An Ember in the Ashes(38)

When I open the curtains, the first rays of morning illuminate the room.
I stop to look at the emptiness beyond the Commandant’s window, miles of whispering dunes, rippling like waves in the dawn wind. For a second, I lose myself in their beauty. Then Blackcliff’s drums thud out, a wake-up call for the entire school and half the city.
“Slave-Girl.” The Commandant’s impatience has me moving before she says another word. “My hair.”
As I take a brush and pins from a table drawer, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. The bruises from my run-in with Aspirant Marcus a week ago are fading, and the ten lashes I received afterward have scabbed over. Other wounds have replaced them. Three lashes on my legs for a dust stain on my skirt. Four lashes on my wrists for not finishing her mending. A black eye from a Skull in a foul mood.
The Commandant opens a letter sitting on her dressing table. She keeps her head still as I pull back her hair, ignoring me entirely. For a second, I stand frozen, staring down at the parchment as she reads. She doesn’t notice.
Of course she doesn’t. Scholars don’t read—or so she assumes. I brush out her pale hair swiftly.
Look at it, Laia. Darin’s voice. Discover what it says.
She will see. She will punish me.
She doesn’t know you can read. She’ll think you’re an idiot Scholar gawping at pretty symbols.
I swallow. I should look. Ten days at Blackcliff with nothing to show for it but bruises and lashes is disastrous. When the Resistance demands a report, I won’t have anything for them. What will happen to Darin then?
Again and again, I glance at the mirror to make sure the Commandant is enmeshed in her letter. When I’m sure, I risk a quick look down.
—too dangerous in the south, and the Commandant is not trustworthy. I advise that you return to Antium. If you must come south, travel with a small force—
The Commandant shifts, and I tear my eyes away, paranoid that I’ve been too obvious. But she reads on, and I risk another glance. By then, she’s turned the parchment over.
—allies are deserting Gens Taia like rats fleeing a fire. I have learned that the Commandant is planning—
But I do not find out what the Commandant is planning, for at that moment, I look up. She is watching me in the mirror.
“The—the marks are beautiful,” I say in a choked whisper, dropping one of the hairpins. I bend to retrieve it, taking those precious seconds to hide my panic. I’ll be whipped for reading something that doesn’t even make any sense. Why did I let her see me? Why wasn’t I more careful? “I haven’t seen much of words,” I add.
“No.” The woman’s eyes flicker, and for a moment, I think she’s mocking me. “Your kind doesn’t need to read.” She examines her hair. “The right side’s too low. Fix it.”
Though I feel like crying from relief, I keep my face carefully bland and slide another pin into her silken hair.

“How long have you been here, slave?”
“Ten days, sir.”
“Have you made any friends?”
This question is so preposterous coming from the Commandant that I almost laugh. Friends? At Blackcliff? Kitchen-Girl is too shy to talk to me, and Cook only speaks to give me orders. The rest of Blackcliff’s slaves live and work on the main grounds. They are silent and distant—always alone, always wary.
“You’re here for life, girl,” the Commandant says, inspecting her now-finished hair. “Maybe you should get to know your fellows. Here,” she hands me two sealed letters. “Take the one with the red seal to the couriers’ office and the one with the black seal to Spiro Teluman. Don’t leave him without a reply.”
Who Spiro Teluman is and how to find him I don’t dare to ask. The Commandant punishes questions with pain. I take the letters and back out of the room to avoid any surprise attacks. A breath explodes out of me when I close the door. Thank the skies the woman is too arrogant to think her Scholar drudge can read. As I walk down the hall, I peek at the first letter and nearly drop it. It’s addressed to Emperor Taius.
What would she be corresponding with Taius about? The Trials? I run an experimental finger near the seal. Still soft, it lifts cleanly.
There’s a scrape behind me, and the letter falls from my hand as I whip around. My mind screams Commandant! But the hall is empty. I pick up the letter and shove it into my pocket. It seems alive, like a snake or spider I’ve decided to keep as a pet. I touch the seal again before jerking my hand away.
Too dangerous.
But I need something to give the Resistance. Every day when I leave Blackcliff to run the Commandant’s errands, I fear Keenan will pull me aside and demand a report. Every day he doesn’t is a reprieve. Eventually, I’ll run out of time.
I have to get my cloak, so I head to the servants’ quarters in the open-air hallway just outside the kitchen. My room, like Kitchen-Girl’s and Cook’s, is a dank hole with a low entrance and a ragged curtain that serves as a door.
Inside, it’s just wide enough to fit a rope pallet and a crate that serves as a side table.
From here, I can hear the low tones of Cook and Kitchen-Girl speaking.
Kitchen-Girl, at least, has been slightly friendlier than Cook. She’s helped me with my duties more than once, and at the end of my first day, when I thought I’d faint from the pain of the lashes I’d received, I saw her scuttle away from my quarters. When I went in, I found a healing salve and a mug of pain-numbing tea.
That’s as far as her friendship extends. I’ve asked her and Cook questions, discussed the weather, complained about the Commandant. No response.