A Torch Against the Night (An Ember in the Ashes #2) - Sabaa Tahir Page 0,102

are purplish blue. All of our cold-weather gear was burned with Afya’s wagon. I have the cloak Elias gave me weeks ago, but it was meant for a Serran winter, not this biting cold, which gets under the skin and clings like a lamprey.

“If you exhaust yourself into illness,” Keenan says, “one night of rest isn’t going to fix it. Besides, we’re not being careful. That last patrol was yards away—we nearly walked right into it.”

“Bad luck.” I’m already moving on. “We’ve been fine since then. I hope this safe house has a lamp. We need to look at the map Elias gave us and work out how we’re going to get to that cave if the storms get bad.”

The snow swirls down in thick patches, and nearby, a rooster caws. The landowner’s mansion is just visible a quarter mile away, but we veer away from it and head for an outbuilding near the slaves’ quarters. In the distance, two hunched figures trudge to a barn, buckets in hand. The place will be swarming with slaves and their overseers soon. We need to take cover.

We finally make it to the cellar door behind a squat granary. The door’s latch is stiff from cold, and Keenan groans as he tries to pry it up.

“Hurry.” I crouch beside him. In the slaves’ hovels a few dozen yards away, smoke rises and a door creaks. A Scholar woman, her head wrapped in cloth, emerges.

Again, Keenan digs his dagger into the latch. “Bleeding thing won’t—ah.” He sits back, the latch having finally come loose.

The sound echoes, and the Scholar woman spins around. Keenan and I both freeze—there’s no chance that she hasn’t seen us. But she simply waves us into the cellar.

“Quick,” she hisses. “Before the overseers wake!”

We drop into the cellar’s dimly lit interior, our breath clouding above us. Keenan bars the door as I inspect the space. It is a dozen feet wide, a half dozen feet long, and cramped with barrels and wine racks.

But a lamp hangs from the roof on a chain, and below it, a table boasts fruit, a paper-wrapped loaf of bread, and a tin tureen.

“The man who runs this farm is a Mercator,” Keenan says. “Scholar mother, Martial father. He was the only heir, so they passed him off as a full-blooded Martial. But he must have been closer to his mother, because last year, when his father died, he started helping runaway slaves.” Keenan nods at the food. “Looks like he’s still at it.”

I pull Elias’s map from my pack, unroll it carefully, and clear a space on the ground. My stomach rumbles with hunger, but I ignore it. Safe houses usually have little room to move, let alone light enough to see. Keenan and I spend every hour of the day sleeping or running. This is a rare chance to discuss what’s to come.

“Tell me more about Kauf.” My hands shake with cold—I can hardly feel the parchment between my fingers. “Elias drew a rough layout, but if he fails and we have to go inside, it won’t be—”

“You haven’t said her name since she died.” Keenan cuts through the torrent of words spilling from my mouth. “Do you know that?”

My hands shake more violently. I fight to still them as he sits in front of me.

“You only talk about the next safe house. About how we’ll make our way out of the Empire. About Kauf. But you won’t talk about her or what happened. You won’t talk about this strange power of yours—”

“Power.” I want to scoff. “A power that I can’t even tap into.” Though skies know I’ve tried. Every free moment, I’ve attempted to will myself into invisibility until I feel like I’ll go mad thinking the word disappear. Every time, I fail.

“Perhaps if you talked about it, it would help,” Keenan suggests. “Or if you ate more than a bite or two. Or slept more than a few hours.”

“I don’t feel hungry. And I can’t sleep.”

His gaze falls upon my shaking fingers. “Skies, look at you.” He shoves the parchment away and envelops my hands in his own. His warmth fills up an emptiness inside. I sigh, wanting to fall into that warmth—to let it wrap around me so that I forget all that’s to come—even for a few minutes.

But that’s selfish. And stupid, considering that at any moment, we might be caught by Martial soldiers. I try to take my hands away, but as if Keenan knows what I’m thinking,