An Ember in the Ashes: Chapters 34–44

She shouldn’t have been out at this hour. I dismissed her for the evening. Any injuries she’s sustained are the result of her own foolhardiness.

What can you do? a pragmatic voice asks. If you try to help, the Commandant will only punish you both, and that will kill the girl for sure.

The walls of Blackcliff rise around us like impassive sentinels.

For a few minutes, my pain dulls. But it’s still near, an enemy pacing impatiently outside the gates. And eventually, it bursts through, burning and reaving.

But it's Aquilla who's singing, Aquilla who is commanding me, with just one word repeated in an infinitely complex melody. Live live live live live live live.

I reach for them, but they're gone, and there's only me and Aquilla and the stifling walls of my quarters.

The mist gets so thick I can barely see my hand in front of my face, making training more grueling than usual.

“If you know, then why are you letting yourself get destroyed in combat? How can you win the Trial if you don't have the confidence to defeat someone like Zak? Don't you understand what's at stake?''

“Be quick about it,” the old woman says when I appear in the kitchen to resume my duties.

His eyes are guarded again, his face empty of any emotion but a sort of professional detachment.

“How will a secret entrance to Blackcliff help you free my brother from the most fortified prison in the south?''

Your goal is simple: You are to kill as many of the enemy as you can. The battle will end when you, Aspirant Veturius, defeat—or are defeated by—the leader of the enemy. I warn you now, if you show mercy, if you hesitate to kill, there will be consequences.

Doubt and fear are treacherous emotions before a fight. Together, they can infiltrate the minds of good men and decide a battle before it's begun.

I turn to look for her and spot Tristas cutting through the melee, coming straight for me.

Every time one of my men shows mercy to the enemy, one of their comrades falls, their life wrung out of them by Augur devilry.

Around me, my men drop, suffocating as they refuse to kill their friends, or falling beneath the merciless blades of Blue Platoon.

So I kill. Blood taints everything. My armor, my skin, my mask, my hair. The hilt of my scim drips with it, making it slippery beneath my hand. I’m Death himself, presiding over this butchery.

Death supplants everything. Friendship, love, loyalty. The good memories I have of these men—of helpless laughter, of bets won and pranks hatched—they are stolen away.

Soon, I’m fighting in earnest, using every trick I know to survive her onslaught.

The second I finish, she leaves the room, snatching her weapons from the wall, not bothering to give me her usual litany of orders.

From this ever-changing world arose the Empire of the Scholars, strongest among men, dedicated to their creed: Through knowledge, transcendence.

He lives now in the shadows, where he lures and enslaves the lesser of his brethren—the ghuls, the wraiths, the cave effits—to punish them for their betrayal so long ago.

“Aspirant Veturius," he says, “as Aquilla has forfeited, and you, of all Aspirants, have the most men left alive, we, the Augurs, name you victor in the Trial of Strength. Congratulations."

A terrible anger consumes me, virulent as a sickness.

Beneath the shadow of his mask, his full mouth seems harsh, his jaw unyielding.

I want to laugh at the absurdity of it—Veturius giving me the key to my brother's freedom, just as I realize that such information might not mean anything.

He speaks for a long time, and his words weave a life before my eyes, the life of a dark-haired, curious-eyed child who snuck out from lessons so he could go adventuring, who waited eagerly at the edge of camp for the men of the Tribe to return from their merchant forays.

They brought me to Blackcliff. Cut off my hair, took my clothes, and put me in a pen outside with the others for a culling.

The knowledge is a revelation and one so staggering that I badly want him to see it too. “You're not like the others. You killed to save. You put others first.

My fingers are clenched around the hilt of the dagger Veturius gave me, and a hot anger rises inside me—at the Augurs for letting me think I was to be interrogated. At the Commandant for leaving her own child to die a torturous death, and at Blackcliff for training that child to be a killer. At my parents for dying and my brother for apprenticing himself to a Martial. At Mazen for his demands and secrets. At the Empire and its iron-fisted control over every aspect of our lives.

I want to defy all of them—the Empire, the Commandant, the Resistance. I wonder where such defiance comes from, and my armlet feels hot suddenly.

“If you could just be who you are in here”—I place my palm over his heart—“instead of who they made you, then you would be a great Emperor.” I feel his pulse thud against my fingers. “But they won’t let you, will they? They won’t let you have compassion or kindness. They won’t let you keep your soul.”

Each name summons an image in my head—a face, a voice, a form—until it feels as if my fallen comrades are rising up around me, a phalanx of ghosts.

“Empire soldiers who died in battle, who died with honor. I’ll celebrate them. I’ll mourn them. But I won't regret what I did. I did it for the Empire. I did it for my people.”

“Do not set your will against the Augurs, Keris Veturia. You will fail. You can come willingly to the amphitheater, or I can compel you. Which shall it be?”

The Empire has decreed that this slave-girl is to die.

“When I tell you to proceed,” Cain goes on calmly, as if he’s not talking about the death of a seventeen-year-old girl, “you will all simultaneously attempt to execute her. Whoever carries out the order will be declared victor of the Trial.”

So if you let me take care of this, I vow, by blood and by bone, that the second I'm named Empress, I’ll release you from your oaths to the Empire. Do whatever you want. You'll be beholden to no one. You'll be free.

I see myself sailing out of port at Navium, leaving for the southern kingdoms, where no one and nothing have a claim over my body or my soul. Well, my body, anyway. Because if I allow Helene to kill Laia, I won't have a soul.

You were prepared to strike down the enemy. But you faltered when faced with Veturius, deferring to his wishes. Such loyalty to a peer is admirable. But not in an Emperor.