An Ember in the Ashes(64)

My whole body shakes. Finally, finally, I have something useful for the Resistance. It’s not everything they want to know. But it might be enough to sate Mazen, to buy more time. Half of me is jubilant, but the other half is still thinking about the creature the Commandant called the Nightbringer.
What was that thing?
Scholars do not, on principle, believe in the supernatural. Skepticism is one of the few remnants of our bookish past, and most of us hold onto it tenaciously. Jinn, efrits, ghuls, wraiths—they belong in Tribal myth and legend.
Shadows coming alive are a trick of the eye. A shadowman with a voice out of hell—there should be an explanation for him too.
Except there is no explanation. He is real. Just like the ghuls are real.
A sudden wind sweeps in from the desert, shaking the trellis and threatening to rip me from my perch. Whatever that thing is, I decide, the less I know about it, the better. All that matters is that I’ve gotten the information I need.
I reach my foot out to the trellis but pull it back quickly when another gust of wind whips past. The trellis creaks, tips, and, before my horrified eyes, drops with a deafening clatter to the flagstones. Bleeding hells. I wince, waiting for Cook or Izzi to come out and discover me.
Seconds later, sandals rasp on the courtyard stone. Izzi emerges from the servants’ hallway, a shawl wrapped tight around her shoulders. She looks down at the trellis and then up at the window. When she spots me, her mouth is an O of surprise, but she simply lifts the trellis and watches as I climb down.
When I turn to face her, I’m hastily composing a fleet of explanations, none of which make any sense. But she speaks first.
“I want you to know that I think what you’re doing is brave. Really brave.”
Her words come out in a torrent, as if she’s been hoarding them all for this moment. “I know about the raid and your family and the Resistance. I wasn’t spying on you, I swear it. It’s just, after I took up the sand this morning, I realized I left the irons in the oven to heat. When I came back to get them, you and Cook were talking, and I didn’t want to interrupt. Anyway, I was thinking—I could help you. I know things, lots of things. I’ve been at Blackcliff forever.”
For a second, I’m speechless. Do I beg her not to tell anyone else? Do I get unfairly angry at her for eavesdropping? Do I just stare because I didn’t think she had that many words in her? I have no idea, but I do know one thing: I can’t accept her help. It’s too risky.
Before I’ve said anything, she stuffs her hands under her shawl and shakes her head.
“Never mind.” She looks so lonely—a loneliness of years, of a whole life.
“It was a stupid idea. Sorry.”
“It’s not stupid,” I say. “Just dangerous. I don’t want you getting hurt. If the Commandant finds out, she’ll kill us both.”
“Might be better than how things are now. At least I’ll die having done something useful.”
“I can’t let you, Izzi.” My rejection hurts her, and I feel terrible for it. But I’m not so desperate that I’ll put her life at risk. “I’m sorry.”
“Right.” She’s back in her shell now. “Never mind. Just...forget it.”
I’ve made the right decision. I know it. But as Izzi walks away, lonely and miserable, I hate the fact that it’s me who has made her feel that way.
***
Though I beg Cook to let me run errands for her so I can be out in the markets every day, I hear nothing from the Resistance.
Until finally, on the third day after overhearing the Commandant, I’m shoving my way past the crowds in the couriers’ office, and a hand lands on my waist. I instinctively jab back with my elbow to knock the wind out of the fool who thinks he can take liberties. Another hand catches my arm.
“Laia.” A low voice murmurs into my ear. Keenan’s voice.

My skin thrills at the familiar scent of him. He lets my arm go, but his hand tightens on my waist. I’m tempted to push him away and tell him off for touching me, but at the same time, the feel of his hand sends a jolt up my spine.
“Don’t turn,” he says. “Commandant’s put a tail on you. He’s trying to work his way through the crowd. We can’t risk a meeting now. Do you have anything for us?”
I raise the Commandant’s letter to my face and fan myself, hoping the movement will conceal the fact that I’m talking.
“I do.” I’m practically vibrating with excitement, but I sense only tension from Keenan. When I turn to look at him, he gives me a sharp squeeze of warning, but not before I see the grim cast of his face. My elation fades.
Something is wrong.
“Is Darin okay?” I whisper. “Is he—” I can’t say the words. My fear stifles me into silence.
“He’s in a death cell here in Serra, in Central Prison.” Keenan speaks softly, the way Pop used to when he gave patients the worst news. “He’s to be executed.”
All the air drains from my lungs. I can’t hear the office clerks yelling, or feel the hands pushing me, or smell the sweat of the crowd.
Executed. Killed. Dead. Darin will be dead.
“We still have time.” To my surprise, Keenan sounds sincere. My parents are dead too, he said when I saw him last. My whole family, actually. He understands what Darin’s execution will do to me. Perhaps he’s the only one who does.
“The execution will happen after the new Emperor is named. That might not be for a while yet.”
Wrong, I think.
In two weeks, the shadowman had said, you will have a new Emperor. My brother doesn’t have a while. He has two weeks. I need to tell Keenan this, but when I turn to do so, I see a legionnaire standing in the entryway of the couriers’ office, watching me. The tail.