter understanding of pain that I know well. Here’s someone who has walked paths as dark as mine. Darker, maybe.

Then coldness descends over his face, and his hands are moving again.

‘Right,’ he says. ‘Listen carefully. Today was graduation day at Blackcliff. But we’ve just learned that this year’s ceremony was different. Special.’

He tells me of the Trials and the four Aspirants. Then he gives me my mission.

‘We need three pieces of information. We need to know what each Trial is, where it’s taking place, and when. And we need to know this before each Trial begins, not after.’

I have a dozen questions, but I don’t ask, knowing he’ll just think me more foolish.

‘How long will I be in the school?’

Keenan shrugs and finishes bandaging my hands. ‘We know next to nothing about the Trials,’ he says. ‘But I can’t imagine it will take more than a few weeks – a month, at most.’

‘Do you – do you think Darin will last that long?’

Keenan doesn’t answer.

* * *

Hours later, in the early evening, I find myself in a house in the Foreign Quarter with Keenan and Sana, standing before an elderly Tribesman. He’s clad in the loose robes of his people and looks more like a kindly old uncle than a Resistance operative.

When Sana explains what she wants of him, he takes one look at me and folds his arms across his chest.

‘Absolutely not,’ he says in heavily accented Serran. ‘The Commandant will eat her alive.’

Keenan throws Sana a pointed look, as if to say, What did you expect?

‘With respect,’ Sana says to the Tribesman, ‘can we …’ She gestures to a lattice-screen doorway leading to another room. They disappear behind the lattice. Sana’s speaking too softly for me to hear, but whatever she’s saying must not be working, because even through the screen, I can see the Tribesman shaking his head.

‘He won’t do it,’ I say.

Beside me, Keenan leans against the wall, unconcerned. ‘Sana can convince him. She’s not leader of her faction for nothing.’

‘I wish I could do something.’

‘Try looking a little braver.’

‘What, like you?’ I arrange my face so it’s blank as slate, slump against the wall, and look off into the distance. Keenan actually smiles for a fraction of a second. It takes years off his face.

I rub a bare foot across the hypnotic swirls of the thick Tribal rug on the floor. Pillows embroidered with tiny mirrors are strewn across it, and lamps of coloured glass hang from the roof, catching the last rays of sunlight.

‘Darin and I came to a house like this to sell Nan’s jams once.’ I reach up to touch one of the lamps. ‘I asked him why Tribesmen have mirrors everywhere, and he said—’ The memory is clear and sharp in my mind, and an ache for my brother, for my grandparents, pulses in my chest with such violence that I clamp my mouth shut.

Tribesmen think the mirrors ward off evil, Darin said that day. He took out his sketchbook while we waited for the Tribal trader and started drawing, capturing the intricacy of the lattice screens and lanterns with small, quick strokes of charcoal. Jinn and wraiths can’t stand the sight of themselves, apparently.

After that, he’d answered a dozen more of my questions with his usual quiet confidence. At the time, I’d wondered how he knew so much. Only now do I understand – Darin always listened more than he spoke, watching, learning. In that way, he was like Pop.

The ache in my chest expands, and my eyes are suddenly hot.

‘It will get better,’ Keenan says. I look up to see sadness flicker across his face, almost instantly replaced by that now-familiar chill. ‘You’ll never forget them, not even after years. But one day, you’ll go a whole minute without feeling the pain. Then an hour. A day. That’s all you can ask for, really.’ His voice drops. ‘You’ll heal. I promise.’

He looks away, distant again, but I’m grateful to him anyway, because for the first time since the raid, I feel less alone. A second later, Sana and the Tribesman come around the screen.

‘You’re sure this is what you want?’ the Tribesman asks me.

I nod, not trusting my voice.

He sighs. ‘Very well.’ He turns to Sana and Keenan. ‘Say your goodbyes. If I take her now, I can still get her into the school by dark.’

‘You’ll be all right.’ Sana hugs me tightly, and I wonder if she’s trying to convince me or herself. ‘You’re the Lioness’s daughter. And the Lioness was a survivor.’

Until she wasn’t. I lower my gaze so Sana doesn’t see my doubt. She heads out the door, and then Keenan is before me. I cross my arms, not wanting him to think I need a hug from him too.

But he doesn’t touch me. Just cocks his head and lifts his fist to his heart – the Resistance salute.

‘Death before tyranny,’ he says. Then he, too, is gone.

* * *

A half hour later, dusk drops over the city of Serra, and I am following the Tribesman swiftly through the Mercator Quarter, home to the wealthiest members of the Martial merchant class. We stop before the ornate iron gate of a slaver’s home, and the Tribesman checks my manacles, his tan robes swishing softly as he moves around me. I clasp my bandaged hands together to stop them from shaking, but the Tribesman gently prises my fingers apart.

‘Slavers catch lies the way spiders catch flies,’ he says. ‘Your fear is good. It makes your story real. Remember: do not speak.’

I nod vigorously. Even if I wanted to say something, I’m too frightened. The slaver is Blackcliff’s sole supplier, Keenan had explained while walking me to the Tribesman’s house. It’s taken months for our operative to gain his trust. If he doesn’t pick you for the Commandant, your mission’s dead before it begins.

We’re escorted through the gates, and moments later, the slaver is circling me, sweating in the heat. He’s as tall as the Tribesman but twice as broad, with a paunch that strains the buttons of his gold brocade shirt.

‘Not bad.’ The slaver snaps his fingers, and a slave-girl appears from the recesses of his mansion bearing a tray of drinks. The slaver slurps one down, pointedly not offering anything to the Tribesman. ‘The brothels will pay well for her.’

‘As a whore, she won’t fetch more than a hundred marks,’ the Tribesman says in his hypnotic lilt. ‘I need two hundred.’

The slaver snorts, and I want to strangle him for it. The shaded streets of his neighbourhood are littered with sparkling fountains and bow-backed Scholar slaves. The man’s house is a bloated hodgepodge of arches and columns and courtyards. Two hundred silvers is a drop in the bucket for him. He probably paid more for the plaster lions flanking his front door.

‘I hoped to sell her as a house slave,’ the Tribesman continues. ‘I heard you were looking for one.’

‘I am,’ the slaver admits. ‘Commandant’s been on my back for days. Hag keeps killing off her girls. Temper like a viper.’ The slaver eyes me the way a rancher eyes a heifer, and I hold my breath. Then he shakes his head.

‘She’s too small, too young, too pretty. She won’t last a week in Blackcliff, and I don’t want the bother of replacing her. I’ll give you one hundred for her and sell her to Madam Moh over dockside.’

A bead of sweat trickles down the Tribesman’s otherwise serene face. Mazen ordered him to do whatever it took to get me into Blackcliff. But if he drops his price suddenly, the slaver will be suspicious. If he sells me as a whore, the Resistance will have to get me out – and there is no guarantee they can do so quickly. If he doesn’t sell me at all, my attempt to save Darin will fail.

Do something, Laia. Darin again, fanning my courage. Or I’m dead.

‘I press clothes well, Master.’ The words are out before I can reconsider. The Tribesman’s mouth drops open, and the slaver regards me as if I’m a rat who has begun juggling.

‘And, um … I can cook. And clean and dress hair,’ I trail off into a whisper. ‘I’d – I’d make a good maid.’

The slaver stares me down, and I wish I’d kept my mouth shut. Then his eyes grow shrewd, almost amused.

‘Afraid of whoring, girl? Don’t see why, it’s an honest enough trade.’ He circles me again, then jerks my chin up until I am looking into his reptilian green eyes. ‘You said you can dress hair and press clothes? Can you barter and handle yourself in the market?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You can’t read, of course. Can you count?’

Of course I can count. And I can read too, you double-chinned pig.

‘Yes, sir. I can count.’

‘She’ll have to learn to keep her mouth shut,’ the slaver says. ‘I’ve got to eat the cost of cleanup. Can’t send her to Blackcliff looking like a chimney sweep.’ He considers. ‘I’ll take her for one hundred and fifty silver marks.’

‘I can always take her to one of the Illustrian houses,’ the Tribesman suggests. ‘Underneath all that dirt, she’s a fine-looking girl. I’m sure they’d pay well for her.’

The slaver narrows his eyes. I wonder if Mazen’s man has erred, trying to bargain higher. Come on, you miser, I think at the slaver. Cough up a little extra.

The slaver pulls out a sack of coins. I fight to hide my relief.

‘A hundred and eighty marks then. Not a copper more. Take off her chains.’

Less than an hour later, I’m locked inside a ghost wagon that is heading for Blackcliff. Wide silver bands that mark me as a slave adorn each wrist. A chain leads from the collar around my neck to a steel rail inside the wagon. My skin still smarts from the scrubbing I got from two slave-girls, and my head aches from the tight bun they tamed my hair into. My dress, black silk with a corset-tight bodice and diamond-patterned skirt, is the finest thing I’ve ever worn. I hate it on sight.

The minutes crawl by. The inside of the wagon is so dark that I feel as if I’ve gone blind. The Empire throws Scholar children into these wagons, some as young as two or three, ripped screaming from their parents. After that, who knows what happens to them. The ghost wagons are so named because those who disappear into them are never seen again.

Don’t think of such things, Darin whispers to me. Focus on the mission. On how you’ll save me.

As I go over Keenan’s instructions again in my head, the wagon begins to climb, moving achingly slow. The heat seeps into me, and when I feel as if I’ll faint from it, I think up a memory to distract myself – Pop sticking his finger in a fresh jam pot three days ago and laughing while Nan whacked him with a spoon.

Their absence is a wound in my chest. I miss Pop’s growling laugh and Nan’s stories. And Darin – how I miss my brother. His jokes and drawings and how he seems to know everything. Life without him isn’t just empty, it’s scary. He’s been my guide, my protector, my best friend for so long that I don’t know what to do without him. The thought of him suffering torments me. Is he in a cell right now? Is he being tortured?

In the corner of the ghost wagon, something flickers, dark and creeping.

I want it to be an animal – a mouse or, skies, even a rat. But then the creature’s eyes are on me, bright and ravenous. It is one of the things. One of the shadows from the night of the raid. I’m going crazy. Bleeding, bat crazy.

I close my eyes, willing the thing to disappear. When it doesn’t, I swat at it with trembling hands.

‘Laia …’

‘Go away. You’re not real.’

The thing inches close. Don’t scream, Laia, I tell myself, biting down hard on my lip. Don’t scream.

‘Your brother suffers, Laia.’ Each of the creature’s words is deliberate, as if it wants to make sure I don’t miss a single one. ‘The Martials pull pain from him slowly and with relish.’

‘No. You’re in my head.’

The creature’s laugh is like breaking glass. ‘I’m real as death, little Laia. Real as shattered bones and traitorous sisters and hateful Masks.’

‘You’re an illusion. You’re my … my guilt.’ I grab Mother’s armlet.

The shadow flashes its predator’s grin, and now it’s only a foot away. But then the wagon comes to a stop, and the creature gives me a last malevolent look before disappearing with a dissatisfied hiss. Seconds later, the wagon door swings open, and the forbidding walls of Blackcliff are before me, their oppressive weight driving the hallucination from my mind.

‘Eyes down.’ The slaver unchains me from the rail, and I force my gaze to the cobbled street. ‘Only speak to the Commandant if she speaks to you. Don’t look her in the eyes – she’s flogged slaves for less. When she gives you a task, carry it out quickly and well. She’ll disfigure you in the first few weeks, but you’ll thank her for it eventually – if the scarring’s bad enough, it’ll keep the older students from raping you too often.

‘The last slave lasted two weeks,’ the slaver continues, oblivious to my growing terror. ‘Commandant wasn’t happy about it. My fault, of course – I should have given the girl some fair warning. Went batty when the Commandant branded her, apparently. Threw herself off the cliffs. Don’t you do the same.’ He gives me a hard look, like a father warning an errant child not to wander off. ‘Or the Commandant will think I’m supplying her with inferior goods.’

The slaver nods a greeting to the guards stationed at the gates and pulls my chain as if I’m a dog. I shuffle after him. Rape … disfigurement … branding. I can’t do it, Darin. I can’t.

A visceral urge to flee sweeps through me, so powerful that I slow, stop, pull away from the slaver. My stomach roils, and I think I’ll be sick. But the slaver yanks the chain hard, and I stumble forward.

There’s nowhere to run, I realize as we pass beneath Blackcliff’s iron-spiked portcullis and into the fabled grounds. There’s nowhere to go. There’s no other way to save Darin.

I’m in now. And there is no going back.

CHAPTER TWELVE
Elias

Hours after I’m named an Aspirant, I dutifully stand beside Grandfather in his cavernous foyer to greet guests arriving for my graduation party. Though Quin Veturius is seventy-seven years old, women blush when he looks them in the eye, and men wince when he deigns to shake their hands. The lamplight paints his thick mane of white hair gold, and the way he towers over everyone else, the way he nods at those entering his home, makes me imagine a falcon watching the world from an updraught.

By eighth bell, the mansion is packed with the finest Illustrian families, along with a few of the wealthiest Mercators. The only Plebeians are the stable hands.

My mother wasn’t invited.

‘Congratulations, Aspirant Veturius,’ a moustached man who might be a cousin says as he shakes my hand in both of his, using the title the Augurs bestowed on me during graduation. ‘Or should I say, your Imperial Majesty.’ The man dares to meet Grandfather’s gaze with an obsequious grin. Grandfather ignores him.

It’s been like this all night. People whose names I don’t know are treating me as if I’m their long-lost son or brother or cousin. Half of them probably are related to me, but they’ve never bothered acknowledging my existence before this.

The bootlickers are interspersed with friends – Faris, Dex, Tristas, Leander – but the person I wait most impatiently for is Helene. After I took the oath, the families of the graduates flooded the field, and she was swept away in a tide of Gens Aquilla before I had a chance to speak to her.

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