An Ember in the Ashes

Darin draws a sharp breath, the only sign of strain. “They asked for my sketchbook,” he says. “I said no. I swear it.”
“And their hideout?”
“I didn’t see. They blindfolded me. We were in the catacombs.”
“Where in the catacombs?”
“I didn’t see. They blindfolded me.”
The Mask eyes my brother for a long moment. I don’t know how Darin can remain unruffled beneath that gaze.

“You’re prepared for this.” The smallest bit of surprise creeps into the Mask’s voice. “Straight back. Deep breathing. Same answers to different questions. Who trained you, boy?”
When Darin doesn’t answer, the Mask shrugs. “A few weeks in prison will loosen your tongue.” Nan and I exchange a frightened glance. If Darin ends up in a Martial prison, we’ll never see him again. He’ll spend weeks in interrogation, and after that they’ll either sell him as a slave or kill him.
“He’s just a boy,” Pop speaks slowly, as if to an angry patient. “Please—”
Steel flashes, and Pop drops like a stone. The Mask moves so swiftly that I don’t understand what he has done. Not until Nan rushes forward. Not until she lets out a shrill keen, a shaft of pure pain that brings me to my knees.
Pop. Skies, not Pop. A dozen vows sear themselves into my mind. I’ll never disobey again, I’ll never do anything wrong, I’ll never complain about my work, if only Pop lives.
But Nan tears her hair and screams, and if Pop was alive, he’d never let her go on like that. He wouldn’t have been able to bear it. Darin’s calm is sheared away as if by a scythe, his face blanched with a horror I feel down to my bones.
Nan stumbles to her feet and takes one tottering step toward the Mask. He reaches out to her, as if to put his hand on her shoulder. The last thing I see in my grandmother’s eyes is terror. Then the Mask’s gauntleted wrist flashes once, leaving a thin red line across Nan’s throat, a line that grows wider and redder as she falls.
Her body hits the floor with a thud, her eyes still open and shining with tears as blood pours from her neck and into the rug we knotted together last winter.
“Sir,” one of the legionnaires says. “An hour until dawn.”
“Get the boy out of here.” The Mask doesn’t give Nan a second glance.
“And burn this place down.”
He turns to me then, and I wish I could fade like a shadow into the wall behind me. I wish for it harder than I’ve ever wished for anything, knowing all the while how foolish it is. The soldiers flanking me grin at each other as the Mask takes a slow step in my direction. He holds my gaze as if he can smell my fear, a cobra enthralling its prey.
No, please, no. Disappear, I want to disappear.
The Mask blinks, some foreign emotion flickering across his eyes—surprise or shock, I can’t tell. It doesn’t matter. Because in that moment, Darin leaps up from the floor. While I cowered, he loosened his bindings. His hands stretch out like claws as he lunges for the Mask’s throat. His rage lends him a lion’s strength, and for a second he is every inch our mother, honey hair glowing, eyes blazing, mouth twisted in a feral snarl.
The Mask backs into the blood pooled near Nan’s head, and Darin is on him, knocking him to the ground, raining down blows. The legionnaires stand frozen in disbelief and then come to their senses, surging forward, shouting and swearing. Darin pulls a dagger free from the Mask’s belt before the legionnaires tackle him.
“Laia!” my brother shouts. “Run—”
Don’t run, Laia. Help him. Fight.
But I think of the Mask’s cold regard, of the violence in his eyes. I’ve always loved dark-haired girls. He will rape me. Then he will kill me.
I shudder and back into the hallway. No one stops me. No one notices.
“Laia!” Darin cries out, sounding like I’ve never heard him. Frantic.
Trapped. He told me to run, but if I screamed like that, he would come. He would never leave me. I stop.
Help him, Laia, a voice orders in my head. Move.
And another voice, more insistent, more powerful.
You can’t save him. Do what he says. Run.
Flame flickers at the edge of my vision, and I smell smoke. One of the legionnaires has started torching the house. In minutes, fire will consume it.
“Bind him properly this time and get him into an interrogation cell.” The Mask removes himself from the fray, rubbing his jaw. When he sees me backing down the hallway, he goes strangely still. Reluctantly, I meet his eyes, and he tilts his head.
“Run, little girl,” he says.
My brother is still fighting, and his screams slice right through me. I know then that I will hear them over and over again, echoing in every hour of every day until I am dead or I make it right. I know it.
And still, I run.
***
The cramped streets and dusty markets of the Scholar’s Quarter blur past me like the landscape of a nightmare. With each step, part of my brain shouts at me to turn around, to go back, to help Darin. With each step, it becomes less likely, until it isn’t a possibility at all, until the only word I can think is run.
The soldiers come after me, but I’ve grown up among the squat, mud-brick houses of the Quarter, and I lose my pursuers quickly.
Dawn breaks, and my panicked run turns to a stumble as I wander from alley to alley. Where do I go? What do I do? I need a plan, but I don’t know where to start. Who can offer me help or comfort? My neighbors will turn me away, fearing for their own lives. My family is dead or imprisoned. My best friend, Zara, disappeared in a raid last year, and my other friends have their own troubles.
I’m alone.
As dawn breaks, I find myself in an empty building deep in the oldest part of the Quarter. The gutted structure crouches like a wounded animal amid a labyrinth of crumbling dwellings. The stench of refuse taints the air.
I huddle in the corner of the room. My hair has slipped free of its braid and lays in hopeless tangles. The red stitches along the hem of my shift are ripped, the bright yarn limp. Nan sewed those hems for my seventeenth year-fall, to brighten up my otherwise drab clothing. It was one of the few gifts she could afford.
Now she’s dead. Like Pop. Like my parents and sister, long ago.