An Ember in the Ashes (An Ember in the Ashes 1)

The inside of the house is as gloomy as a dungeon, the smattering of candles providing little illumination against the dark stone walls. I look around, glimpsing the simple, almost monkish furnishings of a dining room and sitting room before the slaver grabs a fistful of my hair and pulls on it so hard I think my neck will break. A knife appears in his hand, its tip caressing my eyelashes. The slave-girl winces.

“You look up one more time,” the slaver says, his hot breath foul in my face, “I’ll carve out your eyes. Understand?”

My eyes water, and at my rapid nod, he releases me.

“Stop blubbering,” he says as the slave leads us upstairs. “Commandant would rather put a scim through you than deal with tears, and I didn’t spend one hundred eighty marks just to throw your corpse to the vultures. ”

The slave-girl leads us to a door at the end of a hallway, straightening her already perfectly pressed black dress before knocking softly. A voice orders us to enter.

As the slaver pushes the door open, I get a glimpse of a heavily curtained window, a desk, and a wall of hand-drawn faces. Then I remember the slaver’s knife and pin my eyes to the floor.

“It took you long enough,” a soft voice greets us.

“Forgive me, Commandant,” the slaver says. “My supplier—”

“Silence. ”

The slaver swallows. His hands rasp like a snake’s coils as he rubs them together. I stand perfectly still. Is the Commandant looking at me? Examining me? I try to look beaten and obedient, the way I know Martials like Scholars to look.

A second later, she is before me, and I jump, surprised at how silently she’s come around her desk. She’s smaller than I expect—shorter than me and reed-slim. Almost delicate. If not for the mask, I might mistake her for a child. Her uniform is pressed to perfection, and her pants are tucked into mirror-bright black boots. Every button of her ebony shirt gleams with the shimmer of a serpent’s eyes.

“Look at me,” she says. I force myself to obey, instantly paralyzed as I meet her gaze. Looking into her face is like looking at the flat, smooth surface of a gravestone. There isn’t a shred of humanity in her gray eyes, nor any evidence of kindness in the planes of her masked features. A spiral of faded blue ink curls up the left side of her neck—a tattoo of some kind.

“What is your name, girl?”

“Laia. ”

My head is jerked to one side, my cheek on fire before I even realize she’s struck me. Tears spring to my eyes at the sharpness of the slap, and I dig my nails into my thigh to keep from running.

“Wrong,” the Commandant informs me. “You have no name. No identity. You are a slave. That is all you are. That is all you will ever be. ” She turns to the slaver to discuss payment. My face is still smarting when the slaver unhooks my collar. Before walking out, he pauses.

“May I offer you my congratulations, Commandant?”

“On what?”

“On the naming of the Aspirants. It’s all over the city. Your son—”

“Get out,” the Commandant says. She turns her back on the startled slaver, who quickly retreats, and settles her gaze on me. This thing actually spawned? What kind of demon had she whelped? I shudder, hoping I never find out.

The silence lengthens, and I remain still as a post, too afraid to even blink.

Two minutes with the Commandant and she’s already cowed me.

“Slave,” she says. “Look behind me. ”

I look up, and the peculiar impression of faces I’d gotten when I first walked in resolves itself. The wall behind the Commandant is covered with wood-framed posters of men and women, old and young. There are dozens, row after row.

WANTED: Rebel Spy. . . Scholar Thieves. . . Resistance Henchman. . .

REWARD: 250 Marks. . . 1,000 Marks.

“These are the faces of every Resistance fighter I’ve hunted down, every Scholar I’ve jailed and executed, most before my tenure as Commandant. Some after. ”

A paper cemetery. The woman is sick. I look away.

“I will tell you the same thing I tell every slave brought into Blackcliff. The Resistance has tried to penetrate this school countless times. I have discovered it every time. If you are working with the Resistance, if you contact them, if you think of contacting them, I will know and I will destroy you. Look. ”

I do as she asks, trying to ignore the faces and letting the images and words fade into a blur.

But then I see two faces that will not fade. Two faces that, however poorly rendered, I could never ignore. Shock courses through me slowly, as if my body is fighting it. As if I don’t want to believe what I see.

MIRRA AND JAHAN OF SERRA

RESISTANCE LEADERS

TOP PRIORITY

DEAD OR ALIVE

REWARD: 10,000 MARKS

Nan and Pop never told me who destroyed my family. A Mask, they said.

Does it matter which one? And here she is. This is the woman who crushed my parents under her steel-bottomed boot, who brought the Resistance to its knees by killing the greatest leaders it ever had.

How did she do it? How, when my parents were such masters of concealment that few knew what they looked like, let alone how to find them?

The traitor. Someone swore allegiance to the Commandant. Someone my parents trusted.

Did Mazen know he was sending me into the lair of my parents’ murderer? He’s a stern man, but he doesn’t seem like a willfully cruel one.

“If you betray me,” the Commandant holds my eyes relentlessly, “you’ll join the faces on that wall. Do you understand?”

Ripping my gaze from my parents, I nod, trembling in my struggle not to allow my body to betray my shock. My words are a strangled whisper.

“I understand. ”

“Good. ” She goes to the door and pulls on a cord. Moments later, the one-eyed girl appears to escort me downstairs. The Commandant closes the door behind me, and anger rises in me like a sickness. I want to turn around and attack the woman. I want to scream at her. You killed my mother, who had a lion’s heart, and my sister, who laughed like the rain, and my father, who captured truth with a few strokes of a pen. You took them from me. You took them from this world.

But I don’t turn back. Darin’s voice comes to me again. Save me, Laia.

Remember why you’re here. To spy.

Skies. I didn’t notice anything in the Commandant’s office except for her wall of death. The next time I go in, I have to pay closer attention. She doesn’t know I can read. I might learn something just by glancing at the papers on her desk.

My mind occupied, I barely hear the feather-light whisper of the girl as it drifts past my ear.

“Are you all right?”

Though she is only a few inches smaller than me, she seems tiny somehow, her stick-thin body swimming in her dress, her face pinched and frightened, like that of a starved mouse. A morbid part of me wants to ask her how she lost her eye.

“I’m fine,” I say. “Don’t think I got on her good side though. ”

“She doesn’t have a good side. ”

That’s clear enough. “What’s your name?”

“I-I don’t have a name,” the girl says. “None of us do. ”

Her hand strays to her eyepatch, and I suddenly feel sick. Is that what happened to this girl? She told someone her name and she had her eye gouged out?