An Ember in the Ashes(62)

I swallow nervously as the implications of his words sink in. No matter how clever Scholar uprisings have been, in the end it comes down to steel against steel, and in that battle, the Martials always win.
“You wanted him to make weapons for the Scholars?” That would be treason. When Spiro nods, I can’t believe him. This is a trick, like with Veturius this morning. It’s something Teluman’s planned with the Commandant to test my loyalty.
“If you’d really been working with my brother, someone would have seen. Other people must work here. Slaves, assistants—”
“I’m the Teluman smith. Other than my apprentice, I work alone, as my forefathers did. It’s the reason your brother and I were never caught. I want to help Darin. But I can’t. The Mask who took Darin recognized my work in his sketches. I’ve been questioned about it twice already. If the Empire learns I took your brother as my apprentice, they’ll kill him. Then they’ll kill me, and right now I’m the only chance the Scholars have at casting off their chains.”
“Were you working with the Resistance?”
“No,” Spiro says. “Darin didn’t trust them. He tried to stay away from the fighters. But he used the tunnels to get here, and a few weeks ago, two rebels spotted him leaving the Weapons Quarter. Thought he was a Martial collaborator. He had to show them his sketchbook to keep them from killing him.” Spiro sighs. “Then, of course, they wanted him to join up. Wouldn’t leave him alone. Lucky, in the end. That connection to the Resistance is the only reason either of us is still alive. As long as the Empire thinks he’s holding rebel secrets, they’ll keep him in prison.”
“But he told them he wasn’t with the Resistance,” I say. “When the Mask raided us.”
“Stock answer. Empire expects real rebels to deny membership for days—weeks, even—before giving in. We prepared for this. I taught him how to survive interrogation and prison. As long as he stays here in Serra and out of Kauf, he should be fine.”
For how long, I wonder.
I’m afraid to cut Teluman off, but I’m more afraid not to. If he’s telling the truth, then the more of this I listen to, the more danger I’m in. “The Commandant’s expecting a reply. She’ll send me back for it in a few days. Here.”
“Laia—wait—”
But I shove the papers in his hands, dart to the door, and unlock it. He can easily come after me, but he doesn’t. Instead, he watches as I hurry down the alley. When I turn the corner, I think I hear him curse.
***
At night, I toss restlessly in the tiny box that is my room, the rope of my pallet digging into my back, the roof and walls so close that I can’t breathe. My wound burns, and my mind echoes with Teluman’s words.
Serric steel is the heart of the Empire’s strength. No Martial would give up its secrets to a Scholar. And yet something about Teluman’s rings ring true.
When he spoke of Darin, he captured my brother perfectly—his drawings, the way he thinks. And Darin, like Spiro, told me he wasn’t with the Martials or the Resistance. It all aligns.
Except the Darin I knew wasn’t interested in rebellion.

Or was he? Memories cascade through my head: Darin’s silence when Pop told us of how he set the bones of a child beaten by auxes. Darin excusing himself when Nan and Pop discussed the most recent Martials raids, fists clenched. Darin ignoring us to draw Scholar women flinching from Masks and children fighting over a rotted apple in the gutter.
I thought my brother’s silence meant he was pulling away from us. But maybe silence was his solace. Maybe it was the only way he could fight his outrage at what was happening to his people.
When I do fall asleep, Cook’s warning about the Resistance burrows its way into my dreams. I see the Commandant cut me over and over. Each time, her face changes from Mazen’s to Keenan’s to Teluman’s to Cook’s.
I wake to choking darkness and gasp for breath, trying to push away the walls of my quarters. I scramble out of my bed, through the open-air corridor, and into the back courtyard, guzzling the cool night breezes.
It’s past midnight, and clouds scud over a nearly full moon. In a few days, it will be time for the Moon Festival, the Scholars’ midsummer celebration of the largest moon of the year. Nan and I were supposed to sell cakes and pastries this year. Darin was supposed to dance until his feet fell off.
In the moonlight, the forbidding buildings of Blackcliff are almost beautiful, the sable granite softened to blue. The school is, as always, eerily hushed.
I never feared the night, not even as a child, but Blackcliff’s night is different, heavy with a silence that makes you look over your shoulder, a silence that feels like a living thing.
I look up at the stars hanging low in a sky that makes me think I’m seeing the infinite. But beneath their cold gaze, I feel small. All the beauty of the stars means nothing when life here on earth is so ugly.
I didn’t used to think so. Darin and I spent countless nights on the roof of our grandparents’ house tracing the path of the Great River, the Archer, the Swordsman. We’d watch for falling stars, and whoever saw one first would issue a dare. Since Darin’s eyes were sharp as a cat’s, I was always the one stuck stealing apricots from the neighbors, or pouring cold water down the back of Nan’s shirt.
Darin can’t see the stars now. He’s stuck in a cellblock, lost in the labyrinth of Serra’s prisons. He’ll never see the stars again, unless I get the Resistance what they want.
A light flares in the Commandant’s study, and I start, surprised she’s still awake. Her curtains flutter, and voices drift down through the open window.