A Torch Against the Night (23 page)

“Twenty-six men, fifteen women, and twelve children, Blood Shrike.”

“Execute them,” Dex says. “Immediately. We need to show what happens when you harbor an Empire fugitive.”

“You can’t kill them.” Faris glares at Dex. “They’re the only family Elias ever—”

“Those people aided and abetted an enemy of the Empire,” Dex snaps. “We have orders—”

“We don’t have to execute them,” Harper says. “They have other uses.”

I catch Harper’s intent. “We should question them. We have Mamie Rila, yes?”

“Unconscious,” Harper says. “The aux who took her was too enthusiastic with the hilt of his sword. She should come around in a day or two.”

“She’ll know who got Veturius out of here,” I say. “And where he’s heading.”

I look at the three of them. Harper has orders to remain with me, so he cannot stay in Nur to question Mamie and her family. But Dex might kill off our prisoners. And more dead Tribesmen are the last thing the Empire needs while the Scholar revolution still rages.

“Faris,” I say. “You’ll handle the interrogations. I want to know how Elias got out and where he’s going.”

“What of the children?” Faris says. “Surely we can release them. They won’t know anything.”

I know what the Commandant would say to Faris.
Mercy is weakness. Offer it to your enemies and you might as well fall upon your own sword.

The children will be a powerful incentive for the Tribespeople to tell us the truth. I know this. Yet the idea of using them—hurting them—makes me uneasy. I think of the ravaged house in Serra that Cain showed me. The Scholar rebels who burned down that house showed no mercy to the Martial children who lived there.

Are these Tribal children so different? In the end, they are still children. They didn’t ask to be a part of this.

I catch Faris’s eye. “The Tribesmen are already restless, and we don’t have the men to put down another riot. We’ll let the children go—”

“Are you insane?” Dex shoots a glare first at Faris then at me. “Don’t let them go. Threaten to throw them into ghost wagons and sell them into slavery unless you get some bleeding answers.”

“Lieutenant Atrius.” I flatten my voice as I address Dex. “Your presence is no longer needed here. Go and divide the remaining men into three groups. One goes with you to search east, in case Veturius makes for the Free Lands. One with me to search south. One stays here to hold the city.”

Dex’s jaw twitches, his anger at being dismissed warring with a lifetime of obeying the orders of a superior officer. Faris sighs, and Harper watches the exchange with interest. Finally, Dex stalks out, slamming the door behind him.

“Tribesmen value their children above all else,” I say to Faris. “Use them as leverage. But don’t hurt them. Keep Mamie and Shan alive. If we can’t run Elias down, we might be able to use them to lure him in. If you learn
anything
, send me a message through the drums.”

When I leave the barracks to saddle my horse, I find Dex leaning against the stable wall. Before he can tear into me, I turn on him.

“What in the bleeding skies were you doing in there?” I say. “It’s not enough that I have one of the Commandant’s spies questioning my every move? I need you plaguing me too?”

“He reports on everything you do,” Dex says. “But he doesn’t question you. Even when he should. You’re not focused. You should have seen that riot coming.”

“You didn’t see it coming.” Even to my own ears, I sound like a petulant child.

“I’m not the Blood Shrike. You are.” His voice rises, and he takes a level breath.

“You miss him.” The edge in his voice fades. “I miss him too. I miss all of them. Tristas. Demetrius. Leander. But they’re gone. And Elias is on the run. All we have now, Shrike, is the Empire. And we owe it to the Empire to catch this traitor and execute him.”

“I
know
that—”

“Do you? Then why did you disappear for a quarter hour in the middle of the riot? Where were you?”

I stare at him long enough to make sure my voice doesn’t shake. Long enough for him to start thinking that he might have crossed a line.

“Begin your hunt,” I say quietly. “Don’t leave a single wagon unsearched. If you find him, bring him in.”

We are interrupted by a step behind us: Harper, holding two scrolls with broken seals.

“From your father and sister.” He doesn’t apologize for the fact that he’s clearly read the missives.

Livvy’s note is shorter.

My hands shake as I roll the parchment up. Would that I’d received these messages a few days ago. Perhaps I would have realized the cost of failure and taken Elias into custody.

Now, what Father feared has begun. The Gens turn against each other. Hannah is that much closer to marrying the Snake.
And
Marcus is trying to get to Livia—she never would have mentioned it if she didn’t think it was significant.

I crush the letters. Father’s message is loud and clear.
Find Elias. Give Marcus a victory.

Help us.

“Lieutenant Harper,” I say. “Tell the men we move out in five minutes. Dex—”

I can see from the stiff way that he turns to me that he’s still angry. He has a right to be.

“You’ll handle the interrogations,” I say. “Faris will search the desert to the east instead. Let him know. Get me answers, Dex. Keep Mamie and Shan alive in case we need them as bait. Otherwise, do what you must. Even … even in regard to the children.”

Dex nods, and I quash the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach at speaking the words. I’m Blood Shrike. It is time to show my strength.

«««

“N
othing?” The three squad leaders fidget under my scrutiny. One stamps his foot in the sands, antsy as a penned stallion. Behind him, other soldiers in our encampment, some miles north of Nur, watch surreptitiously. “We’ve searched this blasted desert for six days, and we
still
have nothing
?
”

Harper, the only one of the five of us not squinting from the punishing desert wind, clears his throat. “The desert is vast, Blood Shrike,” he says. “We need more men.”

He’s right. We must search thousands of wagons, and I have only three hundred men to do it. I sent messages to Atella’s Gap, as well as to the Taib and Sadh garrisons requesting backup—but none has soldiers to spare.

Strands of hair whip around my face as I pace before the soldiers. I want to send the men out once more before nightfall to search whatever wagons they find. But they are too exhausted.

“There’s a garrison a half day’s ride north in Gentrium,” I say. “If we push hard, we’ll make it by nightfall. We can get reinforcements there.”

Evening nears as we approach the garrison, poking up over the top of a hill a quarter mile to the north. The outpost is one of the largest in the area and straddles the forested lands of the Empire’s interior and the Tribal desert.

“Blood Shrike.” Avitas shifts a hand to his bow and slows his horse when the garrison comes into view. “Do you smell that?”

A western wind brings a whiff of something familiar and sour-sweet to my nose. Death. My hand goes to my scim. An attack on the garrison? Scholar rebels? Or a Barbarian sortie, slipping through the Empire unnoticed because of the chaos elsewhere?

I order the men forward, my body coiled, blood rising, yearning toward the battle. Perhaps I should have sent a scout ahead, but if the garrison needs our aid, there’s no time for reconnaissance.

We clear the hill, and I slow the men. The road leading to the garrison is littered with the dead and dying. Scholars, not Martials.

Far ahead, beside the garrison’s gate, I see a row of six Scholars kneeling. Before them paces a small figure, instantly recognizable, even at a distance.

Keris Veturia.

I nudge my horse forward. What in the bleeding hells is the Commandant doing all the way out here? Has the revolution spread so far?

My men and I pick our way carefully through the bodies left in haphazard piles. Some wear the black of Resistance fighters. But most do not.

So much death, all for a revolution that was doomed before it even began. Anger flares as I stare at the bodies. Didn’t the Scholar rebels understand what they would unleash when they revolted? Didn’t they realize the death and terror the Empire would rain down upon them?

I swing down from my horse at the garrison gate, a few yards from where the Commandant observes her prisoners. Keris Veturia, her armor splashed with blood, ignores me. So do her men, who flank the Scholar prisoners.

As I draw myself up to reprimand them, Keris plunges her scim into the first Scholar prisoner, a woman who crumples to the ground without so much as a whimper.

I force myself not to look away.

“Blood Shrike.” The Commandant turns and salutes. Immediately, her men follow suit. Her voice is soft, but as ever, she manages to mock my title while keeping her face and expression flat. She glances at Harper and he offers a bare nod in acknowledgement. Then she addresses me. “Shouldn’t you be scouring the lands to the south for Veturius?”

“Shouldn’t you be hunting Scholar rebels along the River Rei?”

“The revolution along the Rei has been crushed,” the Commandant says. “My men and I have been purging the countryside of the Scholar threat.”

I eye the prisoners shaking in terror before her. Three are twice my father’s age. Two are children.

“These civilians do not look like rebel fighters to me.”

“It is such thinking, Shrike, that encourages revolts in the first place. These
civilians
harbored Resistance rebels. When brought to the garrison for questioning, they—along with the rebels—attempted to stage an escape. No doubt they were encouraged in their insurgency by rumors of a Martial rout in Nur.”

I flush at her pointed remark, seeking a retort and finding none.
Your failure has weakened the Empire.
The words are unspoken. And they are not wrong. The Commandant curls her lip and shifts her gaze over my shoulder, to my men.

“A ragged bunch,” she observes. “Tired men make for failed missions, Blood Shrike. Did you not learn that lesson at Blackcliff?”

“I had to divide my forces to cover more ground.” Though I try to keep my voice as unfeeling as hers, I know I sound like a sullen Cadet defending an unsound battle strategy to a Centurion.

“So many men to hunt a traitor,” she says. “Yet you’ve had no luck. One would think you do not truly wish to find Veturius.”

“One would be wrong,” I grind out from a clenched jaw.

“One would hope,” she says with a soft derision that brings an enraged flush to my cheeks. She turns back to her prisoners. One of the children is next, a dark-haired boy with freckles across his nose. The sharp tang of urine permeates the air, and the Commandant looks down at the boy and cocks her head.

“Afraid, little one?” Her voice is almost gentle. I want to retch at the lie in it. The boy trembles, staring at the blood-soaked dirt before him.

“Stop.” I step forward.
Bleeding skies, what are you doing, Helene?
The Commandant looks at me with a mild sort of curiosity.

“As Blood Shrike,” I say, “I order—”

The Commandant’s first scim whistles through the air, divesting the child of his head. At the same time, she draws her second scim, plunging it through the heart of the second child. Knives appear in her hands, and she flings them—
zing-zing-zing
—one by one into the throats of the last three prisoners.

In the space of two breaths, she has executed them all.

“Yes, Blood Shrike?” She turns back to me. On the surface, she is patient, attentive. No hint of the madness that I know roils deep within. I survey her men—well over a hundred of them watching the altercation with cold-eyed interest. If I challenge her now, there is no telling what she will do. Attack, possibly. Or try to butcher my men. She certainly won’t submit to censure.

“Bury the bodies.” I suppress my emotions and flatten my voice. “I don’t want the garrison’s water supply contaminated by corpses.”

The Commandant nods, her face still. The consummate Mask. “Of course, Shrike.”

I order my men into the garrison and retire to the empty Black Guard barracks, dropping into one of the dozen hard bunks along the walls. I am filthy from a week on the road. I should bathe, eat, rest.

Instead, I find myself staring at the ceiling for a solid two hours. I keep thinking of the Commandant. Her insult to me was clear—and my inability to respond displayed my weakness. But though I’m upset by that, I’m more disturbed at what she did to the prisoners. At what she did to the children.