An Ember in the Ashes

Page 15

  Mazen says nothing.

  Please don’t let him be the traitor. Let him be one of the good ones.

  If Nan could see me, she’d throttle me. I’ve kept the secret of my parents’ identities all my life. Telling it makes me feel hollow inside. And what happens now? All of these rebels, many of whom fought alongside my parents, suddenly know whose child I am. They’ll want me to be fearless and charismatic, like Mother. They’ll want me to be brilliant and serene, like Father.

  But I’m not any of those things.

  “You served with my parents for twenty years,” I say to Mazen. “In Marinn and then here, in Serra. You joined up the same time as my mother. You rose to the top with her and my father. You were third-in-command. ”

  Keenan’s eyes flash between Mazen and me, the rest of his face still. Work in the cavern halts, and fighters whisper to each other as they gather around us.

  “Mirra and Jahan had one child. ” Mazen limps toward me. His eyes go from my hair to my eyes to my lips as he remembers, compares. “She died when they did. ”

  “No. ” I’ve held this in for so long that it feels wrong to speak of it. But I have to. It is the only thing I can say that might make a difference.

  “My parents left the Resistance when Lis was four. They were expecting Darin. They wanted a normal life for their children. They disappeared. No trace. No trail.

  “Darin was born. Then, two years later, I arrived. But the Empire was coming down hard on the Resistance. Everything my parents worked for was crumbling. They couldn’t sit by and watch. They wanted to fight. Lis was old enough to stay with them. But Darin and I were too young. They left us with Mother’s parents. Darin was six. I was four. They died a year later. ”

  “You tell a good tale, girl. ” Mazen says. “But Mirra didn’t have parents.

  She was an orphan, like me. Like Jahan. ”

  “I’m not telling tales,” I pitch my voice low so it doesn’t shake. “Mother left home when she was sixteen. Nan and Pop didn’t want her to go. After she left, she cut off all contact. They didn’t even know she was alive until she knocked on their door asking them to take us in. ”

  “You’re nothing like her. ”

  He might as well have slapped me. I know I’m not like her, I want to say. I cried and cringed instead of standing and fighting. I abandoned Darin instead of dying for him. I’m weak in a way she never was.

  “Mazen,” Sana whispers, like I’ll disappear if she speaks too loudly. “Look at her. She has Jahan’s eyes, his hair. Ten hells, she has his face. ”

  “I swear it’s true. This armlet—” I lift my hand, and it glints in the cavern’s light. “It was hers. She gave it to me a week before the Empire caught her. ”

  “I’d wondered what she’d done with it. ” The stiffness in Mazen’s face dissolves, and the light of an old memory flares in his eyes. “Jahan gave it to her when they got married. I never saw her without it. Why didn’t you come to us before? Why didn’t your grandparents contact us? We’d have trained you up the way Mirra would have wanted. ”

  The answer dawns on his face before I can say it.

  “The traitor,” he says.

  “My grandparents didn’t know who to trust. They decided not to trust anyone. ”

  “And now they’re dead, your brother is in jail, and you want our help. ”

  Mazen brings his pipe back to his mouth.

  “We must give her aid. ” Sana is beside me, her hand on my shoulder. “It’s our duty. She’s, as you say, one of our own. ”

  Tariq stands behind her, and I notice that the fighters have divided into two groups. The ones backing Mazen are closer to Keenan’s age. The rebels clustered behind Sana are older. She’s the head of our faction, Tariq had said.

  Now I realize what he meant: The Resistance is divided. Sana leads the older fighters. And, as she’d hinted at before, Mazen leads the younger ones—and serves as overall leader.

  Many of the older fighters stare at me, perhaps searching my face for evidence of Mother and Father. I don’t blame them. My parents were the greatest leaders in the Resistance’s five-hundred-year history.

  Then they’d been betrayed by one of their own. Caught. Tortured. Executed along with my sister, Lis. The Resistance collapsed and never recovered.

  “If the Lioness’s son is in trouble, we owe it to her to help,” Sana says to those gathered behind her. “How many times did she save your life, Mazen? How many times did she save all of us?”

  Suddenly, everyone is talking.

  “Mirra and I set fire to an Empire garrison—”

  “She could cut right to your soul with her eyes, the Lioness—”

  “Saw her fend off a dozen auxes once—not a bit of fear in her—”

  I have stories of my own. She wanted to leave us. She wanted to abandon her children for the Resistance, but Father wouldn’t let her. When they fought, Lis took me and Darin into the forest and sang so we wouldn’t hear them.

  That’s my first memory—Lis singing me a song while the Lioness raged a few yards away.

  After my parents left us with Nan and Pop, it took weeks for me to stop feeling jumpy, to get used to living with two people who actually seemed to love each other.

  I say none of this, instead knotting my fingers together as the fighters tell their stories. I know they want me to be brave and charming, like Mother.

  They want me to listen, really listen, like Father. If they knew what I truly was, they’d have thrown me out of here without a thought. The Resistance doesn’t tolerate weaklings.

  “Laia,” Mazen speaks over them, and they quiet down. “We don’t have the manpower to break into a Martial prison. We’d risk too much. ”

  I don’t get the chance to protest because Sana’s speaking for me.

  “The Lioness would have done it for you without a second thought. ”

  “We have to bring down the Empire,” a blond man behind Mazen says.

  “Not waste our time saving some boy. ”

  “We don’t abandon our own!”

  “We’ll be the ones doing all the fighting,” another of Mazen’s men calls from the back of the crowd, “while you old-timers sit around taking all the credit. ”

  Tariq shoves past Sana, his face dark. “You mean while we plan and prepare to make sure you young fools don’t get ambushed—”

  “Enough. Enough!” Mazen raises his hands. Sana pulls Tariq back, and the other fighters fall silent. “We won’t solve this by shouting at each other. Keenan, find Haider and bring him to my chambers. Sana, get Eran and join us. We’ll decide this privately. ”

  Sana hurries away but Keenan doesn’t move. I flush beneath his stare, not sure what to say. His eyes are almost black in the cavern’s dim light.

  “I see it now,” he murmurs, as if to himself. “I can’t believe I almost missed it. ”

  He can’t have known my parents. He doesn’t look much older than me. I wonder how long he’s been in the Resistance, but before I can ask, he disappears into the tunnels, leaving me to stare after him.

  Hours later, after I’ve forced food down my throat and pretended to sleep on a rock-hard bunk, after the stars have faded and the sun has risen, one of the cavern doors swings open.