An Ember in the Ashes

“Darin’s still in Serra. I heard the spy who gave the report.” Keenan walks me further down the street. “But he’s not...well. They’ve been at him.”
A punch to the stomach would have been gentler. I don’t have to ask who “they” are, I already know. Interrogators. Masks.

“Look,” Keenan says. “You don’t know the first thing about spying. That’s clear. Here are some basics: Gossip with the other slaves—you’ll be surprised at what you learn. Keep your hands busy—sewing, scrubbing, fetching. The busier you are, the less likely it is that anyone will question your presence, wherever you might be. If you see a chance to get your hands on real information, take it. But always have an exit plan. The cloak you’re wearing is good—
it helps you blend in. But you walk and act like a freewoman. If I noticed it, others will too. Shuffle, hunch. Act beaten. Act broken.”
“Why are you trying to help me?” I ask. “You didn’t want to risk the men to save my brother.”
He is suddenly very interested in the moldering bricks of a nearby building. “My parents are dead too,” he says. “My whole family, actually. A long time ago now.” He gives me a quick, almost angry glance, and for a second, I see them in his eyes, this lost family, flashes of fiery hair and freckles. Did he have brothers? Sisters? Was he the oldest? The youngest? I want to ask, but his face is shuttered.
“I still think the mission is a terrible idea,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t understand why you’re doing it. And it doesn’t mean I want you to fail.” He touches his fist to his heart and holds out his hand to me. “Death before tyranny,” he murmurs.
“Death before tyranny.” I take his hand, aware of every muscle in his fingers.
No one has touched me for the past ten days except to hurt me. How I miss being touched—Nan stroking my hair, Darin arm-wrestling me and pretending to lose, Pop squeezing my shoulder good night.
I don’t want Keenan to let go. As if he understands, he holds on a moment longer. But then he turns and walks away, leaving me alone on an empty street with fingers still tingling.
***
After delivering the Commandant’s first letter to the courier’s office, I head to the smoke-choked streets near the river docks. Serran summers are always blistering, but the heat in the Weapons Quarter takes on an animal esurience.
The district is a hive of movement and sound, busier on a regular day than most markets are on festival days. Sparks fly from hammers as big as my head, forge fires glow a red deeper than blood, and cottony plumes of steam erupt every few feet from freshly quenched swords. Blacksmiths shout orders as apprentices jostle to follow them. And above it all, the strain and pump of hundreds of bellows, creaking like a fleet of ships in a storm.
Within seconds of entering the district, I am stopped by a platoon of legionnaires demanding to know my business. I offer them the Commandant’s remaining letter only to find myself arguing with them over its authenticity for ten minutes. Finally, grudgingly, they send me on my way.
It makes me wonder yet again how Darin managed to get into the district not just once, but day after day.
They’ve been at him, Keenan said. How long can Darin hold out against his torturers? Longer than me, certainly. When Darin was fifteen, he fell from a tree while trying to draw Scholars working a Martial orchard. He arrived home with bone jutting out of his wrist, and I screamed and nearly fainted at the sight. It’s all right, he said to me. Pop will set it. Find him and then go back for my sketchbook. I dropped it, and I don’t want someone to take it.
My brother has Mother’s iron will. If anyone can survive a Martial interrogation, it’s him.
As I walk, I feel a tug on my skirt and glance down, expecting to find it caught beneath someone’s boot. Instead, I catch a glimpse of a slit-eyed shadow slipping quickly across the cobbles. A tingle runs up my spine at the sight, and I hear a low, cruel cackle. My skin prickles—that laugh was directed at me. I’m certain of it.
Unsettled, I quicken my pace, eventually persuading an elderly Plebeian man to direct me to Teluman’s forge. I find it just off the main street, marked only by an ornate iron T hammered into the door.
Unlike the other forges, this one is utterly silent. I knock, but no one answers. Now what? Do I open the door and risk angering the smith by barging in, or do I go back to the Commandant without a response when she specifically demanded one?
It’s not a difficult choice.
The front door opens to an antechamber. A dust-coated counter splits the room, backed by dozens of glass display cases and another, narrower door.
The forge itself sits in a larger room to my right, cold and empty, its bellows still. A hammer lies on an anvil, but the other tools hang neatly from pegs on the walls. Something strikes me about the room. It reminds me of another I’ve seen, but I can’t place it.
Light filters in weakly through a bank of high windows, illuminating the dust I kicked up when entering. The place has an abandoned feel to it, and I feel my frustration building. How am I supposed to take back a response if the smith isn’t here?
Sunlight glints off the row of glass cases, and my gaze is drawn to the weapons within. They are gracefully wrought, each one worked with the same intricate, almost obsessive detail, from hilt to crossbar to minutely etched blade.
Intrigued by their beauty, I move closer. The blades remind me of something, as the whole shop does—something important, something I should be able to put my finger on.