An Ember in the Ashes

“Elias?”
“Yes,” I say too loudly. “Sorry.” Hel looks annoyed.

“Thinking of Laia?” The mention of the Scholar girl is so incongruous to my thoughts that for a second I’m stunned silent, and Helene stiffens.
“Well, don’t mind me, then,” she says. “Not like I just spent two days by your bedside singing you back to life or anything.”
For a second I don’t know what to say. I don’t know this Helene. She’s acting like an actual girl. “No, Hel, it’s not like that. I’m just tired—”
“Forget it,” she says. “I have to get to watch.”
“Aspirant Veturius.” A Yearling jogs toward me, a note in his hand. I take the note from him, all the while asking Helene to wait. But she ignores me and, even as I’m trying to explain, she walks away.
XXV: Laia
Hours after telling Keenan I’d get out of Blackcliff to meet him, I feel like the world’s biggest fool. Tenth bell has come and gone. The Commandant dismissed me and retreated to her room an hour ago. She shouldn’t emerge until dawn, especially since I spiked her tea with kheb leaf—a scentless, tasteless herb Pop used to help patients rest. Cook and Izzi are asleep in their quarters. The house is silent as a mausoleum.
And still I sit in my room, trying to concoct a way out of this place.
I can’t just walk past the gate guards so late at night. Bad things happen to slaves foolish enough to do so. Besides which, the risk that the Commandant will hear about my midnight wandering is too great.
But I can, I decide, create a distraction and sneak past the guards. I think back to the flames that consumed my house on the night of the raid. Nothing distracts better than fire.
So, armed with tinder, flint, and a striker, I slip out of my room. A loose black scarf obscures my face, and my dress, high-necked and long-sleeved, conceals both my slaves’ cuffs and the Commandant’s mark, still scabbed and painful.
The servants’ corridor is empty. I move silently to the wooden gate leading to Blackcliff’s grounds and ease it open.
It squeals louder than a gutted pig.
I grimace and scurry back to my quarters, waiting for someone to come investigate the noise. When no one does, I creep out of my room—
“Laia? Where are you going?”
I jump and drop the flint and striker to the ground, barely keeping hold of the tinder.
“Bleeding skies, Izzi!”
“Sorry!” She picks up the flint and striker, brown eyes widening when she realizes what they are. “You’re trying to sneak out.”
“Am not,” I say, but she gives me a look that makes me fidget. “Fine, I am, but—”
“I...could help you,” she whispers. “I know a way out of the school that even the legionnaires don’t patrol.”
“It’s too dangerous, Izzi.”
“Right. Of course.” She retreats but then stops, small hands twisting together.
“If—if you were planning to set a fire and sneak through the front gate while the guards are distracted, it won’t work. The legionnaires will send the auxes to deal with the fire. They never leave a gate unattended. Never.”
As soon as she says it, I know she’s right. I should have realized that fact myself. “Can you tell me about this way out?” I ask her.
“It’s a hidden trail,” she says. “A rock path and a scanty one at that. I’m sorry, but I’d have to show you—which means I’d have to come with you. I don’t mind. It’s what a—a friend would do.” She says the word friend like it’s a secret she wishes she knew. “I’m not saying that we’re friends,” she continues in a rush. “I mean—I don’t know. I’ve never really had...”
A friend. She’s about to say it, but she looks away, embarrassed.
“I’m to meet with my handler, Izzi. If you come and the Commandant catches you—”
“She’ll punish me. Maybe kill me. I know. But she might do that anyway if I forget to dust her room or if I look her in the eye. Living with the Commandant is like living with the Reaper. And anyway, do you really have a choice? I mean,” she looks almost apologetic, “how else are you planning to get out of here?”
Good point. I don’t want her to get hurt. I lost Zara to the Martials a year ago. I can’t bear the thought of another friend suffering at their hands.
But I don’t want Darin to die either. Every second I waste is a second he is rotting in prison. And it’s not as if I’m forcing her into this. Izzi wants to help. A host of what-ifs parade through my head. I silence them. For Darin.
“All right,” I say to Izzi. “This hidden trail—where does it let out?”
“The docks. Is that where you’re going?”
I shake my head. “I have to get into the Scholar’s Quarter for the Moon Festival. But I can make my way there from the docks.”
Izzi nods. “This way, Laia.”
Please don’t let her get hurt. She ducks into her room for a cloak, then takes my hand and pulls me to the back of the house.
XXVI: Elias
Though the physician excused me from training and watch, my mother doesn’t seem to care. Her note to me is an order to report to training field two for hand-to-hand combat. I pocket the bloodroot serum—it will have to wait—and spend the next two hours attempting to keep the Combat Centurion from beating me to a pulp.
By the time I change into fresh fatigues and leave the training field, tenth bell’s come and gone, and I have a party to go to. The boys—and Helene—will be waiting. I shove my hands in my pockets as I walk. I hope Hel loosens up a little—at least enough to forget that she was so irritated with me earlier. If I want her to set me free from the Empire, making sure she doesn’t hate me seems like a good first step.
My fingers brush up against the bottle of bloodroot in my pocket. You told Laia you’d take it to her, Elias, a voice chides me. Days ago.
But I also said I’d join Hel and the boys in the barracks. Hel’s already mad at me. If she finds out I’m visiting Scholar slave-girls in the dead of night, she won’t be pleased.
I stop and consider. If I’m quick about it, Hel will never know where I’ve been.