Before She Ignites

by Jodi Meadows

  Then there was Hurrok, who screamed at night, and Kumas, who sang all the time though she had no talent for it, and Kason, who seemed to hate everyone but me. Probably because of the food.

  When the food was all gone and the strips of silk returned to me, I hid them inside my pillow and copied Gerel’s stance. Aaru and I were both exercising with her now, though when I’d told her it was for our alliance, she’d made me promise to never try standing on my hands again.

  “I wanted to be a Drakon Warrior,” she said during a series of squats. “That’s why I joined. I was small for my age, so no one thought I could do it. I endured the other trainees’ taunting for the first year—and then I broke every nose in my group within a few minutes.”

  My gasp made her smile.

  “Were you punished?” Aaru asked. Idris had very strict rules, he’d told me before, and even stricter punishments. Mostly, they seemed to involve locking people in basements.

  Gerel shrugged. “I was reprimanded and made to apologize, but immediately given the top position in my class. On account of my fierceness and clear fighting skills.” She glanced at me and . . . didn’t quite smile, but almost. “Besides, noses look ridiculous. I improved the situation.”

  I giggled in spite of myself. “They do, don’t they? But can you imagine our faces without them?”

  “Oh, seven gods. No.” She gave a shiver of disgust.

  “Did you become a Drakon Warrior?” Aaru spoke carefully, quietly, like waiting for someone to catch him. One did not speak aloud to their superiors on Idris—not without invitation—and he, like most of us, considered Gerel an expert here.

  “No.” A frown tugged on her mouth. “The Mira Treaty went into effect when I was three years old, but I always believed the part outlawing the practice of dragon riding would be repealed.”

  “Right. Forgot that part. Sorry.”

  Gerel shook her head. “I don’t know how you could forget the worst part of it. I hate the Mira Treaty.”

  “Barely affects me.” Aaru said it like a shrug.

  “What do you think of it?” Gerel looked at me. “After all, you have the unfortunate distinction of sharing a name with it. I bet you have an opinion.”

  I was of the opinion that the Mira Treaty did more good than harm. It helped the dragons. It freed Harta. It united the islands. Sure, dragons were illegal to own now, and if anyone understood the desire for dragons, I did. But we did what was necessary to care for the children of the gods.

  I weighed the idea of asking Gerel whether she knew the Drakon Warriors had not truly disbanded. Altan had all but admitted his involvement, but he didn’t say when he’d joined them. Gerel might know, but there was equal chance she didn’t, and it wasn’t my place to tell her when I didn’t have more information.

  “Well?” Annoyance edged Gerel’s tone. “You probably got teased in school. You must have thought about it.”

  I pulled myself back into the present. Gerel had been nice to me for the last few days, and I wanted to keep her that way.

  “I have.” I just hadn’t thought of a way to talk about it while hiding that I was the Mira. And since Gerel hated the treaty, it seemed best not to give her another reason to despise me. “It seems to me that the Mira Treaty—”

  “I tried to kill Mira once,” Hurrok said from down the hall.

  Gerel stopped in the middle of stretching her arm across her chest. Her eyes cut to me.

  Then his words registered.

  “What did you say?” Gerel’s voice was deep. Angry. She’d always seemed powerful to me, but when she gripped the bar of her door and peered out the side—not that she could see much—she was terrifying. Her knuckles stood sharp. Her eyes narrowed. In the dim, shadowy light, every muscle went taut with readiness. She looked fierce.

  Hurrok spoke slowly, like he was attempting to communicate with someone very stupid. “I said I tried to kill Mira Minkoba once. That’s how I ended up here.”

  “Why?” The question fell out of my mouth, but maybe I didn’t want to know.

  “She ruined my life!”

  I couldn’t see him from my position, but still I pressed my face to the bars of my cell and peered down the hall. “How?” Five heartbeats raced in my ears, loud. Painful.

  “You don’t have to humor this waste of breath.” Gerel looked as though she might crush the cell bars with her bare hands.

  ::Gerel is right,:: Aaru added. ::He doesn’t mean you. He means the Hopebearer.::

  “I wanted her dead!”

  A faint cry of hysteria escaped, and I shuddered, but Gerel didn’t notice. She was too busy attempting to break down the door, though I couldn’t imagine why. She didn’t like the Mira Treaty me or the me she thought she knew.

  “I hate her,” said the screaming man. He sucked in a noisy breath. “I tried to sneak into her house a year ago. It’s up there in Crescent Prominence, where the Luminary Council lives. She lives there, too, like she’s someone important. She was getting ready for a party. I could see her through her window. Through the open door of her dressing room, where that woman was helping her.”

  As he described it, I could envision myself sitting at the dressing table with Krasimir brushing cosmetics across my face. The screaming man was right. He could have seen me through the window if the dressing room door was open.

  Another shudder rippled through me.

  “I had an arrow dipped in poison. I was ready to do it.”

  My heart hammered against my chest. A hundred times. A thousand times. It ached. I didn’t want to hear how he’d almost killed me, but I couldn’t lift my voice to tell him to be quiet. I couldn’t gather enough breath.

  “Just as I’d nocked the arrow, her Hartan guard dog came into the bedroom. He slammed the dressing room door shut and he came at me. I tried to shoot him instead, but he threw something at me and knocked me off the window ledge. Next thing I knew, I was on trial and sent here.”

  I remembered that day. I’d been preparing for a charity ball at Councilor Elbena’s mansion. The money was going to benefit research into the ancient ruins across the islands. My dress had been long, layered, golden, and trimmed in topaz. Krasimir had done my hair in a series of loops and braids, adding strings of crystal so that I sparkled. I’d never felt more beautiful.

  Then the door had shut with a bang. Krasimir had been so surprised she smeared the line across my eye. She’d muttered about having to start over. But thirteen minutes later, the door opened again and Father stood there, impeccably dressed and brooding. The ball was off. Crescent Prominence was on lockdown for the rest of the night. Half the regular guards had been fired from their positions.

  My questions about why had been ignored, and though I’d mourned the loss of that charity ball, others had followed and I had mostly forgotten about it.

  Until now.

  Until Hurrok described how he’d tried to assassinate me in my bedroom. Just like that man when I was little. And how many others had there been? How many times had Hristo saved my life and not told me?

  I was on the floor, shaking. My whole body trembled against the memory and I knew I was making a scene, but I couldn’t stop imagining person after person sneaking into my bedroom, wanting to kill me. Hristo always acted like he wasn’t really necessary, but secretly . . .

  Maybe Mother had forbidden him from saying anything. That was something she would do, but why had Hristo obeyed? He was supposed to be my friend, the person I trusted above all others, and surely I deserved the truth.

  “Are you all right?” Gerel snapped her fingers at me. “Get up.”

  Still trembling, I forced myself to my feet. “I’m fine. I just hadn’t realized—”

  “What?” She scowled like I was a worm in her salad. “Didn’t you realize what kind of monsters you’re trapped in here with?”

  “We’re all monsters,” added the screaming man. “Every one of us.”

  I closed my eyes and took three steps back from the door. My heel bumped
the sewage hole lid. “I’d like to go to bed now.”

  “Someone is testy tonight,” Gerel muttered.

  “Someone gets that way when other people casually talk about trying to commit murder.” A strange venom laced my tone.

  Gerel stared at me.

  The screaming man was quiet.

  Chenda watched me from her cell.

  And Aaru? Who could tell with him. As always, he was the very absence of sound.

  Then, footfalls stormed into the cellblock. Three guards. Maybe four. Noorestones flared bright, blinding, making me squint. Through the cacophony of boots pounding on the stone, a voice rose above the others.

  “Mira!” Altan’s voice. “It’s time to answer more questions.”

  Cold terror touched my heart, and I couldn’t forget the truth: no matter how terrible the prisoners were, the guards were worse.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ALTAN HAD QUESTIONS.

  More questions.

  Hope died inside me as he halted at my cell, twisted his key in the lock, and threw open the door. “Let’s go.”

  Two more guards flanked him, both in leather uniforms with chevrons pinned around Khulan’s crossed maces. And there was the claw, too, which had mystified me before, but now I knew it must be the insignia for Drakon Warriors.

  Did all the Drakon Warriors know about me, then? And Altan was tasked—or had tasked himself—with squeezing any information out of me?

  So quickly that my head spun, Altan yanked me from my cell and practically flung me into the hall. I tried to root myself to the floor while he shut my door and prodded me forward.

  The other two guards didn’t speak, or even touch me. If they were worried about the possibility of me running, they didn’t show it.

  Altan had probably told them I wasn’t brave enough for that.

  After four steps, Altan motioned for me to halt. I obeyed, too afraid to do anything but.

  At once, I realized that I stood even with Aaru’s door, and I risked a look inside, expecting him to be sitting on the bed with his knees up, or hidden beneath the bed. But everything was different today.

  Even Aaru.

  He stood at his door, regarding me with fearful curiosity.

  I shouldn’t have been able to read his expression, not when I’d never really seen him before. Only in dim pieces through the hole.

  But now he was an arm’s length away, his stubble-covered face obscured only by the grille of metal. His skin was dark—a few shades browner than mine—and he was almost a head taller, with a lanky build made gaunt by a month of constant hunger. A mess of too-long hair framed nighttime-black eyes. He was . . . not handsome. Not beautiful. But compelling, even under the grime and starvation. I wanted to look more.

  Suddenly, I realized he was studying me in the same way: noting my half-unraveled twists, my trembling hands, my face, which had been pretty three decans ago but now must be changed by my time in the Pit.

  “I’m sorry,” I mouthed. For this moment. For staring. For being less beautiful than I’d wanted him to see. For being the one who was taken from her cell and . . . I didn’t know what I was apologizing for.

  But then Altan flung open Aaru’s door and took him by the arm. “You too.”

  Aaru’s black eyes widened as he staggered forward. Questions rushed between us, but there was no time to give them voice. Altan and the other two dragged us from the cellblock, through the anteroom, and down the hallway. Numbers flitted through my head as we moved—steps, stairs, intersections.

  My mind cataloged the heavy footfalls of the three warriors, and the lighter stride of Aaru. I wanted to look over my shoulder at him. He was there. I could feel him. But I didn’t know why he was here, and that was what scared me.

  ::What’s happening?:: His quiet code was quick, but not quick enough that it wasn’t noticed. A guard shoved him, and he stumbled. One, two, three: his bare feet slapped the ground before he caught himself.

  I didn’t dare answer his question. Even if I knew the answer, Altan was too observant. He’d notice the tapped exchange and have questions.

  Then we stopped in front of a door and Altan’s grip on my arm grew tighter. “Here’s your chance. You can tell me what I want to know—right now—or we can go inside.”

  When I turned to Altan, my voice trembled. “What do you want to know?”

  “Your secret, of course.” He smirked. “Your second secret.”

  The chill that ran through my body felt like ripples from a punch.

  He rested a hand on the doorknob. “I told you I would come back for it. Did you think I’d forgotten?”

  I couldn’t bring myself to speak. He’d known I’d held something back, and I’d been waiting for him to ask. Of course. But what could I say to him? I couldn’t tell him the truth; that was too dangerous. And I couldn’t lie, because he’d know.

  “Very well.” He pulled open the door and frightening familiarity stole me.

  I knew this place. I’d cleaned this interrogation room four times, scrubbing blood and urine off the floor until my hands grew raw. I knew each stone on the floor, wall, and ceiling. I knew the crystals lighting the grim space. I knew the echoes of terrible things that had happened here.

  On the far side of the room, a strange chair loomed. Leather straps hung from it like stranglemoss—harmless by itself, but deadly to creatures caught in its embrace.

  Aaru stood next to me, surveying the room in absolute silence. He didn’t move, like LaLa’s prey hoping she wouldn’t notice it if it stayed completely still. Only his gaze darted around, eyes wide with alarm.

  The back of my hand brushed his. A bad idea, I realized too late.

  “Take him.”

  At Altan’s command, the other two guards dragged Aaru toward the chair. He struggled, but he was whip-thin and hungry. The larger men easily overpowered him and shoved him into the chair.

  “No!” The word was out before I could stop it.

  “I warned you about making friends,” Altan said. “But now I wonder if I should have warned him about you.”

  Quickly, the guards bound Aaru’s limbs to the chair. One leather strap around each wrist. One around each ankle. Two more went around his forehead and his chest.

  Aaru didn’t have shoes, and even from here I could see dark scars crisscrossing his feet and forearms and the bottoms of his calves. His torn clothes weren’t quite long enough.

  “You seem attached to this one.” Altan dragged his knuckles against mine, a mockery of the way I’d reached for Aaru’s hand. My stomach turned over. “That’s good for me.”

  I couldn’t read Aaru’s expression anymore. His throat remained silent against his voice; so was his face against his feelings.

  “Why don’t you sit?” Altan didn’t make it sound like an invitation as he motioned me toward a small table and chairs near the wall.

  My hands shook too badly for me to move my chair out. Altan laughed and did it for me, a knowing smirk on his face. Then, he pulled off his jacket, as though settling in, and draped it over the back of the other chair. I didn’t like this helpful, casual Altan. I didn’t trust him.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen,” he said. “You’re going to think about why you kept a secret from me, and what that secret is actually worth. While you consider, we’re both going to test that Idrisi boy. What does it take to make him sing?”

  The thought of Aaru singing would have made me laugh if I didn’t know Altan meant something else. “Why?” I whispered.

  “Do you really need me to tell you?” Altan looked disappointed. “I thought you were cleverer than that.”

  “I’m being punished.”

  He nodded.

  “Because I kept secrets from you.”

  Again, he nodded.

  I looked up at Aaru, now fully strapped to the chair. After the isolation incident, when Altan had been scolded for nearly killing me, his leaders must have forbidden him from physically hurting me again. That left on
e option: hurt me by hurting others.

  And they’d chosen Aaru. The two guards with him stepped aside as three new figures came into the room: one was Rosa, the Daminan doctor who’d given me the coconut water treatment, and the other two were warrior trainees, each carrying a large iron basin. They positioned them in front of Aaru, scraping the stone floor.

  Inside each basin rested a noorestone the size of a fist.

  If Aaru was worried, he didn’t show it.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard,” Altan said, “that we are moving toward new uses for noorestones.”

  A terrible sinking feeling overwhelmed me.

  Across the room, Rosa muttered to her assistants, too low for me to hear. One of them dripped a dark concoction onto each of the noorestones, making the room stink of sulfur and . . . something else. Something familiar, but too distant to identify.

  “It’s taken some effort to find the best type of noorestones for this treatment,” Altan went on. “We lost over twenty prisoners during the testing phase, but eventually we found that small, old crystals are the most effective.”

  Anxiety wrenched inside my chest.

  “Noorestones aren’t normally hot to the touch,” Altan said, as if I needed reminding. “But these—well, I wouldn’t risk it.”

  As the trainees slid one of the basins under Aaru’s left foot, my silent neighbor gasped and jerked his leg, but it was too tightly bound.

  “What’s happening?”

  “A heat transfer.” Altan cocked his head. “Have you ever had a fever, Fancy?”

  I could only nod. Once, I’d been truly ill. I didn’t remember much from the days I’d lain in bed, just sweat and chills and Doctor Chilikoba ordering me to drink more and more water when I only wanted to sleep. The days felt long and the nights felt longer. Strange how fever could manipulate time.

  “Think of this the same way,” Altan said. “Heat from the noorestone is moving through his skin and spreading throughout his body. It won’t cause burn marks, but if we leave him like this long enough, his blood could boil. Isn’t that fascinating?”