A Torch Against the Night (An Ember in the Ashes #2) - Sabaa Tahir Page 0,153
Laia, who pulls Tas to her chest. I am beside them moments later.
“Elias,” Tas whispers. He cannot take his eyes off the Warden. “I—”
“You slew a demon, Tas of the north.” I kneel beside him. “I am proud to fight by your side. Get the other children out. We’re not free yet.” I look up at the gate, where the guards now battle a horde of crazed prisoners. “Meet us at the boats.”
“Darin!” Laia looks at me. “Where—”
“By the pens,” I say. “I can’t wait until he wakes up and I can give him hell. I’ve had to drag him all around this bleeding prison.”
The drums thud frenziedly, and over the chaos, I can just barely hear the answering drums of a distant garrison. “Even if we escape onto the boats,” Laia says as we race for the pens, “we’ll have to get out before we reach the Forest of Dusk. And the Martials will be waiting, won’t they?”
“They will,” I say. “But I have a plan.” Well, not exactly a plan. More like a hunch—and a possibly delusional hope that I can use my new occupation to do something quite mad. It’s a gamble that will depend on the Waiting Place and Shaeva and my power of persuasion.
With Darin slung over my shoulder, we head for Kauf’s entry gate, inundated with prisoners. The crowd is rabid—there are too many people fighting to get out, and too many Martials fighting to keep us in.
I hear a metallic groaning. “Elias!” Laia points at the portcullis. Slowly, ponderously, it begins to drop. The sound gives new heart to the Martials beating back the prisoners, and Laia and I are driven farther from the gate.
“Torches, Laia!” I shout. She snatches two off a nearby wall, and we wield them like scims. Those around us instinctively cringe from the fire, allowing us to force a path through.
The portcullis drops another few feet, almost at eye level now. Laia grabs my arm. “One push,” she shouts. “Together—now!”
We lock arms, lower the torches, and ram our way through the crowd. I shove her beneath the portcullis ahead of me, but she resists and whips around, forcing me to come with her.
And then we are beneath, through, running past the soldiers battling prisoners, making straight for the boathouse, where I see two barges already a quarter mile down the river and two more launching from the docks, Scholars hanging off the sides.
“She did it!” Laia shouts. “Afya did it!”
“Bowmen!” A line of soldiers appears atop Kauf’s wall. “Run!”
A hail of arrows rains down around us, and half the Scholars racing for the boathouse with us go down. Almost there. Almost.
“Elias! Laia!” I spot Afya’s red-black braids at the boathouse door. She waves us into the structure, her eyes on the bowmen. Her face is slashed, her hands covered in blood, but she quickly leads us to a small canoe.
“As much as I’d enjoy a boating adventure with the unwashed masses,” she says, “I think this will be faster. Hurry.”
I lay Darin down between two benches, grab an oar, and push off from the boathouse. Behind us, Araj pulls Tas and Bee onto the final Scholar barge and launches it. His people pole it forward with panicked speed. Swiftly, the current pulls us away from the ruin of Kauf—and toward the Forest of Dusk.
“You said you had a plan.” Laia nods to the soft green line of the Forest to the south. Darin lies between us, still unconscious, his head resting on his sister’s pack. “Might be a good time to share it.”
What do I say to her of the trade I made with Shaeva? Where do I even begin?
With the truth.
“I’ll share it,” I say quietly enough that only she can hear. “But first, there’s something else I need to tell you. About how I survived the poison. And about what I’ve become.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Helene
ONE MONTH LATER
Deep winter roars into Antium on the back of a three-day blizzard. Snow blankets the city so thickly that the Scholar sweepers work around the clock to keep the thoroughfares clear. Midwinter candles glow all night in windows across the city, from the finest mansions to the poorest hovels.
Emperor Marcus will celebrate the holiday at the imperial palace with the Paters and Maters of a few dozen important Gens. My spies tell me that many deals will be struck—trade agreements and government postings that will further cement Marcus’s power.
I know it to be true, because I helped arrange most of those deals.