A Torch Against the Night (An Ember in the Ashes 2)

"You've been carrying too much weight for too long. All this time, Laia, you've led, you've made difficult decisions--and perhaps you weren't ready to. There's no shame in that, and I'll gut anyone who tells me different. You did the best you could. But let go now. Let me carry that weight for you. Let me help you. Trust that I'll do the right thing. Have I steered you wrong yet?"

I shake my head. My disquiet returns. You should believe in yourself more than this, Laia, a voice within says. Not every decision you've made has been a bad one.

But the ones that mattered--the ones where lives hung in the balance--those decisions were wrong. The weight of it is crushing.

"Close your eyes," Keenan says. "Rest now. I'll get us to Kauf. We'll get Darin out. And all will be well."

*

Three nights after we leave the cellar safe house, we stumble upon a half-dug mass grave of Scholars. Men. Women. Children. All tossed carelessly within, like offal. Ahead of us, the snow-capped peaks of the Nevennes Range blot out half the sky. How cruel their beauty seems. Do they not know the evil that has taken place in their shadow?

Keenan quickly urges us past, moving even after the sun is up. When we're well away from the grave and traversing a high, forested bluff, I catch a glimpse of something to the west, in the low hills that lie between us and Antium. Tents, it looks like, and men, campfires. Hundreds of them.

"Skies." I stop Keenan. "Do you see that? Aren't those the Argent Hills? It looks like an entire damned army out there."

"Come on." Keenan pulls me onward, worry driving his impatience and igniting my own. "We need to take cover until nightfall."

But the night only brings more horrors. Hours into our journey, we come so suddenly upon a group of soldiers that I gasp, nearly giving away our position.

Keenan pulls me back with a hiss of breath. The soldiers guard four ghost wagons--so called because once you disappear inside, you might as well be dead. The wagons' high, black sides prevent me from seeing how many Scholars are within. But hands clutch at the bars on the back window, some large and others far too small. More prisoners are loaded into the last wagon as we watch. I think of the grave we passed earlier. I know what will happen to these people. Keenan tries to pull me onward, but I find I am unable to move.

"Laia!"

"We can't just leave them."

"There are a dozen soldiers and four Masks guarding those wagons," Keenan says. "We'd be slaughtered."

"What if I disappeared?" I look back toward the wagons. I can't stop thinking of those hands. "The way I did in the Tribal camp. I could--"

"But you can't. Not since . . ." Keenan reaches out and squeezes my shoulder in sympathy. Not since Izzi died.

At the sound of a shout, I turn back to the wagons. A Scholar boy claws at the face of the Mask who drags him forward.

"You can't keep doing this to us!" the boy screams as the Mask tosses him in the wagon. "We're not animals! One day, we'll fight back!"

"With what?" The Mask chuckles. "Sticks and rocks?"

"We know your secrets now." The boy throws himself against the bars. "You can't stop it. One of your own smiths turned against you, and we know."

The sneer drops off the Mask's face, and he looks almost thoughtful. "Ah yes," he says quietly. "The rats' great hope. The Scholar who stole the secret of Serric steel. He is dead, boy."

I gasp, and Keenan puts a hand over my mouth, holding me steady as I flail, whispering that I cannot make a sound, that our lives depend on it.

"He died in prison," the Mask says. "After we extracted every bit of useful information from his weak, miserable mind. You are animals, boy. Less than that, even."

"He's lying," Keenan whispers, pulling me bodily from the trees. "He's doing it to torment that boy. There's no way the Mask could know if Darin was dead."

"What if he's not lying?" I say. "What if Darin is dead? You've heard the rumors about him. They're spreading further and further. Maybe by killing him, the Empire thinks they can crush those rumors. Maybe--"

"It doesn't matter," Keenan says. "As long as there's a chance that he's alive, then we have to try. Do you hear me? We must keep going. Come on. A lot of ground to cover."

*

Nearly a week after leaving the cellar safe house, Keenan comes trudging back to camp--this one beneath the gnarled, leafless boughs of an oak tree. "The Commandant has gotten as far as Delphinium," he says. "She slaughtered every free Scholar."

"What about slaves? Prisoners?"

"Slaves were left alone--their masters no doubt protested the loss of property." He looks ill as he says it. "She cleared out the prison. Held a mass execution in the city square."

Skies. The darkness of the night feels deeper and quieter somehow, as if the Reaper walks these trees and every living thing knows it but us. "Soon," I say, "there will be no Scholars left."

"Laia," Keenan says. "She's heading to Kauf next."

My head jerks up. "Skies, what if Elias hasn't gotten Darin out? If the Commandant starts killing the Scholars up there--"

"Elias left six weeks ago," Keenan says. "And he seemed damned confident. Perhaps he's already broken Darin out. They might be waiting for us in the cave."

Keenan reaches into his bulging pack. He pulls out a loaf of bread, still steaming, and half a chicken. Skies know what he did to get it. Still, I can't bring myself to eat.

"Do you ever think about those people in the wagons?" I whisper. "Do you ever wonder what happened to them? Do--do you care?"

"I joined the Resistance, did I not? But I can't dwell, Laia. It accomplishes nothing."

But it's not dwelling, I think. It's remembering. And remembering is not nothing.

A week ago, I'd have said the words out loud. But since Keenan took the yoke of leadership from me, I've felt weaker. Diminished. As if I grow smaller by the day.

I should be thankful to him. Despite the Martial-infested countryside, Keenan has safely avoided every patrol and scouting party, every outpost and watchtower.

"You must be freezing." His words are soft, but they pull me from my thoughts. I look down in surprise. I still wear the thick black cloak that Elias gave me a lifetime ago in Serra.

I pull the cloak closer. "I'm all right."

The rebel rummages around in his bag and eventually pulls out a heavy, fur-lined winter cloak. He leans forward and gently unhooks my cloak, letting it fall. Then he drapes the other over my shoulders and secures it.

He doesn't mean ill. I know that. Though I've pulled away from him over the past few days, he's been solicitous as ever.

But a part of me wants to fling the cloak off and put Elias's back on. I know I'm acting the fool, but somehow Elias's cloak made me feel good. Perhaps because more than reminding me of him, it reminded me of who I was around him. Braver. Stronger. Flawed, certainly, but unafraid.

I miss that girl. That Laia. That version of myself that burned brightest when Elias Veturius was near.

The Laia who made mistakes. The Laia whose mistakes led to needless death.

How could I forget? I thank Keenan quietly and stuff the old cloak in my bag. Then I pull the new one closer and tell myself that it's warmer.

XXXVIII: Elias

The night silence of Kauf Prison is chilling. For it is not a silence of sleep, but of death, of men giving up, letting their lives slip away, of finally allowing the pain to wash over them until they fade to nothingness. At dawn, the children of Kauf will lug out the bodies of those who haven't lasted the night.

In the quiet, I find myself thinking of Darin. He was always a ghost to me, a figure we strained toward for so long that though I never met him, I feel tied to him. Now that he's dead, his absence is palpable, like a phantom limb. When I remember that he's gone, hopelessness washes over me anew.

My wrists bleed from my manacles, and I cannot feel my shoulders; my arms have been outstretched all night. But the pain is a sear, not a conflagration. I've dealt with worse. Still, when the blackness of a seizure falls

over me like a shroud, it is a relief.

But it is short-lived, for when I wake in the Waiting Place, my ears are filled with the panicked whispers of spirits--hundreds--thousands--too many.

The Soul Catcher offers me a hand up, her face drawn.

"I told you what would happen in that place." My wounds aren't visible here, but she winces when she looks at me, as if she can see them anyway. "Why didn't you listen to me? Look at you."

"I didn't expect to get caught." Spirits whirl around us, like flotsam spinning about in a gale. "Shaeva, what in the ten hells is going on?"

"You shouldn't be here." Her words are not hostile, as they would have been weeks ago. But they are firm. "I thought I wouldn't see you until your death. Go back, Elias."

I feel the familiar pull in my belly but fight it. "Are the spirits restless?"

"More than usual." She slumps. "There are too many. Scholars, mostly."

It takes me a moment to understand. I feel sick when I do. The whispers I hear--thousands upon thousands--are Scholars murdered by Martials.

"Many move on without my aid. But some are so anguished. Their cries upset the jinn." Shaeva puts her hand to her head. "I have never felt so old, Elias. So helpless. In a thousand years as Soul Catcher, I have seen war before. I watched the fall of the Scholars, the rise of the Martials. Still, I have not seen anything like this. Look." She points to the sky, visible through a space in the Forest canopy.

"The archer and the shield maiden fade." She points out the constellations. "The executioner and the traitor arise. The stars always know, Elias. Of late, they whisper only of the approaching darkness."

Shadows gather, Elias, and their gathering cannot be stopped. Cain spoke those words--and worse--to me just months ago, in Blackcliff.

"What darkness?"

"The Nightbringer," Shaeva whispers. Fear rolls over her, and the strong, seemingly impervious creature I've become accustomed to vanishes. In her place is a frightened child.