An Ember in the Ashes(106)

As sickened.
I snatch my scims from the wall. The thought of what I’d done with them makes me want to toss them to the dunes, Teluman blades or not. But I’m too used to having weapons across my back. I feel naked without them.
The sun shines as I emerge from the barracks, unfeeling in a cloudless sky.
It seems profane somehow—the world clean, the air warm—when scores of young men lay cold in their coffins, waiting to return to the earth.
The dawn drums thunder out and begin listing the names of the dead.
Each name summons an image in my head—a face, a voice, a form—until it feels as if my fallen comrades are rising up around me, a phalanx of ghosts.
Cyril Antonius. Silas Eburian. Tristas Equitius. Demetrius Galerius. Ennis Medalus. Darien Titius, Leander Vissan.
The drumming goes on. The families will have collected the bodies by now. Blackcliff has no graveyard. Among these walls, all that remains of the fallen is the emptiness of where they walked, the silence where their voices rang.
In the belltower courtyard, Cadets lunge and parry with staffs as a Centurion circles them. I should have known the Commandant wouldn’t cancel classes, not even to honor the deaths of dozens of her students.
The Centurion nods as I pass, and I’m confused by his lack of disgust.
Doesn’t he know I’m a murderer? Wasn’t he watching yesterday?
How can you ignore it? I want to shout. How can you pretend it didn’t happen?
I head for the cliffs. Helene will be down in the dunes, where we have always mourned our dead. On my way there, I see Faris and Dex. Without Tristas, Demetrius, and Leander by their sides, they look bizarre, like an animal missing its legs.
I think they will pass me by. Or attack me for giving the order that took their souls. Instead, they stop before me, quiet, despondent. Their eyes are as red as mine.
Dex massages his neck, his thumb moving in ceaseless circles over the Blackcliff tattoo. “I keep seeing their faces,” he says. “Hearing them.”
For long moments, we stand together in silence. But it is selfish of me to share such grief, to take comfort in knowing that they feel the same self-hatred that I do. I’m the reason they are haunted.
“You followed orders,” I say. This burden, at least, I can take. “Orders I gave. Their deaths aren’t on you. They’re on me.”
Faris meets my eyes, a ghost of the big, joyful boy he had once been.

“They’re free now,” he says. “Free of the Augurs. Of Blackcliff. Not like us.”
When Dex and Faris walk away, I rappel to the desert floor, where Helene sits cross-legged in the shade of the cliffs, her feet buried to the ankles in the hot sand. Her hair ripples in the wind, glowing gold-white like the curve of a sunlit dune. I approach her as one would an angry horse.
“You don’t need to be so cat-footed,” she says when I’m a few feet away.
“I’m not armed.”
I sit beside her. “Are you all right?”
“I’m alive.”
“I’m sorry, Helene. I know you can’t forgive me, but—”
“Stop. We didn’t have a choice, Elias. If I’d gotten the upper hand, I’d have done the same thing to you. I killed Cyril. I killed Silas and Lyris. I nearly killed Dex, but he backed off, and I couldn’t find him again.” Her silver face could be carved of marble, it’s so emotionless. Who is this person?
“If we’d refused to fight,” she says, “our friends would have died. What were we supposed to do?”
“I killed Demetrius.” I search her face for anger. She and Demetrius grew close after his brother died—she was the only one who ever knew what to say to him. “And—and Leander.”
“You did what you had to. Just as I did what I had to. Just as Faris and Dex and all the others who survived did what they had to.”
“I know they did what they had to do, but they followed an order I gave. An order I should have been strong enough not to give.”
“You’d have died, Elias.” She doesn’t look at me. She’s working so hard to convince herself that it’s all right. That what we did was necessary. “Your men would have died.”
“The battle will end when you defeat or are defeated by the leader of the enemy. If I’d been willing to die first, Tristas would still be alive. Leander. Demetrius. All of them, Helene. Zak knew it—he begged Marcus to kill him. I should have done the same. You’d be named Empress—”
“Or the Augurs would name Marcus, and I’d be his—his slave—”
“We told our men to kill.” Why doesn’t she understand? Why isn’t she willing to face it? “We gave the order. We followed it ourselves. It’s unforgiveable.”
“What did you think was going to happen?” Helene pushes herself to her feet, and I stand, too. “Did you think the Trials would get easier? Didn’t you know this would come? They’ve made us live our deepest fears. They’ve thrown us at the mercy of creatures that shouldn’t exist. Then they turned us against each other. Strength of arms and mind and heart. You’re surprised? You’re na?ve, is what you are. You’re a fool.”
“Hel, you don’t know what you’re saying. I almost killed you—”
“Thank the skies for it!” She’s in front of me, so close that strands of her long hair blow into my face. “You fought back. After losing so many training battles, I wasn’t sure you would. I was so scared—I thought you’d be dead out there—”