We Set the Dark on Fire

by Tehlor Kay Mejia

  The crowd was silent, and beneath their silence Dani thought she could sense the god of guilt spreading his shadow across their hearts. Guilt they’d never admit to their neighbors, but that burrowed into the secret places. Some red-faced folks had stalked off angry to stand behind the line of officers, but far more had stayed.

  Out of fear or curiosity, who could say? But they had stayed.

  Dani’s heart was a paper kite, soaring on the wind of the protesters’ words, on the change she could almost feel. Like the swell of a wave before it breaks.

  “But what would you do?” Sota asked, softer now. “If all that were gone. If your children were stretching thinner and your wives cried at night from hunger. If the streets were thick with criminals, stealing your meager garden’s bounty and selling it for more money than you could ever hope to make?”

  He took a deep breath, emotion choking him. “What would you do then? If you were desperate, and every day a simple, treatable illness took another of your friends? Your children? Would you stay at home? Would you be silent? Would you remember the rules?”

  In front of them, the officers had begun to mutter among themselves. They didn’t dare open fire now, not with so many witnesses to the peaceful nature of the protesters. These were Medio’s most notorious gossips. Whatever happened here would spread.

  “They’re lying to you about who we are,” Sota said, somehow making eye contact with everyone at once. “We only want to live.”

  Behind him, one of the protesters began to hum. A low, pervasive sound that grew louder as the rest joined their voices to his. It was twenty separate tones. It was a hundred. It was one. It vibrated through Dani’s teeth and jaw, in the space between her ribs, growing somehow louder still, and she thought—for the second time today—that she could feel the gods watching.

  Some people said this conflict, the one they would not officially call a war, had started thousands of years ago during a falling-out between two brother-gods. But here, today, Dani could see that was just a fanciful story, perpetuated to give people an easy answer. The real answer was harder. Prejudice. Privilege. Hatred.

  Maybe the Sun and Salt Gods had walked with mortals all those years ago. Maybe one had betrayed the other. But there was nothing left of that story here today. This was politics. This was humanity, and the refusal to recognize it. The realization felt like another small chip coming off the foundation Dani had always trusted to remain solid beneath her.

  Then, at the edge of her vision, she saw an officer break away from the group. Consumed with the spectacle before them, no one else seemed to notice. Dani elbowed Carmen, but she turned too late. The officer had disappeared into the trees.

  The hopeful feeling she’d had just a moment ago was quickly evaporating in the face of a sinister fear that filled Dani up like smoke.

  She pushed through the crowd at her side, hoping to find a better vantage point, but she’d only made it two feet from Carmen when an explosion cracked the air and sent earth flying just past the treeline. The vibration stopped, the low hum replaced with screams and curses from both sides.

  “They’re firing!” shouted an officer in front of Dani, and the call was echoed down the line. “They’ve hidden explosives! We’re under attack!”

  “No!” Dani shouted, but another blast went off on the other side of the road, swallowing her cry.

  “Take them alive if possible, but do not let them escape!” shouted an officer.

  The first gunshot went off seconds later, and Dani screamed, not caring if her anger was mistaken for fear. She charged toward the front, thinking of nothing but the injustice of it all. The fact that all of these people had come here at great personal risk to promote a message of tolerance and understanding, and they were about to pay the ultimate price for it.

  In the commotion, she could have slipped through the rough, uniformed bodies trying to restrain her, but a moment later she was being held from behind by two much softer, warmer arms.

  “We can’t,” Carmen said in her ear, pulling her back, holding her close against her chest. “Not now, do you understand? Not right now.”

  Her voice calmed Dani, though she had no idea what the words meant. Carmen repeated them, something of the protesters’ hum in her tone as she walked Dani backward into the crowd of terrified onlookers who had, just a moment ago, seemed willing to listen.

  “Did they have the bombs set up in the trees?” shrieked a voice on the edge of hysteria.

  “They lured us in with that speech! They were going to kill us all!”

  “Criminals!”

  “Rioters!”

  “Illegals!”

  Dani turned to Carmen, her eyes wide as she wordlessly pleaded for understanding.

  “I know.” Carmen looked like she’d swallowed something bitter that was taking a long time to go down.

  “Carmen, they didn’t—”

  “I know.”

  “It was the officers. They—”

  “I know, Dani. I know.”

  Her eyes said what her words couldn’t. That it didn’t matter if they knew. There was nothing they could do about it. Not today.

  The gunfire finally died down, and soon cars sped down the hill with the bodies of protesters, living and dead. Even the living wouldn’t last long, not in those cells, and Dani’s body felt suddenly boneless.

  She’d been a hungry child. A criminal, moments from arrest or death. She’d been a daughter who couldn’t do enough to save her parents, and a victim of blackmail, and a girl who dreamed of kissing a Segunda in a sun-filled glade.

  But until this moment, she’d never been so completely helpless.

  Carmen stood steady and strong, letting Dani slump against her as they walked slowly up the newly cleared mouth of the road toward home. For once, they didn’t have to worry about how it looked. Even strange as it was, no one was looking at them.

  The moment they walked through the front door of the massive house, they were descended upon by frantic house staff, who checked them for injuries and asked questions faster than Dani could even begin to answer them.

  She looked for Carmen in the commotion, and she was there, her eyes steady as they held Dani’s. She heard the words she’d whispered at the scene again.

  Not now. . . .

  She wondered again what they’d meant, but before she could think of a way to get Carmen alone, the maids were separating them, bundling them off to their respective rooms to be treated for scrapes and bruises.

  The long, shallow scratches on her neck were the least of Dani’s worries. There had been blood on the pavement as they’d left the marketplace. . . .

  What if it was Sota’s? Did anyone else know about their arrangement? She’d been so busy pushing back during their meetings she had never thought to ask. A few weeks ago, the idea of being free of La Voz, no strings attached, would have been the answer to a prayer.

  But now?

  She thought about her life as it would unfold without her connection to the resistance. A life of parties and staff schedules. A life of luxury beyond what she’d ever dreamed, built on her husband’s belief that people like Dani’s family didn’t deserve to live.

  A life of watching Carmen disappear into his bedroom every night, educating the children they made together behind those ornate doors when they grew old enough. Pretending to be an unfeeling, uncaring hunk of stone while the world went on killing people and she became bitter and resentful.

  Despite her best efforts, the tears were back in a moment. Between Carmen and the protest, this day had put a crack in her perfect restraint, and she wasn’t sure it was fixable. Dani sent the maid out with less tact than she normally would have employed, and breathed in the minty, herbal scent of the salve on her scratches as her thoughts continued to spiral.

  She remembered so clearly now, the things she’d said to Sota the first day they met. About how she shouldn’t be expected to fight for the cause just because she happened to have been born in the wrong place.
About how survival was the most important thing.

  But right now, after what she’d seen, survival felt less guaranteed than ever, and more than that, it felt small. Selfish and mean. What right had she ever had to hide away in this rose stone mansion, cloaking herself in safety when she knew what it felt like to want? To need. To be denied.

  If we’re not all free, none of us are free, Sota had said that day. And wasn’t it true?

  Today, La Voz had tried to tell the truth, and Medio’s military had put them all in danger just to make sure that message was never received. She’d thought they were protecting her, once. That if she learned to imitate the elite well enough, one day she would be one of them.

  But there was no safety in wartime. There was no protection. Not for people like her. She had done what she needed to do to survive, but even now, at least one member of the family she’d counted on to protect her wanted her imprisoned or killed. What would come next?

  And if every part of her was a lie, what would be left of Dani?

  She felt dizzy with the realization, her life so far wobbling on a foundation that had been slowly eroding since graduation and was now crumbling beneath her feet.

  The maid came back with dinner sometime later, and Dani ate ravenously, her body exhausted though her mind had never been more awake. She stayed up long after the sky went dark and the house went silent, wrestling with her thoughts and history.

  The police had tried to erase the truth Sota and the others had spoken from the minds of every onlooker with their underhanded trick, but they could never make Dani forget what she’d seen. This house felt stifling, her role in it even more so. She felt restless and strange, on the precipice of a decision she wasn’t sure she trusted herself to make.

  I need to see Sota, she thought, surprising herself. But was it really so surprising? During their meetings, Dani had always had a single objective: Do the least possible damage, and get out before anyone realizes what you’ve done. But what would it feel like to take matters into her own hands? To volunteer? To make a choice to do what was right instead of what was safe?

  The thought filled her with a cold, biting fear. Today’s events had pushed her visit with Mama Garcia to the back of her mind, but her suspicion was still there, like a knife against Dani’s throat. Even so, there was something bigger than fear inside her today.

  As the sky began to turn pink at the horizon, Dani left behind her sadness and reformed her anger into something diamond hard and sharp. At her desk, she took a piece of stationery and a pen from her drawer and gritted her teeth.

  She had a plan. Now she just had to hope it didn’t get her killed.

  16

  As a Primera, you will need the ability to assess situations quickly, to become an expert on any subject in as long as it takes to finish an appetizer or cocktail.

  —Medio School for Girls Handbook, 14th edition

  JUST BEFORE BREAKFAST, DANI SNUCK out her patio door and clung to the shadows beside the house, an envelope clutched in her trembling hand.

  She met no one on her way to the front of the house, where she lurked out of sight as two maids who had just finished the pre-breakfast table setting walked down the driveway toward the servants’ quarters.

  When the coast was clear, Dani approached the front door, trying to look casual even though no one was there to notice her posture. Whispering a prayer to the gods in the shadows, the gods in her own coiled-to-spring muscles, she slid her envelope under the door and bolted back to her bedroom patio.

  No one had seen her. Phase one was complete.

  Taking a deep breath, Dani made sure her desk was clear of evidence, stuffing the page below the one she’d written on into the back of her desk drawer with the cards. If even the impression of those words was noticed, it would be over for her, and she wasn’t going to be caught burning things in the garden before breakfast. Not when Mama Garcia might already be onto her.

  With the coast clear, she let her Primera calm settle. She’d been through an ordeal the day before, her mask told the world. She was tired. But nothing else was out of the ordinary.

  Until a knock sounded on her door. Dani jumped before throwing herself into her desk chair and trying to look like she’d been there for hours.

  Mateo didn’t wait for her to invite him in, pushing the door open harder than was necessary. It banged against the wall behind it as he strode in, his normally well-ordered hair disheveled, his eyes open a little too wide.

  Dani’s body reacted to the sight of him, rage heating her from the inside. His wide shoulders and his long arms, the body he’d used to intimidate her, to terrify Jasmín when she was already doomed. She hated him and everything he stood for, but she had to prevent him from finding that out at all costs.

  “Daniela,” he said, barely looking at her. “I’ve doubled down on security. No more of those monsters will be getting in through the gate or anywhere else.”

  “Thank you, Mateo,” Dani said, the grateful wife and her heroic husband. Like he hadn’t startled her nearly out of her skin by barging in here. Like there was nothing to hide in this room. “I’m alright,” she said when he didn’t reply. “Just a little shaken up.”

  By the thugs you employ as military police.

  “Understandably so. To attack us here, at home . . .” He shook his head and turned his eyes on her at last. They were bloodshot. A little wild. Like he’d hardly slept. “I never would have forgiven myself if something had happened to you or Carmen.”

  “Luckily we were well out of the way of the blast,” she said, seething at the way his mouth wrapped possessively around Carmen’s name. Mateo was agitated about something, that much was clear enough, but she’d bet the contents of her secret drawer that it didn’t have anything to do with the safety of his family.

  She could only hope the wheels she’d set in motion this morning were rolling in the right direction.

  As if on cue, Mia appeared in the open doorway, Dani’s envelope in her hand. “I’m so sorry to bother you, señor, señora,” she said. “But this letter has just arrived. It’s addressed to both of you and it’s marked ‘urgent,’ so I thought you’d want to see it right away.”

  “Give it here,” Mateo said, holding out his hand, not making eye contact with the girl. “That’ll be all.”

  He ripped into the letter as if it was addressed to him alone, which was exactly what Dani had been counting on. She sat idly before him, fighting the urge to check that her drawer was securely closed, tension in every muscle that she could not let him see.

  After a minute that lasted far too long, Mateo set the letter down and looked at her pityingly, the wildness gone from his eyes for the moment.

  “Everything alright?” she asked, as casually as she could.

  “I’m afraid not,” he said, leaning down to place his hand on her shoulder. It was all Dani could do not to physically recoil. “The letter is from your mother. It seems your father has fallen ill and is now being treated at the hospital in the capital.” He passed her the letter, and she took the excuse to shrug out from under his heavy hand, pretending to read the letter she’d written herself just after dawn.

  “Oh no,” she said, her face falling, the concerned daughter mask sliding into place. “My poor papa. And my mama all alone.” Dani let the letter fall and covered her mouth.

  “The capital’s hospital has the best doctors outside the complex,” said Mateo, his voice detached rather than comforting. This was an unwelcome distraction from his vendetta. “I’m sure he’ll make a full recovery.”

  “Of course, señor,” Dani replied, hesitating for just long enough to get his attention. “It’s only . . . my mother isn’t from the city. They’ve never been to the capital, let alone a hospital that size. I wish they had someone to navigate things for them, to ensure he’s getting the best care.” She looked up at him with pleading eyes, as if this was a problem she couldn’t possibly solve on her own.

  Mateo stroked his chin. “Normal
ly, I would say you should go and be with them,” he said. “But with the riot yesterday . . . ,” he continued, already shaking his head.

  “José can drive me,” Dani said, trying not to sound too eager. “It might startle them to see me with a bodyguard, but perhaps he could . . . leave me at the hospital doors? I swear to you, I won’t leave the building until he returns.”

  On your honor, she thought.

  Mateo was impatient to return to his diatribe against La Voz, but Dani was pitiful, and more than that, she knew he wouldn’t like the story spreading that he’d refused her the opportunity to see her ailing father.

  “Go,” he said at last. “But José will have to remain with you; that part is nonnegotiable.”

  “Of course, señor,” Dani said again. “Thank you.” It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do for now. She’d find a way to shake José when they arrived. It wasn’t like it would be the first time. She forced a smile and got to her feet. Mateo made no move to go. “I’ll . . . need to get ready,” she said, eyeing the door.

  There was a flash of something distrustful and cold in his eyes, but it was gone in an instant. “I hope your father recovers quickly,” he said, and then he was gone.

  Dani was ready in moments. In the driveway, she sent the doorman scurrying for José and waited, the feeling of a ticking clock making feel her jumpy and strange. When the car pulled up, Dani exhaled, and within its dark interior she relaxed for the first time.

  “Sorry to hear of your father, señora,” said José perfunctorily. “To the hospital?”

  “To the hospital,” she agreed, feeling for the first time like she might actually get away with this.

  The feeling didn’t last long.

  Air rushed into the back seat as the door was pulled open from outside. Dani’s heart stuttered to twice its normal speed, and then seemed to stop completely when she heard a familiar voice.