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

Nothing is impossible. It’s something she’s said to her students a hundred times—when we were exhausted from back-to-back training battles or we hadn’t slept in days. She always demanded more. More than we thought we had to give. Either find a way to complete the tasks I have set before you, she would tell us, or die in the attempt. Your choice.

Exhaustion is temporary. Pain is temporary. But Helene dying because I didn’t find a way to get her back on time—that’s permanent.

I spot a smoking wooden beam half in the water, half out. It will do. I kick, shove, and roll the blasted thing to the river, where it bobs beneath the water threateningly before floating to the surface. Carefully, I lay Helene on the beam and lash her into place. Then I sling an arm around it and make for the closest boat as if all the jinn of air and sea are on my tail.

The river’s waters run freely at this time, mostly empty of the barges and canoes that choke it in the morning. I angle toward a Mercator craft bobbing mid-river, its oars at rest. The sailors don’t notice me approaching, and when I’m right alongside the rope ladder leading to the boat’s deck, I cut Hel from the beam. She sinks into the water almost immediately. I grab the slick rope with one hand and Helene with the other, eventually working her body over my shoulder and clambering up the ladder to the deck.

A silver-haired Martial with a soldier’s build—the captain, I assume—is overseeing a group of Plebeians and Scholar slaves stacking boxes of cargo.

“I am Aspirant Elias Veturius of Blackcliff,” I level my voice until it is as flat as the deck I stand on. “And I am commandeering this vessel. ”

The man blinks, taking in the sight before him: two Masks, one so covered in blood it appears that she’s been tortured, and the other practically naked with a week’s worth of beard, wild hair, and a mad look in his eyes.

But the merchant has clearly done his time in the Martial army because after only a moment, he nods.

“I am at your disposal, Lord Veturius. ”

“Get this boat docked in Serra. Now. ”

The captain shouts orders at his men, a whip much in evidence. In under a minute, the boat is chugging toward Serra’s docks. I look balefully at the sinking sun, willing it to at least slow down. I have no more than a half hour left, and I still have to get through the dock traffic and up to Blackcliff.

I’m cutting it close. Too close.

Helene moans, and I place her on the deck gently. She is sweating despite the cool river air, and her skin is deathly pale. She opens her eyes for a moment.

“Do I look that bad?” she whispers, seeing the expression on my face.

“Actually, it’s an improvement. The filthy woodswoman thing suits you. ”

She smiles, a rare, sweet smile, but it fades quickly.

“Elias—you can’t let me die. If I die, then you—”

“Don’t talk, Hel. Rest. ”

“Can’t die. Augur said—he said if I lived, then—”

“Shhh. . . ”

Her eyes flutter closed, and impatiently, I eye Serra’s docks, still a half mile away and crowded with sailors, soldiers, horses, and wagons. I want to urge the boat faster, but the slaves are already rowing furiously, the captain’s whip at their backs.

Before the boat docks, the captain lowers the gangplank, hails a legionnaire patrolling nearby, and relieves him of his horse. For once, I’m thankful for the severity of Martial discipline.

“Luck to you, Lord Veturius,” the captain says. I thank him and load Hel onto the waiting horse. She sags forward, but I don’t have time to adjust her.

I vault onto the beast and put heel to flank, my eyes on the sun hovering just above the horizon.

The city passes in a blur of gaping Plebeians, muttering auxes, and a riot of merchants and their stalls. I race past all of them, down Serra’s main thoroughfare, through the dwindling crowds of Execution Square, and up the cobbled streets of the Illustrian Quarter. The horse surges on recklessly, and I’m too crazed to even feel guilty when I knock over a peddler and his cart.

Helene’s head bobs back and forth like a slack marionette’s.

“Hang on, Helene,” I whisper. “Almost there. ”

We enter an Illustrian market, scattering slaves in our wake before turning a corner. Blackcliff looms before us as suddenly as if it has sprung fully formed from the earth. The faces of the gate guards blur as we gallop past them.

The sun sinks lower. Not yet, I tell it. Not yet.

“Come on. ” I dig my heels in deeper. “Faster!”

Then we are across the training field, up the hill and inside the central courtyard. The belltower rises in front of me, a few precious yards away. I jerk the horse to a halt and leap off it.

The Commandant stands at the base of the tower, her face stiff—from anger or nerves, I can’t tell. Beside her, Cain waits with two other Augurs, both women. They look at me with mute interest, as if I am a mildly entertaining side act at a circus.

A scream tears through the air. The courtyard is lined with hundreds of people: students, Centurions, and families—including Helene’s. Her mother falls to her knees, hysterical at the sight of her blood-covered daughter. Hel’s sisters, Hannah and Livia, drop beside her as Pater Aquillus remains stone-faced.

Next to him, Grandfather stands in full battle dress. He looks like a bull about to charge, and his gray eyes blaze with pride.

I pull Helene into my arms and stride to the belltower. It’s never seemed so long, this courtyard, not even when I’ve run a hundred sprints across it in the dead of summer.

My body drags. All I want is to collapse onto the ground and sleep for a week. But I take those last few steps, laying Helene down against the tower and reaching out a hand to touch the stone. A moment after my skin meets the rock, the sunset drums boom out.

The crowd erupts. I’m not sure who starts the cheer. Faris? Dex? Maybe even Grandfather. The whole square echoes with it. They must hear it down in the city.

“Veturius! Veturius! Veturius!”

“Get the physician,” I roar at a nearby Cadet who cheers with all the others. His hands freeze mid-clap, and he gapes at me. “Now! Move!”

“Helene,” I whisper. “Hold on. ”

She’s as waxen as a doll. I put a hand against her cold cheek, rubbing a circle over the skin with my thumb. She doesn’t move. She doesn’t draw breath. And when I put my fingers to her throat, to where her pulse should be, I feel nothing.

XVII: Laia

Sana and Mazen disappear up an interior staircase as Keenan walks me out of the basement. I expect him to beg off as quickly as possible. Instead, he beckons me to follow him to a weed-choked backstreet nearby. The street is empty but for a band of urchins crouching over some small treasure, and they scatter at our approach.

I sidle a glance at the red-haired fighter, to find his attention fixed on me with an intensity that sends an unexpected flutter through my chest.

“They’ve been hurting you. ”

“I’m fine,” I say. I won’t let him think I’m weak. I’m on thin ice as it is.

“Darin’s all that matters. The rest is just. . . ” I shrug. Keenan cocks his head and brushes a thumb across the now-faint bruises on my neck. Then he takes my wrist and turns it over to reveal the angry welts the Commandant left there. His hands are slow and gentle as candle flame, and the warmth in my chest spreads up through my collarbone and down to my fingertips. My pulse skitters, and I shake his hand away, unnerved at my own reaction.