Before She Ignites (Fallen Isles Trilogy #1)(24)
“Or Drakontos titanus!”
I let out a long sigh of wonder. “And Drakon Warriors rode them into battle. . . .”
Because of the Mira Treaty, it was illegal for anyone to ride dragons; the larger species were endangered and mostly lived in sanctuaries, and the smaller species were carefully monitored. All we had were dragons made of glass.
But Ilina was like me: we dreamed of something more.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A FAINT SENSE OF HESITATION PRESSED BETWEEN US before Aaru said, “Allies?”
“What?”
“Us. Allies.”
Oh. He wanted us to be allies. That was better than enemies, but not as good as friends. Still, I wouldn’t turn him down. “Allies have a shared goal. What is ours?”
He shifted closer to the hole, blocking all light from his side. The word puffed in like a cloud of wishes. “Freedom.”
The word echoed around the small place beneath my bed. A promise. A hope. A dream. Just hearing the word aloud sent a pang of longing through me. I wanted freedom in the same way I wanted my next breath: an unspoken but constant desire.
“Mira.” A note of annoyance skewed the way he said my name.
“Sorry,” I muttered. “I was just thinking. About freedom.”
He made a noise like he hadn’t been aware I’d been capable of such an act. “Escape?” A series of taps on the floor accompanied the word. What was the tapping?
“You want to escape the Pit?”
“Yes.”
“No one ever has.” At least, as far as I knew. And I didn’t need to escape. I just needed to survive long enough for the Luminary Council to realize their mistake and send for me.
Besides, he was an Idrisi boy who spent all his time under his bed. I was a Daminan girl with no practical survival knowledge whatsoever. What made him think we could get out of this place alive?
“Oh.” Through the hole, I could just see him turning away, but not his expression or anything else useful. “Understand.” He rolled onto his back and sighed. Then, like he wasn’t quite aware of it, he beat a pattern onto his ribs. It didn’t take long before he gained speed, the sounds coming so quick I could barely keep up.
There was almost a desperate quality to the rhythm, like he was trying to explain something but couldn’t find the words.
“What is that?” I scooted toward the wall until I could peer through the hole, catching only suggestions of a strong nose and prominent brow. He was still drumming on his chest, the same pattern over and over. He gave no indication whether he’d heard me. “Aaru?”
He stopped in the middle of a repeat, slamming his hands to his chest and holding so, so still. Like he was waiting to get caught.
I spoke gently. “What is that? The tapping, I mean.”
A long breath heaved out of him. “Strength through silence.”
“I see.” But I didn’t really. I knew that tense feeling of dreading trouble. I knew the compulsion that drove strange behavior. Counting. Thumping. But “strength through silence.” I’d heard that phrase before. When?
During a (very short, curt) speech from a visiting Silent Brother. He’d been talking about the Mira Treaty and how it shouldn’t just unite the islands against threats like the Algotti Empire, but encourage everyone to embrace their individual histories and cultures. On Idris, he’d said, the people found their strength through silence.
Aaru hadn’t moved. “Idris’s holy words.”
“Oh.” I hesitated.
“What?”
“I don’t understand how silence can be strength.” Mother always said our voices were power, and it was our duty to use them.
There was a pause where he might have muttered about my confusion being so typical for a Daminan, but he didn’t. “There is strength,” he said slowly, “in knowing when to speak, and when to listen.” His hands stayed on his chest, motionless. “And when to say nothing at all.”
There was something in those words, some kind of pain, but it would be rude to keep digging. So I went back to his tapping. “You don’t always do that pattern, though.”
His fingers curled slightly, long arches over the fabric of his shirt. “You hear it?”
“Of course. These walls aren’t soundproof.” Everyone down the cellblock had probably heard.
“No—” He tapped twice, a long then short. “The patterns. You hear them.”
“Of course,” I said again.
His hand lifted just off his chest, like he was about to thump another pattern but then thought better of it.
“What is it? Why do you do it?”
“Quiet code.” (Two slow, one fast, one slow. Pause. Slow, fast, slow, fast.)
“A code?” My sister had wanted us to share a secret code when we were younger, before she decided to hate me, but I’d never been good at remembering which letters exchanged for other letters.
“Idris language.”
A language made of drumming different rhythms? That seemed complicated. “It’s so you don’t have to talk out loud?”
More tapping. (One slow, one fast, two slow.) “Yes.”
How interesting. The benefit to using a tapped code on an island where silence was valued most of all—would be enormous. Maybe that was why Father had assumed no one spoke, not even to one another. They could have been communicating in a different way.