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

If it's going to die anyway, might as well be useful. Laia's words.

The same applies to me, I realize.

Kauf is more than a thousand miles away. By wagon, it will take two months, true enough. The Empire's couriers, on the other hand, regularly make the journey in two weeks.

I won't have access to fresh horses every dozen miles, the way the couriers do. I cannot use the main roads. I'll need to hide or fight at a moment's notice. I'll need to hunt or steal everything I consume.

Even knowing all of that, if I head to Kauf alone, I can make it in half the time that it would take the wagons. I don't wish to leave Laia--I will feel the absence of her voice, her face, every day. I already know it. But if I can make it to the prison in a month, I'll have enough time before Rathana to break Darin out. The Tellis extract will keep the seizures at bay until the wagons get close to the prison. I will see Laia again.

I rise, coil my bedroll, and make for Afya's wagon. When I knock on the back door, it takes her only a moment to answer, despite it being the dead of night.

She holds up a lamp, raising her eyebrows when she sees me.

"I usually prefer to get to know my midnight visitors a bit better before I invite them into my wagon, Elias," she says. "But for you . . ."

"That's not why I'm here," I say. "I need a horse, some parchment, and your discretion."

"Escaping while you still can?" She gestures me inside. "I'm glad you've come to your senses."

"I'm getting Darin out alone." I step in the wagon and drop my voice. "Faster and safer for everyone that way."

"Fool. How will you sneak north without my wagons? Have you forgotten that you're the Empire's most wanted criminal?"

"I'm a Mask, Afya. I'll manage." I narrow my eyes at the Tribeswoman. "Your vow to me still stands. You will get them to Kauf."

"But you'll get him out yourself? There will be no need for Tribe Nur's assistance?"

"No," I say. "There's a cave in the hills south of the prison. It's about a day's hike from the main gate. I'll draw you a map. Get them there safely. If all goes well, Darin will be waiting there when you arrive in two months. If not--"

"I won't just abandon them in the mountains, Elias." Afya bristles, offended. "They have taken water and salt at my table, for skies' sake." She gives me an appraising look, and I don't like the sharpness in her eyes, like she'll cut the truth of why I'm doing this out of me if she has to.

"Why the change of heart?"

"Laia wanted us to do this together. So it never occurred to me to do it alone." That part, at least, is true, and I let Afya see that in my face. "I'll need you to give Laia something from me. She'll put up a fight if I tell her."

"She will indeed." Afya hands me parchment and a quill. "And not just because she wants to do this herself, though you both might tell yourselves that."

I choose not to dwell on that particular comment. A few minutes later, I've finished the letter and drawn a detailed map of the prison and of the cave where I plan to stow Darin.

"You're sure about this?" Afya crosses her arms as she stands. "You shouldn't just disappear, Elias. You should ask Laia what she wants. It's her brother, after all." Her eyes narrow. "You're not planning to leave the girl high and dry, are you? I'd hate if the man to whom I made my vow was without honor himself."

"I wouldn't do that."

"Then take Trera, Riz's bay. He's headstrong but swift and cunning as a north wind. And try not to fail, Elias. I have no desire to break into that prison myself."

Silently, I make my way from her wagon to Riz's, whispering to Trera in soothing tones to keep him quiet. I snatch flatbread, fruit, nuts, and cheese from Vana's wagon and lead the horse well beyond the camp.

"You're trying to get him out on your own, then?"

Keenan materializes out of the darkness like a bleeding wraith, and I jump. I didn't hear him--didn't even sense him.

"I don't need to hear your reasons." He keeps his distance, I notice. "I know what it is to do things that you don't want to for a greater good."

On the surface, the words are almost sympathetic. But his eyes are as flat as polished stones, and my neck prickles unpleasantly, as if the second I turn around, he'll stab me in the back.

"Good luck." He offers a hand. Warily I shake it, my other hand drifting to my knives almost unconsciously.

Keenan sees, and his half smile doesn't reach his eyes. He lets go of my hand quickly and fades back into the dark. I shake off the uneasiness that has stolen over me. You just don't like him, Elias.

I glance up at the sky. The stars still sparkle above, but dawn approaches, and I need to be well away before then. But what about Laia? Am I really going to leave with only a note to say goodbye?

On cat feet, I make my way to Gibran's wagon and open the back door. Izzi snores on one bench, her hands folded beneath her cheek. Laia is curled in a ball on the other, one hand on her armlet, fast asleep.

"You are my temple," I murmur as I kneel beside her. "You are my priest. You are my prayer. You are my release." Grandfather would scowl at me for sullying his beloved mantra so. But I prefer it this way.

I leave and head toward Trera, waiting at the edge of the camp. As I climb up into the saddle, he snorts.

"Ready to fly, boy?" He flicks his ears, and I take it as a yes. Without another look back at the camp, I turn toward the north.

XXIV: Helene

He escaped. He escaped. He escaped.

I pace a groove into the stone floor of the garrison's main room, trying to block out the rasp of Faris sharpening his scims, the low murmur of Dex giving orders to a group of legionnaires, the tapping of Harper's fingers on his armor as he watches me.

There must be some way to track Elias. Think. He's one man. I have the might of the entire Empire behind me. Send out more soldiers. Call in more Masks. Members of the Black Guard--you're their commander. Send them out after the Tribes Mamie visited.

It won't be enough. Thousands of wagons poured out of the city while I put down a staged riot after letting Elias walk away from me. He could be on any of those wagons.

I close my eyes, wanting desperately to break something. You're such an idiot, Helene Aquilla. Mamie Rila played a tune, and I tossed my arms up and danced to it like a mindless marionette. She wanted me at the storytelling theater. She wanted me to know Elias was there, to see the riot, to call for reinforcements, to weaken the cordon. I was too stupid to realize it until it was too late.

Harper, at least, kept his head. He ordered two squads of soldiers assigned to quell the riot to instead surround Tribe Saif's wagons. The prisoners he took--including Mamie Rila--are the only hope we have of finding Elias.

I had him. Damn it all. I had him. And then I let him go. Because I don't want him to die. Because he's my friend and I love him.

Because I am a damned fool.

All the times I lay awake at night, telling myself that when the time came, I needed to be strong. I needed to take him. It was nothing in the face of seeing him again. Of hearing his voice and feeling his hands on my skin.

He looked so different, all muscle and sinew, like one of his Teluman scims brought to life. But the greatest change was his eyes--the shadows beneath and the sadness within, like he knew something he couldn't bear to tell me. It gnaws at me, that look in his eyes. More than my failure to catch and kill him when I had the chance. It frightens me.

We both know I'm not long for this world. What did he mean by it? Since healing him in the Second Trial, I've felt a bond with Elias--a protectiveness I've tried not to think about. It's born of the healing magic, I'm certain. When Elias touched me, that bond told me that my friend was not well.

"Don't forget about us," he said to me in Serra. I close my eyes and allow myself one moment to imagine a different world. In that world, Elias is a Tribal boy, and I am a jurist's daughter. We meet in a market, and our love isn't tainted by Blackcliff or by all the things he hates about himself. I hold myself in that world, jus

t for a second.

Then I release it. Elias and I are finished. Now, there is only death.

"Harper," I say. Dex dismisses the legionnaires, turning his attention to me, and Faris sheathes his scims. "How many members of Tribe Saif did we capture?"

"Twenty-six men, fifteen women, and twelve children, Blood Shrike."

"Execute them," Dex says. "Immediately. We need to show what happens when you harbor an Empire fugitive."

"You can't kill them." Faris glares at Dex. "They're the only family Elias ever--"

"Those people aided and abetted an enemy of the Empire," Dex snaps. "We have orders--"

"We don't have to execute them," Harper says. "They have other uses."

I catch Harper's intent. "We should question them. We have Mamie Rila, yes?"

"Unconscious," Harper says. "The aux who took her was too enthusiastic with the hilt of his sword. She should come around in a day or two."

"She'll know who got Veturius out of here," I say. "And where he's heading."

I look at the three of them. Harper has orders to remain with me, so he cannot stay in Nur to question Mamie and her family. But Dex might kill off our prisoners. And more dead Tribesmen are the last thing the Empire needs while the Scholar revolution still rages.

"Faris," I say. "You'll handle the interrogations. I want to know how Elias got out and where he's going."

"What of the children?" Faris says. "Surely we can release them. They won't know anything."