by Ruth Lauren
My gaze snaps to him in surprise. I cough to cover up the little rush of gratitude I feel.
“Natalia, back to work,” says Katia sharply. “Work that seam along there.” She points to a crevice at the back of the cave. The girl gives me a filthy look and does as she says.
I look at Feliks and Katia. I should distance myself from them. Everyone hates me. I still have the ink marks on my head, and until they’re gone I have no hope of that changing.
I tell myself I’m not here to make friends.
“I can look after myself,” I say to Katia. I start picking up my tools so I can move away. I know she gave that order simply to get the work done, not to speak up for me, but I don’t want to seem like I need the help.
As I step away, though, Feliks gathers his things too, standing up with the pickax.
“What are you doing? You should stay by Katia,” I mumble.
“You too good for help when it’s offered?” he asks in a low voice. “You can barely pay attention as it is. I’m sorry you can’t talk to your sister, but we have a quota to meet. Didn’t you hear Nicolai?” He looks straight at the ground. “Look—about before. You know, when you … I’m not stupid. I know what would have happened if you hadn’t stopped me trying to escape. I owe you.” He tilts his face up, looking determined.
Katia clears her throat. “You both need to get to work there,” she says gruffly. “I’m stuck with you as a cellmate, Valor, whether I like it or not. And Feliks is right, we have to get the work done.”
A few seconds pass before I can speak, and even then my voice is wobbly. “Katia, I’m sorry for what I said at breakfast.”
She doesn’t acknowledge the apology, but as we turn back to our work, I’m still glad I said it. We work in silence for a few minutes, and then Katia says without looking at me, “Your sister’s boots are as fine as yours. How did two girls like you end up in here?” She eyes my clothes. “Unless, of course, you stole it all. But no common thief gets herself into the Black Hands.”
“I’m not a thief,” I say cautiously. This is the most Katia’s said to me so far. “And my sister is not a criminal. Not really.”
Katia barks a laugh. “She says she didn’t do it? She has that in common with almost everyone else in here, then. Do you think this place works on fairness? Look at Nicolai. Only been here a month, and he’s giving out orders already.”
I take a chisel and smash it into the rock, though it burns the blisters I am sure cover every inch of my hands under my mittens. “Would you consider a thirteen-year-old girl who stole a music box to be dangerous?”
A flicker of curiosity passes over her face, but she shrugs. I remember the way she twitched in the dining hall when she heard Feliks ask about my sister. “Do … you have a sister, Katia? Or a brother? Sasha shouldn’t be with the Black Hands. I have to speak to her. I have to—”
“You have to get back to work is what you have to do.” Her voice is clipped and closed off. The conversation is over.
When my stomach rumbles and my arms feel weak and numb from hefting the pickax, I glance at Feliks to see if he’s doing any better than I am. He’s fallen asleep. I steal a quick look at Katia to see if she’s noticed, then reach out to shake him awake. I don’t want him getting in trouble after what he said earlier.
“I haven’t seen him,” Katia says. She stops her work, breathing hard, but doesn’t turn around.
“What?”
“If I see him, I have to report him.” She wipes the back of her hand across her face. “So don’t make me turn around.”
There’s a little quiet, and I feel like I have to say something. “Thanks.”
“I’m not doing it for you.” She’s taken her coat off, and underneath her clothes are rough and patched, nothing like the finely woven tunic I’m wearing. Her shoulders drop and she sighs, as though she’s debating something inside. “They keep the Black Hands in the isolation cells.”
“What?” I’m immediately focused. Natalia glances over, sees Feliks, and deliberately turns away. I lower my voice anyway. “Where are they?”
“I’ll show you later, when we go back to the cellblock.” I want to question her until she’s given up every bit of information she knows, but I don’t let myself in case she changes her mind.
As Katia returns to work, I lean over Feliks and pull his furs closer around him. While I’m doing it, I take one of the smallest picks and push it up my sleeve. It’s metal, which means it can be melted down. I hesitate for a second, thinking about Feliks and Katia and even Natalia, about the infractions I’ve already earned, and then I slip it into the hidden compartment on the side of my boot. I need my own set of keys to my cell if any of my plans are going to work.
The moon hangs low and heavy when we stand again in the entrance of the mine. My back aches, and my hands are weak and throbbing from the work. Feliks stumbles to the rack to return the bag of tools. Nicolai stops him, his face tired in the orange light from a brazier. There’s a Peacekeeper behind him.
“Tool check.”
The other prisoners fall into line behind us, but suddenly I am wide awake again, fresh sweat pricking my back. Nicolai sorts through the bag and frowns.
Stupid. I am so stupid. I’m not in a world where trust exists anymore. Of course there would be a count.
“One broke,” I blurt out. “A very small pick.”
“Where are the pieces?” Nicolai looks from me to Katia.
Katia stands straight. “I don’t have them. She didn’t report it.”
“I …” My mind is blank. I have nothing.
“It was destroyed,” says Feliks, “when the transport cart ran over it. But there are probably some splinters left. I could go back and find them.” Behind us, the other prisoners shift, one of them muttering something inaudible. They’re tired and hungry. We all are.
Nicolai looks hard at all three of us. “That won’t be necessary, inmate.”
I start to breathe again.
“But I’ll need to search you all.” He points at Feliks and me. “Starting with you two.”
I stand rigid, vividly aware of the compartment in my boot.
Feliks steps forward and Nicolai checks under his collar, all over his clothing, and even makes him take his boots off. My heart thuds loud enough for him to hear. “Katia,” Nicolai says, making me jump. “Search this inmate.” Katia comes forward, searching me all over while I hold my breath.
“She’s clean,” she says in a cold, sullen voice.
“Go,” Nicolai says to me. And I do.
There’s a meal of bread, cheese, and milk that I all but inhale, and then we’re separated, boys from girls, and marched back to the cellblock by a Peacekeeper with magnificent eagles carrying skulls tattooed across her arms. On either side of her shoulders, huge black wingtips poke out from under her clothes. She must have a giant eagle across the entirety of her broad back.
The only thing keeping me from falling asleep on my feet is the promise of what Katia might tell me. And as we file through the narrow doorway into the cellblock, I hear a voice in my ear. It’s her. “Look up.”
I stop myself from turning toward her and drawing attention. I look down the length of the cellblock at the rows of cells, and up to the roof, open to the dusky sky. A pale moon is partially obscured by wisps of cloud.
“At the back, after the third level, there’s another set of steps cut into the wall. Can you see them?”
She’s talking low and fast. I try to slow the line down, dragging my feet. I can just make out some sharply ascending steps set high up, leading to a narrow crack in the stone. “I see them.”
“There are cells at the top of those steps. That’s whereshe’ll be. Now you know. And there’s nothing you can do about it, so don’t ask me for anything else.”
I shake my head. There’s no room for cells up there. But Katia’s already gone.
“Move along,” calls the Peacekeeper. “You. Wait there.” She pulls me aside and waits unt
il all the other girls have scurried up or down the steps. When everyone is inside their cell, the screeching noise of the doors being rolled shut starts. My heart pounds in my ears along with the grate of metal on stone. When it ends and the cells are locked in position, the Peacekeeper marches me down the steps to the lower level, her boots scraping the stone in the sudden silence.
There’s only darkness in the cells, the prisoners already in their bunks. Torches flare at intervals on the walls. I’m led to the middle of the floor, each second that ticks by winding my muscles tighter. The Peacekeeper leans down, and I suck in a breath at the snarling snow leopard inked on the back of her arm, haunches bunched as though it might leap from her skin to destroy me.
The chains at her waist clink, and I see she’s running them through an iron ring embedded in the stone floor. When she stands, she’s holding cuffs like the ones Feliks and I wore on our way here. I force myself to hold out my arms. There is no point in making this worse—if it can be any worse. The Peacekeeper shackles me, the cold iron weighting my wrists. I shiver as she drops the chains to the floor with an echoing rattle and walks away. Her footsteps move up the stone stairs, and the iron door clangs.
The cellblock is silent. I sink down to the ground, the heavy chain sliding into a noisy pile with me. A bunk in the row to the left of me creaks.
“If you’re still alive in the morning, you’ll wish you’d been quiet tonight,” a voice hisses at me. I swallow. Above us, the stars are coming out in a cold, clear night. That’s when the muttering starts, whispering from the cells, and the reality of what I’ve done hits me. They’re not going to roll the roof over us tonight. Everyone is going to be cold, and it’s only going to get colder. I have to stay out here all night on my own, with no bed. And it’s all my fault.
Any trouble my sister or I have been in before feels like nothing now. Back when we were nine, we were once in the palace kitchens while our mother and the queen were discussing a problem. The queen and the princess had been overseeing preparations for a banquet.
As the three of us stood dutifully, listening to our mothers, Sasha inched her fingers backward to a table, closed them around a little pastry, and fed it into her pocket. Not five minutes later, one of the cooks was blaming the theft on a little kitchen girl, who was denying it at such a high pitch that the queen strode across the kitchen to deal with the matter herself.
Sasha was wide-eyed, breathing fast. She stepped forward and reached for her pocket. I stepped with her. But then Anastasia reached up and touched her mother’s arm. She told the whole kitchen in a clear voice that she had meant no harm, hadn’t realized that it would matter, had only seen how pretty the pastries were and wanted one for herself.
I think about that day as I sit, my fingers starting to go numb. There’s no one here to help Sasha now but me. I look up, high on the far wall, at the opening in the rock that Katia showed me. There’s no way to get there from the ground floor. I’ll have to go back up the steps, past the door to the cellblock, then to the next level and along the ledge right past my own cell and all the others to get to the steps to the isolation cells. I’m so tired that just the thought of it seems too much. But at least there are no Peacekeepers inside the cellblock.
I huddle in on myself, careful to keep the chains quiet. I don’t need anyone seeing what I’m going to do. The cuffs clink together a little as I work the tool I stole out of my boot. I meant for it to be melted down to help me make the keys I need, but maybe I can use it for something else too. I can still melt it down later.
It takes a few seconds to work one of my mittens off and twist the sharp end of the pick into the lock. My fingers are shaking and sore, raw with the cold and the work they’ve done today in the mines.
Every time I slip, someone curses me and the small noises I’m making. I’m almost ready to give up. But then something gives in the lock mechanism, and one of the cuffs springs open. I rub my wrist, flexing my fingers. There’s no movement from the cells closest to me. If their days have been anything like mine, they’re exhausted and, I hope, asleep. The other cuff gives quickly now that I know what I’m doing. I place the chains on the cold ground, listen for a moment, and then stand. I take one step.
“What do you think you’re doing?” a low voice snarls at me from a darkened cell. “If you make it two nights with no roof, you won’t live to see a third.”
I look at the stone steps. “If you tell anyone what I’m doing, then you will have two nights with no roof. And maybe worse.” I’ve never heard my own voice come out like that before. I hope it sounded fierce, not desperate. I take another step, my heart leaping up into my throat. The cell is silent.
I go and listen at the iron door. It’s silent on the other side; only my own breath sounds loud in my ears. Dim torchlight throws flickering shadows over the steps Katia showed me. This could be what I’ve been waiting for. I summon up my last reserve of energy and head for them.
The stone path up to the first level seems so much narrower than it did this morning when I flew down the steps away from the Peacekeeper. As I creep along the ledge outside the cells, some of the girls inside stare at me tight-lipped, and some call out horrible things. I take care that my furs don’t brush the bars of each cell, trying not to even breathe.
I near the back of the room and catch sight of something flying toward me out of the corner of my eye. I flinch away from it, but not fast enough. Freezing water slaps me in the face, and I gasp, stumbling toward the edge where the stone drops away to the open ground below.
I teeter on the brink, sure I’m going to fall, but I’m grabbed by an arm and yanked back onto the ledge. I yell, my heart beating wildly, and pull away from the grip on me, but I soon realize that without the girl reaching out across the ledge from her cell, I’d be broken on the ground by now, maybe even dead.
I take a big, shaky breath. “Thank you.”
She lets go of my arm and nods. There’s a black patch over one of her eyes. “Everyone deserves a chance,” she says, her voice surprisingly low. “You in there, back away and let her pass.” There’s grumbling, then movement in the cell next door.
I shiver, thin, icy fingers of water trickling down my neck. “Will the Peacekeepers come back?”
“Not at night—unless someone gives them a reason to. The cells are locked, and even if they weren’t, the cellblock is locked too.” The girl with the eye patch gives me another nod. “Go on now.” She raises her voice. “No one else will bother you.”
A girl glowers from the back of her cell as I pass, and my heart keeps up its frantic beat while I climb the next flight of stairs to the top level. Now I’m standing right by the steep steps Katia pointed out, and I start to wonder if it was some cruel joke. I’m so tired; my thoughts flit around, and it’s hard to pin them in place. I haul myself up to the first step and push my feet onto it, not looking down, knowing that there’s only air between me and a drop that would surely kill me.
As I climb, I keep my eyes on the crevice in the stone as if there’s a rope attached to it, pulling me forward, and when I reach the top, I slide into the gap and let out a sob. The sky lightens above me, and slow, fat flakes of snow start to fall.
“Who’s there?”
I start at the sound of the voice, and then edge forward into the opening in the wall and around a corner. There’s a small row of cells open to the sky. A face presses against the first set of bars, the whites of its eyes showing. Filthy hands wrapped in rags clasp the bars. I put my finger to my lips.
Dark shapes huddle in the next two cells. I press against the far wall to pass by. Opposite the fourth cell, I stop. Inside sits a slightly built girl, shivering even though she’s covered in brown furs.
“Sasha.” I whisper her name and run to her, dropping to my knees, not caring about the cold or the snow or the bars between us. It doesn’t matter what anyone here or in the city thinks of me or what I’ve done. It was all worth it. I press my arms through the gaps to hug her, and she
does the same. My face is pushed into cold, hard iron, and I don’t care at all.
“Valor!” she says. “How are you here?” Her voice is full of disbelief, but her arms are so tight around me it hurts.
Snowflakes flurry around us, settling on my furs before melting.
I hug her back just as hard. “I’m so sorry, Sasha. I should never have talked on and on the way I did about the parade. I should have realized. I should have stopped you. But I have a plan. I have a plan, Sasha, and I’m going to get you out of here.” I pull back finally and look at her. “We’re going to escape.”
She takes hold of my wrists and looks at me wonderingly. Tears shine in her eyes. “What are you talking about? How did you even get here? You have to go before someone sees you. We can’t escape. And what do you mean, you should have stopped me? Stopped me from what?”
I search her face. She’s perhaps a little thinner than before, but her eyes are as bright and full of intelligence as ever. It feels like there’s a date pit stuck in my throat that I have to swallow away.
“From stealing the music box, of course. But I’m going to make it up to you. Don’t you see? Now I’ve found you, and we’re going to figure out how to get you out of here.” I grab the bars of her cell and tug on them. “And once you’re out with the rest of us, I have a plan. I found a way on Father’s secret maps and memorized it. I’m going to get keys. We can escape, Sasha. It will work, it will.”
She shakes her head. “Secret maps? I don’t—I didn’t—”
“You’ve never seen them?”
“Not the ones you speak of, but I can believe it. There are hidden passageways in the palace itself.” She shakes her head again, and her face clears as she looks at me. “I thought I’d never see you again,” she whispers. Then her brows crease, and she peers anxiously down the narrow corridor. “But you must go. What about Mother and Father? Do they know what you’re … ? I can’t believe you’re here. I can’t believe what you’re saying. But, Valor, I didn’t steal the music box.”
I stare. My cheeks burn. For seconds, I can’t speak.