An Ember in the Ashes(104)

“We celebrated into the night, but finally, everyone slept. Everyone but me. I’d had this strange sense for hours—that some darkness was closing in. I saw shadows outside the wagon, shadows circling the camp. I climbed out of the wagon and saw this...this man. Black clothing and red eyes and skin without any color at all. An Augur. He said my name. I remember thinking he must be part-reptile, because his voice came out of him like a hiss. And that was it. I was chained to the Empire. I was chosen.”
“Were you afraid?”
“Terrified. I knew he was there to take me away. And I didn’t know where, or why. They brought me to Blackcliff. Cut off my hair, took my clothes, and put me in a pen outside with the others for a culling. Soldiers threw us moldy bread and jerky once a day, but back then, I wasn’t very big, so I never got much. Midway through the third day, I was sure I would die. So I snuck out of the pen and stole food from the guards. I shared it with my lookout. Well...” He looks up, considering. “I say share, but really, she ate most of it. Anyway, after seven days, the Augurs opened the pen, and those of us still alive were told that if we fought hard, we would be the guardians of the Empire, and if we didn’t, we’d be dead.”
I can see it. The small bodies of those left behind. The fear in the eyes of those who lived. Veturius as a boy, afraid and starved, determined not to die.
“You survived.”
“I wish I hadn’t. If you’d seen the Third Trial—if you knew what I did...” He polishes the same spot on one of the scims over and over.
“What happened?” I ask softly. He is silent for so long that I think I’ve angered him, that I’ve crossed a line. Then he tells me. He pauses frequently, and his voice goes from broken to flat. He keeps working on the scim, shining it, then sharpening it with a whetstone until it gleams.
When he is done speaking, he hangs the scim up. The streaks running down his mask catch the firelight, and I understand, now, why he was shaking when he walked in, why his eyes are so haunted.

“So you see,” he says, “I’m just like the Mask who killed your grandparents. I’m just like Marcus. Worse, actually, because such men consider it their duty to kill. I know better. And I did it anyway.”
“The Augurs didn’t give you a choice. You couldn’t find Aquilla to end the Trial, and if you hadn’t fought, you’d have died.”
“Then I should have died.”
“Nan always said that as long as there is life, there is hope. If you’d refused to give the order, your men would be dead right now—either at the hands of the Augurs or on the blades of Aquilla’s platoon. Don’t forget: She chose life for herself and her men. Either way, you’d have blamed yourself. Either way, people you cared about would have suffered.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“But it does matter. Of course it matters. Because you’re not evil.” The knowledge is a revelation and one so staggering that I badly want him to see it too. “You’re not like the others. You killed to save. You put others first. Not—not like me.”
I can’t bring myself to look at Veturius. “When the Mask came, I ran.” The words spill out of me, a tumbling river I’ve dammed up for too long. “My grandparents were dead. The Mask had Darin, my brother. Darin told me to run, even though he needed me. I should have helped him, but I couldn’t. No.” I dig my fists into my thighs. “I didn’t. I chose not to stay. I chose to run, like a coward. I still don’t understand it. I should have stayed, even if that meant dying.”
My eyes seek the floor in shame. But then his hand is on my chin, tipping my face up. His clean scent washes over me.
“As you say, Laia,” he forces me to meet his eyes, “there’s hope in life. If you hadn’t run, you’d be dead. And Darin too.” He lets me go and sits back.
“Masks don’t like defiance. He’d have made you pay for it.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Veturius smiles that knife’s-edge smile. “Look at us,” he says. “Scholar slave and Mask, each trying to persuade the other that they’re not evil. The Augurs do have a sense of humor, don’t they?”
My fingers are clenched around the hilt of the dagger Veturius gave me, and a hot anger rises inside me—at the Augurs for letting me think I was to be interrogated. At the Commandant for leaving her own child to die a torturous death, and at Blackcliff for training that child to be a killer. At my parents for dying and my brother for apprenticing himself to a Martial. At Mazen for his demands and secrets. At the Empire and its iron-fisted control over every aspect of our lives.
I want to defy all of them—the Empire, the Commandant, the Resistance.
I wonder where such defiance comes from, and my armlet feels hot suddenly.
Perhaps there’s more of my mother in me than I thought.
“Maybe we don’t have to be Scholar slave and Mask.” I drop the dagger.
“For tonight, maybe we can just be Laia and Elias.”
Emboldened, I reach out and pull at the edge of his mask, which has never seemed like a part of him. It resists, but now I want it off. I want to see the face of the boy I’ve been speaking to all night, not the Mask I always thought he was. So I pull harder, and the mask falls into my hands with a hiss. The back is bent into sharp spikes wet with blood. The tattoo on his neck glistens with a dozen small wounds.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I didn’t realize...”
He looks into my eyes, and something undefined burns in his gaze, a flash of emotion that brings a different sort of fire to my skin.