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as Blood Shrike.” You serve until you die. Everyone knows
that.
“Actually,” Helene says, “the Blood Shrike
can
resign, but only if the
Emperor agrees to release him from service. It’s not commonly known—Father
says it’s some odd loophole in Empire law. Anyway, if the rumor is true, then the
Blood Shrike was a fool to even ask. Taius isn’t going to free his right-hand man
right when Gens Taia is being shoved out of power.”
She looks up at me, expecting a response, but I just stare at her open-
mouthed, because something huge has occurred to me, something I haven’t
understood until now.
If you do your duty
, the Augur said,
you have a chance to break the bonds
between you and the Empire forever.
I know how to do it. I know how I’ll find my freedom.
If I win the Trials, I become Emperor. Nothing but death can release the
Emperor from his duty to the Empire. But that’s not the case for the Blood
Shrike.
The Blood Shrike can resign, but only if the Emperor agrees to release
him from service.
I’m not supposed to win the Trials. Helene is. Because if she wins and I
become Blood Shrike, then she can set me free.
The revelation is like a punch to the gut and flying, all at once. The Augurs
said whoever won two Trials first would become Emperor. Marcus and Helene
are both up one. Which means I have to win the next Trial and Helene has to win
the Fourth. And sometime between now and then, Marcus and Zak have to die.
“Elias?”
176
“Yes,” I say too loudly. “Sorry.” Hel looks annoyed.
“Thinking of
Laia
?”
The mention of the Scholar girl is so incongruous to my
thoughts that for a second I’m stunned silent, and Helene stiffens.
“Well, don’t mind me, then,” she says. “Not like I just spent two days by your
bedside singing you back to life or anything.”
For a second I don’t know what to say. I don’t know this Helene. She’s acting
like an actual girl. “No, Hel, it’s not like that. I’m just tired—”
“Forget it,” she says. “I have to get to watch.”
“Aspirant Veturius.” A Yearling jogs toward me, a note in his hand. I take the
note from him, all the while asking Helene to wait. But she ignores me and, even
as I’m trying to explain, she walks away.
177
H
XXV: Laia
ours after telling Keenan I’d get out of Blackcliff to meet him, I feel like
the world’s biggest fool. Tenth bell has come and gone. The Commandant
dismissed me and retreated to her room an hour ago. She shouldn’t emerge until
dawn, especially since I spiked her tea with kheb leaf—a scentless, tasteless herb
Pop used to help patients rest. Cook and Izzi are asleep in their quarters. The
house is silent as a mausoleum.
And still I sit in my room, trying to concoct a way out of this place.
I can’t just walk past the gate guards so late at night. Bad things happen to
slaves foolish enough to do so. Besides which, the risk that the Commandant
will hear about my midnight wandering is too great.
But I can, I decide, create a distraction and
sneak
past the guards. I think back
to the flames that consumed my house on the night of the raid. Nothing distracts
better than fire.
So, armed with tinder, flint, and a striker, I slip out of my room. A loose black
scarf obscures my face, and my dress, high-necked and long-sleeved, conceals
both my slaves’ cuffs and the Commandant’s mark, still scabbed and painful.
The servants’ corridor is empty. I move silently to the wooden gate leading to
Blackcliff’s grounds and ease it open.
It squeals louder than a gutted pig.
I grimace and scurry back to my quarters, waiting for someone to come
investigate the noise. When no one does, I creep out of my room—
“Laia? Where are you going?”
I jump and drop the flint and striker to the ground, barely keeping hold of the
tinder.
“Bleeding skies, Izzi!”
“Sorry!” She picks up the flint and striker, brown eyes widening when she
realizes what they are. “You’re trying to sneak out.”
“Am not,” I say, but she gives me a look that makes me fidget. “Fine, I am,
but—”
“I . . . could help you,” she whispers. “I know a way out of the school that
even the legionnaires don’t patrol.”
“It’s too dangerous, Izzi.”
“Right. Of course.” She retreats but then stops, small hands twisting together.
178
“If—if you were planning to set a fire and sneak through the front gate while
the guards are distracted, it won’t work. The legionnaires will send the auxes to
deal with the fire. They never leave a gate unattended. Never.”
As soon as she says it, I know she’s right. I should have realized that fact
myself. “Can you tell me about this way out?” I ask her.
“It’s a hidden trail,” she says. “A rock path and a scanty one at that. I’m sorry,
but I’d have to show you—which means I’d have to come with you. I don’t
mind. It’s what a—a friend would do.” She says the word
friend
like it’s a secret
she wishes she knew. “I’m not saying that we’re friends,” she continues in a
rush. “I mean—I don’t know. I’ve never really had . . . ”
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