A Torch Against the Night

by Sabaa Tahir

  But the Augurs, I realize, promised me nothing.

  I force myself to meet my father's eyes. I have never seen him so defeated.

  Beside him, Mother's white-blonde hair shines as if lit from within, her fur-lined gown draped gracefully even as she kneels for death. Her pale face is fierce. "Strength, my girl," she whispers to me. Beside her, Livvy breathes in short, panicked gusts. She whispers rapidly to a violently trembling Hannah.

  I try to grasp the scim at my waist to steady myself, but I can hardly feel it beneath my palm.

  "Your Majesty," I say. "Please. The Commandant is planning a coup. You heard Lieutenant Faris. You must listen to me."

  Marcus lifts his eyes to me, their flat yellow chilling my blood. Slowly, he draws a dagger from his belt. It is thin and razor-sharp with a Blackcliff diamond as its hilt. His prize for winning the First Trial, so long ago.

  "I can make it quick, Shrike," he says quietly. "Or I can make it very, very slow. Speak out of turn again and see which one I choose. Lieutenant Sergius," he calls out. The Black Guard I cowed through blackmail and coercion just weeks ago slinks forward.

  "Secure the Shrike and her allies," Marcus says. "We wouldn't want their emotions to get the better of them."

  Sergius hesitates for just a second before signaling the other Black Guards.

  Hannah sobs quietly, turning imploring eyes to Marcus. "Please," she whispers. "Your Majesty. We are engaged--I am your betrothed." But Marcus doesn't spare her any more attention than he would a beggar.

  Marcus turns to the Paters in the throne room, and power exudes from him. He is no embattled Emperor now but one who has survived a Scholar rebellion, assassination attempts, and the betrayal of the strongest families in the land.

  He twirls his dagger in his hand, and the silver catches the light of the sun now rising overhead. Dawn illuminates the room with gentle beauty that sickens me when I think of what is about to happen. Marcus paces back and forth behind my family, a brutal predator deciding whom to kill first.

  My mother whispers something to my father and sisters. I love you.

  "Men and women of the Empire." Marcus slows behind Mother. Her eyes burn into mine, and she straightens her spine and throws back her shoulders. Marcus stills the movement of the dagger. "Observe what happens when you fail your Emperor."

  The throne room falls silent. I hear the silver blade dip into my mother's throat, the gurgling tear it makes as he draws it across her neck and into her artery. She sways. Her gaze slides to the floor, her body soon following.

  "No!" Hannah shrieks, giving voice to the despair that has gripped my body. My mouth is salty with blood--I've bitten through my lip. While the courtiers watch, Hannah keens like a wounded animal, rocking over my mother's body, not caring about anything but her wretched, all-consuming grief. Livia's face is empty, her eyes confused as she peers down at the blood pooling, soaking the knees of her pale blue dress.

  I cannot feel the pain in my lip. My feet, my legs seem so far away. That is not my mother's blood. That is not her body. Those are not her hands, lifeless and white. No.

  Hannah's scream yanks me from my daze. Marcus has grabbed her by her ruined hair. "No, please." Her frantic eyes seek me out. "Hel, help me!"

  I strain against Sergius, a strange wounded snarl coming from my throat. I can barely hear her as she chokes out the words. My baby sister. She had the softest hair when we were girls. "Helly, I'm sorry--"

  Marcus draws the knife across her throat swiftly. His face is blank as he does so, as if the task requires all of his concentration. He releases her, and she thuds down beside my mother. The pale strands of their hair mingle.

  Behind me, the door to the throne room opens. Marcus sneers at the interruption.

  "Y-your Majesty." I cannot see the soldier who enters, but the crack in his voice suggests that he wasn't expecting to walk into a bloodbath. "A message from Kauf . . ."

  "I'm in the middle of something. Keris," Marcus barks at the Commandant without looking at her, "deal with it."

  The Commandant bows and turns to leave, slowing as she passes me. She leans forward, putting a cold hand on my shoulder. I am too numb to flinch away from her. Her gray eyes are remorseless.

  "It is glorious to witness your unmaking, Blood Shrike," she whispers. "To watch as you break."

  My whole body shakes as she throws Cain's words back at my face. First you will be unmade. First, you will be broken. Bleeding skies, I thought he meant when I killed Elias. But he knew. All that time while I agonized over my friend, he and his brethren knew what it was that would truly break me.

  But how could the Commandant possibly know what Cain said to me? She releases me and saunters out of the room, and I have no more time to wonder, for Marcus is before me.

  "Take a moment to say goodbye to your father, Shrike. Sergius, release her."

  I take three steps to my father and fall to my knees. I cannot look away from my mother and sister.

  "Blood Shrike," my father whispers. "Look at me."

  I want to beg him to call me by my name. I'm not the Shrike. I'm Helene, your Helene. Your little girl.

  "Look at me, daughter." I lift my eyes, expecting to see defeat in his gaze. Instead, he is my calm, collected father, though his whisper is ragged with grief. "And listen. You cannot save me. You could not save your mother, or your sister, or Elias. But you can still save the Empire, for it is in far graver danger than Marcus realizes. Tiborum will soon be surrounded by hordes of Wildmen, and I hear tell of a fleet out of Karkaus, heading north to Navium. The Commandant is blind to it--she is too fixated on the destruction of the Scholars and on securing her own power."

  "Father." I glance at Marcus, who is watching from a few yards away. "Damn the Empire--"

  "Listen to me." The sudden desperation in his voice terrifies me. My father fears nothing. "Gens Aquilla must remain powerful. Our alliances must remain powerful. You must remain powerful. When war comes to this land from without, which it inevitably will, we cannot falter. How many Martials in this Empire?"

  "M-millions."

  "More than six million," my father says. "Six million men, women, and children whose futures rest in your hands. Six million who will depend on your strength so that they may remain untouched by the torment of war. You are all that holds back the darkness. Take my necklace."

  With shaking hands, I pull off the chain I used to bat at as a child. One of my first memories is Father leaning over me, the Aquilla ring dangling from his collar, the embossed falcon in full flight catching the lamplight.

  "You are Mater of Gens Aquilla now," Father whispers. "You are Blood Shrike of the Empire. And you are my daughter. Do not fail me."

  The moment my father eases back, Marcus strikes. It takes my father longer to die--he has more blood, perhaps. When his eyes darken, I think I cannot hurt any more. Marcus has wrung me dry of all my pain. Then my eyes fall upon my littlest sister. You fool, Helene. When you love, there is always more pain.

  "Men and women of the Empire." Marcus's voice echoes from the rafters of the throne room. What in the bleeding hells is he doing?

  "I am but a Plebeian, given the burden of rulership by our esteemed holy men, the Augurs." He sounds almost humble, and I gape at him as he looks around at the assembly of the Empire's finest. "But even a Plebeian knows that sometimes an Emperor must show mercy.

  "The bond between Shrike and Emperor is one ordained by the Augurs." He goes to Livia and lifts her to her feet. She looks between Marcus and me, mouth parted, skin blanched to gray.

  "It is a bond that must weather the darkest of tempests," the Emperor says. "My Shrike's first failure is one such tempest. But I am not unmerciful. Nor do I wish to begin my reign with broken promises. I signed a marriage agreement with Gens Aquilla." He glances at me, stone-faced. "And so I shall honor it--by marrying Mater Aquilla's youngest sister, Livia Aquilla, immediately. By joining my line to one of the oldest Gens in the land, I seek to establish my dynasty and bring glo
ry to the Empire once more. We shall put this"--he looks distastefully at the bodies on the ground--"behind us. If, of course, Mater Aquilla accepts."

  "Livia." I can only mouth my sister's name. I clear my throat. "Livia would be spared?" At Marcus's nod, I stand. I force myself to look at my sister, because if she would rather die, then I cannot deny her that, even if it unravels my last bit of sanity. But the reality of what is happening finally hits her. I see my own torment mirrored in her eyes--but I see something else too. My parents' strength. She nods.

  "I--I accept," I whisper.

  "Good," Marcus says. "We will marry at sunset. The rest of you--get out," he barks at the courtiers, who watch in horrified fascination. "Sergius." The Black Guard steps forward. "Take my . . . bride to the east wing of the palace. Make sure she is comfortable. And safe."

  Sergius escorts Livia away. The courtiers file out silently. As I stare at the ground in front of me, at the spreading pool of blood, Marcus approaches.

  He stands behind me and runs one finger along the back of my neck. I shudder in disgust, but a second later, Marcus jerks his body away.

  "Shut up," he hisses, and when I glance up, I find he's not addressing me. Instead, he's looking over his shoulder--at empty air. "Stop."

  I watch with a dull sort of fascination as he growls and shakes his shoulders, like he's shaking off someone's grasp. A moment later, he turns back to me--but keeps his hands to himself.

  "You stupid girl." His voice is a soft hiss. "I told you: Never presume that you know more than me. I was well aware of Keris's little plot. I warned you not to defy me publicly, and still you barged in, screaming of a coup, making me look weak. If you'd kept your damned mouth shut, this wouldn't have happened."

  Bleeding skies. "You--you knew--"

  "I always know." He digs his hand into my hair, yanking my head up and away from the sight of the blood. "I will always win. And now I possess the last living member of your family. If you ever disobey an order again, if you fail me, speak against me, or double-cross me, I swear to the skies that I will make her suffer more than you can possibly imagine."

  He releases me violently. His boots are silent as he leaves the throne room.

  I am alone, but for ghosts.

  LIV: Laia

  I stumble away from the flames, my invisibility gone. No! Skies, no!

  Darin, Elias, little Tas--they cannot be dead in the inferno. Not after everything. I find that I am sobbing, that my invisibility has fallen. And I don't care.

  "You there! Scholar!" Bootsteps thunder toward me, and I slide back across the polished stone of the rotunda, trying to avoid the grasping hand of a legionnaire who clearly thinks I'm an escaped prisoner. His eyes narrow, and he lunges forward, his fingers fastening onto my cloak, ripping it off. He casts it to the ground as I scramble away, then he hurtles his big body into mine.

  "Oof!" The breath leaves my lungs as I hit the bottom steps of the staircase. The soldier tries to flip me on my stomach, to capture my hands.

  "Get off!"

  "Did you escape the pens? Arrrg!" He jerks when I knee him in the groin. I unsheathe my dagger, drive it into his thigh, and twist. He bellows, and a second later, his weight is yanked off me and he goes flying into the staircase, my blade still embedded in his leg.

  A shadow fills the space where he stood, familiar and utterly changed at the same time. "E-Elias?"

  "I'm here." He hauls me to my feet. He is lean as a rail, and his eyes appear to almost glow in the thickening smoke. "Your brother is here. Tas is here. We're alive. We're all right. And that was beautifully done." He nods to the soldier, who has ripped the dagger out of his thigh and is now crawling away. "He'll be limping for months."

  I leap up and pull him into a hug, something between a sob and a cry erupting from my chest. We are both injured and exhausted and heartsore, but when I feel his arms around me, when I realize that he is real and here and alive, I believe, for the first time, that we have a chance at surviving.

  "Where's Darin?" I pull away from Elias, looking around, expecting my brother to appear out of the smoke. Soldiers rush past us, desperate to escape the fire engulfing the Martial section of the prison. "Here, take your scims." I shrug out of the cross-body scabbards, and Elias pulls them on. Darin does not appear.

  "Elias?" I say, worried now. "Where--" As I speak, Elias kneels, pulling something from the floor onto his shoulder. I think, at first, that it is a filthy bag of sticks.

  Then I see the hands. Darin's hands. His skin is scarred, and he's missing a pinky and a middle finger. Still, I'd know those hands anywhere.

  "Skies." I try to see Darin's face, but it's obscured by hanks of long, filthy hair. My brother was never particularly heavy, but he seems so small suddenly--a depleted, nightmare version of himself. He might not be what he was, Afya had warned.

  "He's alive," Elias reminds me when he sees my face. "He got a knock on the head is all. He's going to be all right."

  A small figure appears behind Elias, my bloody dagger in hand. He gives it to me, then takes my fingers. "You must not be seen, Laia," he says. "Hide yourself!"

  Tas pulls me down the hall, and I let my invisibility fall over me. Elias starts at my sudden disappearance. I squeeze his hand so he knows I am close. Ahead of us, the prison doors are flung open. A knot of soldiers teems outside.

  "You have to open the Scholar pens," Elias says. "I can't do it while carrying Darin. The guards would be on me in a second."

  Skies! I was to set more fires in the prison yard to add to the mayhem.

  "We'll have to do without the extra distraction," Elias says. "I'll pretend I'm delivering Darin to the pens. I'll be right behind you. Tas, stay with Laia--watch her back. I'll find you."

  "One thing, Elias." I don't want to worry him, but he should know. "The Warden might know I'm here. I lost my invisibility upstairs for a moment. I got it back, but he could have seen the change."

  "Then stay away from him," Elias says. "He's wily, and from the way he interrogated Darin and me, I'm certain he'd love to get his hands on you."

  Seconds later, we burst out of the prison and into the yard. The cold is like a knife in the face after the stifling heat of the prison.

  The yard, though crowded, is devoid of chaos. Prisoners emerging from Kauf are immediately escorted away. Kauf's guards, many of them coughing, ash-faced, or burned, are ushered into a line, where another soldier assesses them for injuries before assigning them to a task. One of the legionnaires in charge spots Elias and calls out to him.

  "You!" he says. "You there!"

  "Let me dump this body," Elias grumbles, the perfect impression of a sullen aux. He pulls his cloak closer and edges away as another group of soldiers tumbles out of Kauf's inferno.

  "Go, Laia," he whispers under his breath. "Quickly!"

  Tas and I bolt toward the Scholar pens, far to our left. Behind us echo the voices of thousands of prisoners: Martials, Tribesmen, Mariners--even Wildmen and Barbarians. The Martials have gathered them into one enormous circle and formed a cordon of spearmen two guards thick around them.

  "There, Laia." Tas shoves the keys he stole into my hands and nods to the north side of the pen. "I will warn the Skiritae!" He veers away, staying close to the edges of the pen and whispering through the wide spaces between its wooden slats.

  I spot the door--which is guarded by six legionnaires. The racket of the prison yard is loud enough that they could not possibly hear me approach, but I tread carefully anyway. When I am within three feet of the door, and just inches from the closest legionnaire, he shifts, putting a hand on his sword, and I freeze. I can smell the leather of his armor, the steel tips of the arrows across his back. Just one more step, Laia. He can't see you. He has no idea you're here.

  As if handling an angry snake, I remove the key ring from my pocket, holding on to it tightly so it doesn't jangle. I wait until one of the legionnaires turns to say something to the rest before I put the key in the lock.

  It ja
ms.

  I wiggle the key, first gently and then a bit harder. One of the soldiers turns toward the door. I look at him, right at his eyes, but he shrugs and turns back.

  Patience, Laia. I take a deep breath and lift the lock. Because it's attached to something that is grounded in the earth, it does not disappear. I hope no one is looking at this door right now--they'd see a lock floating inches from where it should be, and even the most dimwitted aux would know that's unnatural. Again, I twist the key. Almost--

  Just then, something fastens on to my arm--a long hand that curls like a feeler around my bicep.

  "Ah, Laia of Serra," someone breathes into my ear. "What a talented girl you are. I am very interested in examining your skill further."

  My invisibility falters, and the keys fall to the icy stones with a clatter. I look up to find myself staring into a pointed face with large, watery eyes.

  The Warden.

  LV: Elias

  Shaeva warned me that the Waiting Place would pull at me. As I make my way across the freezing prison yard to the pens, I feel it, a yank in my chest, like an invisible hook.

  I'm coming, I shout in my head. The more you bully me, the slower I'll be, so stop it.

  The pull lessens slightly, as if the Waiting Place has heard. Fifteen yards to the pens . . . thirteen . . . ten . . .

  Then I hear footsteps. The soldier from Kauf's entrance has caught up with me. From his cautious gait, I can tell that my uniform and the scims across my back haven't fooled him. Ten hells. Ah well. This was always a stretch, as far as disguises go.

  He attacks. I try to sidestep him, but Darin's body has me off balance, and the soldier clips me, knocking me down and sending Darin rolling away.

  The legionnaire's eyes widen when my hood falls back. "Prisoner loose," he bellows. "Pris--" I snatch a knife from his belt and plunge it into his side.

  Too late. The legionnaires at Kauf's entrance have heard his cry. Four of the spearmen guarding the prisoners break away. Auxes.

  I smile. Not enough to take me down.

  I draw my scims as the first soldier approaches, duck under his spear, and slice his wrist. He screams and releases the weapon. I drop him with a blow across the temple, then pivot and halve the spear of the next soldier, felling him with a blade through the stomach.