The Commandant nods, her face still. The consummate Mask. “Of course, Shrike.”
I order my men into the garrison and retire to the empty Black Guard barracks, dropping into one of the dozen hard bunks along the walls. I am filthy from a week on the road. I should bathe, eat, rest.
Instead, I find myself staring at the ceiling for a solid two hours. I keep thinking of the Commandant. Her insult to me was clear—and my inability to respond displayed my weakness. But though I’m upset by that, I’m more disturbed at what she did to the prisoners. At what she did to the children.
Is this what the Empire has become? Or is this what it always was? a quiet voice within asks.
“I brought you food.”
I jerk upright, hit my head on the bunk above me, and curse. Harper drops his pack on the floor and nods to a steaming plate of golden rice and spiced minced meat on a table by the door. It looks delicious, but I know that right now, anything I eat will taste of ashes.
“The Commandant left about an hour ago,” Harper says. “She’s headed north.”
Harper removes his armor, laying it neatly beside the door before digging around in the closet for fresh fatigues. He turns his back to me and changes. When he strips off his shirt, he steps into the shadows so I cannot see. I crack a smile at his modesty.
“The food won’t jump down your throat on its own, Shrike.”
I look suspiciously at the plate, and Harper sighs, pads to the table in bare feet, and tastes the food before handing me the plate. “Eat,” he says. “Your mother asked you to. How would it look if the Empire’s Blood Shrike fainted dead away from starvation in the middle of a fight?”
Reluctantly, I take the plate and force myself to chew a few morsels of it.
“The old Blood Shrike had tasters.” Harper sits on a bunk across from me and rolls his shoulders back. “Usually an aux soldier from some nameless Plebeian family.”
“People tried to assassinate the Shrike?”
Harper looks at me like I’m an especially dim Yearling. “Of course. He had the Emperor’s ear and was first cousin to Kauf’s Warden. There are probably only a handful of secrets in the Empire that he didn’t know.”
I press my lips together to quell my shudder. I remember the Warden from my time as a Fiver. I remember how he got his secrets: through twisted experiments and mind games.
Harper’s eyes cut to me and glitter like the pale jade of the Southern Lands. “Will you tell me something?”
I swallow the bite I’ve only half chewed. That placidness in his tone—I’ve learned what it means. He’s about to strike.
“Why did you let him go?”
Bleeding skies. “Let who go?”
“I know when you’re trying to mislead me, Shrike,” Harper says. “Five days in an interrogation room with you, remember?” He leans forward on his bunk, tilting his head mildly, like a curious bird. I am not fooled; his eyes burn with intensity. “You had Veturius in Nur. You let him go. Because you love him? Is he not a Mask, like any other?”
“How dare you!” I slam the plate down and stand. Harper grabs my arm, not releasing when I try to throw him off.
“Please,” he says. “I mean no harm. I swear it. I too have loved, Shrike.” Old pain flickers and fades in his eyes. I see no lie there. Only curiosity.
I shove away his arm and, still assessing him, sit back down. I look out the open window of the barracks to the wide stretch of scrubby hills beyond. The moon barely lights the room, and the darkness is a comfort.
“Veturius is a Mask like the rest of us, yes,” I say. “Bold, brave, strong, swift. But those were afterthoughts for him.” The Blood Shrike’s ring of office feels heavy on my finger, and I spin it around. I have never spoken of Elias to anyone. Whom would I speak to? My comrades at Blackcliff would have mocked me. My sisters would not have understood.
I want to speak of him, I realize. I crave it.
“Elias sees people as they should be,” I say. “Not as they are. He laughs at himself. He gives of himself—in everything he does.
“Like with the First Trial.” I shiver at the memory. “The Augurs played with our minds. But Elias didn’t falter. He looked death straight in the face and never considered leaving me behind. He didn’t give up on me. He’s the things that I can’t be. He’s good. He never would have let the Commandant kill those prisoners. Especially not the children.”
“The Commandant serves the Empire.”
I shake my head. “What she did doesn’t serve the Empire,” I say. “Not the Empire I fight for, anyway.”
Harper watches me with an unsettling, fixed gaze. I wonder briefly if I’ve said too much. But then I realize that I don’t care what he thinks. He is no friend of mine, and if he reports what I said to Marcus or the Commandant, it will change nothing.
“Blood Shrike!” The shout makes both Harper and me jump, and a moment later, the door bursts open to reveal an aux courier panting and coated in dirt from the road. “The Emperor orders you to ride for Antium. Now.”
Bleeding skies. I’ll never catch Elias if I detour to Antium. “I’m in the middle of a mission, soldier,” I say. “And I’m not inclined to leave it half-finished. What’s so damned important?”
“War, Blood Shrike. The Illustrian Gens have declared war on each other.”
PART TWO
NORTH
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Elias
For two weeks, the hours pass in a blur of nighttime riding, thieving, and skulking. Martial soldiers swarm over the countryside like locusts, tearing through every village and farmstead, every bridge and shack, in their search for me.
But I am alone, and I am a Mask. I ride hard, and Trera, desert born and bred, eats up the miles.
After a fortnight, we reach the eastern branch of the River Taius, glimmering like the groove of a silver scim beneath the full moon. The night is quiet and bright, without a breath of wind, and I lead Trera up the riverbank until I find a place to cross.
He slows as he splashes through the shallows, and when his hooves hit the northern bank, he tosses his head wildly, his eyes rolling back.
“Whoa—whoa, boy.” I drop into the water and pull his bridle forward to get him up the bank. He whinnies and jerks his head. “Did you get bitten? Let’s see.”
I pull a blanket from one of the saddlebags and rub his legs gently, waiting for him to flinch when the blanket hits the bite. But he just lets me rub him down before turning south.
“This way.” I try to urge him north, but he’s having none of it. Strange. Up until now, he and I have gotten along fine. He’s far more intelligent than any of Grandfather’s horses, and he has more stamina too. “Don’t worry, boy. Nothing to fear.”
“Are you certain of that, Elias Veturius?”
“Ten bleeding hells!” I don’t believe it’s the Soul Catcher until I see her sitting on a rock a few yards away.
“I’m not dead,” I say quickly, like a child denying a wrongdoing.
“Obviously.” The Soul Catcher stands and shakes back her dark hair, her black eyes fixed on me. Part of me wants to poke her to see how real she is. “You are, however, in my territory now.” The Soul Catcher nods east, to a thick, dark line on the horizon. The Forest of Dusk.
“That’s the Waiting Place?” I never linked the oppressive trees of the Soul Catcher’s lair to anything in my world.
“Didn’t you ever wonder where it was?”
“I mostly spent my time figuring out how to get out of it.” I try again to pull Trera from the river. He doesn’t budge. “What do you want, Soul Catcher?”
She pats Trera between his ears, and he relaxes. She takes his reins from me and leads him north as easily as if she’s the one who’s been with him for the past two weeks. I give the beast a dark look. Traitor.
“Who says I want anything, Elias?” the Soul Catcher says. “I’m simply welcoming you to my lands.”
“Right.” What a load of dung. “You won’t need to worry about me lingering. I have someplace to be.”