A Torch Against the Night (21 page)

“I didn’t see.” She turns to Afya. “Did you—”

The Tribeswoman fidgets, and I catch her glance. Across the depot, I see wagons draped in silver and green, as familiar as my own face. Tribe’s Saif’s colors. Tribe Saif’s wagons.

Surrounded by Martials.

They drag members of the Tribe out of the wagons and force them to their knees. I recognize my family. Uncle Akbi. Aunt Hira. Bleeding hells, Shan, my foster brother.

“Afya,” I say. “I have to do something. That’s my Tribe.” I reach for my weapons and edge to the open door between the wagon and the driver’s seat.
Jump. Run. Come at them from behind. Take the strongest first—

“Stop.” Afya grabs my arm in a viselike grip. “You can’t save them. Not without giving yourself away.”

“Skies, Elias.” Laia’s face is stricken. “Torches.”

One of the wagons—the beautiful, mural-decorated
Kehanni
wagon that I grew up in—goes up in flame. It took Mamie months to paint the peacocks and fish and ice dragons that adorned it. I’d hold the jars for her sometimes and wash the brushes. Gone, so fast. One by one, the other wagons are put to the torch until the entire encampment is nothing but a black stain against the sky.

“Most of them got away,” Afya says quietly. “Tribe Saif’s caravan is nearly a thousand strong. A hundred and fifty wagons. Of those, only a dozen were caught. Even if you could get to them, Elias, there are at least a hundred soldiers out there.”

“Auxes,” I say through gritted teeth. “Easy to beat. If I could get swords to my uncles and Shan—”

“Tribe Saif planned for this, Elias.” Afya refuses to back down. In that moment, I hate her. “If the soldiers see that you came from Nur’s wagons, my entire Tribe is dead. Everything Mamie and I planned for in the last two days—every favor
she
called in to get you out of here—it will all be for nothing. You traded in your favor, Elias. This was the price.”

I look back. My Tribal family huddles together, heads bowed. Defeated.

Except for one. She fights, shoving at the auxes who have grabbed her arms, fearless in her defiance. Mamie Rila.

Uselessly, I watch her struggle, watch a legionnaire bring the hilt of his scim down on the side of her head. The last thing I see before she disappears from sight is her hands fluttering for purchase as she falls to the sands.

T
he relief of escaping Nur does nothing to assuage my guilt at what happened to Elias’s Tribe. I do not bother trying to talk to him. What could I say?
Sorry
is a callous inadequacy. He is silent in the back of Afya’s wagon, staring out at the desert in the direction of Nur, as if he can use his willpower to change what happened to his family.

I give him his solitude. Few people want witnesses to their pain, and grief is the worst pain of all.

Besides which, the guilt I feel is almost crippling. Again and again, I see Mamie’s proud form crumpling like a sack of grain emptied of its bounty. I know I should acknowledge to Elias what happened to her. But it seems cruel to do so now.

By nightfall, Nur is a distant cluster of light in the sweeping blackness of the desert behind us. Its lamps seem dimmer tonight.

Though we fled in a caravan of more than two hundred wagons, Afya has split her Tribe a dozen times since then. By the time the moon rises, we are down to five wagons and four other members of her Tribe, including Gibran.

“He didn’t want to come.” Afya surveys her brother, perched atop the bench of his wagon a dozen yards away. It is covered with thousands of tiny mirrors that reflect the moonlight, a creeking, trundling galaxy. “But I can’t trust him not to get himself or Tribe Nur into trouble. Fool boy.”

“I can see that,” I murmur. Gibran has lured Izzi up into the seat beside him, and I’ve caught flashes of her shy smile all afternoon.

I glance back through the window into Afya’s wagon. The burnished walls of its interior glow with muted lamplight. Elias sits on one of the velvet-clad benches and stares out the back window.

“Speaking of fools,” Afya says. “What’s between you and the redhead?”

Skies. The Tribeswoman misses nothing. I need to remember that. Keenan has ridden with Riz, a silver-haired, silent member of Afya’s Tribe, since our last stop to water the horses. The rebel and I hardly had a chance to speak before Afya ordered him to help Riz with his supply wagon.

“I don’t know what’s between us.” I am wary of telling Afya the truth but suspect that she could pick out a lie a mile away. “He kissed me once. In a shed. Right before he ran off to help start the Scholar revolution.”

“Must have been quite a kiss,” Afya mutters. “What about Elias? You’re always staring at him.”

“I am not—”

“Not that I blame you,” Afya continues as if I haven’t spoken, casting an appraising eye back at Elias. “Those cheekbones—skies.” My skin heats, and I cross my arms, frowning.

“Ah.” Afya flashes her wolfish smile. “Possessive, are we?”

“I have nothing to be possessive of.” An icy wind blows down from the north, and I huddle into my thin Tribal dress. “He’s made it clear to me that he’s my guide and nothing more.”

“His eyes say different,” Afya says. “But who am I to get between a Martial and his misplaced nobility?” The Tribeswoman raises her hand and whistles, ordering the caravan to a halt beside a high plateau. A cluster of trees stands at its base, and I catch the shine of a spring and the scrape of an animal’s claws as it patters away.

“Gibran, Izzi,” Afya calls across the camp. “Get a fire going. Keenan”—the redhead drops down from Riz’s wagon—“help Riz and Vana with the animals.”

Riz calls out something in Sadhese to his daughter, Vana. She is whip-thin with deep brown skin, like her father, and braid tattoos that mark her as a young widow. The last member of Afya’s Tribe is Zehr, a young man about Darin’s age. Afya barks an order at him in Sadhese, and he gets to it without hesitation.

“Girl.” Afya is, I realize, speaking to me. “Ask Riz for a goat, and tell Elias to slaughter it. I’ll trade the meat tomorrow. And talk to him. Get him out of this funk he’s in.”

“We should leave him be.”

“If you’re going to drag Tribe Nur into this ill-advised attempt to save your brother, then Elias needs to come up with a foolproof plan to do so. We have two months before we reach Kauf—that should be enough time. But he can’t do it if he’s moping. So fix it.”

As if it’s that easy.

A few minutes later, Riz points me to a goat with an injured leg, and I lead it to Elias. He guides the limping animal to the trees, out of sight of the rest of the caravan.

He doesn’t need help, but I follow anyway with a lantern. The goat bleats at me mournfully.

“Always hated butchering animals.” Elias sharpens a knife on a whetstone. “It’s like they know what’s coming.”

“Nan used to do the butchering in our house,” I say. “Some of Pop’s patients paid in chickens. She had this saying:
Thank you for giving your life, that I may continue mine.
”

“Nice sentiment,” Elias kneels. “Doesn’t make it any easier to watch it die.”

“But it’s lame—see?” I shine the lantern upon the goat’s wounded hind leg. “Riz said we’d have to leave it behind and it would die of thirst.” I shrug. “If it’s going to die anyway, it might as well be useful.”

Elias draws the blade across the animal’s neck and it kicks. Blood pours onto the sand. I look away, thinking of the Tribesman Shikaat, of the hot stickiness of his blood. Of how it smelled—sharp, like the forges of Serra.

“You can go.” Elias uses a Mask’s voice on me. It is colder than the wind at our backs.

I retreat quickly, mulling over what he said.
Doesn’t make it any easier to watch it die.
Guilt sweeps through me again. He wasn’t talking about the goat, I think.

I try to distract myself by finding Keenan, who has volunteered to make dinner.

“All right?” he asks when I appear beside him. He looks briefly toward Elias.

I nod, and Keenan opens his mouth as if to say something. But perhaps sensing I’d rather not talk, he just hands me a bowl of dough. “Knead it, please?” he says. “I’m terrible at making flatbread.”

Grateful to have a task, I get to it, taking comfort from its simplicity, from the ease of having only to roll out disks and cook them on a cast iron pan. Keenan hums as he adds red chilies and lentils to a pot, a sound so unexpected that I smile when I first hear it. It is as soothing as one of Pop’s tonics, and after a time, he speaks of Adisa’s Great Library, which I’ve always wanted to visit, and of the kite markets in Ayo that stretch for blocks. The time passes quickly, and I feel as if a bit of the weight on my heart has been lifted.

By the time Elias has finished butchering the goat, I flip the last pieces of charred, fluffy flatbread into a basket. Keenan ladles out bowls of spiced lentil stew. The first bite makes me sigh. Nan always made stew and flatbread on cold fall nights. Just the smell of it makes my sadness seem further away.

“This is incredible, Keenan.” Izzi holds out her bowl for a second helping before turning to me. “Cook used to make it all the time. I wonder—” She shakes her head and for a time, she is quiet. “I wish she had come,” my friend finally says. “I miss her. I know it must sound strange to you, considering how she acted.”

“Not really,” I say. “You loved each other. You were with her for years. She took care of you.”

“She did,” Izzi says softly. “Her voice was the only sound in the ghost wagon that took us from Antium to Serra after the Commandant bought us. Cook gave me her rations. Held me in the freezing nights.” Izzi sighs. “I hope I see her again. I left in such a hurry, Laia. I never told her …”

“We’ll see her again,” I say. It’s what Izzi needs to hear. And who knows, maybe we will. “And Izzi”—I squeeze her hand—“Cook knows whatever you didn’t tell her. In her bones, I’m sure she knows.”

Keenan brings us mugs of tea, and I take a sip, closing my eyes at the sweetness, inhaling the aroma of cardamom. Across the fire, Afya lifts her mug to her lips and promptly spews out the tea.

“Bleeding, burning skies, Scholar. Did you waste my entire honey pot on this?” She tosses the liquid onto the ground in disgust, but I curl my fingers around the mug and take a deep sip.

“Good tea is sweet enough to choke a bear,” Keenan says. “Everyone knows that.”

I chuckle and smile at him. “My brother used to say that when he made it for me.” As I think of Darin—the old Darin—my smile fades. Who is my brother now? When did he transform from the boy who made me too-sweet tea to a man with secrets too heavy to share with his little sister?

Keenan settles in beside me. A wind howls out of the north, battling the flames of our fire. I lean close to the fighter, savoring his warmth.

“Are you all right?” Keenan dips his head toward me. He takes a lock of hair flying across my face and tucks it behind my ear. His fingers linger at my nape, and my breath catches. “After …”

I look away, cold again, and reach for my armlet. “Was it worth it, Keenan? Skies, Elias’s mother, his brother, dozens of members of his Tribe.” I sigh. “Will it even matter? What if we can’t save Darin? Or if …”
He’s dead.

“Family is worthy dying for, killing for. Fighting for them is all that keeps us going when everything else is gone.” He nods at my armlet. There’s a sad longing in his face. “You touch it when you need strength,” he says. “Because that’s what family gives us.”

I drop my hand from the armlet. “I don’t even know I’m doing it sometimes,” I say. “It’s silly.”

“It’s how you hold on to them. Nothing silly about that.” He tips his neck back and looks up at the moon. “I don’t have anything from my family. I wish I did.”

“Some days I don’t remember Lis’s face,” I say. “Just that she had light hair like Mother.”

“She had your mother’s temperament too.” Keenan smiles. “Lis was four years older than me. Skies, she was bossy. She tricked me into doing her chores all the time …”

The night is suddenly less lonely with memories of my long-dead sister dancing around me. On my other side, Izzi and Gibran lean toward each other, my friend giggling delightedly at something the Tribal boy says. Riz and Vana reach for their ouds. Their strumming is soon accompanied by Zehr’s singing. The song is in Sadhese, but I think they must be remembering those they have loved and lost, because after only a few notes, it raises a lump in my throat.

Without thinking, I search the dark for Elias. He sits slightly away from the fire, his cloak pulled tight around him. His attention is fixed on me.

Afya clears her throat pointedly and then jerks her head at Elias.
Talk to him.

I glance back at him, and that heady rush I always experience when I look into his eyes rolls through me.

“I’ll be right back,” I say to Keenan. I put down my mug and pull my cloak close. As I do, Elias rises in one smooth motion and moves away from the fire. He disappears so swiftly that I don’t even see which direction he’s gone in the darkness beyond the circle of wagons. His message is clear:
Leave me alone.

I pause, feeling like a fool. A moment later, Izzi appears beside me.

“Talk to him,” she says. “He needs it. He just doesn’t know it. And you do too.”

“He’s angry,” I whisper.

My friend takes my hand and squeezes. “He’s hurt,” she says. “And that’s something you understand.”

I walk out past the wagons, scanning the desert until I spot the shine of one of his bracers near the base of the plateau. When I’m still a few feet away from him, I hear him sigh and turn toward me. His face, blank with a sort of bland politeness, is lit by the moon.

Just get it over with, Laia.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “For what happened. I—I don’t know if it’s right to trade the suffering of Tribe Saif for Darin’s life. Especially when it doesn’t even guarantee that Darin will live.” I was planning a few demure and carefully chosen words of sympathy, but now that I’ve started talking, I can’t seem to stop. “Thank you for what your family sacrificed. All I want is for nothing like that to happen again. But—but I can’t guarantee it, and it makes me feel ill, because I
know
how it feels to lose family. Anyway, I’m sorry—”