I L: Elias s this what happens to everyone when they die? One second, you’re alive, the next, you’re dead, and then BOOM, an explosion that tears apart the very air. A violent welcome to the afterlife, but at least there is one. Screams fill my ears. I open my eyes and find that I’m not, in fact, lying on a fair netherworld plain. Instead, I’m flat on my back beneath the very same platform where I was supposed to have died. Smoke and dust choke the air. I touch my neck, which stings something fierce. My hands come away dark with blood. Does this mean I’ll have a severed head in the afterlife, I wonder stupidly. Seems a bit unfair . . . A pair of familiar gold eyes appears above my face. “You’re here too?” I ask. “I thought Scholars had a different afterlife.” “You’re not dead. Not yet, anyway. And neither am I. I’m setting you free. Here, sit up.” She puts her arms under me and helps me up. We’re beneath the execution dais; she must have dragged me here. The entire back of the stage is gone, and through the dust, I can barely make out the prone forms of four Masks. As I take in what I see, I understand, slowly, that I’m still alive. There’s been an explosion. Multiple explosions. The courtyard is in chaos. “Did the Resistance attack?” “I attacked,” Laia says. “The Augurs tricked everyone into thinking I died yesterday. I’ll explain later. What’s important is that I’m setting you free—for a price.” “What price?” I feel steel against my neck and glance down. She is holding the knife I gave her to my throat. She pulls two pins from her hair, keeping them just out of reach. “These pins are yours. You can pick your locks. Use the confusion to get out of here. Leave Blackcliff forever, like you wanted. On one condition.” “Which is . . . ” “You get me out of Blackcliff. You guide me to Kauf Prison. And you help me break my brother out of there.”
That’s three conditions. “I thought your brother was in—” “He’s not. He’s in Kauf, and you’re the only person I know who’s ever been there. You have the skills to help me survive the trip north. That tunnel of yours—no one knows of it. We can use it to escape.” Ten burning hells. Of course she won’t just set me free for the hell of it. From the mayhem around us, it’s clear that she’s gone through considerable trouble to pull this off. “Decide, Elias.” The clouds of dust shielding us from view are slowly starting to clear. “There’s no time.” It takes me a moment. She offers me freedom, not realizing that even chained, even facing execution, my soul is already free. It was free when I rejected my mother’s twisted way of thinking. It was free when I decided that dying for what I believed in was worth it. True freedom—of body and of soul. What happened in my prison cell was freedom of my soul. But this—this is freedom of my body. This is Cain keeping his promise. “Fine,” I say. “I’ll help you.” I don’t know how, but that’s a minor detail right now. “Hand them over.” I reach for the pins, but she holds them back. “Swear it!” “I swear on my blood, bones, honor, and name, I will help you escape Blackcliff, I will help you get to Kauf, and I will help you save your brother. Pins. Now.” Seconds later, my manacles are off. The hobbles around my ankles are next. Behind the stage, the Masks stir. Helene still lies facedown, but she mutters as she shudders awake. In the courtyard, my mother climbs to her feet, peering through the dust and smoke at the dais. Hag. Even when the world explodes around her, her main concern is that I’m dead. Soon enough she’ll have the entire damn school after me. “Come on.” I grab Laia’s hand and pull her out from under the stage. She stops, staring at the unmoving form of a Mask, one who escorted me to the courtyard. She brings up the dagger I gave her, and her hand shakes. “He killed my grandparents,” she says. “He burned my home.” “I completely sympathize with your desire to stab your family’s killer,” I say, glancing back toward my mother. “But trust me, nothing you could do would begin to compare to the torment he’ll face once the Commandant
gets her hands on him. He was guarding me. He failed. My mother hates failure.” Laia glares at the Mask for a second more before giving me a quick nod. As we duck through the arches at the base of the belltower, I look over my shoulder. My stomach sinks. Helene is staring straight at me. Our eyes lock for a moment. Then I turn and push open the doors to a classroom building. Students rush through the corridors, but they’re mostly Yearlings, and none of them look twice at us. The structure rumbles ominously. “What the hell did you do to this place?” “Set charges in sandbags all over the courtyard. And—and there might be some explosives in other places. Like the mess hall. And the amphitheater. And the Commandant’s house,” she says, quickly adding, “All empty. Didn’t want to kill anyone, just create a distraction. Also . . . I’m sorry I held a knife to you.” She looks embarrassed. “I wanted to make sure you’d say yes.” “Don’t be sorry.” I look around for the clearest exit, but most are flooded with students. “You’ll be holding a knife to more than one throat before this is all over. You’ll need to practice technique, though. I could have disarmed you—” “Elias?” It’s Dex. Faris stands behind him open-mouthed, flummoxed at finding me alive, chain-free, and standing hand-in-hand with a Scholar girl. For a second, I think I’m going to have to fight them. But then Faris grabs Dex and uses sheer bulk to turn him around and shove him into the crowd, away from me. He looks over his shoulder once. I think I see him smile. Laia and I burst from the building and skid down a grassy slope. I make for the doors of a training building, but she pulls me back. “Another way.” Her chest heaves from the running. “That building—” She grabs my arm as the ground beneath us shakes. The building shudders and collapses. Flames explode from its innards, sending plumes of black smoke into the sky. “I hope there isn’t anyone inside,” I say. “Not a soul.” Laia releases my arm. “Doors were barred ahead of time.” “Who’s helping you?” She can’t have done all this alone. That redhaired fellow at the Moon Festival, perhaps? He had the look of a rebel.
“Never mind that!” We sprint around the remains of the training building, and Laia begins to lag. I pull her along mercilessly. We can’t slow down now. I don’t let myself think about how close I am to freedom, or how close I came to death. I think only about the next step, the next turn, the next move. The Skulls’ barracks rise ahead of us, and we duck inside. I look back— no sign of Helene. “In.” I push open the door to my room and lock it behind us. “Pull up the center hearthstone,” I say to Laia. “The entrance is beneath. I just have to grab a few things.” I don’t have time for full armor, but I buckle on my chest plate and bracers. Then I find a cloak and strap on my knives. My Teluman blades are long gone, abandoned on the dais of the amphitheater yesterday. I feel a pang of loss. The Commandant has probably claimed them by now. From my bureau, I pull out the wooden token given to me by Afya AraNur. It marks a favor owed, and Laia and I will need all the favors we can get in the days to come. As I pocket it, someone pounds on the door. “Elias.” Helene’s voice is pitched low. “I know you’re in there. Open up. I’m alone.” I stare at the door. She swore fealty to Marcus. She nearly took my head off minutes ago. And from how quickly she caught up to us, it’s clear she came after me like a hound after a fox. Why? Why do I matter so little to her, after everything we’ve been through? Laia’s gotten the hearthstone up. She looks between me and the door. “Don’t open it.” She sees my indecision. “You didn’t see her before your execution, Elias. She was calm. Like . . . like she wanted to do it.” “I have to ask her why.” I know when I say the words that this will be the life or death of me, what happens now. “She’s my oldest friend. I have to understand.” “Open up.” Helene bangs on the door again. “In the name of the Emperor—” “The Emperor?” I yank open the door, dagger in hand. “You mean the lowborn, murdering rapist who’s been trying to kill us for weeks?” “That’s the one,” Helene says. She slips under my arm, her scims still in their sheaths, and hands me, to my astonishment, the Teluman blades. “You know, you sound just like your grandfather. Even when I was smuggling
him out of the damn city, all he could talk about was the fact that Marcus was a Plebeian.” She smuggled Grandfather out of the city? “Where is he now? How did you get these?” I hold up the scims. “Someone left them in my room last night. An Augur, I assume. As for your grandfather, he’s safe. Probably making some innkeeper’s life hell even as we speak. He wanted to lead an attack on Blackcliff to set you free, but I convinced him to lay low for a while. He’s clever enough to keep a rein on Gens Veturia, even while in hiding. Forget about him, and listen. I need to explain—” At that moment, Laia clears her throat pointedly, and Helene draws her scim. “I thought she was dead.” Laia grips her dagger tightly. “She is alive and well, thanks. She set him free. Which is more than I can say for you. Elias, we need to leave.” “We’re escaping.” I hold Helene’s eyes. “Together.” “You have a few minutes,” Helene says. “I sent the legionnaires the other way.” “Come with us,” I say. “Break your oath. We’ll escape Marcus together.” Laia lets out a sound of protest—this isn’t part of her plan. I continue on regardless. “We can figure out how to bring him down together.” “I want to,” Hel says. “You don’t know how much. But I can’t. It’s not the oath to Marcus that’s the problem. I made another vow—a different vow —one I can’t break.” “Hel—” “Listen to me. Right after graduation, Cain came to me. He told me death was coming for you, Elias, but that I could stop it. I could make sure you lived. All I had to do was swear fealty to whoever won the Trial—and hold to that fealty no matter what the cost. That meant that if you won, I’d swear myself to you. If not . . . ” “What if you’d won?” “He knew I wouldn’t win. Said it wasn’t my fate. And Zak was never strong enough to stand up to his brother. It was always between you and Marcus.” She shudders. “I’ve dreamt of Marcus, Elias. For months now. You think I just hate him, but I’m—I’m afraid of him. Afraid of what he’ll
make me do, now that I can never say no to him. Afraid of what he’ll do to the Empire, the Scholars, the Tribes. “It’s why I tried to get Elias to kill you in the Trial of Loyalty.” Hel looks at Laia. “Why I nearly killed you myself. You’d have been one life against the darkness of Marcus’s reign.” All Helene’s actions of the past few weeks suddenly make sense. She’s been desperate for me to win because she knew what would happen if I didn’t. Marcus would rise and release his madness on the world, and she would become his slave. I think of the Trial of Courage. Can’t die, she’d said. Have to live. So she could save me. I think of the night before the Trial of Strength. You have no idea what I’ve given up for you—the deal I made. “Why, Helene? Why didn’t you tell me?” “You think the Augurs would have let me? Besides, I know you, Elias. You wouldn’t have killed her, even if you’d known.” “You shouldn’t have taken that vow,” I whisper. “I’m not worth that much. Cain—” “Cain kept his vow. He said if I swore fealty and held it, you’d live. Marcus ordered me to swear my loyalty, so I did. He ordered me to swing that ax at your head. So I did. And here you are. Still alive.” I touch the wound at my neck—a few inches more, and I’d have been dead. She’d trusted the Augurs with everything—her life, my life. But then, that’s who Helene is: Her faith is steadfast. Her loyalty. Her strength. They always underestimate me. I’d underestimated her more than anyone. Cain and the other Augurs saw it all. When he told me I had a chance at freedom of body and soul, he knew he’d force me to pick between keeping my soul and losing it. He saw what I would do, that Laia would free me, that we’d escape. And he knew that in the end, Helene would swear fealty to Marcus. The vastness of that knowledge staggers me. For the first time, I catch a tiny glimpse of the burden the Augurs must live with. There is no time to wonder at such things now. The barracks doors creak open, and somebody barks orders. Legionnaires, tasked with sweeping the school. “After I escape,” I say. “Break the oath then.” “No, Elias. Cain kept his promise. I’ll keep mine.” “Elias,” Laia warns softly.
“You forgot something.” Helene lifts her hands and pulls at my mask. It clings tenaciously, as if it knows that once it’s off, it will never get a chance at me again. Slowly, Hel rips it free, rending the flesh of my neck as the metal releases. Blood pours down my back. I hardly notice it. Footsteps echo in the hall. A mailed hand clanks against the door. I have so much left to say to her. “Go.” She shoves me toward Laia. “I’ll cover you this last time. But after this, I belong to him. Remember, Elias. After this, we’re enemies.” Marcus will send her after me. Perhaps not right away, perhaps not until she’s proven herself. But eventually, he will. We both know it. Laia ducks into the tunnel, and I follow. When Helene reaches for the hearthstone to pull it over me, I grab her arm. I want to thank her, apologize to her, beg her forgiveness. I want to drag her down here with me. “Let me go, Elias.” She puts soft fingers to my face and smiles a sad, sweet smile that’s mine alone. “Let me go.” “Don’t forget this, Helene,” I say. “Don’t forget us. Don’t become like him.” She nods once, and I pray that her nod is a promise. Then she takes hold of the stone and pulls the hearth closed. Ahead of me, Laia inches forward, her hand outstretched as she feels her way through the dark. Seconds later, she drops from my tunnel into the catacombs with a startled yelp. For now, Helene can cover for us. But when order is restored at Blackcliff, Serra’s ports will shut down, the legionnaires will bar the city gates, and the streets and tunnels will be flooded with soldiers. The drums will beat from here to Antium, alerting every guardhouse and garrison that I’ve escaped. Rewards will be offered; hunting parties will form; ships, wagons, caravans will all be searched. I know Marcus and I know my mother. Neither will stop until they have my head. “Elias?” Laia doesn’t sound afraid, just wary. The catacombs are tomb-black, but I know where we are: in a burial chamber that hasn’t been patrolled in years. Ahead of us are three entrances, two that are blocked and one that just looks blocked. “I’m with you, Laia.” I reach out and take her hand. She squeezes it. I take a step, Laia close beside me. Then another. My mind ranges out, planning our next moves: Escape Serra. Survive the road north. Break into
Kauf. Save Laia’s brother. There will be so much more in between. So much uncertainty. I don’t know if we’ll survive the catacombs, let alone the rest of it. But it doesn’t matter. For now, these steps are enough. These first few precious steps into darkness. Into the unknown. Into freedom.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My fervent thanks, first and always, to my parents: My mother, my north star, my safe place, for being the exact opposite of the Commandant; and my father, who taught me the meaning of perseverance and faith, and who never once doubted me. My husband, Kashi, is my greatest defender and the most fearless man I know. Thank you for convincing me to climb this mountain and for carrying me when I fell. To my boys, my inspirations: Here’s hoping you grow up to have Elias’s courage, Laia’s determination, and Helene’s capacity to love. Haroon, trailblazer and purveyor of fine music, thank you for having my back like no one else, and for reminding me what it means to be family. Amer, personal Gandalf and perfect human, thank you for a thousand things, but most of all for teaching me to believe in myself. My deepest appreciation to: Alexandra Machinist—ninja-agent, slayer of doubt, and answerer of 32,101 questions—I’m in awe of you. Thank you for your unshakeable belief in this book; Cathy Yardley, whose guidance has changed my life—I’m honored to have you as a mentor and a friend; Stephanie Koven, my tireless international champion—thank you for helping me share my book with the world; and Kathleen Miller, whose friendship is a most precious gift. I couldn’t imagine a better publishing home than Penguin. My thanks to Don Weisberg, Ben Schrank, Gillian Levinson (who loves me, even when I send her fourteen emails in one day), Shanta Newlin, Erin Berger, Emily Romero, Felicia Frazier, Emily Osborne, Casey McIntyre, Jessica Shoffel, Lindsay Boggs, and the remarkable people in sales, marketing, and publicity who championed this book. For their steadfast faith in me, I owe a debt of gratitude to my family: Uncle and Auntie Tahir; Heelah, Imaan, and Armaan Saleem; Tala Abbasi; and Lilly, Zoey, and Bobby. My heartfelt thanks to Saul Jaeger, Stacey LaFreniere, Connor Nunley, and Jason Roldan for their service to their country and for showing me what it means to have the soul of a warrior.
The maps you see in this book are by Jonathan Roberts, cartographer extraordinaire. Thank you, Jonathan, for bringing Blackcliff and the Empire to life so beautifully. For their encouragement and general awesomeness, great thanks to: Andrea Walker, Sarah Balkin, Elizabeth Ward, Mark Johnson, Holly Goldberg Sloan, Tom Williams, Sally Wilcox, Kathy Wenner, Jeff Miller, Shannon Casey, Abigail Wen, Stacey Lee, Kelly Loy Gilbert, Renee Ahdieh, and the Writer Unboxed community. Sincere thanks to Angels and Airwaves for “The Adventure,” Sea Wolf for “Wicked Blood,” and M83 for “Outro.” Without those songs, this book wouldn’t exist. Last (but only because I know He doesn’t mind), I thank the one who has been with me from the beginning. I look for your 7s everywhere. Without you, I am nothing.
SABAA TAHIR grew up in California’s Mojave Desert at her family’s eighteen-room motel. There, she spent her time devouring fantasy novels, raiding her brother’s comic book stash, and playing guitar badly. She began writing An Ember in the Ashes while working nights as a newspaper editor. She likes thunderous indie rock, garish socks, and all things nerd. Sabaa currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family. • • • For more information, please visit Sabaa at SabaaTahir.com AnEmberintheAshesBook.com Or follow her on Twitter @SabaaTahir
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