Before She Ignites

by Jodi Meadows

  I heaved Aaru up, but he was too heavy, too tall. I fell backward with a sharp cry, the weight of an unconscious boy on top of me. My breath whooshed out in a faint oof, and pain sliced through my back and shoulders and legs. The shattered noorestone. I’d forgotten about it and now shards cut through my skin.

  Tears dripped down the sides of my face, both from the stabbing pain in my back and for the horrible realization that I wasn’t going to get out of here. Not with Aaru unconscious. Not with the fire of hot noorestones slicing through me.

  While I struggled to breathe through the pain, I stayed absolutely motionless, in spite of the body on top of mine. He grew heavier and heavier, it seemed like, defying all the natural laws I’d once thought I’d understood. Or maybe it was just that my back hurt.

  Sound returned more steadily than light, but it wasn’t very useful. Fragmented noises came from everywhere and nowhere, and it was too hard to tell what was in my head and what was real. But I needed to place the others. I needed to know what I was up against and if maybe there was a chance of getting out of here—

  Dim illumination pulsed through the room in time with Aaru’s heartbeat.

  No, that couldn’t be right. But when I slid my hand down his chest again, the thump of his heart came at the same moment as the light flared.

  Then I understood.

  Aaru had done this. Aaru had caused this darkness, this soundlessness. My sad, silent neighbor.

  For seven of his heartbeats, I waited, hoping the light and beat would fall out of synchronization, but even as Aaru’s heart rate increased to a normal speed, so did the pulses of light. It was Aaru. There was no question.

  Far away, I heard magic-muffled shouts. Crunches. Orders: “Secure the girl” and “Fetch more doctors.”

  With all my strength, I shoved Aaru until he rolled off me. His body hit the floor with faint thumps. Once his weight was gone, the noorestone shards gouging my back eased. Hopefully Aaru hadn’t fallen onto a particularly sharp fragment, too. Maybe since he’d just rolled, he wouldn’t get stabbed the same way I had. It seemed especially awful for him to get stabbed just after enduring torture and then . . .

  Magic.

  My body screamed as I forced my way up to my knees, but I did it.

  The light was steady now, released from Aaru’s hold, and it grew brighter. It came from the twenty noorestones shining in their sconces, but also from shards and dust spread across the floor. Beneath me, the debris was wet and dark with my blood.

  Altan appeared in the fractured light. Five guards followed him, all with their weapons drawn.

  “Stay down!” The warrior’s order sounded faraway on the first word, and then leaped into normal volume for the second word. “Stay down!” he shouted again as he stopped just three paces away. Two pairs of boots crunched over the ground behind me and halted.

  At least six people surrounded Aaru and me. There was no escape.

  Altan stormed toward us with fire in his eyes. His baton was drawn, and as he thundered through the room so loudly that I began to regret the return of sound, a wild growl tore out of him. He rushed beyond me.

  The other guards were no longer advancing. With agony slicing through my back, I glanced over my shoulder.

  Bodies. Three of them.

  Two were the trainees who’d been assisting. The other was Rosa.

  She was facedown in a pool of blood, illuminated by noorestone shards. Fourteen pierced her motionless body, brightening the puncture wounds with their eerie blue glow. Blood almost looked purple as it flooded around her.

  All three were dead.

  “How did this happen?” Altan asked.

  “Three noorestones exploded.” The guard’s tone was deadly calm, like a dagger dripping with poison. “The ones in the basins.”

  “How?”

  “I’m not sure, sir.”

  But I knew.

  Aaru stirred under my hands. I bent toward him, keeping my voice soft and under the rumble of discussion. “Can you hear me?”

  He looked at me, but his eyes were unfocused, like he was dizzy, or not quite awake, or still in shock. Dark circles hung down to his cheekbones, and even his blinking was erratic. “Oh, Aaru,” I breathed.

  When he opened his mouth and made the shape of my name, nothing came out. He frowned, swallowed, and tried again. Still, nothing.

  He’d lost his voice screaming. Even through our small hole in the wall, I so rarely heard him speak. The screaming was probably a year’s worth of voice for him. Maybe more. “Are you—” Not all right, because he wasn’t.

  In the background, Altan said, “Maybe someone tampered with the noorestones.”

  Aaru blinked five more times, still trying to focus. Again, his mouth shaped my name, but only silence emerged.

  Shame burned through my veins, igniting the edges of panic. He was hurt because of me. My ally. My . . . friend, maybe.

  He struggled to push himself into a sitting position. My shaking hands slid off his sweat-slicked skin as I tried to help. But in spite of our disoriented fumbling, he made it up and tugged the jacket tighter around his shoulders. Shivers racked through him. The sudden absence of the noorestones’ fire seemed to leech all the warmth from his skin.

  Before I could think better of it, I drew him toward me and wrapped my arms around him, like I could take some of the cold from him. Pain rippled through me as the noorestone shards in my back shifted, but I dismissed it. This was only a fraction of what Aaru had endured.

  He leaned against me, shuddering as his cheek rested on my shoulder.

  “Is it possible to sabotage noorestones?” someone asked.

  “Anything can be sabotaged.” Altan’s voice was like gravel. “Find whoever did it. Notify the trainees’ commanding officers. I want this taken care of immediately.”

  Altan could never know the truth. It was impossible to say much about his relationship with Rosa, or whether he’d even known the trainees’ names, but surely his honor demanded harsh retribution.

  I pulled Aaru closer to me. After so long with a wall between us, I’d wanted to see more of him than just fragments in the dark. I’d wanted to do more than just hold his hand. But not like this. If I’d known that Altan would use Aaru against me . . .

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry, Aaru.”

  He started to tap something in the quiet code, but his hand trembled too badly. I seized his icy fingers and pulled them to the hollow of my throat.

  “Don’t try to speak yet.” The chill in his skin made my own feel hotter. “Can you get up? Run?” The words were just for him, barely perceptible even to my own ears.

  He shook his head.

  No. Of course not. He’d just been tortured. And with crystals still digging into my back, I wasn’t in the best condition to run, either. Where did I think I’d go? With what food? With what knowledge of the Pit?

  Tirta had access to food. To the rest of the Pit. She was third level, with more leniency.

  My gaze cut to the warrior blocking the only exit.

  I’d never be able to get both of us past him.

  “Could it have been the girl?” one of the warriors asked. “Maybe she used her Daminan powers on the noorestone.”

  “You think she charmed it into exploding?” Altan gave a sharp laugh as he stood, the bodies of Rosa and the trainees at his feet. In the eerie blue light, the bodies were like paintings: lifelike, but clearly lifeless. “No, it was someone else, so stop speculating and find them. And get these prisoners out of here.”

  I pulled Aaru closer to me, like I could protect him, but it was futile. From behind, a warrior grabbed me under the arms and hauled me to my feet.

  Aaru collapsed to the floor, and for the first time I noticed the bloody shreds of his feet. It had been the noorestones in the basins that had exploded, killing three people.

  A dark part of me celebrated. They’d deserved it.

  PART THREE

  EQUALITY IN SHADOWS
r />   CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I AWAKENED IN THE DIM INFIRMARY, ALL BUT ONE noorestone covered for the night. A deep stillness filled the room.

  Fragmented memories surfaced: medicine that numbed my pain and my thoughts, doctors removing crystal shards from my back, and scattered conversation about what they’d do with the boy’s feet.

  Which meant—though Aaru had been tortured—they’d treated me first. Why? Because I was Mira Minkoba? That name shouldn’t make a difference, especially not here. Aaru had barely been alive when I’d dragged him off the chair; he should have been given priority.

  Gerel had once told me that warriors weren’t allowed to murder prisoners; it was against their code of honor. But sometimes there were “accidents,” which accounted for the suspiciously low population of the Fallen Isles’ most infamous prison.

  My back ached as I pushed myself into a sitting position and surveyed the infirmary. It was the same one as before—the only one in the Heart of the Great Warrior that accepted inmates—and I knew from experience there would be several uninterrupted hours of peace.

  In the deep-blue gloom, I found one other bed occupied.

  With a strangled groan, I slid off my bed and tiptoed to his. Aaru was asleep, a gray sheet pulled across his body. He looked better, at least. Not what I’d call healthy, but his skin had been scrubbed clean and the cadence of his breath was long and even. Bandages covered his feet and ankles, so at least a day had gone by; it would have taken several hours to remove all the crystal shards from both my back and Aaru’s feet, clean the wounds, and stitch them shut. Plus, the medication they’d used to numb me was mere dregs now, and I’d felt like I’d been sleeping awhile.

  “It’s my fault,” I whispered. The night made my words seem insubstantial. I started to take his hand, like I might convey my regret through physical contact, but hesitated. After what happened, he probably didn’t want me to touch him. So I knelt next to his bed and bent my head in repentance. “What happened to you is my fault.”

  His breathing didn’t alter, but his presence shifted from asleep to awake; I’d felt that change often enough as we lay together at night, a wall in between our bodies. But now nothing separated us except a bubble of propriety and uncertainty.

  “I thought Altan would do something else to me. Before, when I refused him, he threatened to isolate me again. Worse, though. And I thought . . .” My ragged fingernails dug into my palms. “It never occurred to me that he might hurt you.”

  Aaru’s fingers twitched, then slowly moved into the quiet code. ::You’re a kind person. Cruelty does not occur to you.::

  My jaw trembled. “How can you forgive so easily?”

  Slowly, he turned his head to look at me. Noorestone light limned the curve of his cheek and jaw with pale blue, and the urge to touch that space where illumination met skin overwhelmed me. I pressed my fingers against the mattress instead, feeling the soft vibrations of his tapping. ::Forgiveness is easy when there’s nothing to forgive. He did this. Not you.::

  I couldn’t imagine being so clearheaded and merciful if our positions had been reversed.

  ::The Book of Silence says unwarranted blame is an affront to Idris’s ears. We must take care not to place it at the wrong person’s feet.::

  I pressed my mouth into a line. ::The Book of Love says something similar.::

  ::We are not so different.:: Pain racked his features as he shifted onto his side, but when I offered to help, he shook his head. So I stayed put, my knees digging into the floor, and watched the way he moved. In our darkened little space beneath our beds, I’d never gotten a sense of his size, but now I couldn’t help but notice how much of him there was. Long and lanky, yes, but corded with lean muscle from years of hard work.

  “We aren’t the same, Aaru.”

  He lifted an eyebrow in question.

  “Where do I begin? Our upbringings, stations, and families—those are just a few examples of things that separate us.”

  ::But not the thing you want to discuss.::

  I added his perceptiveness to the list.

  ::Will answer your question.::

  Now I was embarrassed to ask, but he’d offered. “You did something incredible,” I said. “Do you remember? At the end, you made the noorestones stop glowing and smothered all the sound.”

  ::I didn’t know I could.:: His teeth flashed bright white where he bit his lower lip. ::Idris grants powerful gifts to the worthy, but I am not. I am of the least of his people, not like the Silent Brothers.::

  Damyan and Darina gave charm to their people, but there were spectrums of power. Elected officials, theater actors, and people in the public eye had all the charm in the world, while others (like me) made do with the barest scrapes.

  ::The gift is silence,:: he went on. ::Noorestones make a sound that most cannot hear, but it illuminates the stones. I silenced it.::

  “And everything else.”

  He nodded.

  Most gifts were muted away from our home islands, which meant Aaru was powerful. If he could silence noorestones here, what could he do on Idris? “What about in our cellblock?”

  ::Not me. Another. Better and stronger. More precise. They silence light without silencing sound.::

  And for Aaru, it was all or nothing, but perhaps with more practice, he could be more precise as well. “It’s amazing,” I whispered. I’d always believed the Idrisi divine gift was passive—the ability to move silently or be silent. But making other things silent? That was incredible. Dangerous.

  ::Please tell no one.::

  “I won’t tell anyone. I promise.”

  He rolled onto his back again, mouth dropped open with a soundless groan.

  “Aaru . . .” My knees ached as I stood to help him, but I was too slow. He’d finished rearranging himself and was panting with the effort. “I’m sorry.” I sat on the bed next to him, not quite touching his hip, and hung my head. “I’m so sorry he did this to you, and for my part in it. I should have known better.”

  His fingers breezed against a lock of my hair, loose from its twist. The barest heat from his skin touched my cheek.

  At once, his face darkened and he withdrew.

  I wished he’d do it again, but I wasn’t about to suggest it. Not when I was the cause for his pain. He shouldn’t feel like he had to comfort me.

  ::Why does Altan hate you?:: Aaru asked. ::Why did he hurt you before? And now me?::

  Of all people, Aaru deserved answers. But what could I say without giving away my identity? “I have information.” My voice trembled. “I know things I shouldn’t. That’s why I was sent here.”

  ::And he wants to know what you know.:: Aaru nodded to himself. ::He won’t stop.::

  “Not until he’s satisfied I’ve given him everything.”

  ::What will you do?::

  “What would you do?”

  His gaze was steady, not judging, but appraising, and I couldn’t help but wonder what he saw. A scared girl from Damina? Someone who’d never known true fear or hunger until now? Maybe a thoughtless person who caused others pain?

  ::I would ask Idris for guidance.:: He turned his face to cover a yawn. ::Sorry. Tired.::

  “Then go to sleep.” I studied him a moment longer: the sharp lines and full lips and heavy brow. He had a kind face, and eyes filled with deep thoughts and emotion; I wished I could read them.

  ::Will you do something for me?::

  “Of course.” A flurry of impossible requests came to mind as soon as the words were out. He might ask me to get him out of the Pit right now, or give Altan the rest of my information, or even fly. I could do none of those things.

  But this was Aaru. He said, ::Tell me about your life before this.:: He lifted his hands toward me like an offering, melting away all lingering doubts about his forgiveness.

  He still wanted whatever it was that we’d been growing this last month. Our alliance, or . . . maybe friendship? Our injuries set back our plan at least a decan—neither Aaru nor I coul
d work while we were recovering—but we’d begin again as soon as we were released from the infirmary. We’d keep feeding Gerel and Chenda and all the others (I tried not to think of Hurrok), and we’d find a way out of here. Together.

  Heart pounding, I let my fingertips play across the backs of his hands, finding the ridges of bones and tendons and knuckles. His breath caught; he closed his eyes; my name fell soundless from his lips.

  This was forward, at least on Idris. On Damina, this might be just the beginning, but Idris was so reserved in the giving and receiving of physical affection.

  Still, we’d held hands before.

  There’d been a wall between us.

  But he’d placed his hands into mine.

  An invitation to hold his hands was not an invitation to indulge the fluttery feeling deep in my stomach. I squashed it, and ordered myself to do as he’d asked: tell him about my life.

  But as I began to describe Crescent Prominence in stumbling quiet code, Aaru opened his eyes and cocked his head—listening.

  Footsteps in the hall.

  Before I could scramble away, back to my bed, the door slammed open and bright noorestone light shone in from the hall.

  “Mira Minkoba.” Altan stood in the doorway, obscured by my light-induced tears. “I’m happy to see you’re awake.” His tone contradicted his words, though, and as he strode into the room, a pair of white-uniformed men at his sides, he frowned at the sight of me next to Aaru.

  Behind me, Aaru’s curiosity at my surname burned, and my mind dutifully counted the letters of my name tapped against the back of my hand, but it was the pair of newcomers who held my attention.

  Their clothing was off-white linen that glowed against their brown skin, with seven gold stars embroidered around the deep hoods. Seven buttons down the left side of the jackets gave the illusion of the wrap style that was fashionable in Damina, while medals were pinned right in the middle. They wore matching trousers, boots, and gloves, and both had long daggers at their hips. From one side of the hoods to the other, an off-white mask stretched. It concealed their noses and mouths, leaving only dark eyes to watch me.