Before She Ignites

by Jodi Meadows

  A predatory grin spread across his face. “Tell me.”

  My heart sped up and I prayed I wasn’t making a mistake. “I’ll clean.”

  “Good. I’ll inform Sarannai, your new supervisor.” He strode away, too busy to keep taunting me. The rest of the hall was quiet with prisoners taking their turn in the bath. The other guard was gone for now, too, and a tense sense of waiting fell over the cellblock.

  “Shouldn’t have done that.” Gerel had a low, melodic voice, not at all what I’d expected from a former warrior. She stood by her door, feeling at the top for something. Then, she lifted herself off the ground.

  There wasn’t much room to grab up there, at least from what I could tell on my door. Which meant she was pulling with just her fingertips.

  “Why?” I added another item to my benefits-of-working list: I wouldn’t have to spend every day watching Gerel exercise.

  “You’ll find out soon enough.” She grunted faintly with effort. My fingers would have fallen off already. “Well,” she said, letting go of the door. She hopped back and brushed her hands over her trousers. “It’s not as though there’s anything better to do here.”

  I frowned.

  “None of the rest of us have been given the opportunity to work. Why do you think that is?”

  How was I supposed to know? Maybe because they’d committed actual crimes?

  “Altan wants something from you,” she said. “Remember that.”

  A shudder ran through me. One of the jobs he’d suggested—

  Gerel tilted her head. “No, not that. That, at least, is one thing you don’t have to worry about here. Warriors won’t take an unwilling partner. Khulan won’t allow it. That offense would put a black mark on their honor for the rest of eternity and they wouldn’t be permitted to fight in Khulan’s Final Battle.”

  “I’m supposed to have faith in their unwillingness to besmirch their honor?”

  She eyed me askance. “I don’t know what it’s like where you’re from, but here, warriors take their vows seriously. Other people may not be watching, but Khulan is. Always.” There was a pause, like she was thinking about her own dishonor. Her sentence to this prison. “Anyway, that’s not something you have to worry about.”

  Thank Damina for that small measure of safety. There were plenty of other things the warriors could do to me here, but at least that wasn’t one of them. Mother reminded me frequently about the importance of my virtue, and how I should protect it.

  “But Altan wants something,” Gerel said. “He was never a prison guard before. You must be important.”

  There was an implied question in that statement, but she didn’t ask, and I certainly wasn’t going to volunteer the information. “What do you think he wants?”

  She shrugged. “How should I know? I can’t read minds.”

  Well, neither could I.

  “At any rate,” Gerel said, “be careful. Sarannai is not an easy woman to please. Would-be warriors train under her when they come to the Heart.” She stretched one arm across her chest, clenching and unclenching her fingers. “And she supervises Pit prisoners, when she’s feeling testy.”

  I hadn’t realized that warriors spent part of their training here, but it made sense, didn’t it? I’d seen the statues and chapels. This was their temple.

  “I came to the Heart for training when I was fifteen. Before that, I’d spent ten years preparing. Running. Fighting. Learning to use every weapon available. I was at the top of my class. None could best me.”

  Thank Damina humility wasn’t one of the attributes of a good warrior.

  “Then we came to the Heart. We’d heard about it all our lives, of course. No warrior completes training without time here.” She rolled her shoulders as she spoke. “Our first night in the trainee barracks, everyone in the class ahead of us came rushing in, banging batons against the frames of our beds. It went on until the last one in our class—a boy who died a few days later—finished dressing and reported for cleaning duty. Under Sarannai.”

  A boy had died? Maybe he’d taken ill and the doctors hadn’t been able to treat him.

  “Sarannai said there were buckets with soap and rags stashed around the outer ward. Fourteen buckets. Fifteen of us. Everyone who got a bucket needed to have the outer ward spotless by dawn. If Sarannai found even a smudge of dirt, we’d all suffer.”

  I swallowed hard. “What about the trainee who didn’t get a bucket?”

  Her face went blank, completely free of emotion. “He’s the one who died later. I don’t think you’d like to hear how that happened.”

  Probably not. “Tell me.”

  Down the hall, a door slammed. She motioned for me to wait as footfalls hit the stone floor and four cell doors shuddered open. Prisoners put back in. Prisoners taken out. Lucky prisoners who got to take their baths right now.

  Then it was quiet again, and Gerel continued with her story. “I didn’t see all of it, because I got the first bucket. I was already scrubbing by the time it happened.”

  Of course. Top of her class. None could best her, or touch her bucket.

  “Most of this is what I heard later.” Her voice deepened, as though she was trying to hide some sort of emotion. Pain? Pride? “There was a fight for the final bucket. Sarannai had said that whoever didn’t get one wouldn’t be allowed to continue training, so everyone was inspired to do whatever they needed to ensure their stay. No one wants to leave as a dishonored trainee. Not even the most loving family would accept them back.”

  “That’s very sad.”

  “That’s Khulani life.” She shrugged, but her voice was tight, betraying some sort of emotion. “So that boy—”

  “You don’t even say his name.”

  “No one does,” she said. “There’s no honor in his name, because he didn’t complete his training. He fought for the last bucket. Even after it was clear he’d lost and most were already cleaning, he tried to steal someone’s bucket, rather than be dismissed to a life among the homeless dishonored. I can’t say I would have done any differently. But he was interrupting everyone’s work by then, and the outer ward wasn’t going to get cleaned with him trying to steal. Plus, he was dripping blood everywhere, making more work.”

  Chills of dread rippled through my stomach. “What happened?”

  “They beat him until he stayed down. The other trainees. Boys and girls he’d known for ten years. Been friends with. But they had to stop him. He was in the infirmary for three days before he died. Some said he’d been bleeding internally and the doctors hadn’t been able to repair it, but others said he took too many painkillers.”

  “Because he hurt so much? He accidentally took too many?”

  She shook her head. “No. Because he knew what it would do to him.”

  “Oh.” And it was Sarannai who’d sentenced everyone to such an awful task. Who’d made everyone choose between their friend and their future. Where was the honor in that?

  “Well, it’s too late to change your mind.” Gerel flashed a dark smile and moved to the back corner of her cell, where, in one swift movement, she stood upside down—her palms flat on the floor and holding up her entire body. Her heels dragged against the wall as she bent her elbows, then pushed up.

  One. Two. Three. She went on and on.

  At the end of the hall, a woman started singing—a generous description.

  “Shut up, Kumas!” a man shouted. “If you can’t sing in tune, don’t sing at all!”

  Gerel could have been lying about Sarannai. I had no reason to trust her, or anyone here. But the story had been so awful that it had to be true.

  She had survived Sarannai because she was strong. Hristo would tell me to get strong, too.

  I went to the corner of my cell and stared at the floor. Gerel had just sort of . . . dived into it. I tried for a tamer method of getting upside down: I bent over, placed my hands on the ground (internally shuddering at the filth I was willingly touching), and kicked one leg up.

  T
he skirt of my dress fell around my head, blinding me, and my weight shifted to my arms for a half second—

  I dropped to the ground in a mess of cloth and humiliation.

  “What are you doing?” Gerel stood by her door again, fists on her hips. “Are you trying to kill yourself?”

  “No.” I climbed to my feet. “But I think I should have tied my dress in place.”

  “That would be a start.” Her expression shifted somewhere between annoyed and amused. “A better start would involve beginning with something simpler.”

  “Like what?” I’d trained twice a decan with Instructor Boyan, so I wasn’t a complete weakling. I didn’t want to end up like that boy. I wanted to live. I wanted to get out of here. I wanted to see my friends and dragon again. I wanted to stand on Damina and feel that deep-rooted sense of belonging.

  Gerel sneered as she looked over my form. My ragged dress. My dirt-streaked skin. “Maybe you have more muscle hidden in there somewhere, but I doubt it. One day of scrubbing floors is going to make you question whether you’ll ever lift your arms again.”

  “You don’t have to be so mean about it.” I crossed my arms over my chest, but the posture came off as trying to hide, rather than competent and tough.

  “You think I’m mean?” Gerel scoffed and pressed close to the metal grille of her door. “I am kind, Fancy. I’m your best friend.”

  No, Ilina was my best friend.

  But I still wanted Gerel to like me. I wanted everyone to like me. It was one of the most basic Daminan tenets—that with love, anything could be endured—and though the Luminary Council had betrayed me, my beliefs had deep roots. I made my voice soft. “Does that mean you’re going to help me?”

  “No. It just means I hate you less than I hated the previous occupant of that cell. I was so glad when he died.”

  Maybe I didn’t want to know this either, but . . . “What happened?”

  “One day, his sores all burst open and he melted. It was one of the most disturbing things I’ve seen in a long time.”

  I eyed the cell warily. I’d touched the floor and now I desperately wanted to remove my hands.

  “They cleaned after he died. Sort of.” She waved away my concern, like it was dumb to worry about all the gross things that might be left over. “My point is that you never know who your neighbors will be. You’re at least pretty.”

  I was visually more appealing than the man before me. Well, I supposed that was my face working in my favor again. Mother would be proud.

  Gerel went back to her exercises. This time, though, she stood with her legs apart and slowly bent at the knees, then straightened.

  I copied her. I wasn’t as pathetic as she believed. I wasn’t. But she didn’t know I had the best self-defense trainer on Damina. Or that I hunted with a Drakontos raptus. Or . . . Well. That was probably it.

  Gerel didn’t say anything else to me, just glanced up every so often to see if I was still copying her. I couldn’t tell if she approved or not. Probably not. Even so, it felt good to move around again, to force my muscles to flex and bend. If I wanted to survive, I needed to be strong.

  I was a Drakontos mimikus. I was not like the others here, but I could blend in long enough for my family to secure my release.

  After two hundred squats, seven stretches, and twenty push-ups, my face felt flushed and my muscles trembled. Gerel wasn’t tired, though. She went back to lifting herself on the edge of the door. With her fingertips.

  Well, of course she could do that. She was a warrior and she was on Khulan. She’d just told me that she’d been training harder than this her entire life. Top of her class, at least until she’d done something no one else liked.

  But in the back of my head, I could hear Mother’s disappointed sigh. Not smart enough. Not strong enough. “Thank Damina you’re beautiful.”

  I touched the blemish on my chin and cringed.

  Finally, it was Gerel’s turn for the bath. And mine. But Altan approached my cell and didn’t open it.

  He tilted his head. “You just got here. What makes you think you earned a bath?”

  Gerel caught my eye as she stepped out of her cell, but I couldn’t decipher her look.

  “As for this”—Altan hefted a sack of food—“you haven’t earned it, either.”

  “But—” I pressed my mouth into a line. Everyone else got theirs—I assumed—so why shouldn’t I get mine? And a bath? I’d cleaned my cell, same as the other prisoners.

  Altan tossed the sack through the open door of Gerel’s cell; it landed on her bed. “Get some rest, Fancy. You have a big day tomorrow.”

  My stomach growled and ached, and I thought bitterly of the rotten apple and stale bread I’d tossed down the sewage hole. Maybe I should have eaten it after all. I pressed my palms to my belly and curled over myself, but it didn’t help. Maybe a distraction.

  “Aaru?” I peered under my bed, toward the hole. “Are you there?”

  Two taps answered. “No.”

  I sat on my bed, blanket pulled around my shoulders, and counted the cracks in the walls (three hundred and twelve) until Gerel returned. Then I watched her eat my food (three chews per bite, no matter what she ate, like she was afraid it might be taken from her).

  She looked over. “Stop watching me. It’s weird.”

  I dropped my gaze to my knees. She knew I hadn’t been allowed to bathe, but she couldn’t know I’d been denied dinner, too. For the moment, that made me both the hungriest and the dirtiest person in the cellblock.

  Later, when the lights went out and the screaming started, I began to understand. This was day and night in the Pit. Faint light, and no light. No light meant whoever was so afraid of the dark screamed until he fell asleep.

  This wasn’t fair. I was being punished for trying to do the right thing. I should have been rewarded.

  But life didn’t always work like that.

  I SPENT THE night under the bed. It seemed safer than on top.

  I tried to sleep the normal way. When the screaming stopped, I peeled myself off the floor and felt through the black space until my fingers scraped the edge of the bed. But the moment I stood, this awful sensation of being lost—or somewhere else—came over me. Like if I took one wrong step, I’d fall off the edge of a mountain, or into another world.

  By the time I made it into bed, my pillow and blanket in their proper places, I was trembling with the unknown. Like this thin wooden cot was a raft and I was drifting in the middle of the sea, no land in sight. All I could feel was the dark and the pressure and the lurking terror of something unnameable, like a beast lived in the blackness and if I moved wrongly, it would devour me.

  So in a fit of bravery, I jumped off the bed and scrambled back under, protected on five sides. But it wasn’t enough.

  My head spun and my throat closed. I was choking on the darkness, and on fear that the dim crystals in the hall might never illuminate again.

  I could be trapped in this darkness forever.

  A high-pitched whine squeezed from my throat as I pressed my spine to the floor and my palms to the underside of the bed, like anchoring myself here. Like reminding myself there were physical things surrounding me. But every time I opened my eyes, there was only void. Darkness.

  I needed my calming pills. I needed Doctor Chilikoba, who always assured me I wasn’t dying when I felt like this.

  “Breathe,” she would say. “Start with breathing.”

  I gasped. Not a long breath, but enough that the muscles in my throat opened a fraction. Another inhale, this one more substantial. That could count as the first breath.

  One. Two. Three. I breathed in, held the air in my lungs, and exhaled as long and slow as I could stand. Gradually, my racing heart eased.

  As long as I didn’t open my eyes. As long as I didn’t move my hands from the underside of the bed.

  And I listened to the whimper of someone in the throes of nightmares, to a whistling snore from a man down the hall, and to heavy silence. L
ike everyone was just waiting for something terrible to happen.

  But what could be worse than this?

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE NEXT MORNING, ALTAN STOPPED IN FRONT OF my door, his eyes hooded and his mouth turned downward. A fresh cut ran the length of his cheek, not deep enough to need stitches or a bandage, but the brown skin around it had turned ruddy and ragged. It probably hurt. Good.

  Damina’s Law said one should never wish pain on someone else, but did that apply to one’s jailer? Surely Damyan and Darina wouldn’t begrudge me this one indulgence.

  “Ready for your first day of work?” he asked.

  I glanced at his empty hand, then beyond him to where the second guard was throwing a sack of food into Gerel’s cell. First last night, and now today. I’d been under the impression that agreeing to work meant I’d get more food. Not zero food.

  My nemesis grinned. “Not in here, Fancy. You get breakfast in the mess hall. And if the others want more food, they’ll work for it, too.”

  Except the others hadn’t been offered work. Why? Gerel’s warning ran through my head again: Altan wanted something.

  “I brought these.” Altan motioned at a pair of shackles hanging from his belt. “You don’t have to wear them if you promise to come without a struggle.”

  We both knew I wouldn’t fight.

  He opened the door.

  I stepped through, and while Altan closed the door, I glanced toward Aaru’s cell. Nothing was visible. Just the front corner, partially blocked by a guard hassling him about standing up and coming out from under the bed.

  A twinge of guilt wrapped around me. He’d tried to apologize, and I’d forgotten about him once Altan offered work and Gerel started talking to me. It was rude to ignore people, Mother always said. And especially rude to ignore them after annoying them and accusing them of being hallucinations.

  Then again, I’d tried to talk to him later, and he’d ignored me. Clearly he hated me.

  Maybe I had made a mistake by accepting his water. Maybe I hadn’t. After all, I couldn’t trust Altan any more than I could trust the other prisoners. Ilina would tell me to find some way to win Aaru over. Not that I knew how to do that if I couldn’t smile at him (the hole was too small) and giggle at his jokes (he didn’t seem to know much about jokes). But Ilina would push me to find another way.