Читать книгу An Ember in the Ashes - Sabaa Tahir, Sabaa Tahir - Страница 15

Barrius’s screams blister my brain for hours. I see his body fall, hear the rasp of his last breath, smell the taint of his blood on the flagstones.

Student deaths don’t usually hit me this way. They shouldn’t – the Reaper’s an old friend. He’s walked with all of us at Blackcliff at some point. But watching Barrius die was different. For the rest of the day, I’m short-tempered and distracted.

My odd mood doesn’t go unnoticed. As I trudge to combat training with a group of other Senior Skulls, I realize Faris has just asked me a question for a third time.

‘You look like your favourite whore’s caught the pox,’ he says when I mutter an apology. ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’

‘Nothing.’ I realize too late how angry I sound, how unlike a Skull on the verge of Maskhood. I should be excited – bursting with anticipation.

Faris and Dex trade a sceptical glance, and I stifle a curse.

‘You sure?’ Dex asks. He’s a rule-follower, Dex. Always has been. Every time he looks at me, I know he’s wondering why my mask hasn’t joined with me yet. Piss off, I want to say to him. Then I remind myself that he’s not prying. He’s my friend, and he’s genuinely worried. ‘This morning,’ he says, ‘at the whipping, you were—’

‘Hey, leave the poor man be.’ Helene strolls up behind us, flashing a smile at Dex and Faris and throwing a careless arm around my shoulders as we enter the armoury. She nods at a rack of scims. ‘Go on, Elias, pick your weapon. I challenge you, best of three.’

She turns to the others and murmurs something as I walk away. I lift a blunted practice scim, checking its balance. A moment later, I feel her cool presence beside me.

‘What did you tell them?’ I ask her.

‘That your grandfather’s been hounding you.’

I nod. The best lies come from the truth. Grandfather is a Mask, and like most Masks, he’s never satisfied with anything less than perfection.

‘Thanks, Hel.’

‘You’re welcome. Repay me by pulling yourself together.’ She crosses her arms at my frown. ‘Dex is your platoon lieutenant, and you didn’t commend him after he caught a deserter. He noticed. Your entire platoon noticed. And at the whipping, you weren’t … with us.’

‘If you’re saying that I wasn’t baying for the blood of a ten-year-old, you’d be right.’

Her eyes tighten, enough for me to know that some part of her sympathizes with me, even if she’ll never admit it.

‘Marcus saw you stay behind after the whipping. He and Zak are telling everyone that you thought the punishment was too harsh.’

I shrug. As if I care what the Snake and Toad say about me.

‘Don’t be an idiot. Marcus would love to sabotage the heir to Gens Veturia a day before graduation.’ She refers to my familial house, one of the oldest and most respected in the Empire, by its formal title. ‘He’s all but accusing you of sedition.’

‘He accuses me of sedition every other week.’

‘But this time, you did something to earn it.’

My eyes jerk to hers, and for one tense moment, I think she knows everything. But there’s no anger or judgment in her expression. Only concern.

She counts off my sins on her fingers. ‘You’re squad leader of the platoon on watch, yet you don’t bring Barrius in yourself. Your lieutenant does it for you, and you don’t commend him. You barely contain your disapproval when the deserter’s punished. Not to mention the fact that it’s the day before graduation, and your mask has only just begun to meld with you.’

She waits for a response, and when I give none, she sighs.

‘Unless you’re stupider than you look, even you can see how this appears, Elias. If Marcus reports you to the Black Guard, they might have enough evidence to pay you a visit.’

A prickle of unease creeps down my neck. The Black Guard is tasked with ensuring the loyalty of the military. They wear the emblem of a bird, and their leader, once picked, gives up his name and is known simply as the Blood Shrike. He’s the right hand of the Emperor and the second most powerful man in the Empire. The current Blood Shrike has a habit of torturing first and asking questions later. A midnight visit from those black-armoured bastards will land me in the infirmary for weeks. My entire plan will be ruined.

I try not to glare at Helene. Must be nice to believe so fervently in what the Empire spoon-feeds us. Why can’t I just be like her – like everyone else? Because my mother abandoned me? Because I spent the first six years of my life with Tribesmen who taught me mercy and compassion instead of brutality and hatred? Because my playfellows were Tribeschildren, Mariners, and Scholars instead of other Illustrians?

Hel hands me a scim. ‘Fall in,’ she says. ‘Please, Elias. Just for a day. Then we’re free.’

Right. Free to report for duty as full-fledged servants of the Empire, after which we’ll lead men to their deaths in the never-ending border wars with Wildmen and Barbarians. Those of us not ordered to the border will be given city commands, where we’ll hunt down Resistance fighters or Mariner spies. We’ll be free, all right. Free to laud the Emperor. Free to rape and kill.

Funny how that doesn’t seem like freedom.

I keep quiet. Helene’s right. I’m drawing too much attention to myself, and Blackcliff is the worst place to do so. Students here are like starving sharks when it comes to sedition. One whiff of it, and they swarm.

For the rest of the day, I do my best to act like a Mask on the verge of graduation – smug, brutish, violent. It’s like covering myself in filth.

When I return to my cell-like quarters in the evening for a precious few minutes of free time, I tear off my mask and toss it on my cot, sighing when the liquid metal releases its hold.

At the sight of my reflection in the mask’s polished surface, I grimace. Even with the thick black lashes that Faris and Dex love to mock, my eyes are so much my mother’s that I hate seeing them. I don’t know who my father is, and I no longer care, but for the hundredth time, I wish that he’d at least given me his eyes.

Once I escape the Empire, it won’t matter. People will see my eyes and think Martial instead of Commandant. Plenty of Martials roam the south as merchants, mercenaries, and craftsmen. I’ll be one among hundreds.

Outside, the belltower tolls eight. Twelve hours until graduation. Thirteen until the ceremony is done. Another hour for pleasantries. Gens Veturia is a distinguished house, and Grandfather will want me to shake dozens of hands. But eventually, I’ll beg off and then …

Freedom. At last.

No student has ever deserted after graduating. Why would they? It’s the hell of Blackcliff that drives its students to run. But after we’re out, we get our own commands, our own missions. We get money, status, respect. Even the lowest-born Plebeian can marry high, if he becomes a Mask. No one with any sense would turn his back on that, especially after nearly a decade and a half of training.

Which is what makes tomorrow the perfect time to run. The two days after graduation are madness – parties, dinners, balls, banquets. If I disappear, no one will think to look for me for at least a day. They’ll assume I’ve drunk myself into a stupor at a friend’s house.

The passageway that leads from below my hearth into Serra’s catacombs pulses at the edge of my vision. It took me three months to dig out that damn tunnel. Another two months to fortify and hide it from the prying eyes of aux patrols. And two more months to map out the route through the catacombs and out of the city.

Seven months of sleepless nights and peering over my shoulder and trying to act normal. If I escape, it will all have been worth it.

The drums beat, signalling the start of the graduation banquet. Seconds later, a knock comes at my door. Ten hells. I was supposed to meet Helene outside the barracks, and I’m not even dressed yet.

Helene knocks again. ‘Elias, stop curling your eyelashes and get out here. We’re late.’

‘Hang on,’ I say. As I pull off my fatigues, the door opens and Helene marches in. A blush blooms up her neck at my undressed state, and she looks away. I raise an eyebrow. Helene has seen me naked dozens of times – when wounded, or ill, or suffering through one of the Commandant’s cruel strength-training exercises. By now, seeing me stripped shouldn’t cause her to do anything more than roll her eyes and throw me a shirt.

‘Hurry up, would you?’ She fumbles to break the silence that’s descended. I grab my dress uniform off a hook and button it on quickly, edgy at her awkwardness. ‘The guys already went ahead. Said they’d save us seats.’

Helene rubs the Blackcliff tattoo on the back of her neck – a four-sided black diamond with curved sides that is inked into every student upon arrival at the school. Helene took it better than most of our class fellows, stoic and tearless while the rest of us whimpered.

The Augurs have never explained why they only choose one girl per generation for Blackcliff. Not even to Helene. Whatever the reason, it’s clear they don’t select at random. Helene might be the only girl here, but there’s a reason she’s ranked third in our class. It’s the same reason that bullies learned early on to leave her alone. She’s clever, swift, and ruthless.

Now, in her black uniform, with her shining braid encircling her head like a crown, she’s as beautiful as winter’s first snow. I watch her long fingers at her nape, watch her lick her lips. I wonder what it would be like to kiss that mouth, to push her to the window and press my body against hers, to pull out the pins in her hair, to feel its softness between my fingers.

‘Uh … Elias?’

‘Hmm …’ I realize I’ve been staring and snap out of it. Fantasizing about your best friend, Elias. Pathetic. ‘Sorry. Just … tired. Let’s go.’

Hel gives me a strange look and nods at my mask, still sitting on the bed. ‘You might need that.’

‘Right.’ Appearing without one’s mask is a whipping offence. I haven’t seen any Skull maskless since we were fourteen. Other than Hel, none of them have seen my face, either.

I put the mask on, trying not to shudder at the eagerness with which it attaches to me. One day left. Then I’ll take it off forever.

The sunset drums thunder as we emerge from the barracks. The blue sky deepens to violet, and the searing desert air cools. Evening’s shadows blend with the dark stones of Blackcliff, making the blockish buildings appear unnaturally large. My eyes rove the shadows, seeking out threats, a habit from my years as a Fiver. I feel, for an instant, as if the shadows are looking back at me. But then the sensation fades.

‘Do you think the Augurs will attend graduation?’ Hel asks.

No, I want to say. Our holy men have better things to do, like locking themselves up in caves and reading sheep entrails.

‘Doubt it,’ is all I say.

‘I guess it would get tedious after five hundred years.’ Helene says this without a trace of irony, and I wince at the sheer idiocy of the idea. How can someone as intelligent as Helene actually think the Augurs are immortal?

But then, she’s not the only one. Martials believe that the Augurs’ ‘power’ comes from being possessed by the spirits of the dead. Masks, in particular, revere the Augurs, for it is the Augurs who decide which Martial children will attend Blackcliff. It is the Augurs who give us our masks. And we’re taught that it was the Augurs who raised Blackcliff in a single day, five centuries ago.

There are only fourteen of the red-eyed bastards, but on the rare occasions that they appear, everyone defers to them. Many of the Empire’s leaders – generals, the Blood Shrike, even the Emperor – make a yearly pilgrimage to the Augurs’ mountain lair, seeking counsel on matters of state. And though it’s clear to anyone with an ounce of logic that they are a pack of charlatans, they’re lionized throughout the Empire not just as immortal, but as oracles and mind-readers.

Most Blackcliff students only see the Augurs twice in our lives: when we’re chosen for Blackcliff and when we’re given our masks. But Helene has always had a particular fascination with the holy men – it’s no surprise that she hoped they’d come to graduation.

I respect Helene, but on this, we don’t agree. Martial myths are as believable as Tribal fables of jinn and the Nightbringer.

Grandfather is one of the few Masks who doesn’t believe in Augur rubbish, and I repeat his mantra in my head. The field of battle is my temple. The swordpoint is my priest. The dance of death is my prayer. The killing blow is my release. The mantra is all I’ve ever needed.

It takes all my control to hold my tongue. Helene notices.

‘Elias,’ she says. ‘I’m proud of you.’ Her tone is strangely formal. ‘I know you’ve struggled. Your mother …’ She glances around and drops her voice. The Commandant has spies everywhere. ‘Your mother’s been harder on you than on any of the rest of us. But you showed her. You worked hard. You did everything right.’

Her voice is so sincere that for a moment, I waver. In two days, she won’t think such things. In two days, she will hate me.

Remember Barrius. Remember what you’ll be expected to do after graduation.

I jostle her shoulder. ‘Are you turning sappy and girly on me?’

‘Forget it, swine.’ She punches me on the arm. ‘I was just trying to be nice.’

My laugh is falsely hearty. They’ll send you to hunt me down when I run. You and the others, the men I call brothers.

We reach the mess hall, and the cacophony within hits us like a wave – laughter and boasts and the raucous talk of three thousand young men on the verge of leave or graduation. It’s never this loud when the Commandant is in attendance, and I relax marginally, glad to avoid her.

Hel pulls me to one of the dozens of long tables, where Faris is regaling the rest of our friends with a tale of his latest escapade at the riverside brothels. Even Demetrius, ever haunted by his dead brother, cracks a smile.

Faris leers, glancing between us suggestively. ‘You two took your time.’

‘Veturius was making himself pretty just for you.’ Hel shoves Faris’s boulder-like body over, and we sit. ‘I had to drag him away from his mirror.’

The rest of the table hoots, and Leander, one of Hel’s soldiers, calls for Faris to finish his story. Beside me, Dex is arguing with Hel’s second lieutenant, Tristas. He’s an earnest, dark-haired boy with a deceptively innocent look to his wide blue eyes, and his fiancée’s name, AELIA, tattooed in block letters on his bicep.

Tristas leans forward. ‘The Emperor’s nearly seventy, and he has no male issue. This year might be the year. The year the Augurs choose a new Emperor. A new dynasty. I was talking to Aelia about it—’

‘Every year, someone thinks it’s the year.’ Dex rolls his eyes. ‘Every year, it’s not. Elias, tell him. Tell Tristas he’s an idiot.’

‘Tristas, you’re an idiot.’

‘But the Augurs say—’

I snort quietly, and Helene gives me a sharp look. Keep your doubts to yourself, Elias. I busy myself with piling food on two plates and shove one toward her. ‘Here,’ I say. ‘Have some slop.’

‘What is it, anyway?’ Hel pokes at the mash and takes a tentative sniff. ‘Cow dung?’

‘No whining,’ Faris says through a mouthful of food. ‘Pity the Fivers. They have to come back to this after four years of happily robbing farmhouses.’

‘Pity the Yearlings,’ Demetrius counters. ‘Can you imagine another twelve years? Thirteen?’

Across the hall, most of the Yearlings smile and laugh like everyone else. But some watch us, the way starving foxes might watch a lion – hungry for what we have.

I imagine half of them gone, half the laughter silenced, half the bodies cold. For that is what will happen in the years of deprivation and torment ahead of them. And they will face it either by living or dying, either by accepting or questioning. The ones who question are usually the ones who die.

‘They don’t seem to care much about Barrius.’ The words are out of my mouth before I can help myself. Beside me, Helene’s body stiffens like water freezing into ice. Dex frowns in disapproval, a comment dying on his lips, and silence falls across our table.

‘Why would they be upset?’ Marcus, sitting one table away with Zak and a knot of cronies, speaks up. ‘That scum got what he deserved. I only wished he’d lasted longer so he could have suffered more.’

‘No one asked what you think, Snake,’ Helene says. ‘Anyway, kid’s dead now.’

‘Lucky him.’ Faris picks up a forkful of food and lets it plop unappetizingly back onto his steel plate. ‘At least he doesn’t have to eat this swill anymore.’

A low chuckle runs up and down the table, and conversation picks up again. But Marcus smells blood, and his malevolence taints the air. Zak turns his gaze to Helene and mutters something to his brother. Marcus ignores him, fixing his hyena eyes on me. ‘You were damn broken up over that traitor this morning, Veturius. Was he a friend?’

‘Piss off, Marcus.’

‘Been spending a lot of time down in the catacombs too.’

‘What is that supposed to mean?’ Helene’s hand is on her weapon, and Faris grabs her arm.

Marcus ignores her. ‘You gonna do a runner, Veturius?’

My head comes up slowly. It’s a guess. He’s guessing. There’s no way he could know. I’ve been careful, and careful at Blackcliff translates to paranoid for most people.

Silence falls at my table, at Marcus’s. Deny it, Elias. They’re waiting.

‘You were squad leader on watch this morning, weren’t you?’ Marcus says. ‘You should have been thrilled to see that traitor go down. You should have brought him in. Say he deserved it, Veturius. Say Barrius deserved what he got.’

It should be easy. I don’t believe it, and that’s what matters. But my mouth won’t move. The words won’t come. Barrius didn’t deserve to be whipped to death. He was a child, a boy so afraid of staying at Blackcliff that he’d risked everything to escape it.

The silence spreads. A few Centurions look up from the head table. Marcus stands, and, quick as a flood, the mood of the hall changes, turning curious and expectant.

Son of a whore.

‘Is this why your mask hasn’t joined with you?’ Marcus says. ‘Because you’re not one of us? Say it, Veturius. Say the traitor deserved his fate.’

‘Elias,’ Helene whispers. Her eyes plead. Fall in. Just for one more day.

‘He—’ Say it, Elias. Doesn’t change anything if you do. ‘He deserved it.’

I meet Marcus’s eyes coolly, and he grins, like he knows how much the words cost.

‘Was that so hard, bastard?’

I’m relieved when he insults me. It gives me the excuse I’ve wanted so badly. I spring toward him fists-first.

But my friends are expecting it. Faris, Demetrius, and Helene are on their feet, holding me back, an irritating wall of black and blond keeping me from beating that damn grin off Marcus’s face.

‘No, Elias,’ Helene says. ‘The Commandant will whip you for starting a fight. Marcus isn’t worth that.’

‘He’s a bastard—’

‘That’d be you, actually,’ Marcus says. ‘At least I know who my father is. I wasn’t raised by a pack of camel-stroking Tribesmen.’

‘You Plebeian trash—’

‘Senior Skulls.’ The Scim Centurion has made his way to the foot of the table. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘No, sir,’ Helene says. ‘Go, Elias,’ she murmurs. ‘Go get some air. I’ll handle this.’

My blood still burning, I shove through the mess doors and find myself in the belltower courtyard before I even know where I’m going.

How the hell did Marcus figure out that I’m going to desert? How much does he know? Not too much, or I’d have been called to the Commandant’s office by now. Damn him, I’m close. So close.

I pace the courtyard, trying to calm myself. The desert heat has faded, and a crescent moon hangs low on the horizon, thin and red as a cannibal’s smile. Through the arches, Serra’s lights glow dully, tens of thousands of oil lamps dwarfed by the vast darkness of the surrounding desert. To the south, a pall of smoke mutes the shine of the river. The smell of steel and forge wafts past, ever-present in a city known solely for its soldiers and weaponry.

I wish I could have seen Serra before all this, when it was capital of the Scholar Empire. Under the Scholars, the great buildings were libraries and universities instead of barracks and training halls. The Street of Storytellers was filled with stages and theatres instead of an arms market where the only stories told now are of war and death.

It’s a stupid wish, like wanting to fly. For all their knowledge of astronomy and architecture and mathematics, the Scholars crumbled beneath the Empire’s invasion. Serra’s beauty is long gone. It’s a Martial city now.

Above, the heavens glow, the sky pale with starlight. Some long-buried part of me understands that this is beauty, but I am unable to wonder at it, the way I did when I was a boy. Back then, I clambered up spiky Jack trees to get closer to the stars, sure that a few feet of height would help me see them better. Back then, my world had been sand and sky and the love of Tribe Saif, who saved me from exposure. Back then, everything was different.

‘All things change, Elias Veturius. You are no boy now, but a man, with a man’s burden upon your shoulders and a man’s choice ahead of you.’

My knife is in my hands, though I don’t remember drawing it, and I hold it to the throat of the hooded man beside me. Years of training keep my arm steady as a rock, but my mind races. Where had the man come from? I’d swear on the lives of everyone in my platoon that he hadn’t been standing there a moment ago.

‘Who the hell are you?’

He pulls down his hood, and I have my answer.

Augur.