We Set the Dark on Fire

by Tehlor Kay Mejia

  The formation became a dance, enhanced by painted masks obscuring the performers’ faces. They came into Dani’s eyeline one by one. A wolf. A jungle cat. A fox. A butterfly. Then the dance shifted again, and all she could see was their backs. Midnight black. A statement.

  Beyond, sounds came from the crowd; they undulated in pointless waves. Behind them, Dani realized for the first time, was a line of still more figures in black, linking arms to block their exit. Whatever was about to unfold, they wanted a captive audience. Literally.

  After a few dreamlike moments, the forms went still. A tall figure—there was no doubt this was the leader—emerged from the center wearing a vulture’s mask so true to life it caused Dani’s heart to skip a beat.

  A predator. A scavenger.

  A survivor.

  For the first time, Dani wondered if she had made the wrong choice. If she should have run in the other direction. If she should now. But in the moment, the fear that had driven her was silent. She couldn’t look away.

  The song continued, louder now, and Dani’s heart reached out to meet the notes—even though the words were a mystery to her. They were defiant. Joyful. The rhythm spread slowly like honey, the song half protest and half worship. It demanded reverence for the very act of living.

  Still as a statue, caught up in the magic of it, Dani had the strange desire to weep.

  The formation spun to surround their leader, synchronized, every step part of a larger plan. Torches appeared from nowhere, and the masked figures extended them inward. In the vulture’s mask, the leader held up a metal cone, hammered thin with patient hands until the light caught its every dip and divot.

  Between his fingertips was a single lit match, and when it touched the head of the first torch, he began to speak.

  “You have all heard the lies spread by the Median government,” he said, the cone amplifying his voice. The people behind him, held captive by the wall of black-clad protesters, went strangely still. “You’ve seen the headlines. Calling us criminals. Violent. Accusing us of the intention to destroy all civilization.”

  He lit the second torch.

  “But our demonstrations thus far have been peaceful. We only wanted you to pause. To think. We wanted to spread awareness and show you our humanity.”

  The flames of the third torch danced in the eyes of a fox’s mask.

  “But now we have been blamed for crude violence we did not commit. Framed for a riot that allowed them to kill and imprison our families and friends. Today we will show you what it looks like when we are pushed beyond the peace we love.”

  Half the torches were alive, a punishing rhythm beginning as the masked protesters beat them against the stones of the square again and again.

  “We ask for one thing, and one thing only: to have what is ours by right returned. We have little love for violence, but even less for watching our elders and children starve, all while you demonize us for the deceitful actions of your own military.”

  There was only one more torch to be lit. His own.

  “That,” he said as it caught, “will not be tolerated.”

  A chill ran down Dani’s spine, something tugging at her subconscious, something urgent and half formed.

  “Viva!” he called.

  “Viva!” the rest answered, raising their torches until the air was alive with their crackling.

  The flame bearers fanned out, and the chill in Dani’s bones began to grow roots. Wings.

  The warning.

  The speech.

  The song.

  The evacuation sirens.

  The screaming.

  They were going to burn the marketplace.

  Dani’s heart leapt into her throat, hammering twice as loudly to make up for the moments she hadn’t been afraid. Her Primera mind pushed forward through the haze, analyzing each possible decision before she could arrive at it.

  The air behind her filled with the acrid smell of things that should not burn.

  And in front of her, still, was that wall of linked arms. In order to pass through them, she’d have to declare herself a sympathizer, loud enough for anyone near her to hear.

  While the masked performers entered the marketplace with determined strides, torches held out before them, the Vulture remained in the center of the square, his own torch thrust high into the air, as if daring someone to try to stop them.

  Dani knew she should run, but there was nowhere to go. Nowhere that didn’t require a payment too costly to consider.

  Behind her, someone screamed. The single, desperate sound fractured and multiplied. The air was full of smoke and pain, but everything inside Dani was cold. She’d thought the aisles were long empty by now.

  Carmen. What if Carmen hadn’t gotten out in time?

  Startled into motion by the thought, Dani turned from her hiding place and plunged back into the twisting labyrinth, careful this time to remember where she’d come from. She didn’t dare cry out, lest she attract the attention of one of the masked torch bearers, but she scanned the empty stalls with stinging eyes until the thickening smoke began to choke her.

  Tears streaming down her face, her head swimming, her throat raw, Dani retraced her steps to the tent flap and gulped down air for the second time that day. She’d go back, she told herself, she’d go back as soon as her head stopped spinning. . . .

  But behind her, the smoke had swallowed everything, and her heart sank.

  Going back, said her highly analytical mind, wouldn’t save Carmen. It would only get Dani killed. She would just have to trust that she had made it out. That she was waiting for her at the hospital, or at home. There was no other option now.

  Besides, Dani had more immediate problems. Behind the smoke came the twisting flames, the screams echoing off the burning stalls.

  It’s not Carmen, Dani told herself. It can’t be Carmen.

  Not after everything they’d already survived.

  Sweat poured from Dani’s skin as the heat behind her grew to a blaze. The air itself seemed combustible, and she knew her body would be little more than kindling. Above her, an ominous groaning sound sent her heart racing again, almost musical even as it promised destruction.

  With no more warning, Dani’s peripheral vision was nothing but light and heat and smoke. The tent she’d been hiding behind had caught fire, and she was out of time, with an impossible decision staring her down.

  Would she burn to keep her secret?

  She had the sense that La Voz would expect her to. That any one of them would, in her place, and for a moment she felt full of a nameless determination. She would prove herself worthy of the commitment she’d made, even if the proof was her own life.

  Then the low heat behind her focused into a point of blinding pain against her upper arm, a pain that built and built as Dani spun, trying to keep her movements from attracting attention, aware at last that her sleeve had been burning, and the fabric was now melting into her skin.

  When the fabric was gone and the flames made contact with her arm, there were no more thoughts of secrets. Of protecting her family, or her cause. Of dying for it. The pain burrowed into her flesh and bones, blades and burning, stripping away every pretense.

  Dani forgot herself, moving forward to escape the flames, beating at the fire that was just out of reach with all the strength she could muster, screaming again and again until the marketplace finally coughed her up and spat her at the Vulture’s feet.

  The figure watched, mask expressionless, as she rolled on the stone stage, trying desperately to put out the fire that had taken over her every thought and feeling. When the flames finally died, the fabric of her expensive dress had become one with her skin, and when she tugged at it her vision went black in spots, coming back slowly to reveal an inferno where she had just been standing.

  The eyes behind the Vulture’s mask were swallowed in shadow, but Dani locked onto them anyway, pleading with her gaze if she couldn’t with her scream-and smoke-ravaged throat.

  P
lease, she tried to say with her eyes alone. Don’t kill me.

  As if in answer, the Vulture’s arms darted up, encircling her like steel bars. From a boot came a short knife, which was held to her throat as she raised her hands in surrender.

  Dani didn’t know the faces in the crowd. She didn’t know the Vulture’s hard eyes. She didn’t know how far her voice would carry on the smoke-tainted wind. All she knew was that she didn’t want to die. She wasn’t willing to die. Not today.

  “My name is Daniela Garcia,” she said, barely more than a whisper.

  “And?” The voice was cold.

  “You can’t kill me.”

  The Vulture laughed, one short, sharp blast. “And why not?”

  The flames were still raging, but the screaming had stopped. The people inside didn’t have anything left to scream with.

  “Because I’m one of you,” Dani said, and the words were bitter in her mouth. They tasted like regret for every life lost today, and the weight of responsibility nearly choked her. Did she even want to be a member of La Voz anymore? If this was what they were capable of?

  But the burn seared into her skin, reminding her of what she’d be if she wasn’t La Voz.

  A pile of ashes. A body without blood or a name or a voice.

  “I’m a spy for the resistance,” she said. “For Sota.”

  His eyes didn’t change. The people behind them didn’t react.

  It was as if Dani hadn’t said a word.

  But she could feel it inside. The weight of the words she’d spoken. So much more real than when she’d made her commitment in the soft, safe light of Sota’s infirmary as the sun set.

  The knife pressed harder against her throat, kissing her skin until it broke. A trickle of blood dripped down into the neckline of Dani’s dress, but it was nothing next to the burning.

  Just when she’d run out of time, when one more increase in pressure would open her throat, the Vulture pulled the knife away.

  “Fly, little bird.”

  Dani flew.

  Across the empty plaza, into the throng of people who had resumed their futile pushing and shoving. Her arm didn’t know the flames had gone out, and the pain of it bored much deeper than her skin, traveling from her bloodstream until every inch of her felt fevered, the heat focused on her arm, the rest of her going clammy and cold.

  Sobs, unbidden, bubbled up in Dani’s throat, and she choked on them, their sound lost in the chaos surrounding her.

  She only needed to get to the wall of protesters. They would know to let her through, wouldn’t they? The Vulture had sent them some kind of signal. . . .

  Screams echoed through Dani’s tender skull, memory or reality or both. Before her, the crowd would not give way. A hysterical sort of strength possessed her for a moment, and she scratched and tore and bit at everything in her path, forging a way forward, refusing to quit.

  If she quit, she would never see Carmen again.

  She wouldn’t live to see if her sacrifice had saved Jasmín.

  To see Mateo and his twisted family brought to their knees.

  The bodies pressed closer, and the humid air left Dani gasping, too short to reach the clean air above the shoulders of the desperate crowd. She jumped as high as she could again and again, trying to scrabble over backs, to take one gulp of air untainted by bodies and sweat.

  From the shoulder of a large man, she was thrown to the ground.

  Carmen. She would never see Carmen again if she didn’t get up. She had to get up.

  Sheer force of will brought Dani to her feet once more, but the dizziness was worse now, and her teeth were chattering with fever.

  Bodies. Pain. Screams. Were they the screams of the crowd around her or the echoes of the people in the marketplace? Her vision swam. She no longer knew what was real.

  Fly, little bird.

  Dani pushed harder, she gritted her teeth. She fought. But in the end, she fell.

  22

  Among a Primera’s deadliest weapons are facts and the truth.

  —Medio School for Girls Handbook, 14th edition

  THE FIRST THING DANI SMELLED when she woke was smoke, and for a moment she thrashed her limbs, gasping around the scream still lodged in her throat.

  “Shh,” said a low, hypnotic voice in her ear. “It’s alright. You’re alright.”

  Strong but gentle hands pressed her shoulders back against a mattress. She stopped struggling when she realized they were holding, not restraining.

  Every gasp tore through her throat, even the air corrosive.

  “You’re in the hospital, Dani,” said the voice. “You’re okay.”

  The room came into sharper focus. Eggshell walls, a generic wool blanket, the sound of calculated hurry in the distance.

  Hospital, the voice had said, and Dani had the good sense to look for its source.

  Above her hovered a figure, soot-stained around the eyes, his mouth half worried, half smirking. His foxlike features gave him away.

  “S—” she began, but he pressed a finger to her lips.

  “Not here,” Sota said. “I can only stay a moment.”

  The door was closed, Dani noted. The window was open.

  Panic shot through her chest as her awareness deepened. “Carmen,” she rasped. It sounded more like a wordless groan, but Sota’s mischievous smile told her he’d understood.

  “She’s okay,” he said. “Hasn’t left your side for hours; I had to wait until the doctor called her out to slip in. I’m sure she’ll be back any minute.”

  Relief flooded Dani, making her limbs heavy, killing her pain if only for a moment. Carmen had made it out. She hadn’t been burned. But all those other people . . .

  “Gotta admit, I didn’t see that one coming,” Sota muttered, and Dani smiled with cracked lips before another spike of panic overtook her.

  “Jasmín,” she said, her voice stronger this time. “She—”

  “Save your voice,” Sota interrupted. “Alex passed along the info in time. Consider it taken care of.”

  “Taken care of?” Dani croaked, wanting to be sure. “You can’t . . .”

  “Listen,” Sota said, grinning sheepishly as he rubbed the back of his neck. “That’s part of why I’m here. Since you were so instrumental in saving her life tonight, I feel like you deserve to know.” He took another deep breath as Dani waited, too tired to be impatient. “Jasmín . . . is one of us,” he said at last.

  Dani let her accusatory eyebrows do the talking for her this time.

  “She’s a double agent. She was arrested intentionally after we planted the info with you that she’d double-crossed us. We made up the blackmail to find out whether we could trust you when it came to giving up an old friend, and to reinforce the consequences if you decided to talk. It was . . . the most risk-free way to test your loyalty.”

  “Risk-free for who?” Dani asked, wincing again at the pain, but her mind was recalling the night Jasmín had been arrested. The look of determination on her face when Mateo had knocked at the door. Her perfect certainty, even then, that what she was about to do was right.

  The certainty Dani hadn’t understood until now.

  “We knew prisoners were disappearing,” Sota continued, his voice hushed, eyes darting often to the still-closed door. “We assumed she’d be taken to the same place, find out exactly what was being done there. That she could send word to us and we could send someone to get her out. But if it weren’t for you, she’d have been killed tonight, and we would have lost any information she could have told us about the rest.”

  Dani relaxed her brow a little, nodding, wincing. At least some good had come of this horrific afternoon. Or was it evening?

  “So what now?” Dani asked, her voice growing smoother with use. “Is my cover blown? Do I come with you back to La Voz . . . headquarters or something?” Her heart squeezed at the thought. Little as she could imagine going back home to Mateo and pretending none of this had happened, the idea of leaving Carmen was wo
rse.

  The worry line between Sota’s eyebrows was back. “That’s the other thing I’m here to talk to you about,” Sota said. “We need you to go back. To the Garcias’. So far no one knows why you’re here or what happened—although please let us know next time you suspect someone does, hmm?”

  Dani nodded absently. Mama Garcia was, for once, the least of her worries.

  “If you can get back in time,” he said gently, “we think you can control the story. Tell them what you want them to know. Keep your cover.”

  Her mind went blank. Numb with pain, exhaustion, and fear. Go back. Continue to lie for her life and the lives of others, knowing every moment she was one step closer to being arrested or tortured or killed.

  She thought again of the screams in the marketplace and closed her eyes, stopping all but a single tear from falling.

  “We set off the evacuation sirens ourselves,” Sota said quietly, reading her face correctly. “We wanted everyone to get out safely. No one was supposed to get hurt.”

  “But they did,” Dani whispered. “They were screaming, and . . .”

  “I know,” said Sota, and when she opened her eyes there were tears on his face, too. “We feel those losses. We honor them. We avoid them when we can. But stopping isn’t an option. Not when we’re losing so much ourselves.”

  “I thought we were just trying to raise awareness . . . ,” Dani said, though the words sounded naive even to her.

  “That was the . . . optimistic route,” Sota replied. “We hoped once the Median government saw who we were and what we wanted, they would understand. But things changed when they framed us for those explosions. We’re looking at more drastic measures. Tonight was just the first step.”

  Dani didn’t want to understand, but she did. She didn’t want to be the kind of person who could justify violence, but after all she had seen—after all she had done—how could she not?

  “Change isn’t easy, Dani,” Sota said. “Freedom has a price. People who want easy and pretty stay in their cages.”