A Torch Against the Night. Sabaa Tahir

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      “Thought I saw him. But I lost him.” A version of the truth. I did lose him, in the end.

      “How did he set the charges in the explosives?” The Northman releases my face and paces around me slowly, blending into the shadows but for the red patch on his fatigues—a screaming bird. It is the symbol of the Black Guard, the Empire’s internal enforcers. “When did you help him?”

      “I didn’t help him.”

      “He was your ally. Your friend.” The Northman pulls something from his pocket. It clinks, but I can’t see what it is. “The moment he was to be executed, a series of explosions nearly leveled the school. Do you expect anyone to believe that was a coincidence?”

      At my silence, the Northman motions for the legionnaires to dunk me again. I breathe deep, locking everything else out of my mind but that image of him free.

      And then, just as I go under, I think of her.

      The Scholar girl. All that dark hair and those curves and her damned gold eyes. How he held her hand as they fled through the courtyard. The way she said his name and how, on her lips, it sounded like a song.

      I swallow a mouthful of water. It tastes of death and piss. I kick out and fight the legionnaires holding me. Calm down. This is how interrogators destroy their prisoners. One crack, and he’ll drive a wedge into it and hammer until I split open.

      Elias escaping. Elias free. I try to see it in my mind, but the image is replaced by the two of them together, entwined.

      Maybe drowning wouldn’t be so horrible.

      The legionnaires pull me up as my world goes dark. I spit out a mouthful of water. Shore up, Aquilla. This is when he breaks you.

      “Who’s the girl?”

      The question is so unexpected that for one damning moment, I’m unable to wipe the shock—or the recognition—from my face.

      Half of me curses Elias for being stupid enough to be seen with the girl. The other half tries to quash the dread blooming in my gut. The interrogator watches the emotions play out in my eyes.

      “Very good, Aquilla.” His words are deadly quiet. Immediately, I think of the Commandant. The softer she spoke, Elias once said, the more dangerous she was. I can finally see what the Northman pulled from his fatigues. Two sets of joined, metal rings that he slips onto his fingers. Brass beaters. A brutal weapon that transforms a simple beating into a slow, bloody death.

      “Why don’t we begin there?”

      “Begin?” I’ve been in this hellhole for hours. “What do you mean, begin?”

      “This”—he gestures to the bucket of water and my bruised face—“was me getting to know you.”

      Ten bleeding hells. He’s been holding back. He’s ratcheted up the pain little by little, weakening me, waiting for a way in, for me to give something up. Elias escaping. Elias free. Elias escaping. Elias free.

      “But now, Blood Shrike.” The Northman’s words, though quietly delivered, cut through the chant in my head. “Now, we’ll see what you’re made of.”

      «««

      Time blurs. Hours go by. Or is it days? Weeks? I can’t tell. Down here, I don’t see the sun. I can’t hear the drums or the belltower.

      A little longer, I tell myself after a particularly vicious beating. Another hour. Hold out for another hour. Another half hour. Five minutes. One minute. Just one.

      But every second is pain. I’m losing this battle. I feel it in the blocks of time that disappear, in the way my words jumble and trip over one another.

      The dungeon door opens, closes. Messengers arrive, confer. The Northman’s questions change, but they never end.

      “We know that he escaped with the girl through the tunnels.” One of my eyes is swollen shut, but as the Northman speaks, I glare at him through the other. “Murdered half a platoon down there.”

      Oh, Elias. He’ll torment himself about those deaths, not seeing them as a necessity but as a choice—the wrong choice. He’ll keep that blood on his hands long after it would have washed off mine.

      But some part of me is relieved that the Northman knows how Elias escaped. At least I don’t have to lie anymore. When the Northman asks me about Laia and Elias’s relationship, I can honestly say that I know nothing.

      I just have to survive long enough for the Northman to believe me.

      “Tell me about them—it’s not so hard, is it? We know the girl was affiliated with the Resistance. Had she turned Elias to their cause? Were they lovers?”

      I want to laugh. Your guess is as good as mine.

      I try to answer him, but I’m in too much pain to do more than moan. The legionnaires dump me on the floor. I lay curled in a ball, a pathetic attempt to protect my broken ribs. My breath escapes in a wheeze. I wonder if death is close.

      I think of the Augurs. Do they know where I am? Do they care?

      They must know. And they’ve done nothing to help me.

      But I’m not dead yet. And I haven’t given the Northman what he wants. If he’s still asking questions, then Elias is free, and the girl with him.

      “Aquilla.” The Northman sounds … different. Tired. “You’re out of time. Tell me about the girl.”

      “I don’t—”

      “Otherwise, I have orders to beat you to death.”

      “Emperor’s orders?” I wheeze. I’m surprised. I thought Marcus would visit all sorts of horrors upon me himself before killing me.

      “Doesn’t matter whom the orders come from,” the Northman says. He crouches down. His green eyes meet mine. For once, they are less than calm.

      “He’s not worth it, Aquilla,” he says. “Tell me what I need to know.”

      “I—I don’t know anything.”

      The Northman waits a moment. Watches. When I remain silent, he stands and pulls on the brass beaters.

      I think of Elias, in this very dungeon not long ago. What went through his head as he faced death? He seemed so serene when he came to the execution podium. Like he’d made his peace as he faced his fate.

      I wish I could borrow some of that peace now. Goodbye, Elias. I hope you find your freedom. I hope you find joy. Skies know none of the rest of us will.

      Behind the Northman, the dungeon door clanks open. I hear a familiar, hated gait.

      Emperor Marcus Farrar. Come to kill me himself.

      “My lord Emperor.” The Northman salutes. The legionnaires drag me to my knees and slant my head downward in a semblance of respect.

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