An Ember in the Ashes(49)

“Something the matter, girl?”
A Martial man comes through the narrow back door, looking more like a river pirate than a blacksmith. His head is shaved, and he drips with piercings—six through each ear, one in his nose, his eyebrows, his lips. Multicolored tattoos—of eight-pointed stars, lush-leafed vines, a hammer and anvil, a bird, a woman’s eyes, scales—run from his wrists up his arms and into a black leather jerkin. He can’t be more than fifteen years older than me. Like most Martials, he’s tall and muscled, but lanky, without the brawn I’d expect of a blacksmith.
Is this the man Darin was spying on?
“Who are you?” I’m so thrown off that I forget he’s a Martial.
The man lifts his eyebrows as if to say, Me? Who in the ten hells are you?
“This is my shop,” he says. “I’m Spiro Teluman.”
Of course he is, Laia, you idiot. I scramble for the note from the Commandant, hoping the smith thinks my comment is the result of being a dim-witted Scholar rat. He reads the note but says nothing.
“She—she requested a response. Sir.”
“Not interested.” He looks up. “Tell her I’m not interested.” Then he returns to the back room.
I stare after Teluman uncertainly. Does he know my brother was taken to prison for spying on his shop? Has the smith seen what Darin drew? Is his shop always abandoned? Is that how Darin got so close? I’m still trying to piece it all together when an unsettling feeling creeps up my neck, like the greedy touch of a ghost’s fingers.
“Laia.”
A clump of shadows is gathered at the foot of the door, black as spilled ink.
The shadows take shape, eyes glinting, and I begin to sweat. Why here? Why now? How can creatures of my own mind not be controllable by me? Why can I not will them away?
“Laia.” The shadows rise, morphing into a manlike shape. They take on form and color, and the voice is as familiar and true as if my brother is standing in front of me.
“Why did you leave me, Laia?”
“Darin?” I forget that this is a hallucination, that I’m in a Martial forge with a murderous-looking blacksmith yards away.
The simulacrum tilts its head, just like Darin used to. “They’re hurting me, Laia.”
It’s not Darin. My mind is slipping. This is guilt, fear. The voice changes, twisting and layering as if there are three Darins all talking at once. The light in the fake-Darin’s eyes goes out as quickly as a sun in a storm, and his irises darken into black pits, as if his entire body is filled with shadow.
“I won’t survive it, Laia. It hurts.”
The simulacrum’s hand shoots out to grab my arm, and a bone-deep cold jolts through me. I scream before I can stop myself, and a second later, the creature’s hand drops away. I feel a presence behind me and turn to find Spiro Teluman wielding the most beautiful scim I’ve ever seen. He pushes me casually to the side, holding the scim to the simulacrum.
As if he can see the creatures. As if he can hear them.
“Begone,” he says.
The simulacrum swells, titters, and then falls into a pile of laughing shadows, their cackles falling against my ears like slivers of ice.
“We have the boy now. Our brothers gnaw at his soul. Soon he will be mad and ripe. Then we shall feast.”
Spiro brings the scim down. The shadows scream, and the sound is like nails on wood. They squeeze under the door, a mass of rats escaping a flood.
Seconds later, they’re gone.
“You—you can see them,” I say. “I thought they were all in my head. I thought I was going mad.”
“They’re called ghuls,” Teluman says.
“But...” Seventeen years of Scholar pragmatism protest the existence of creatures that are supposed to be nothing but legend. “But ghuls aren’t real.”
“They are as real as you or I. They left our world for a time. But they’ve returned. Not everyone can see them. They feed off sorrow and sadness and the stink of blood.” He looks around his forge. “They like this place.”
His pale green eyes meet mine, careful and wary. “I’ve changed my mind. Tell the Commandant I’ll consider her request. Tell her to send me some specs. Tell her to send them with you.”
***
My mind whirls with questions when I leave the smithy. Why did Darin draw Teluman’s shop? How did he get in? Why can Teluman see the ghuls? Did he see the shadow-Darin too? Is Darin dying? If ghuls are real, then are jinn real too?
When I arrive back at Blackcliff, I attack my tasks with a single-minded focus, losing myself in the polishing of floors and scrubbing of baths so that I might escape the cyclone of thoughts in my head.
By late evening, the Commandant still has not returned. I head to the kitchen smelling of polish, my head aching with the indecipherable echo of Blackcliff’s drums, which have been pounding all day.
Izzi risks a glance in my direction while she folds a stack of towels. When I smile, she offers a tentative twitch of her lips in return. Cook wipes down the counters for the night, ignoring me, as usual. I think back to Keenan’s advice: to gossip, to keep myself busy. Quietly, I take up a basket of mending and sit at the worktable. As I watch Cook and Izzi, I suddenly wonder if they are related. They tilt their heads in the same way, they are both small and fair-haired. And there’s a quiet companionship between them that makes my heart ache for Nan.
Eventually, Cook turns in for the night, and silence fills the kitchen.
Somewhere in the city, my brother suffers in a Martial prison. You have to get information, Laia. You have to get the Resistance something. Get Izzi to talk.