An Ember in the Ashes, Page 43

Page 43

  “Before you came here, the Resistance sent a boy. Zain. He was supposed to be a gardener. Did they tell you about him?”

  I almost shake my head but stop, crossing my arms instead. She doesn’t acknowledge my silence. She’s not guessing about me. She knows.

  “It was two years ago. Commandant caught him. Tortured him in the school’s dungeon for days. Some nights we could hear him. Screaming. When she was done with Zain, she gathered every last slave in Blackcliff. She wanted to know who’d been friends with him. Wanted to teach us a lesson for not turning in a traitor. ” Cook’s eyes are fixed on me, unrelenting. “Killed three slaves before she was satisfied that the message had sunk in. Lucky I’d warned Izzi away from the boy. Lucky she listened. ”

  Cook gathers her supplies and shoves them back into a cabinet. She picks up a cleaver and hacks at a bloody slab of meat waiting on the worktable.

  “I don’t know why you ran away from your family to join those rebel bastards. ” She flings the words at me like stones. “I don’t care. Tell them you quit. Ask for another mission, somewhere where you won’t hurt anyone. Because if you don’t, you’ll die, and skies only knows what will happen to the rest of us. ” She points the cleaver at me, and I shift back in my chair, watching the knife. “Is that what you want?” she says. “Death? Izzi tortured?” She leans forward, spittle flying from her mouth. The knife is inches from my face. “Is it?”

  “I didn’t run away,” I burst out. Pop’s body, Nan’s glazed irises, Darin’s flailing limbs all flash before my eyes. “I didn’t even want to join. My grandparents—a Mask came—”

  I bite my tongue. Shut it, Laia. I scowl at the old woman, unsurprised to see her glaring back.

  “Tell me the truth about why you joined the rebels,” she says, “and I’ll keep my mouth shut about your dirty little secret. Ignore me, and I’ll tell that ice-hearted vulture upstairs exactly what you are. ” She drives the cleaver into the worktable and drops into the seat next to me, waiting.

  Damn her. If I tell her about the raid and what came after, she might still rat me out. But if I say nothing, I’ve no doubt that she’ll march to the Commandant’s room this instant. She’s just insane enough to do it.

  I have no choice.

  As I speak of what happened that night, she remains silent and unmoved.

  When I finish, my eyes are swollen, but Cook’s mangled face reveals nothing.

  I wipe my face on my sleeve. “Darin’s stuck in prison. It’s only a matter of time before they torture him to death or sell him as a slave. I have to get him out before then. But I can’t do it alone. The rebels said if I spied for them, they’d help me. ” I stand shakily. “You could threaten to turn my soul over to the Nightbringer himself. Doesn’t matter. Darin’s my only family. I have to save him. ”

  Cook says nothing, and after a minute passes, I assume she’s chosen to ignore me. Then, as I move to the door, she speaks.

  “Your mother. Mirra. ” At the sound of Mother’s name, I jerk my head around. Cook is examining me. “You don’t look like her. ”

  I’m so surprised I don’t bother to deny it. Cook has to be in her seventies.

  She’d have been in her sixties when my parents controlled the Resistance.

  What was her real name? What had her role been? “You knew my mother?”

  “Knew her? Yes, I knew her. Always liked y-y-your father better. ” She clears her throat and shakes her head in irritation. Strange. I’ve never heard her stutter. “Kind man. Sm-smart man. Not—not like your m-m-mother. ”

  “My mother was the Lioness—”

  “Your mother—isn’t—worth your words. ” Cook’s voice drops into a snarl.

  “Never—never listened to anything but her own selfishness. The Lioness. ”

  Her mouth twists around the name. “She’s the reason—the reason—I’m here. ” Her breath heaves now, as if she’s having some sort of fit, but she barrels on, determined to get out whatever it is she wishes to say. “The Lioness, the Resistance, and their grand plans. Traitors. Liars. F-fools. ” She stands and reaches for her cleaver. “Don’t trust them. ”

  “I don’t have a choice,” I say. “I have to. ”

  “They’ll use you. ” Her hands shake, and she grips the counter. She gasps out the last few words. “They take—take—take. And then—then—they’ll throw you to the wolves. I warned you. Remember. I warned you. ”

  XXII: Elias

  At exactly midnight, I return to Blackcliff in full battle armor, dripping with weaponry. After the Trial of Courage, I’m not about to be caught shoeless with only a dagger for defense.

  Though I’m desperate to know if Hel is all right, I resist the urge to go to the infirmary. Cain’s orders to stay away didn’t leave room for argument.

  As I stalk past the gate guards, I fervently hope not to run into my mother. I think I’d snap at the sight of her, especially knowing that her scheming nearly killed Helene. And especially after seeing what she’d done to the slave-girl this morning.

  When I’d seen the K carved into the girl—Laia—I’d flexed my fists, imagining, for one glorious moment, the feel of inflicting such pain on the Commandant. See how she likes it, the hag. At the same time, I wanted to back away from Laia in shame. Because the woman who’d done such evil shares my blood. She is half of me. My own reaction—that ravenous lust for violence—is proof.

  I’m not like her.

  Or am I? I think back to the nightmare battlefield. Five hundred thirty-nine bodies. Even the Commandant would be hard-pressed to take so many lives. If the Augurs are right, I’m not like my mother. I’m worse.

  You will become everything you hate, Cain had said when I’d considered deserting. But how could leaving my mask behind make me any worse of a person than the one I saw on that battlefield?

  Lost in my thoughts, I don’t notice anything unusual about Skulls’ quarters when I arrive at my room. But after a moment, it sinks in. Leander’s not snoring, and Demetrius isn’t mumbling his brother’s name. Faris’s door isn’t open, as it almost always is.

  The barracks are abandoned.

  I draw my scims. The only sound is the occasional pop of the oil lamps flickering against the black brick.

  Then, one by one, the lamps go out. Gray smoke seeps beneath the door at one end of the hall, expanding like a roiling bank of storm cloud. In an instant, I realize what’s happening.

  The Second Trial, the Trial of Cunning, has begun.

  “Watch out!” a voice shouts from behind me. Helene—alive—shoves through the doors at my back, fully armed and without a hair out of place. I want to tackle her in a hug, but instead I drop to the floor as a volley of razor-edged throwing stars hurtles through the space where my neck was.

  The stars are followed by a trio of attackers who spring from the smoke like coiled snakes. They are lithe and quick, their bodies and faces wrapped in funereal strips of black cloth. Almost before I’m on my feet, one of the assassins has a scim at my throat. I spin back and kick his feet out from under him, but my leg meets only air.