Except for one. She fights, shoving at the auxes who have grabbed her arms, fearless in her defiance. Mamie Rila.
Uselessly, I watch her struggle, watch a legionnaire bring the hilt of his scim down on the side of her head. The last thing I see before she disappears from sight is her hands fluttering for purchase as she falls to the sands.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Laia
The relief of escaping Nur does nothing to assuage my guilt at what happened to Elias’s Tribe. I do not bother trying to talk to him. What could I say? Sorry is a callous inadequacy. He is silent in the back of Afya’s wagon, staring out at the desert in the direction of Nur, as if he can use his willpower to change what happened to his family.
I give him his solitude. Few people want witnesses to their pain, and grief is the worst pain of all.
Besides which, the guilt I feel is almost crippling. Again and again, I see Mamie’s proud form crumpling like a sack of grain emptied of its bounty. I know I should acknowledge to Elias what happened to her. But it seems cruel to do so now.
By nightfall, Nur is a distant cluster of light in the sweeping blackness of the desert behind us. Its lamps seem dimmer tonight.
Though we fled in a caravan of more than two hundred wagons, Afya has split her Tribe a dozen times since then. By the time the moon rises, we are down to five wagons and four other members of her Tribe, including Gibran.
“He didn’t want to come.” Afya surveys her brother, perched atop the bench of his wagon a dozen yards away. It is covered with thousands of tiny mirrors that reflect the moonlight, a creeking, trundling galaxy. “But I can’t trust him not to get himself or Tribe Nur into trouble. Fool boy.”
“I can see that,” I murmur. Gibran has lured Izzi up into the seat beside him, and I’ve caught flashes of her shy smile all afternoon.
I glance back through the window into Afya’s wagon. The burnished walls of its interior glow with muted lamplight. Elias sits on one of the velvet-clad benches and stares out the back window.
“Speaking of fools,” Afya says. “What’s between you and the redhead?”
Skies. The Tribeswoman misses nothing. I need to remember that. Keenan has ridden with Riz, a silver-haired, silent member of Afya’s Tribe, since our last stop to water the horses. The rebel and I hardly had a chance to speak before Afya ordered him to help Riz with his supply wagon.
“I don’t know what’s between us.” I am wary of telling Afya the truth but suspect that she could pick out a lie a mile away. “He kissed me once. In a shed. Right before he ran off to help start the Scholar revolution.”
“Must have been quite a kiss,” Afya mutters. “What about Elias? You’re always staring at him.”
“I am not—”
“Not that I blame you,” Afya continues as if I haven’t spoken, casting an appraising eye back at Elias. “Those cheekbones—skies.” My skin heats, and I cross my arms, frowning.
“Ah.” Afya flashes her wolfish smile. “Possessive, are we?”
“I have nothing to be possessive of.” An icy wind blows down from the north, and I huddle into my thin Tribal dress. “He’s made it clear to me that he’s my guide and nothing more.”
“His eyes say different,” Afya says. “But who am I to get between a Martial and his misplaced nobility?” The Tribeswoman raises her hand and whistles, ordering the caravan to a halt beside a high plateau. A cluster of trees stands at its base, and I catch the shine of a spring and the scrape of an animal’s claws as it patters away.
“Gibran, Izzi,” Afya calls across the camp. “Get a fire going. Keenan”—the redhead drops down from Riz’s wagon—“help Riz and Vana with the animals.”
Riz calls out something in Sadhese to his daughter, Vana. She is whip-thin with deep brown skin, like her father, and braid tattoos that mark her as a young widow. The last member of Afya’s Tribe is Zehr, a young man about Darin’s age. Afya barks an order at him in Sadhese, and he gets to it without hesitation.
“Girl.” Afya is, I realize, speaking to me. “Ask Riz for a goat, and tell Elias to slaughter it. I’ll trade the meat tomorrow. And talk to him. Get him out of this funk he’s in.”
“We should leave him be.”
“If you’re going to drag Tribe Nur into this ill-advised attempt to save your brother, then Elias needs to come up with a foolproof plan to do so. We have two months before we reach Kauf—that should be enough time. But he can’t do it if he’s moping. So fix it.”
As if it’s that easy.
A few minutes later, Riz points me to a goat with an injured leg, and I lead it to Elias. He guides the limping animal to the trees, out of sight of the rest of the caravan.
He doesn’t need help, but I follow anyway with a lantern. The goat bleats at me mournfully.
“Always hated butchering animals.” Elias sharpens a knife on a whetstone. “It’s like they know what’s coming.”
“Nan used to do the butchering in our house,” I say. “Some of Pop’s patients paid in chickens. She had this saying: Thank you for giving your life, that I may continue mine.”
“Nice sentiment,” Elias kneels. “Doesn’t make it any easier to watch it die.”
“But it’s lame—see?” I shine the lantern upon the goat’s wounded hind leg. “Riz said we’d have to leave it behind and it would die of thirst.” I shrug. “If it’s going to die anyway, it might as well be useful.”
Elias draws the blade across the animal’s neck and it kicks. Blood pours onto the sand. I look away, thinking of the Tribesman Shikaat, of the hot stickiness of his blood. Of how it smelled—sharp, like the forges of Serra.
“You can go.” Elias uses a Mask’s voice on me. It is colder than the wind at our backs.
I retreat quickly, mulling over what he said. Doesn’t make it any easier to watch it die. Guilt sweeps through me again. He wasn’t talking about the goat, I think.
I try to distract myself by finding Keenan, who has volunteered to make dinner.
“All right?” he asks when I appear beside him. He looks briefly toward Elias.
I nod, and Keenan opens his mouth as if to say something. But perhaps sensing I’d rather not talk, he just hands me a bowl of dough. “Knead it, please?” he says. “I’m terrible at making flatbread.”
Grateful to have a task, I get to it, taking comfort from its simplicity, from the ease of having only to roll out disks and cook them on a cast iron pan. Keenan hums as he adds red chilies and lentils to a pot, a sound so unexpected that I smile when I first hear it. It is as soothing as one of Pop’s tonics, and after a time, he speaks of Adisa’s Great Library, which I’ve always wanted to visit, and of the kite markets in Ayo that stretch for blocks. The time passes quickly, and I feel as if a bit of the weight on my heart has been lifted.
By the time Elias has finished butchering the goat, I flip the last pieces of charred, fluffy flatbread into a basket. Keenan ladles out bowls of spiced lentil stew. The first bite makes me sigh. Nan always made stew and flatbread on cold fall nights. Just the smell of it makes my sadness seem further away.
“This is incredible, Keenan.” Izzi holds out her bowl for a second helping before turning to me. “Cook used to make it all the time. I wonder—” She shakes her head and for a time, she is quiet. “I wish she had come,” my friend finally says. “I miss her. I know it must sound strange to you, considering how she acted.”
“Not really,” I say. “You loved each other. You were with her for years. She took care of you.”
“She did,” Izzi says softly. “Her voice was the only sound in the ghost wagon that took us from Antium to Serra after the Commandant bought us. Cook gave me her rations. Held me in the freezing nights.” Izzi sighs. “I hope I see her again. I left in such a hurry, Laia. I never told her …”