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

***

That night, my dreams are travels, filled with hisses and whispers. Wind circles my head like a vulture, and I flinch from hands burning with unnatural heat. I try to wake as discomfort turns into nightmare, but I only slip deeper in, until eventually there is nothing but choking, burning light.

When I open my eyes, the first thing I notice is the hard, sandy ground beneath me. The second is that the ground is hot. Skin-shriveling hot.

My hand shakes as I shield my eyes from the sun and scan the wasted landscape around me. A lone, gnarled Jack tree rises from the cracked land a few feet away. Miles to the west, a vast body of water lays shimmering like a mirage. The air reeks something horrible, a combination of carrion, rotting eggs, and Cadets’ quarters in high summer. The land is so pale and desolate that I might be standing on a distant, dead moon.

My muscles ache, as if I’ve been lying in the same position for hours. The pain tells me that this is no dream. I stagger to my feet, a lonely silhouette in a vast emptiness.

The Trials, it seems, have begun.

XV: Laia

Dawn is still a blue rumor on the horizon when I limp into the Commandant’s chambers. She sits at her dressing table, observing her reflection in the mirror. Her bed looks untouched, as it does every morning. I wonder when she sleeps. If she sleeps.

She’s clad in a loose black robe that softens the disdain on her masked face. It’s the first time I’ve seen her out of uniform. The robe slips down her shoulder, and the unusual swirls of her tattoo are revealed to be part of an ornate A, the dark ink vivid against the chill paleness of her skin.

Ten days have passed since my mission began, and while I haven’t learned anything that will help me save Darin, I have learned how to press a Blackcliff uniform in five minutes flat, how to carry a heavy tray up the stairs with half a dozen welts on my back, and how to remain so silent that I forget my own existence.

Keenan gave me only the barest details about this mission. I’m to gather information about the Trials, and then, when I leave Blackcliff for my errands, the Resistance will contact me. Might take us three days, Keenan said.

Or ten. Be prepared to report every time you go into the city. And never come looking for us.

At the time, I’d suppressed the urge to ask him a dozen questions. Like how to get the information they want. Like how to keep the Commandant from catching me.

Now I’m paying for it. Now I don’t want the Resistance to find me. I don’t want them to learn what a terrible spy I am.

At the back of my mind, Darin’s voice grows fainter: Find something, Laia.

Something that will save me. Hurry.

No, another, louder part of me says. Lay low. Don’t risk spying until you’re certain you won’t get caught.

Which voice do I listen to? The spy or the slave? The fighter or the coward? I thought the answers to such questions would be easy. That was before I learned what real fear was.

For now, I move around the Commandant quietly, setting down her breakfast tray, clearing her tea from the night before, laying out her uniform. Don’t look at me. Don’t look at me. My pleas seem to work. The Commandant acts as if I don’t exist.

When I open the curtains, the first rays of morning illuminate the room.

I stop to look at the emptiness beyond the Commandant’s window, miles of whispering dunes, rippling like waves in the dawn wind. For a second, I lose myself in their beauty. Then Blackcliff’s drums thud out, a wake-up call for the entire school and half the city.

“Slave-Girl. ” The Commandant’s impatience has me moving before she says another word. “My hair. ”

As I take a brush and pins from a table drawer, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. The bruises from my run-in with Aspirant Marcus a week ago are fading, and the ten lashes I received afterward have scabbed over. Other wounds have replaced them. Three lashes on my legs for a dust stain on my skirt. Four lashes on my wrists for not finishing her mending. A black eye from a Skull in a foul mood.

The Commandant opens a letter sitting on her dressing table. She keeps her head still as I pull back her hair, ignoring me entirely. For a second, I stand frozen, staring down at the parchment as she reads. She doesn’t notice.

Of course she doesn’t. Scholars don’t read—or so she assumes. I brush out her pale hair swiftly.

Look at it, Laia. Darin’s voice. Discover what it says.

She will see. She will punish me.

She doesn’t know you can read. She’ll think you’re an idiot Scholar gawping at pretty symbols.

I swallow. I should look. Ten days at Blackcliff with nothing to show for it but bruises and lashes is disastrous. When the Resistance demands a report, I won’t have anything for them. What will happen to Darin then?

Again and again, I glance at the mirror to make sure the Commandant is enmeshed in her letter. When I’m sure, I risk a quick look down.

—too dangerous in the south, and the Commandant is not trustworthy. I advise that you return to Antium. If you must come south, travel with a small force—

The Commandant shifts, and I tear my eyes away, paranoid that I’ve been too obvious. But she reads on, and I risk another glance. By then, she’s turned the parchment over.

—allies are deserting Gens Taia like rats fleeing a fire. I have learned that the Commandant is planning—

But I do not find out what the Commandant is planning, for at that moment, I look up. She is watching me in the mirror.

“The—the marks are beautiful,” I say in a choked whisper, dropping one of the hairpins. I bend to retrieve it, taking those precious seconds to hide my panic. I’ll be whipped for reading something that doesn’t even make any sense. Why did I let her see me? Why wasn’t I more careful? “I haven’t seen much of words,” I add.

“No. ” The woman’s eyes flicker, and for a moment, I think she’s mocking me. “Your kind doesn’t need to read. ” She examines her hair. “The right side’s too low. Fix it. ”

Though I feel like crying from relief, I keep my face carefully bland and slide another pin into her silken hair.

“How long have you been here, slave?”

“Ten days, sir. ”

“Have you made any friends?”

This question is so preposterous coming from the Commandant that I almost laugh. Friends? At Blackcliff? Kitchen-Girl is too shy to talk to me, and Cook only speaks to give me orders. The rest of Blackcliff’s slaves live and work on the main grounds. They are silent and distant—always alone, always wary.

“You’re here for life, girl,” the Commandant says, inspecting her now-finished hair. “Maybe you should get to know your fellows. Here,” she hands me two sealed letters. “Take the one with the red seal to the couriers’ office and the one with the black seal to Spiro Teluman. Don’t leave him without a reply. ”

Who Spiro Teluman is and how to find him I don’t dare to ask. The Commandant punishes questions with pain. I take the letters and back out of the room to avoid any surprise attacks. A breath explodes out of me when I close the door. Thank the skies the woman is too arrogant to think her Scholar drudge can read. As I walk down the hall, I peek at the first letter and nearly drop it. It’s addressed to Emperor Taius.

What would she be corresponding with Taius about? The Trials? I run an experimental finger near the seal. Still soft, it lifts cleanly.