ASH
Ami and I emerge into the Ekasyan sun, pain shooting through eyes that haven’t seen more than torchlight in what feels like half a lifetime. Above us, the imperial complex looms, emanating a foreboding that makes me feel like I’ve reverted to childhood. My home is once again alien to me.
I look back, but the only thing following us is my guilt at not leading Zostar’s younger captives to safety. I send a prayer for mother Esiku to watch over them until the day I can return. May that day come soon.
Below, the city itself looks different. Perhaps the change is in my imagination, perhaps it’s me who’s changed. It takes until we thread our way through the first of the laneways to realize what it is that’s gnawing at me – it’s quiet. As if people are staying off the streets, keeping indoors.
It’s unnerving. Not least of all because it’s the first time I’ve faced the city, or even simply anywhere outdoors, without Linod’s Elixir coursing through my veins to calm me. Even so, my hands are steady. I feel stronger than I ever have, which doesn’t make sense given the gruel and inactivity of the dungeons.
There’s no time to contemplate, though. We pass by a plaza, and Ami angles towards the first gathered group of people we’ve come across. I’d prevent her from doing so, but don’t want to create a scene. Thankfully, she hovers at the fringes as the small crowd listens to the herald give the day’s announcements.
There’s an assurance more grain will be coming to the city before the next moon.
A reminder there’s a curfew in place – the first I’ve ever heard of one in the capital.
And a notice of a reward.
“The Hidden Prince becomes Missing Prince! The Regent will pay dearly for any information leading to the return of his most beloved brother.”
Nisai. If Iddo doesn’t know where he is, then there’s hope.
As the gathering dissipates, Ami plucks at her stained smock, nose wrinkled. Out here in the light, I finally see how much we’ve been marked by the grime of our incarceration. The lines of my hands have dirt embedded in them. It’s caked under my nails. And now that we’re in the open, away from the overwhelming humid dankness under the mountain, I can tell I don’t exactly give off the perfume of roses.
“We have to get cleaned up,” I tell Ami. “We might be able to pass for beggars, but if a patrol finds us, they’re likely to throw us straight back into the dungeons even if they don’t identify us.”
“I know a place,” she says, and starts walking.
“Wait,” I hiss. “Where? Tell me. We’re in this together.”
“Esarik’s.”
Something nudges at the corner of my memory. Something terrible. Esarik was there. The day in the throne room, when we failed to cure Nisai and I …
Ami shakes her head, her eyes stern. “You don’t get to look at me like that. Even by aristocratic standards it wasn’t improper. I married him.”
“It’s not that. It’s about Esarik. I…” I choke on the words.
“I know he’s gone,” she says curtly. “They used that knowledge to torture me. They wondered why I stayed loyal to a Prince who couldn’t keep even his friends safe.”
I bow my head.
Because I have the creeping suspicion that it wasn’t Nisai to blame.
Before I was a fugitive, I would never have imagined it could take the best part of a day to traverse the capital. Ami and I slink along back lanes, only edging out to the spokes of Ekasya’s main thoroughfares when unavoidable. At those points, we keep our heads down and walk deliberately, but not so quickly to suggest we’re fleeing.
More imperial guards patrol than I remember, while fewer ordinary citizens crowd the streets with their gossip or wares. It could be a foreign city – one in the military states over the ocean we’ve only ever heard traveller tales from at the imperial court, too distant for regular trade or diplomatic relations.
Eventually, we reach one of the few half-respectable neighbourhoods outside the walls; the houses and shops are the last to be made of stone, many of them built up against the wall itself as if clinging to a notion they are part of Ekasya proper by proximity.
At the gate of a complex of half a dozen dwellings, Ami bends to feel under the lip of a waist-high urn containing a lilac shrub. It’s almost finished flowering, so that the last few sprays of blossom are browning and ready to drop. I remember how she used to bring the first blooms of the season into the Early Imperial section of the palace library. Was this the very plant they were from?
Something scrapes and a spider drops out on to Ami’s wrist. She clamps her other hand over her mouth, stifling a shriek as she shakes the hairy creature off. She bends to look under the rim before continuing her search. Then she gives a little hmph of satisfaction. In her hand is a key.
We enter a courtyard bathed in the golden light of early evening. It’s quiet, the noise of the city seeming more distant than it actually is, the only sound from inside the complex a singing Trelian lark perched on one of the clay-tiled roofs. More potted lilacs dot the paving stones.
The scent seems from another life.
A life that’s gone to the sky.
“I don’t know if they know about this place,” she murmurs. “We should be careful.”
I follow Ami up a narrow flight of stairs to an intricately engraved door. The key she retrieved from the planter turns smoothly in the lock.
I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this.
It looks like a single-room garret, a fireplace on one wall and an alcove with a tap and copper trough for ablutions on the other. Perhaps the modest dwelling was well furnished, but now it’s in shambles. The bed has been wrenched away from the corner and left at an angle. Drawers from a cherrywood sideboard have been emptied and upended. Books bound in expensive aurochs leather sprawl every which way, broken at the spine or fallen from toppled stacks. Scrolls are half unrolled, some torn or crumpled, an undeniable boot print emblazoned across one.
“Seems they got here first.” Ami looks at the wreckage with sad eyes, then steps forward to right the nearest chair. It wobbles on three legs as she rubs her hand over the back. “Esarik would be devastated.”
“I thought he lived near…”
“His father bought him a manse on the main imperial boulevard further up the Mountain, but this is where he comes when he wants – wanted – to think. Be himself. I’d thought nobody knew about it but me. When Zostar’s men first took me, I used to imagine escaping and coming here to wait for him.”
I don’t reply. Instead, I ease one of the drawers back into its frame, feeling the urge to put the room to rights, as if such a pathetically small gesture could help assuage my guilt at my friend’s downfall. How am I going to broach it with Ami? And if what I suspect is true, what does Nisai think of it? He’s never truly admitted to himself what my curse is. He’s always seen it as more protective than destructive. Would this make him finally understand?
“Here, let me find you something to wear.” Ami picks through a pile of scattered fabric and holds out an outfit that looks distinctively Esarik – dark trousers and a simple but elegant long-line tunic in fine charcoal-coloured weave. At least the colour is appropriate.
“Are you sure? I don’t want to…” It seems I’m no longer capable of finishing a sentence. But what can I say?
She hands me the clothes. “He’d want his things put to good use.”
I accept them with stiff formality, and nod towards the taps in the alcove. “I’ll give you a few moments to yourself. But make them swift. Whoever turned this place over may return.”
I draw the door shut behind me and lean against the wall, forcing myself to breathe deep and even as I survey the lilac-studded courtyard. Further down the slope, a woman hums as she pegs out laundered bedsheets on a terrace between terracotta-tiled roofs. Other than the relative quiet we witnessed in the city’s main thoroughfares, everything seems as it should be.
Ami sticks her head out the door. “Your turn.”
She’s run fresh water into the tub and left a bar of soap beside it. More lilacs. I smile sadly. No wonder Esarik adored them. The thought only makes me think of his end. Of Ami’s loss.
My chest tightens as fragments of memory flash through my mind. The throne room. The shadows moving. Blood. Everywhere, blood.
My friend’s among it all.
The lilacs suddenly smell sickly. Laced with guilt. My jaw clamps tight against a dry retch.
I wash as quickly as I can, douse myself with a bucket over my head, then towel off with the white linen Ami left hanging over a hook. The freshness should be an incredible luxury after feeling like I’ve been marinating in my own filth for moons. It probably would be, if I didn’t have to face the clothes. Esarik was almost as tall as me, but the Trelian was slim. I tentatively pull the tunic over my torso, not wanting to split a finely stitched seam as it strains across my shoulders.
Then I let the bathwater out, pausing to watch the residue of the dungeons drain from the basin. If only I could wash away the whole experience just as easily.
The sound of knocking brings me back to myself. Ami must have taken my silence as a sign I had finished up, though she still opens the door gingerly.
I avoid her gaze, instead bending to pick up a tripod that was toppled beneath a window, where a star-glass had apparently been set up. Better to focus on the problem before us. “Do you have a plan from here? Your family?”
Ami didn’t talk much of her family, but I remember she was one of three, her father a modest carpenter, her mother a much-in-demand seamstress. The latter’s designs popular enough among the merchant class and minor aristocracy to have paid for Ami’s apprenticeship to the Head Curator at the palace library.
She shakes her head. “I don’t come from the sort of family who would appreciate me bringing this kind of trouble to their door. And even if I did, I don’t see how they could possibly help. I have to move on to another library. If I’d done so sooner, Es … he could have come with me. Got away from his father. And the Guild of Physicians. I didn’t know who was worse back then, Zostar or Lord Mur.”
I scowl. “I’d say it’s become very clear. Now, though, we should try to make contact with the Council of Five.”
“Did you not see, in the arena?” She runs her fingertips down the wooden frame of the alcove, where a door may have once been. “They were courtiers. How do we even know there weren’t Council members among them?”
My mind conjures an image of Nisai’s mother, Shari. The woman who allowed me to enter the palace as a boy, and to sponsor the training that would lead to me becoming her son’s Shield. “They would never be involved with something as heinous.”
Her hand keeps moving down the doorframe, then pauses. “You can’t be certain how deep this goes. I would never have suspected the Head Curator, either. But then he began frequenting certain pre-Imperial collections, locking himself away with clay tablet fragments from the Shadow Wars and esoteric scrolls that so-called alchemists produced in the century following. Visits from Zostar and his colleagues became regular, and they became more and more impatient with each appearance.”
There’s a click as a section of the doorframe slots inwards then protrudes just far enough to grasp. Ami gives a little sniff of satisfaction and slides it out like a vertical drawer. It contains a number of compartments, some with tightly wound scrolls, others with coin purses.
Other than Ami, only Kaismap must have known Esarik had such foresight.
Or was it paranoia?
No. He would have told me if he was in some kind of trouble. Or at least told Nisai. Wouldn’t he?
I shake my head. “If I could get to Councillor Shari, she’d help us. I know she would.”
Ami tosses me one of the coin purses. “Even if you’re correct, how do you propose to get past everyone else to find her?”
She stuffs the other purses and scrolls into a satchel that reminds me of Rakel’s. Eagerness and frustration war with each other at the thought – for all I know, Rakel could be in the next courtyard, or at the other end of the Empire.
As for Ami’s question, I don’t have an answer. There is no way back into the imperial complex. Daring the trek up Ekasya Mountain to the wealthier sectors of the city would be an incredible risk. I still don’t know how closely Iddo’s entwined with all of this, but I don’t for a heartbeat think he would welcome me with open arms.
Ami crosses the room and begins to rummage in the contents of a cupboard, now piled on the floor. “We’ll think better if we eat.”
There’s some ancient bread as flat and hard as a roof tile. But there’s also a clay jar of fine olive oil, and another sealed vessel that reveals some olives, their black skins wrinkled and coated with herbs. After the slop of the dungeons, it’s a veritable feast. Yet my stomach remains unsettled, and I have to force myself to face the food.
I snap off a piece of bread, dip it in the oil, and begin to chew mechanically. The tripod I’d righted beneath the window catches my attention. With the bread in one hand, I cast about for the star-glass that would have sat in the frame. Esarik had taught me half the constellations I know, but I never knew before now where he sat and observed them from.
There. Beneath a tattered scroll. And the lens is still intact. I return the cylinder to the tripod and stoop so my eye is level, sweeping the focus across the rooftops.
Back up the mountain’s slope, a patrol of city guards marches between the buildings. It’s only a heartbeat before they’ve disappeared from sight again but … is that a Ranger leading them? They’ve never before had any role in keeping the peace inside the walls of the capital.
Has Iddo ordered the Rangers to implement a lockdown of the palace complex? And if he’s been able to do that, what of the Council of Five? Zostar had said they had control of the temple – that Nisai had recovered and that’s where he was holed up.
I train the glass up to the gloss black stone of the imperial complex. The terraces of the temple are fuzzy.
“Adjust the focus,” Ami says from behind me. “Twist the front section until you have clarity.”
I do as she says. The building becomes clear. Dread lances through me. There are guards patrolling as expected. But every one of them is a Ranger.
I pass the star-glass to Ami.
Her lips become a thin line as she gauges my meaning.
“I can’t believe the Council would let Iddo’s Rangers take control. Nisai would have never allowed it.” I begin pacing. “If Iddo’s put a reward on Nisai’s return, I’d wager Nisai is well clear of the city. But is Rakel with him? If he made it out after she healed him, I have to believe she escaped, too.”
“Who’s Rakel?”
“She’s from Aphorai. When I met her, she was working for the Aphorain Scent Keeper.” I figure “work” is an innocent glossing of details. “She was there the night Nisai was poisoned, and the Scent Keeper died. At first I thought one of them was responsible, or both, but it turns out first impressions truly can be deceiving. She was the one who saved him, in the end.”
“She sounds … impressive.”
I find myself genuinely smiling for the first time in moons. “That’s one word to describe her.”
Ami begins pacing the room, rolling up scrolls and re-shelving books as she goes. “I think Aphorai’s our best bet. It’s Nisai’s ancestral Province, for one.”
“It’s a long way to go on a hunch.”
“We can’t stay here. And what is the likelihood your girlfriend has returned home, too?”
“She’s not my—”
“Remember how many turns I’ve known you, Ashradinoran. There’s only one other person I’ve ever heard you speak like that about, and he’s missing as well. If this Rakel did all those things you say, then she’s the kind of person I’d like on our side.”
I nod. “I need to know she’s all right. And even if Nisai’s not with her, she might know where he is.”
“And there’s an Aphorain library I’d like to consult, too.”
“Oh?”
She waves the air as if fanning away anything of consequence. “Just a regional branch I’m interested in.”
Memories of the Library of the Lost, hidden deep within a maze of canyons in the Aphorain desert, come flooding back. “You’re a … Chronicler?”
“An apprentice curator, you mean.”
“No, a Chronicler. Like those at the Library of the Lost.”
“I’m not sure what you’re referring to other than a legend that’s—”
I fold my arms. “I’ve been there, Ami. Rakel and I sought help from the Chroniclers when we were looking for the cure for Nisai.”
Her evasiveness melts into curiosity. “Truly? You’ve seen it?”
“Briefly. Before Rangers caught up with us.”
“Rangers?” Her features pinch in worry. “At the Library?”
“We left in too much of a hurry to confirm, but they were in the vicinity.”
“I’m not a Chronicler. Perhaps with twenty or thirty more turns of service, I would have been tapped on the shoulder. I did want to be one. I do want to be one. I care about knowledge and its preservation. Deeply. But if Rangers have found the Library of the Lost, and now they’re working with Zostar…” She trails off, her eyes darting to her packed bag on the floor between us.
“What is it?
“I have to get to the Library of the Lost. I have to warn them.”
“All right,” I concede. It’s a long shot, but it’s all we’ve got. “Only, I can’t leave yet. I made a promise to the others. Del. Mish. Lark. I can’t go without finding a way out for them, too.”
“You and what army, Ash?”
I want to slam my fist against the wall, but instead rest my forehead on the cool stone. Guilt. Frustration. Fear. Whatever I’m feeling, emotion isn’t going to help us. The only solution is to stay constant. Stay in control.
Ami gathers her bag. “Let’s see what else we can salvage, then be ready to move.”
It’s a sound plan. I’m not surprised. Ami’s always had a smart head on her shoulders. It’s what Esarik always claimed, with one of his secret smiles: it was what he most adored about her.
And here I am, in his treasured hideaway, wearing his clothes, about to leave with the girl he married in defiance of his father. My mind finally forces the image in front of me, the one I’d do anything not to see. The wounds in Esarik’s torso. Deep gouges through flesh and viscera. Grievous injuries. Damage that said he was never getting up again, even if I wasn’t … present enough … to determine the moment of death.
Harm inflicted by the beast.
Inflicted by me.
I draw back from the window.
“Ami,” I begin, voice grave. “Before we go any further, I have to tell you something.”
“Oh?”
“This won’t be easy to hear…” I mentally cast about, searching for the right way to broach my confession.
She squints in the slanted rays of evening, studying my face. “It was real, wasn’t it? In the arena, when Zostar’s men attacked us … the shadows. I fainted, and came to … I thought they … moved. I wasn’t just imagining it, was I?”
I wince, but don’t reply.
Slow horror creeps into her expression. “You’re what Zostar was searching for, aren’t you?”
I steel myself. No going back now. “I’m cursed, yes.”
She gnaws on a cuticle. A nervous gesture I’ve never seen her do before. “This … power. How does it work?”
“I don’t know,” is all I can say, hopeless.
“It could take over at any time? You could… Would it kill me without you knowing?”
“Not exactly. I tend to get a particular feeling when it’s going to…” I reach for the words to explain something I’ve always done my best to avoid examining too closely. “When it’s going to happen. I just… I can’t control it after it releases. It’s only happened three times. Once when I was a boy. Days ago when you were there. And, in the throne room when … when…”
“When what?”
I hang my head. “When Esarik died.”
“Wh-what do you mean?”
“I … the shadow killed him. Please believe that I didn’t intend for that to happen. If I could have stopped it, I would have… My curse, it…”
She takes one, two steps back, her hands coming up in front of her. “You should leave.”
“Ami, I’m sorry, I never meant for—”
“Get out!”
Voices reverberate around the courtyard below. Men’s voices. I rush to the door. Black jerkins. Red sun. Blazers.
“We have to get out of here.”
She’s still got that horrified look on her face, mixed with anger.
“I can get us clear. Please. Let me help you. Then we can talk about this properly. But we have to go now.”
She shakes her head.
Heavy footsteps begin to climb the external stairs.
I press a finger to my lips, signalling silence. I left the children behind. I won’t leave Ami, whatever she now thinks of me.
I grab her hand and drag her from the garret.
We run headlong through the slums, as if my life has come full circle.
It’s familiar and yet alien territory in the gloom of dusk. So much has changed, the lean-to stores have different rudimentary signs, and the shacks have been altered or rebuilt from the city’s detritus so that the lanes carve new thoroughfares. The layout may have changed, but they’re still the alleys I used to zigzag through as a child, running with a group of older boys. They wanted riches, thrills, and the euphoria they’d only ever find in dreamsmoke.
I just wanted to survive.
Ami’s breath comes ragged behind me. She slipped my grip as soon as we escaped the courtyard ahead of the Blazers, flicking her fingers as if something foul clung to her. At least she’s following. Back at Esarik’s garret, I feared she would let herself be caught rather than follow her husband’s murderer. The awful truth is I couldn’t have blamed her if she had.
Perhaps she should run in a different direction. Perhaps she’s better off without me.
We round a corner into a blind alley and skid to a stop. Ami’s hands go to her knees, as she gasps for air. She can’t keep this up much longer.
I point to a pile of refuse up ahead. “We’ll take the roofs for a bit. Here. I’ll help you up.”
Ami balks for a heartbeat, then looks behind us. There’s nobody there, but there soon will be. We climb on to the pile and she hitches her foot into my interlocked hands. I boost her over the lip of the roof and hoist myself up after.
A strange melancholy pangs in my chest. It would be full dark by now if both moons weren’t cresting the horizon. It’s the only time the slums resemble anything close to beauty, a sprawl of makeshift dwellings and broken dreams cast in silver. I wonder how many loved ones of Zostar’s Ekasyan captives lie awake out there, not knowing if they’ll ever see their child or sibling again.
I have to find a way to get those kids home.
To do that, I have to find Nisai and Rakel.
Ami looks out across the patchwork of reed-and-daub roofs uncertainly.
“Keep near to the edges,” I instruct. “About where the walls are. We don’t want to crash through.”
We set out, skirting crumbling chimneys and leaping precarious gaps, my heart in my throat each time Ami’s footsteps falter.
I feel the heat and smell the metallic steam before I catch sight of the first forge – the smith working through the night. My parents’ workshop was not far from here. We’ll pass it soon.
I signal to Ami and help lower her to the lane below. She puts space between us as soon as her feet find solid ground, backing away and clutching her bag in front of her like a shield. I drop down after her, maintaining my distance.
The sign for my father’s shop is no longer hanging over the door. It’s propped against the boarded-up storefront, rusted. Is he too old now to work? Or did some injury befall him?
I don’t have the time – or the inclination – to find out. What would I even say if I faced him? You were right, father. I’m cursed. An abomination. You should have thrown away the key when you locked me in the cellar.
I give myself an inward shake. There’s no time for this. Even if it seems like we’ve evaded pursuit for now, Zostar’s Blazers won’t give up. If they’re anything like the ones who found Nisai and me when we were young, they’ll know the slums like the backs of their hands. Slums that I’ve been a stranger to for ten turns.
We keep moving through this disconcerting mix of familiar and foreign, landmarks of old mixed with new layers, all of it barnacles clinging to the side of Ekasya Mountain between the mudflats of the river and the city walls.
The one thing that hasn’t changed is the way to the water.
There’s no light other than the moons; nobody wastes candles or coals on these streets. At a time like this the darkness is welcome, because I’m about to do something I haven’t done since last living in these parts – steal.
The banks of the great river are a motley mix of sheds and makeshift moorings, driftwood driven into the silty shores. Weed-festooned ropes hold dinghies at bay. I inspect each of them, looking for the shine of water in the moonslight that indicates they’re leaking.
The first one is a death trap. The second not much better.
Panic tries to sink its claws, but I shove it back down.
The third has a slow leak.
The fourth looks sound but is moored with an intricate security knot.
Fifth vessel lucky, I gesture to Ami.
“You expect me to get in that? With you?”
“Consider the odds that our Blazer friends will treat you more kindly. You’re a scholar. Make an evidence-based decision.”
Behind us, Ekasya Mountain looms out of the plain, like the entire city is glaring down, judging, condemning. I look towards the east, where in a few hours dawn will streak the sky. I need to be far from the capital by then, need to be on my way to finding the people I love, and return to fulfil my promise to Zostar’s captives.
I unhook the sodden rope from its peg.
Ami doesn’t move.
It would be easier to leave her here. Cast off, and not look back. But I owe it to Esarik to see her to safety. Safely to the Library, if that’s what she wants.
I gesture to the tiny boat. “You’re free to hate me. Free to strike out on your own later. But please, for now, let me get you out of here.”