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Freedom. At last.
No student has ever deserted after graduating. Why would they? It’s the hell of Blackcliff that drives its students to run. But after we’re out, we get our own commands, our own missions. We get money, status, respect. Even the lowest-born Plebeian can marry high, if he becomes a Mask. No one with any sense would turn his back on that, especially after nearly a decade and a half of training.
Which is what makes tomorrow the perfect time to run. The two days after graduation are madness – parties, dinners, balls, banquets. If I disappear, no one will think to look for me for at least a day. They’ll assume I’ve drunk myself into a stupor at a friend’s house.
The passageway that leads from below my hearth into Serra’s catacombs pulses at the edge of my vision. It took me three months to dig out that damn tunnel. Another two months to fortify and hide it from the prying eyes of aux patrols. And two more months to map out the route through the catacombs and out of the city.
Seven months of sleepless nights and peering over my shoulder and trying to act normal. If I escape, it will all have been worth it.
The drums beat, signalling the start of the graduation banquet. Seconds later, a knock comes at my door. Ten hells. I was supposed to meet Helene outside the barracks, and I’m not even dressed yet.
Helene knocks again. ‘Elias, stop curling your eyelashes and get out here. We’re late.’
‘Hang on,’ I say. As I pull off my fatigues, the door opens and Helene marches in. A blush blooms up her neck at my undressed state, and she looks away. I raise an eyebrow. Helene has seen me naked dozens of times – when wounded, or ill, or suffering through one of the Commandant’s cruel strength-training exercises. By now, seeing me stripped shouldn’t cause her to do anything more than roll her eyes and throw me a shirt.
‘Hurry up, would you?’ She fumbles to break the silence that’s descended. I grab my dress uniform off a hook and button it on quickly, edgy at her awkwardness. ‘The guys already went ahead. Said they’d save us seats.’
Helene rubs the Blackcliff tattoo on the back of her neck – a four-sided black diamond with curved sides that is inked into every student upon arrival at the school. Helene took it better than most of our class fellows, stoic and tearless while the rest of us whimpered.
The Augurs have never explained why they only choose one girl per generation for Blackcliff. Not even to Helene. Whatever the reason, it’s clear they don’t select at random. Helene might be the only girl here, but there’s a reason she’s ranked third in our class. It’s the same reason that bullies learned early on to leave her alone. She’s clever, swift, and ruthless.
Now, in her black uniform, with her shining braid encircling her head like a crown, she’s as beautiful as winter’s first snow. I watch her long fingers at her nape, watch her lick her lips. I wonder what it would be like to kiss that mouth, to push her to the window and press my body against hers, to pull out the pins in her hair, to feel its softness between my fingers.
‘Uh … Elias?’
‘Hmm …’ I realize I’ve been staring and snap out of it. Fantasizing about your best friend, Elias. Pathetic. ‘Sorry. Just … tired. Let’s go.’
Hel gives me a strange look and nods at my mask, still sitting on the bed. ‘You might need that.’
‘Right.’ Appearing without one’s mask is a whipping offence. I haven’t seen any Skull maskless since we were fourteen. Other than Hel, none of them have seen my face, either.
I put the mask on, trying not to shudder at the eagerness with which it attaches to me. One day left. Then I’ll take it off forever.
The sunset drums thunder as we emerge from the barracks. The blue sky deepens to violet, and the searing desert air cools. Evening’s shadows blend with the dark stones of Blackcliff, making the blockish buildings appear unnaturally large. My eyes rove the shadows, seeking out threats, a habit from my years as a Fiver. I feel, for an instant, as if the shadows are looking back at me. But then the sensation fades.
‘Do you think the Augurs will attend graduation?’ Hel asks.
No, I want to say. Our holy men have better things to do, like locking themselves up in caves and reading sheep entrails.
‘Doubt it,’ is all I say.
‘I guess it would get tedious after five hundred years.’ Helene says this without a trace of irony, and I wince at the sheer idiocy of the idea. How can someone as intelligent as Helene actually think the Augurs are immortal?
But then, she’s not the only one. Martials believe that the Augurs’ ‘power’ comes from being possessed by the spirits of the dead. Masks, in particular, revere the Augurs, for it is the Augurs who decide which Martial children will attend Blackcliff. It is the Augurs who give us our masks. And we’re taught that it was the Augurs who raised Blackcliff in a single day, five centuries ago.
There are only fourteen of the red-eyed bastards, but on the rare occasions that they appear, everyone defers to them. Many of the Empire’s leaders – generals, the Blood Shrike, even the Emperor – make a yearly pilgrimage to the Augurs’ mountain lair, seeking counsel on matters of state. And though it’s clear to anyone with an ounce of logic that they are a pack of charlatans, they’re lionized throughout the Empire not just as immortal, but as oracles and mind-readers.
Most Blackcliff students only see the Augurs twice in our lives: when we’re chosen for Blackcliff and when we’re given our masks. But Helene has always had a particular fascination with the holy men – it’s no surprise that she hoped they’d come to graduation.
I respect Helene, but on this, we don’t agree. Martial myths are as believable as Tribal fables of jinn and the Nightbringer.
Grandfather is one of the few Masks who doesn’t believe in Augur rubbish, and I repeat his mantra in my head. The field of battle is my temple. The swordpoint is my priest. The dance of death is my prayer. The killing blow is my release. The mantra is all I’ve ever needed.
It takes all my control to hold my tongue. Helene notices.
‘Elias,’ she says. ‘I’m proud of you.’ Her tone is strangely formal. ‘I know you’ve struggled. Your mother …’ She glances around and drops her voice. The Commandant has spies everywhere. ‘Your mother’s been harder on you than on any of the rest of us. But you showed her. You worked hard. You did everything right.’
Her voice is so sincere that for a moment, I waver. In two days, she won’t think such things. In two days, she will hate me.
Remember Barrius. Remember what you’ll be expected to do after graduation.
I jostle her shoulder. ‘Are you turning sappy and girly on me?’
‘Forget it, swine.’ She punches me on the arm. ‘I was just trying to be nice.’
My laugh is falsely hearty. They’ll send you to hunt me down when I run. You and the others, the men I call brothers.
We reach the mess hall, and the cacophony within hits us like a wave – laughter and boasts and the raucous talk of three thousand young men on the verge of leave or graduation. It’s never this loud when the Commandant is in attendance, and I relax marginally, glad to avoid her.
Hel pulls me to one of the dozens of long tables, where Faris is regaling the rest of our friends with a tale of his latest escapade at the riverside brothels. Even Demetrius, ever haunted by his dead brother, cracks a smile.
Faris leers, glancing between us suggestively. ‘You two took your time.’
‘Veturius was making himself pretty just for you.’ Hel shoves Faris’s boulder-like body over, and we sit. ‘I had to drag him away from his mirror.’
The rest of the table hoots, and Leander, one of Hel’s soldiers, calls for Faris to finish his story. Beside me, Dex is arguing with Hel’s second lieutenant, Tristas. He’s an earnest, dark-haired boy with a deceptively innocent look to his wide blue eyes, and his fiancée’s name, AELIA, tattooed in block letters on his bicep.
Tristas leans forward. ‘The Emperor’s nearly seventy, and he has no male issue. This year might be the year. The year the Augurs choose a new Emperor. A new dynasty. I was talking to Aelia about it—’
‘Every year, someone thinks it’s the year.’ Dex rolls his eyes. ‘Every year, it’s not. Elias, tell him. Tell Tristas he’s an idiot.’
‘Tristas, you’re an idiot.’
‘But the Augurs say—’
I snort quietly, and Helene gives me a sharp look. Keep your doubts to yourself, Elias. I busy myself with piling food on two plates and shove one toward her. ‘Here,’ I say. ‘Have some slop.’
‘What is it, anyway?’ Hel pokes at the mash and takes a tentative sniff. ‘Cow dung?’
‘No whining,’ Faris says through a mouthful of food. ‘Pity the Fivers. They have to come back to this after four years of happily robbing farmhouses.’
‘Pity the Yearlings,’ Demetrius counters. ‘Can you imagine another twelve years? Thirteen?’
Across the hall, most of the Yearlings smile and laugh like everyone else. But some watch us, the way starving foxes might watch a lion – hungry for what we have.
I imagine half of them gone, half the laughter silenced, half the bodies cold. For that is what will happen in the years of deprivation and torment ahead of them. And they will face it either by living or dying, either by accepting or questioning. The ones who question are usually the ones who die.
‘They don’t seem to care much about Barrius.’ The words are out of my mouth before I can help myself. Beside me, Helene’s body stiffens like water freezing into ice. Dex frowns in disapproval, a comment dying on his lips, and silence falls across our table.
‘Why would they be upset?’ Marcus, sitting one table away with Zak and a knot of cronies, speaks up. ‘That scum got what he deserved. I only wished he’d lasted longer so he could have suffered more.’
‘No one asked what you think, Snake,’ Helene says. ‘Anyway, kid’s dead now.’
‘Lucky him.’ Faris picks up a forkful of food and lets it plop unappetizingly back onto his steel plate. ‘At least he doesn’t have to eat this swill anymore.’
A low chuckle runs up and down the table, and conversation picks up again. But Marcus smells blood, and his malevolence taints the air. Zak turns his gaze to Helene and mutters something to his brother. Marcus ignores him, fixing his hyena eyes on me. ‘You were damn broken up over that traitor this morning, Veturius. Was he a friend?’
‘Piss off, Marcus.’
‘Been spending a lot of time down in the catacombs too.’
‘What is that supposed to mean?’ Helene’s hand is on her weapon, and Faris grabs her arm.
Marcus ignores her. ‘You gonna do a runner, Veturius?’
My head comes up slowly. It’s a guess. He’s guessing. There’s no way he could know. I’ve been careful, and careful at Blackcliff translates to paranoid for most people.
Silence falls at my table, at Marcus’s. Deny it, Elias. They’re waiting.
‘You were squad leader on watch this morning, weren’t you?’ Marcus says. ‘You should have been thrilled to see that traitor go down. You should have brought him in. Say he deserved it, Veturius. Say Barrius deserved what he got.’
It should be easy. I don’t believe it, and that’s what matters. But my mouth won’t move. The words won’t come. Barrius didn’t deserve to be whipped to death. He was a child, a boy so afraid of staying at Blackcliff that he’d risked everything to escape it.
The silence spreads. A few Centurions look up from the head table. Marcus stands, and, quick as a flood, the mood of the hall changes, turning curious and expectant.
Son of a whore.
‘Is this why your mask hasn’t joined with you?’ Marcus says. ‘Because you’re not one of us? Say it, Veturius. Say the traitor deserved his fate.’
‘Elias,’ Helene whispers. Her eyes plead. Fall in. Just for one more day.
‘He—’ Say it, Elias. Doesn’t change anything if you do. ‘He deserved it.’
I meet Marcus’s eyes coolly, and he grins, like he knows how much the words cost.
‘Was that so hard, bastard?’
I’m relieved when he insults me. It gives me the excuse I’ve wanted so badly. I spring toward him fists-first.
But my friends are expecting it. Faris, Demetrius, and Helene are on their feet, holding me back, an irritating wall of black and blond keeping me from beating that damn grin off Marcus’s face.
‘No, Elias,’ Helene says. ‘The Commandant will whip you for starting a fight. Marcus isn’t worth that.’
‘He’s a bastard—’
‘That’d be you, actually,’ Marcus says. ‘At least I know who my father is. I wasn’t raised by a pack of camel-stroking Tribesmen.’
‘You Plebeian trash—’
‘Senior Skulls.’ The Scim Centurion has made his way to the foot of the table. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘No, sir,’ Helene says. ‘Go, Elias,’ she murmurs. ‘Go get some air. I’ll handle this.’
My blood still burning, I shove through the mess doors and find myself in the belltower courtyard before I even know where I’m going.
How the hell did Marcus figure out that I’m going to desert? How much does he know? Not too much, or I’d have been called to the Commandant’s office by now. Damn him, I’m close. So close.
I pace the courtyard, trying to calm myself. The desert heat has faded, and a crescent moon hangs low on the horizon, thin and red as a cannibal’s smile. Through the arches, Serra’s lights glow dully, tens of thousands of oil lamps dwarfed by the vast darkness of the surrounding desert. To the south, a pall of smoke mutes the shine of the river. The smell of steel and forge wafts past, ever-present in a city known solely for its soldiers and weaponry.
I wish I could have seen Serra before all this, when it was capital of the Scholar Empire. Under the Scholars, the great buildings were libraries and universities instead of barracks and training halls. The Street of Storytellers was filled with stages and theatres instead of an arms market where the only stories told now are of war and death.
It’s a stupid wish, like wanting to fly. For all their knowledge of astronomy and architecture and mathematics, the Scholars crumbled beneath the Empire’s invasion. Serra’s beauty is long gone. It’s a Martial city now.
Above, the heavens glow, the sky pale with starlight. Some long-buried part of me understands that this is beauty, but I am unable to wonder at it, the way I did when I was a boy. Back then, I clambered up spiky Jack trees to get closer to the stars, sure that a few feet of height would help me see them better. Back then, my world had been sand and sky and the love of Tribe Saif, who saved me from exposure. Back then, everything was different.
‘All things change, Elias Veturius. You are no boy now, but a man, with a man’s burden upon your shoulders and a man’s choice ahead of you.’
My knife is in my hands, though I don’t remember drawing it, and I hold it to the throat of the hooded man beside me. Years of training keep my arm steady as a rock, but my mind races. Where had the man come from? I’d swear on the lives of everyone in my platoon that he hadn’t been standing there a moment ago.
‘Who the hell are you?’
He pulls down his hood, and I have my answer.
Augur.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Laia
We race through the catacombs, Keenan ahead of me, Sana at my heels. When Keenan is convinced we’ve left the aux patrol behind, he slows our pace and barks at Sana to blindfold me.
I flinch at the harshness in his tone. This is what’s become of the Resistance? This band of thugs and thieves? How did it happen? Only twelve years ago, the rebels were at the height of their power, allying themselves with the Tribes and the king of Marinn. They’d lived their code – Izzat – fighting for freedom, protecting the innocent, elevating loyalty to their own people above all else.
Does the Resistance remember that code anymore? On the off chance that they do, will they help me? Can they help me?
You’ll make them help you. Darin’s voice again, confident and strong, like when he taught me to climb a tree, like when he taught me to read.
‘We’re here,’ Sana whispers after what feels like hours. I hear a series of knocks and the scrape of a door opening.
Sana guides me forward, and a burst of cool air washes over me, fresh as spring after the stench of the catacombs. Light creeps through the edges of my blindfold. The rich green smell of tobacco curls up into my nose, and I think of my father, smoking a pipe as he drew pictures of efrits and wights for me. What would he say if he saw me now, in a Resistance hideout?
Voices mutter and murmur. Warm fingers tangle in my hair, and a moment later, my blindfold falls away. Keenan is right behind me.
‘Sana,’ he says. ‘Give her some neem leaf and get her out of here.’ He turns to another fighter, a girl a few years older than me who flushes when he speaks to her. ‘Where’s Mazen? Have Raj and Navid reported yet?’
‘What’s neem leaf?’ I ask Sana when I’m sure Keenan can’t hear. I’ve never heard of it, and I know most herbs from working with Pop.
‘It’s an opiate. It’ll make you forget the last few hours.’ At my widening eyes, she shakes her head. ‘I won’t give it to you. Not yet, anyway. Have a seat. You look a mess.’
The cavern we’re in is so dark, it’s hard to tell how big it is. Blue-fire lanterns, usually found in the finest Illustrian neighbourhoods, glow here and there, with pitch torches flickering between them. Clean night air flows through a constellation of gaps in the rock ceiling, and I can barely make out the stars. I must have been in the catacombs for nearly a day.
‘It’s draughty.’ Sana pulls off her cloak, and her short, dark hair tufts out like a disgruntled bird’s. ‘But it’s home.’
‘Sana. You’re back.’ A stocky, brown-haired man approaches, looking at me curiously.
‘Tariq,’ Sana greets him. ‘We ran into a patrol. Picked up someone on the way. Grab her some food, would you?’ Tariq disappears, and Sana gestures for me to sit on a nearby bench, ignoring the stares coming our way from the dozens of people moving about the cavern.
There are an equal number of men and women here, most in dark, close-fitting clothing and nearly all dripping with knives and scims, as if expecting an Empire raid any moment. Some sharpen weapons, others watch over cook fires. A few older men smoke pipes. The bunks along the cavern wall are filled with sleeping bodies.
As I look around, I push a hank of hair out of my face. Sana’s eyes narrow when she takes in my features. ‘You look … familiar,’ she says.
I allow my hair to fall forward again. Sana’s old enough to have been in the Resistance for quite some time. Old enough to have known my parents.
‘I used to sell Nan’s jams at market.’
‘Right.’ She’s still staring. ‘You live in the Quarter? Why were you—’
‘Why is she still here?’ Keenan, who’s been busy with a group of fighters in the corner, approaches, pulling back his hood. He’s far younger than I expected, closer to my age than Sana’s – which might explain why she bristles at his tone. Flame-red hair spills over his forehead and into his eyes, so dark at the roots it’s almost black. He is only a few inches taller than me, but lean and strong, with a Scholar’s even, fine features. A hint of ginger stubble shadows his jaw, and freckles spatter his nose. Like the other fighters, he wears nearly as many weapons as a Mask.
I realize I’m staring and glance away, heat rising in my cheeks. Suddenly, the looks he’s been getting from the younger women in the cavern make sense.
‘She can’t stay,’ he says. ‘Get her out of here, Sana. Now.’
Tariq returns and, overhearing Keenan, slams a plate of food onto the table behind me. ‘You don’t tell her what to do. Sana’s not some besotted recruit, she’s the head of our faction, and you—’
‘Tariq.’ Sana puts a hand on the man’s arm, but the look she gives Keenan could wither stone. ‘I was giving the girl some food. I wanted to find out what she was doing in the tunnels.’
‘I was looking for you,’ I say. ‘For the Resistance. I need your help. My brother was taken in a raid yesterday—’
‘We can’t help,’ Keenan says. ‘We’re stretched thin as it is.’
‘But—’
‘We. Can’t. Help.’ He speaks slowly, as if I’m a child. Maybe before the raid, the chill in his eyes would have silenced me. But not now. Not when Darin needs me.
‘You don’t lead the Resistance,’ I say.
‘I’m second-in-command.’
He’s higher up than I expected. But not high enough. I shake my hair out of my face and stand.
‘Then it’s not up to you, whether I stay or not. It’s up to your leader.’ I try to sound brave, although if Keenan disagrees, I don’t know what I’ll do. Start begging, maybe.
Sana’s smile is sharp as a knife. ‘Girl’s got a point.’
Keenan moves towards me until he’s standing uncomfortably close. He smells of lemon and wind and something smoky, like cedar. He takes me in from head to toe, and the look would be shameless if it wasn’t for the slight puzzlement in his face, like he’s seeing something he doesn’t quite understand. His eyes are a dark secret, black or brown or blue – I can’t tell. It feels as if they can see right through me to my weak, cowardly soul. I cross my arms and look away, embarrassed of my tattered shift, of the dirt, the cuts, the damage.
‘That’s an unusual armlet.’ He reaches out a hand to touch it. The tip of his finger grazes my arm, sending a spark skittering across my skin, and I jerk away. He doesn’t react. ‘So tarnished, I might not have noticed it. It’s silver, isn’t it?’
‘I didn’t steal it, all right?’ My body aches and my head spins, but I bunch my fists, afraid and angry all at once. ‘And if you want it, you’ll – you’ll have to kill me to get it.’
He meets my eyes coolly, and I hope he doesn’t call my bluff. He and I both know that killing me wouldn’t be particularly difficult.
‘I expect I would,’ he says. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Laia.’ He doesn’t ask for a family name – Scholars rarely take them.
Sana looks between us, bemused. ‘I’ll go get Maz—’
‘No.’ Keenan’s already walking away. ‘I’ll find him.’
I sit back down, and Sana keeps glancing at my face, trying to puzzle out why I look familiar. If she’d seen Darin, she’d have known right away. He’s the spitting image of our mother – and no one could forget Mother. Father was different – always in the background, drawing, planning, thinking. He gave me his unruly midnight hair and gold eyes, his high cheekbones and full, unsmiling lips.
In the Quarter, no one knew my parents. No one looked twice at Darin or me. But a Resistance camp is different. I should have realized that.
I find myself staring at Sana’s tattoo, and my stomach lurches at the sight of the fist and flame. Mother had one just like it, above her heart. Father spent months perfecting it before inking it into her skin.
Sana sees me staring. ‘When I got this tattoo, the Resistance was different,’ she explains without my asking. ‘We were better. But things changed. Our leader, Mazen, told us we needed to be bolder, to go on the attack. Most of the young fighters, the ones Mazen trains, tend to agree with that philosophy.’
It’s clear Sana’s not happy about this. I’m waiting for her to say more when a door opens on the far side of the cavern to admit Keenan and a limping, silver-haired man.
‘Laia,’ Keenan says. ‘This is Mazen, he’s—’
‘Leader of the Resistance.’ I know his name because my parents spoke it often when I was a child. And I know his face because it’s on wanted signs all over Serra.
‘So, you’re our orphan of the day.’ The man comes to a stop before me, waving me back down when I rise to greet him. He has a pipe clenched in his teeth, and the smoke blurs his ravaged face. The Resistance tattoo, faded but still visible, is a blue-green shadow on the skin below his throat. ‘What is it you want?’