A Torch Against the Night (26 page)

I find that my jaw is tight, my hands in a white-knuckled grip on the bow I hold. Keenan sighs beside me, his arms crossed as he leans against a tree in the clearing we’ve taken over. He knows me by now. He knows what I’m thinking about that’s making me so angry.

“Focus, Laia.”

I try to push Elias from my mind and do as Keenan asks. I sight my target—an old bucket hanging from a scarlet-leafed maple—and let my arrow fly.

It misses.

Beyond the clearing, the Tribal wagons creak as the wind howls around them, an eerie sound that frosts my blood.
Deep autumn already. And winter soon.
Winter means snow. Snow means blocked mountain passes. And blocked passes mean not reaching Kauf, Darin, or Elias until spring.

“Stop worrying.” Keenan pulls my right arm taut as I draw the bowstring again. Warmth emanates from him, beating back the icy air. His touch on my bow arm sends a tingle all the way up my neck, and I’m certain he must notice it. He clears his throat, his strong hand holding mine steady. “Keep your shoulders back.”

“We shouldn’t have stopped so early.” My muscles burn, but at least I haven’t dropped the bow after ten minutes, like I did the first few times. We stand just outside the circle of wagons, making best use of the last scraps of daylight before the sun sinks into the forests to our west.

“It’s not even dark yet,” I add. “We could have crossed the river.” I look west, beyond the forest, to a square tower—a Martial garrison. “I’d like to put the river between us and them, anyway.” I put down the bow. “I’m going to talk to Afya—”

“I wouldn’t.” Izzi sticks her tongue out of the corner her mouth as she draws back her own bowstring a few yards away from me. “She’s in a mood.” Izzi’s target is an old boot atop a low-hanging branch. She’s graduated to using actual arrows. I’m still using blunted sticks so as not to accidentally murder anyone unfortunate enough to get in my way.

“She doesn’t like being so deep in the Empire. Or being within sight of the Forest.” Gibran, lounging on a tree stump near Izzi, nods at the northeastern horizon, where low green hills stretch, thick with old-growth trees. The Forest of Dusk is the sentinel on Marinn’s western border—one so effective that in five hundred years of Martial expansion, even the Empire hasn’t been able to penetrate it.

“You’ll see,” Gibran goes on. “When we cross the east branch north of here, she’ll be even grumpier than normal. Very superstitious, my sister.”

“Are you afraid of the Forest, Gibran?” Izzi surveys the distant trees curiously. “Have you ever gotten close?”

“Once,” Gibran says, and his ever-present humor fades. “All I remember is wanting to leave.”

“Gibran! Izzi!” Afya calls from across the camp. “Firewood!”

Gibran groans and flops his head back. As he and Izzi are the youngest in the caravan, Afya assigns them—and usually me—the most menial tasks: gathering firewood, doing the dishes, scrubbing the laundry.

“She might as well put bleeding slaves’ cuffs on us,” Gibran grumbles. Then a sly look crosses his face.

“Hit that shot”—Gibran flashes his lightning smile at Izzi, and a blush rises in her cheeks—“and I’ll gather firewood for a week. Miss, and it’s on you.”

Izzi draws the bow, sights, and knocks the boot off the branch easily. Gibran curses.

“Don’t be such a baby,” Izzi says. “I’ll still keep you company while you do all the work.” Izzi slings her bow on her back and gives Gibran a hand up. For all his blustering, he holds on to her a little longer than he needs to, his eyes lingering on her as she walks ahead of him. I hide a smile, thinking of what Izzi said to me a few nights ago as we fell into sleep.
“It’s nice to be admired, Laia, by someone who means well. It’s nice to be thought beautiful.”

They pass Afya, who chivvies them along. I clench my jaw and look away from the Tribeswoman. A feeling of impotence seizes me. I
want
to tell her we should keep going, but I know she won’t listen. I
want
to tell her she was wrong for letting Elias leave—for not even bothering to wake me until he was well away, but she won’t care. And I want to rage at her for refusing to allow me or Keenan to take a horse and track Elias down, but she’ll just roll her eyes and tell me again what she told me when I learned Elias left:
My duty is to get you safely to Kauf
.
And you haring off after him interferes.

I must admit that she has carried out her duty with remarkable cleverness. Here in the heart of the Empire, the countryside is crawling with Martial soldiers. Afya’s caravan has been searched a dozen times. Only her savvy as a smuggler has kept us alive.

I put the bow down, my focus shattered.

“Help me get dinner going?” Keenan gives me a rueful smile. He knows well the look on my face. He’s patiently suffered my frustration since Elias left, and he’s realized the only cure is distraction. “It’s my turn to cook,” he says. I fall into step beside him, preoccupied enough that I do not notice Izzi running toward us until she calls out.

“Come quickly,” she says. “Scholars—a family—on the run from the Empire.”

Keenan and I follow Izzi back to camp to find Afya speaking rapidly in Sadhese with Riz and Vana. A small group of anxious Scholars looks on, their clothing torn, faces streaked with dirt and tears. Two dark-eyed women who appear to be sisters stand together. One of them has her arm around a girl of perhaps six. The man with them carries a little boy no more than two.

Afya turns away from Riz and Vana, both of whom have similar, glowering expressions. Zehr keeps his distance, but he doesn’t look happy either.

“We can’t help you,” Afya says to the Scholars. “I will not bring down the Martials’ wrath upon my Tribe.”

“They’re killing everyone,” one of the women says. “No survivors, miss. They’re even killing Scholar prisoners, massacring them in their cells—”

It is as if the earth at my feet has dropped away. “What?” I push past Keenan and Afya. “What did you say about Scholar prisoners?”

“The Martials are butchering them.” The woman turns to me. “Every single prisoner. From Serra to Silas to our city, Estium, fifty miles west of here. Antium is next, we hear, and after that, Kauf. That woman—the Mask, the one they call the Commandant—she’s killing them all.”

“W
hat are you going to do about Captain Sergius?” Harper asks as we make for Antium’s Black Guard barracks. “Some of the Gens on Marcus’s list are allied with Gens Sergia. He has heavy support within the Black Guard.”

“It’s nothing a few whippings won’t fix.”

“You can’t whip them all. What will you do if there is open dissent?”

“They can bend to my will, Harper, or I can break them. It’s not complicated.”

“Don’t be stupid, Shrike.” The anger in his voice surprises me, and when I glance at him, his green eyes flash. “There are two hundred of them and two of us. If they turn on us en masse, we’re dead. Why else wouldn’t Marcus just order them to take out his enemies himself? He knows he might not be able to control the Black Guard. He can’t risk them directly defying him. But he
can
risk them defying you. The Commandant must have put him up to it. If
you
fail, then you’re dead. Which is exactly what she wants.”

“And what you want too.”

“Why would I tell you any of this if I wanted you dead?”

“Bleeding skies, I don’t know, Harper. Why do you do anything? You don’t make sense. You never have.” I frown in irritation. “I don’t have time for this. I need to figure out how I’m going to get to the Paters of ten of the best-guarded Gens in the Empire.”

Harper is about to retort, but we’ve reached the barracks, a great, square building built around a training field. Most of the men within play dice or cards, cups of ale beside them. I clench my teeth in disgust. The old Blood Shrike is gone for a few weeks and discipline has already gone to the hells.

As I pass through the field, some of the men eye me curiously. Others give me blatant once-overs that make me want to rip their eyes out. Most just seem angry.

“We take out Sergius,” I say quietly. “And his closest allies.”

“Force won’t work,” Harper murmurs. “You need to outwit them. You need secrets.”

“Secrets are a snake’s way of doing business.”

“And snakes survive,” Harper says. “The old Blood Shrike traded in secrets—it’s why he was so valuable to Gens Taia.”

“I don’t know any secrets, Harper.” But even as I say it, I realize it’s not true. Sergius, for instance. His son talked about many things that he probably shouldn’t have. Rumors at Blackcliff spread quickly. If anything that Sergius the younger said was true …

“I can deal with his allies,” Harper says. “I’ll get help from the other Plebeians in the Guard. But we need to move swiftly.”

“Get it done,” I say. “I’ll speak with Sergius.”

I find the captain with his feet up in the barracks mess hall, his cronies gathered around him.

“Sergius.” I don’t comment on the fact that he doesn’t stand. “I must solicit your opinion on something. Privately.” I turn my back and make for the Blood Shrike’s quarters, seething when he doesn’t follow immediately.

“Captain,” I begin when he finally walks into my quarters, but he interrupts.

“Miss Aquilla,” he says, and I practically choke on my own saliva. I haven’t been addressed as Miss Aquilla since I was about six.

“Before you ask for advice or favors,” he goes on, “let me explain something. You’ll never control the Black Guard. At best, you’ll be a pretty figurehead. So whatever orders that Plebeian dog of an Emperor gave you—”

“How’s your wife?” I hadn’t planned to be so direct, but if he’s going to be a dog, then I’ll have to crawl down to his level until I get him on a leash.

“My wife knows her place,” Sergius says warily.

“Unlike you,” I say, “sleeping with her sister. And her cousin. How many bastards do you have running around now? Six? Seven?”

“If you’re trying to blackmail me”—the sneer on Sergius’s face is practiced—“it won’t work. My wife knows of my women
and
my bastards. She smiles and does her duty. You should do the same: Put on a dress, marry for the good of your Gens, and produce heirs. In fact, I have a son—”

Yes, you cretin. I know your son.
Cadet Sergius hates his father.
I wish someone would just tell her
, the boy once said of his mother.
She could tell Grandfather. He’d kick my ass of a father out into the cold.

“Maybe your wife does know.” I smile at Sergius. “Or
maybe
you’ve kept your dalliances a secret and learning of them would devastate her. Maybe she would tell her father, who, in rage at the insult, would offer her shelter and withdraw the money that funds your crumbling Illustrian estate. You can’t very well be Pater of Gens Sergia with no money, can you, Lieutenant Sergius?”

“That’s
Captain
Sergius!”

“You’ve just been demoted.”

Sergius first turns white, then an unusual shade of purple. When the shock drains from his face, it’s replaced by a helpless rage that I find quite satisfying.

He straightens his back, salutes, and, in a tone suitable to addressing a superior officer, speaks. “Blood Shrike,” he says. “How may I serve you?”

Once Sergius is barking my orders to his toadies, the rest of the Black Guard fall into line, albeit reluctantly. An hour after walking into the commander’s quarters, I am in the Black Guard war room, planning the attack.

“Five teams with thirty men each.” I point to five Gens on the list. “I want Paters, Maters, and children older than thirteen in chains and waiting at Cardium Rock by dawn. Younger children are to remain under armed guard. Get in and out quietly, and keep it clean.”

“What about the other five Gens?” Lieutenant Sergius says. “Gens Rufia and its allies?”

I know Pater Rufius. He’s a typical Illustrian with typical prejudices. And he was once a friend to my father. According to Father’s missives, Pater Rufius has attempted to pull Gens Aquilla into his traitorous coalition a dozen times already.

“Leave them to me.”

«««

T
he dress I wear is white, gold, and supremely uncomfortable—probably because I haven’t worn one since I was a four-year-old forced to participate in a wedding. I should have put one on sooner—the expression on Hannah’s face alone, like she’s swallowed a live snake—would have been worth it.

“You look beautiful,” Livvy whispers as we file into the dining room. “Those idiots will never see it coming. But only”—she gives me a warning look, her blue eyes wide—“if you rein yourself in. Pater Rufius is smart, even if he is foul. He’ll be suspicious.”

“Pinch me if you see me doing anything stupid.” I finally notice the room, and my jaw drops. My mother has outdone herself, laying the table with snow-white china and long, clear vases of winter roses. Creamy tapers bathe the room in a welcoming glow, and a white whistling thrush sings sweetly from a cage in the corner.

Hannah follows Livvy and me into the room. Her dress is similar to mine, and her hair is done up in a mass of icy curls. She wears a small gold circlet atop—a not-so-subtle nod to her approaching nuptials.

“This won’t work,” she says. “I don’t understand why you don’t just take your guards, sneak into the traitors’ houses, and kill them all. Isn’t that what you’re good at?”

“I didn’t want to get blood on my dress,” I say dryly.

To my surprise, Hannah cracks a smile and then quickly raises a hand to her face to hide it.

My heart lifts, and I find that I am grinning back at her, just like when we shared a joke as girls. But a second later, she scowls. “Skies only know what everyone will say when they learn we invited them here only to trap them.”

She steps away from me, and my temper snaps. Does she think I want to do this?

“You can’t marry Marcus and expect to avoid getting blood on your hands, sister,” I hiss at her. “Might as well get into the habit of it.”

“Stop it, both of you.” Livvy looks between us as, outside the dining room, the front door opens and Father greets our guests. “Remember who the actual enemy is.”