Before She Ignites

by Jodi Meadows

  Aaru bore it with grim determination, but already sweat trickled down his temple, cutting a path through the dirt. Then, without ceremony, Rosa signaled the assistants again, who moved the second basin under his right foot. Suddenly, his hands clenched and he strained against the bindings.

  I surged to my feet; my chair screeched against the floor behind me. “Stop this.”

  Altan grabbed my forearm—hard—and dragged me back to my chair. “I’m making a point to you. Your silent friend will endure this until you’ve learned your lesson.”

  “Why?” The word scraped out of me.

  “I want you to see the consequences for defiance.”

  I cut my gaze toward Aaru. He was breathing heavily. Gasping. Shaking. Under the bright noorestones, the whites of his eyes shone all around his irises. His face gleamed with sweat.

  “Make it stop.” I turned back to Altan. “I promise I’ll be good. You know I will. I’m a good prisoner.”

  He produced a stack of papers and a pencil and placed them in front of me. “There’s only one way to make it stop.”

  “Write it down?” Why? Why not just ask for the information out loud, like before?

  The room’s other occupants?

  Aaru closed his eyes, and he clenched his jaw against the agony of fire. Tendons stood sharp on his neck. Rosa spoke to the trainees, though her words were too low for me to hear. And the other two guards stood at the doorway, hands on their batons.

  He didn’t want them to know.

  He couldn’t be sure what the information was, but he knew he wanted it and he knew he would do anything to get it.

  “Every moment you delay is another moment he suffers.” Altan leaned onto the table, casting a wide shadow. “Just write what you know and this can stop.”

  Anxiety rushed in without warning. It came like thunder as my heart raced louder in my ears. It came like the sea over my head as my lungs struggled to expand. It came like a swarm of gnats crawling over my skin, itching, burning, complete in their distraction.

  This was a nightmare. Aaru was only ten paces away, fire running through his body, and Altan expected me to reproduce information I hadn’t seen in four decans.

  “I assume it’s related to the dragons.” Altan drummed his fingers on the table. “Since you care about it so much.”

  “It’s nothing. I promise, it’s nothing you’re interested in.”

  Altan glanced at Aaru appraisingly and lifted his voice. “He’s taking this quite well. I wonder if these noorestones have already been depleted. Rosa?”

  “They’re the proper age and size.” She glanced at one of the trainees. “Find another.”

  The girl bowed and left the room.

  A third noorestone? How could anyone bear such heat?

  After I’d told Altan about the dragons, I’d declared I’d never tell him about the rest—not even to save my own life. But what about Aaru’s life? I couldn’t let him die, not if I could save him.

  My trembling fingers crept toward the pencil. I could hardly take the wooden barrel, but somehow I fit my hand around it and brought the charcoal tip to paper.

  But then.

  My fingers jerked.

  A slash of charcoal marred the page before the tip snapped off and black dust scattered everywhere.

  “Gods!” Altan pounded a fist on the table, making everything jump. The broken pencil rolled off, and he strode around to retrieve it.

  From the death chair, Aaru stared at me, a delirious sheen in his gaze. Sweat drenched his clothes, and his whole body shuddered against the fever.

  I glanced at his hands, at his feet—everywhere—looking for the quiet code, but even if he wanted to communicate with me now, he was too weak.

  ::I’m sorry,:: I tapped on the table: ::Forgive me.::

  Aaru groaned in agony.

  The sound tore through me. One second. Two. Three. Four. On and on and on. He breathed at thirty-three seconds, just a faint gasp before letting the sound rip from him again. Never before had I heard such torment in a single voice.

  “Please,” I begged. My voice sounded hollow. “I can’t think while he’s in pain.”

  Altan took a small knife and carved a new point for the pencil. “If you want this to end, you know what to do.”

  At that moment, the trainee returned with a third noorestone. Rosa gave it a quick inspection, then nodded. The crystal tumbled into the basin under Aaru’s right foot with a racket. The strange sludge was poured over it.

  Aaru’s head rolled back. The whites of his eyes were bright against his sweat-drenched skin. And then, he began to sob—huge, racking gulps that filled the room. “Stop,” he gasped. “Make it stop.”

  I couldn’t let him suffer. I had to end this.

  I had to steady my breathing. One long breath. Two. Three. When my hand no longer trembled, I pressed the pencil point to the paper.

  Noorestones, I wrote.

  Then, a long, low howl fell from Aaru’s throat. The sweat had dried and his skin was flushed dark with burning. When one of the trainees prodded at the noorestones in the basins, the howl became a scream.

  More than anything, I wished I were the kind of person who knew how to fight. Who could leap over the table and rip the bindings from him. I wished I could escape this awful place, Aaru and Gerel and Tirta with me.

  I wished I were someone in possession of any measure of courage.

  On the shipping order. My writing was jagged, almost impossible to read, but under the bombardment of Aaru’s screams, I kept going. Trading with our enemies.

  Soft pounding sounded from the far side of the room. Aaru’s fists struck the chair arms with a familiar pattern: ::Strength through silence.::

  He repeated the phrase. Two times. Three times. Four.

  Altan breathed over my shoulder, reading my note. “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” My words were a sob. “I don’t know. Please let him go.”

  “I wish I could believe you.”

  ::Strength through silence.::

  “I’m not part of the Luminary Council.” I could barely think around the buzzing anxiety in my head. “They don’t tell me why they do things.”

  ::Strength through silence.::

  Altan studied me for a long moment, then shook his head. “No, you know why they’re shipping these, too.”

  ::Strength through silence.::

  “I told you what I know.” But he could see my lie. Hear it.

  ::Strength through silence.::

  “The longer you resist me, the longer he stays like that.”

  Aaru strained against the bindings. His eyes were squeezed shut, like he couldn’t bear to acknowledge anything because the fire was too intense.

  “Let him go!” Without thinking, I grabbed the pencil, twisted, and jabbed at Altan’s face. He was fast; he dodged without a problem, and my momentum carried me to the floor behind him. I crumpled against the wall.

  Prison guards stormed toward me, and Altan drew back his hand to slap my face.

  But then.

  Aaru’s screams stopped. A sharp keening sliced through the room for a half second before three things happened at once:

  A noorestone exploded.

  All twenty-three crystals went dark.

  And complete and smothering silence flooded the room.

  BEFORE

  Sarai 15, 2204 FG

  THE DAY ILINA, HRISTO, AND I DISCOVERED THAT dragons had gone missing, we waited in Ilina’s parents’ office and riffled through papers and reports. There, we found the shipping order that changed everything. Dragons weren’t the only things being shipped.

  “They’re sending ten noorestones as well.” I stared at the paper, numbers filling my head: dimensions, weights, power. . . . These noorestones were as big as Hristo. “We don’t trade with our enemies,” I whispered.

  “What does it matter?” An angry sob choked her words. “The dragons—”

  “We especially don’t give them the ten bigge
st noorestones in the Fallen Isles,” I said.

  “What?” Hristo took the paper from me and frowned at it.

  Most people cared about one thing when it came to noorestones:

  1. They glowed.

  Most people never really thought about these five things:

  1. The best noorestones came from Bopha, though all the islands had deep mines.

  2. Noorestones possessed an inner fire that burned for centuries, but the stones themselves were cool to the touch.

  3. Most of the ruins found on the islands had embedded noorestones, which still glowed after thousands of years—long after regular noorestones would have gone dark.

  4. Dragons really liked noorestones.

  5. Ships used noorestones to traverse the islands quickly, though the stones needed to be fresh (most potent) and giant (larger capacity).

  “Most of our ships travel exclusively between the islands,” I said. “Partly because we have nowhere else we’d want to go, but also because of noorestone limits. Only two of our ships have the ability to go beyond, because the noorestones that power them are immense.”

  “The Star-Touched and Great Mace.” Hristo’s eyebrows knit together.

  Panic fluttered in my chest, and I wished I’d thought to bring my calming pills with me today. But I’d never needed them in the sanctuary before. This had always been the one place panic was never triggered. “And four years ago, the Infinity.”

  “The Infinity sank,” Hristo said.

  I closed my eyes and breathed. Once. Twice. Three times. “She didn’t just sink. There was an accident. A dragon—a Drakontos milos named Ives—was on board and got loose.”

  “All right.” Ilina frowned. “What then?”

  “We don’t know much,” I said, “because the only person to get away didn’t see everything. But the Infinity”—I forced the word out—“exploded.”

  “What?” Ilina’s jaw dropped.

  “Why doesn’t everyone know this?” Hristo asked.

  “The Luminary Council didn’t want to alarm anyone. They said the people might lose faith in the navy if they knew the truth, and it was such an isolated incident. But something terrible happened between the dragon and the giant noorestones—”

  “Dragons hoard noorestones.” Ilina gripped the back of a chair so hard her knuckles stood sharp. “They lick noorestones. A dragon wouldn’t use noorestones to hurt anyone.”

  Hristo placed his hand on her shoulder. “I don’t think that’s what Mira is saying.”

  I shook my head. “Those were the arguments made. I heard the survivor’s whole story when she came before the council. She saw the dragon on one of the noorestones. A lot of councilors thought the explosion was because of the noorestones’ size. The crystals required to power a vessel like the Infinity or Star-Touched are enormous. And rare. They’re not as stable as the smaller stones.”

  Ilina stared at me.

  I nodded. “After an investigation, it was determined the incident was unlikely to happen again. Still, new regulations were put in place for safety.”

  “So what does this mean?” Hristo handed the shipping order back to me. “Both dragons and giant noorestones are going to the Algotti Empire?”

  I touched the descriptions of noorestones, my fingernail scraping across the paper. “Look at this. These stones are huge. Ten stones could power three ships like the Star-Touched. Why aren’t those stones going to new ships of that class for the Fallen Isles?”

  Color drained from their faces as they both realized what I had:

  Someone was sending our dragons to our enemies, along with objects that would give the empire the ability to travel to us more quickly—or to attack us.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  IT WAS AN OPPRESSIVE SORT OF DARKNESS, THE KIND of darkness that smothered even sound.

  I couldn’t see. I couldn’t hear. I’d suddenly stopped existing.

  But when I moved my arm, my fingers hit the wall. No thump, though. No auditory evidence of the wall’s existence and no sign the nine other people in the room were still here, either. I couldn’t even hear the pounding of my own heartbeat, though it thrummed against my chest, painful and violent. (Five, six, seven . . .)

  I’d never realized how many noises my own body made: the sound of swallowing, the hiss of air through my nose, the crack in my knees when I crouched and scrambled away from where the warriors had last seen me. Only with the absence of those sounds did I realize how I’d used them to give me a sense of orientation.

  Now I didn’t know where the others were, if they were even alive. The warriors had been after me. Altan had been about to slap me. But now? Nothing.

  I crawled under the table.

  Complete darkness.

  Complete silence.

  The days of being trapped alone in my cell crashed down on me again, making me sway through the inky space. I would crumble like this. If the lights ever came back, if sound ever returned, Altan and his friends would find me huddled beneath the table, wondering if I was trapped somewhere between life and death.

  And what about Aaru? He’d been . . . tortured. While I’d done nothing to stop it.

  The table was in the same place as Before Darkness; I had to assume everything else was as well. Including Aaru.

  With a murmured prayer for bravery—which, of course, I couldn’t even hear echoed in my head—I scooted out from under the table (not the way I’d come, where the guards and Altan would be) and risked the two steps to where Altan had left his jacket on the other chair.

  It was still there, the leather soft and worn in my fingers. My sense of touch, at least, remained. As I mapped the room in my head, a part of me wondered who else was risking movement. Could they see or hear? Maybe I was the only one trapped in this void of sight and sound.

  My stomach twisted at the thought. If I was the only one, everyone might be watching me. I could be grabbed at any moment.

  But nothing had happened yet. And I had to move if I wanted to help Aaru. It was my fault he was here. It was my responsibility to help him.

  I draped the jacket over my shoulders and let my numbers do the work. One, two, three . . . I stepped in Aaru’s direction, both of my hands slightly in front of me, in case I miscalculated.

  My foot slid over a sharp, slick object that cut through my slipper and grazed the sole of my foot, but didn’t break the skin. Still. I had to be more careful. The object had made no scrape on the stone, offered no indication of what it might be. There could be more debris from . . . whatever had happened.

  It took extra time, and I had no idea how long this darkness and silence would last, but I had to know what I’d stepped on. I knelt and felt around the floor until my fingers brushed the offending object. It was slightly warm, smooth sided, and sharp along the edges. Crystalline.

  A noorestone shard.

  One—or maybe more—of the noorestones had exploded. I remembered now.

  I forced myself three more steps, even more cautious as I crept toward Aaru. Seven more shards rolled under my feet, and countless—even to me—tiny fragments slipped beneath me, like the floor was covered in a thin layer of sand.

  Here. I should be standing right in front of Aaru. But this vast and unending silence locked away any shout for help, any whisper of reassurance, any gasp of pain.

  “Please, Damina.” The silence swallowed my voice.

  I lifted my hand ahead of me until my fingertips grazed hot skin. Aaru, I hoped. His head, most likely.

  He didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. Maybe he was dead.

  That was a horrible thought. I wanted to crush it as soon as it formed. But it was a possibility, wasn’t it?

  “Shut up.” Like the anxiety ever listened. Like I even had a voice now.

  My fingers crept upward along a smooth plane of skin. His cheek, it felt like. I let my fingers travel up his temple until they reached the strap on his forehead. I searched for the buckle, unclipped it, and slid the leather off.

&nbs
p; As fast as possible, I found the other five straps and unclipped them, then lifted his feet out of the basins. Away from the hot noorestones.

  With Aaru free of the bindings, I threw the jacket over him. He was burning up, but I recalled chills during my fever; he’d need the warmth. If he was alive. I couldn’t tell if he was, or how I was supposed to get him out of here, or if there was any sort of hope at all.

  I took Aaru by the shoulders and shook him. “Wake up.” But, of course, I had no voice here. There was only silence.

  ::Wake up,:: I tapped against his shoulder.

  Nothing. He didn’t move.

  I let one hand slide down to his chest, and the other up to his throat. Slowly, distantly, I found what I’d been seeking: his pulse fluttered under my fingertips, and his chest lifted with breath. He had a heartbeat.

  Just as I was ready to try throwing Aaru over my shoulder, a haze of blue light flashed through the room. Noorestone light.

  It vanished quickly, leaving me no time to inspect Aaru or look for the other occupants of the room. Its only gift was light spots that danced in front of my eyes, and heavy tears squeezing from between my eyelids. I blinked them away. Now, I knew four things:

  1. I was not blind.

  2. The lights were not gone forever.

  3. Altan and his friends would be furious.

  4. I had to move.

  In the dark again, I grabbed for Aaru’s arm and pulled him forward. His whole body shuddered as he slumped toward me. I angled my right shoulder under him and tried to lift, but in spite of being so thin, he was heavy. Or I just wasn’t very strong.

  Light tore through the darkness again, and this time, I caught hints of movement from the guards. Or maybe that had been Rosa; the light was gone too soon for me to tell.

  “Come on,” I hissed. I could hear my own voice, though it was muffled inside my head. In addition to not being blind, it seemed I wasn’t deaf, either. Likely, I still existed as well, which was distantly comforting.