“Stay alive.” Afya’s eyes soften—just a touch—and she nods to the children. “Protect them. Help any others you can. That’s the only payment I expect I’ll get.”
When she’s out of earshot, I approach Miladh, who is now attempting to fashion a sling from a length of cloth. As I show him how to drape the cloth, he eyes me with nervous curiosity. He must be wondering about what he saw in Afya’s wagon.
“I don’t know how I disappeared,” I finally say. “That was the first time I even realized I had done it.”
“A good trick for a Scholar girl to have,” Miladh says. He looks at Afya and Gibran, speaking quietly on the other side of the barn. “In the boat, the boy said something about saving a Scholar who knows the secrets of Serric steel.”
I scuff my foot against the ground. “My brother,” I say.
“This isn’t the first time I’ve heard about him.” Miladh tucks his son into the sling. “But it is the first time I’ve had cause to hope. Save him, Laia of Serra. Our people need him. And you.”
I look to the little boy in his arms. Ayan. Tiny dark crescents curve beneath his lower lashes. His eyes meet mine, and I touch his cheek, soft and round. He should be innocent. But he’s seen things no child should. Who will he be when he grows up? What will all this violence make him? Will he survive? Not another forgotten child with a forgotten name, I plead. Not another lost Scholar.
Vana calls out and, with Zehr, leads Miladh, his sister, and the children into the night. Ayan twists about to look at me. I make myself smile at him—Pop always said you could never smile too much at a baby. The last thing I see before they are lost in darkness is his eyes, so dark, watching me still.
I turn to Afya, locked in conversation with her brother. From the look on her face, interrupting them would result in a fist to the jaw.
Before I decide what to do, Keenan ducks into the barn. The sleet falls steady now, and his red hair is plastered to his head, almost black in the darkness.
He halts when he sees the eyepatch in my hand. Then he takes two steps and pulls me to his chest without hesitation, wrapping his arms around me. This is the first time we’ve had a moment to even look at each other since we escaped the Martials. But I am numb as he holds me close, unable to relax into him or to allow his warmth to drive away a chill that set into my bones the moment I saw Izzi’s chest torn open.
“We just left her there,” I say into his shoulder. “Left her to—” To rot. To have her bones picked clean by scavengers or tossed into some unmarked grave. The words are too horrible to speak.
“I know.” Keenan’s voice cracks, and his face is chalk-white. “Skies, I know—”
“—can’t bleeding make me!”
I jerk my head around to the other end of the barn, where Afya looks as if she’s about to crush the lamp in her hand. Gibran, meanwhile, seems as if he’s more like his sister than is currently convenient for her.
“It’s your duty, you fool. Someone must take control of the Tribe if I don’t come back, and I won’t have it be one of our idiot cousins.”
“You should have thought of that before you brought me along.” Gibran stands nose to nose with Afya. “If Laia’s brother can make the steel that brings the Martials down, then we owe it to Riz—and Izzi—to save him.”
“We’ve dealt with the Martials’ cruelty before—”
“Not like this,” he says. “They’ve disrespected us, robbed us, yes. But they’ve never butchered us. They’ve been killing Scholars, and it’s making them bold. We’re next. For where will they find slaves if they’ve killed all the Scholars off?”
Afya’s nostrils flare. “In that case,” she says, “fight them from the Tribal lands. You certainly can’t do it from Kauf Prison.”
“Listen,” I say, “I don’t think—”
The Tribeswoman whirls, as if the sound of my voice has triggered an explosion that’s been building for hours. “You,” she hisses. “You’re the reason we’re in this mess. The rest of us bled while you—you disappeared.” She twitches with fury. “You went into that smugglers’ compartment, and when the Mask opened it, you were gone. Didn’t realize I was transporting a witch—”
“Afya.” Keenan’s voice holds a note of warning. He’s said nothing about my invisibility. There hasn’t been time until now.
“I didn’t know I could do it,” I say. “It was the first time. I was desperate. Maybe that’s why it worked.”
“Well, it’s very convenient for you,” Afya says. “But the rest of us don’t have any black magic.”
“Then you need to leave.” I hold up a hand as she tries to protest. “Keenan knows the safe houses we can stay in. He suggested it before, but I didn’t listen.” Skies, how I wish I had. “He and I can get to Kauf alone. Without wagons, we can move even faster.”
“The wagons protected you,” Afya says. “I made a vow—”
“To a man who’s long gone.” The frost in Keenan’s voice reminds me of the first time I met him. “I can get her to Kauf safely. We don’t need your help.”
Afya rises to her full height. “As a Scholar and a rebel, you don’t understand honor.”
“What honor is there in a useless death?” I ask her. “Darin would hate that so many died to save him. I can’t order you to leave me. All I can do is ask.” I turn to Gibran. “I think the Martials will turn on the Tribesmen eventually. I vow that if Darin and I make it to Marinn, I will get you word.”
“Izzi was willing to die for this.”
“Sh-she had nowhere else to go.” The stark truth of my friend’s loneliness in this world hits me. I swallow back the grief. “I shouldn’t have brought her along. It was my decision, and it was the wrong one.” Saying it makes me feel hollow inside. “And I won’t make that decision again. Please, go. You can still catch up with Vana.”
“I don’t like this.” The Tribeswoman casts Keenan a look of distrust that surprises me. “I don’t like it at all.”
Keenan’s eyes narrow. “You’ll like being dead even less.”
“My honor demands that I escort you, girl.” Afya puts out the lamp. The barn seems darker than it should be. “But my honor also demands that I not take a woman’s decision about her own fate away from her. Skies knows there’s enough of that in this blasted world.” She pauses. “When you see Elias, you tell him that from me.”
That is all the goodbye I get. Gibran storms out of the barn. Afya rolls her eyes and follows.
Keenan and I stand alone, the sleet drumming the earth in a steady tattoo around us. When I look into his eyes, a thought enters my head: This is right. This is how it should be. This is how it always should have been.
“There’s a safe house a half dozen miles from here.” Keenan touches my hand to pull me from my thoughts. “If we’re swift, we can get there before dawn.”
Part of me wants to ask him if I have made the right decision. After so many mistakes, I yearn for the reassurance that I haven’t ruined everything yet again.
He will say yes, of course. He will comfort me and tell me this is the best way. But doing the right thing now does not undo every mistake I have already made.
So I do not ask. I simply nod and follow as he leads the way. Because after all that has happened, I do not deserve comfort.
PART THREE
THE DARK PRISON
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Elias
The Warden’s rail-thin shadow falls over me. His long, triangular head and thin fingers bring to mind a praying mantis. I have a clear shot, but my knives do not leave my hands. All thoughts of murder flee my mind when I see what he is holding.
It’s a Scholar child, nine or ten years old. Malnourished, filthy, and as silent as a corpse. The cuffs on his wrists mark him not as a prisoner but as a slave. The Warden digs a blade into his throat. Rivulets of blood trickle down the child’s neck and onto a filthy shift.
Six Masks follow the Warden into the block. Each wears the sigil of Gens Sisellia, the Warden’s family. Each has a notched arrow pointed at my heart.
I could take them, even with the arrows. If I drop fast enough, use the table as a shield—