An Ember in the Ashes (Ember Quartet #1)(123)

Darin, Izzi, and Elias put me first. No one made them do it. They did it because they felt it was the right thing to do. Because whether they know what Izzat is or not, they live by it. Because they are brave.

My turn to do right, a voice says in my head. Not Darin’s words anymore, but my own. That voice has always been my own. My turn to live by Izzat. Mazen said I didn’t know what Izzat was. But I understand it better than he ever will.

By the time I navigate the treacherous hidden trail and scramble up to the Commandant’s courtyard, the school is still and quiet. The lamps in the Commandant’s study are lit, and voices drift out her open window, too faint to hear. That suits me fine—not even the Commandant can be in two places at once.

The slaves’ quarters are dark but for one light. I hear muffled sobbing. Thank the skies. The Commandant hasn’t taken her for interrogation yet. I peer through the curtain of her room. She isn’t alone.

“Izzi. Cook.”

They sit on the cot together, Cook with her arm around Izzi. When I speak, their heads jerk up, faces blanching like they’ve been confronted with a ghost. Cook’s eyes are red, her face wet, and when she sees me, she lets out a cry. Izzi throws herself at me, hugging me so tightly I think she’ll break a rib.

“Why, girl?” Cook wipes her tears away almost angrily. “Why come back? You could have run. Everyone thinks you’re dead. There’s nothing here for you.”

“But there is something here.” I tell Cook and Izzi all that has happened since this morning. I tell them the truth about Spiro Teluman and Darin and what the two of them were trying to do. I tell them of Mazen’s betrayal. Then I tell them my plan.

After I finish, they sit silently. Izzi fiddles with her eyepatch. Part of me wants to take her by the shoulders and beg her for help, but I can’t coerce her into doing this. This has to be her choice. Cook’s choice.

“I don’t know, Laia.” Izzi shakes her head. “It’s dangerous . . . ”

“I know,” I say. “I’m asking so much of you. If the Commandant catches us—”

“Contrary to what you might think, girl,” Cook says, “the Commandant is not all-powerful. She underestimated you, for one. She misread Spiro Teluman—he is a man and so, in her mind, is only capable of a man’s base appetites. She hasn’t connected you to your parents. She makes mistakes, like anyone else. The only difference is that she doesn’t make the same mistake twice. Keep that in mind and you just might be able to outwit her.”

The old woman considers for a moment. “I can get what we need from the school’s armory. It’s well stocked.” She stands up, and when Izzi and I stare at her, she lifts her eyebrows.

“Well, don’t just sit there like lumps on a log.” She gives me a kick, and I yelp. “Move.”

???

Hours later, I awake to Cook’s hand on my shoulder. She bends down beside me, her face barely visible in the predawn gloom.

“Get up, girl.”

I think of another dawn, the one after my grandparents were killed and Darin was taken. That day, I thought my world was ending. In a way, I was right. Now it’s time to remake my world. Time to redo my ending. I put my hand to my armlet. This time, I will not falter.

Cook slumps against the entry to my room, sliding a hand across her eyes. She’s been up nearly all night, as I have. I didn’t want to sleep at all, but in the end, she insisted on it.

“No rest, no wits,” she said when forcing me to my cot just an hour before. “And you’ll need all your wits if you want to get out of Serra alive.”

Hands shaking, I pull on the combat boots and fatigues Izzi filched from the school’s supply closets. I buckle Darin’s scim to a belt Cook rustled up and pull my skirt over it all. Elias’s knife stays attached to the strap on my thigh. My mother’s armlet is hidden beneath a loose, long-sleeved tunic. I think at first to wear a scarf, to cover the Commandant’s mark, but in the end I decide against it. Though I once hated the sight of the scar, I view it with a sort of pride now. As Keenan said, it means I survived her.

Beneath the tunic, hanging diagonally across my chest, is a soft leather satchel filled with flatbread, nuts, and fruit sealed in oilskin, along with a canteen of water. Another package holds gauze, herbs, and oils for healing. I shove Elias’s cloak on top of it all.

“Izzi?” I ask Cook, who watches me silently from the door.

“On her way.”

“You won’t change your mind? You won’t come?”

Her silence is her answer. I look into her blue eyes, distant and familiar all at once. I have so many questions for her. What’s her name? What happened with the Resistance that was so horrible she can’t speak of them without stuttering and convulsing? Why does she hate my mother so much? Who is this woman who is more closed, even, than the Commandant? Unless I ask her now, I will never know the answers. After this, I doubt I’ll see her again.

“Cook—”

“Don’t.”

The word, though quietly spoken, is like a door slamming in my face.

“Are you ready?” she asks.

The belltower tolls. In two hours, the dawn drums will beat.

“Doesn’t matter if I’m ready,” I say. “It’s time.”