An Ember in the Ashes. Sabaa Tahir

in her black uniform, with her shining braid encircling her head like a crown, she’s as beautiful as winter’s first snow. I watch her long fingers at her nape, watch her lick her lips. I wonder what it would be like to kiss that mouth, to push her to the window and press my body against hers, to pull out the pins in her hair, to feel its softness between my fingers.

      ‘Uh … Elias?’

      ‘Hmm …’ I realize I’ve been staring and snap out of it. Fantasizing about your best friend, Elias. Pathetic. ‘Sorry. Just … tired. Let’s go.’

      Hel gives me a strange look and nods at my mask, still sitting on the bed. ‘You might need that.’

      ‘Right.’ Appearing without one’s mask is a whipping offence. I haven’t seen any Skull maskless since we were fourteen. Other than Hel, none of them have seen my face, either.

      I put the mask on, trying not to shudder at the eagerness with which it attaches to me. One day left. Then I’ll take it off forever.

      The sunset drums thunder as we emerge from the barracks. The blue sky deepens to violet, and the searing desert air cools. Evening’s shadows blend with the dark stones of Blackcliff, making the blockish buildings appear unnaturally large. My eyes rove the shadows, seeking out threats, a habit from my years as a Fiver. I feel, for an instant, as if the shadows are looking back at me. But then the sensation fades.

      ‘Do you think the Augurs will attend graduation?’ Hel asks.

      No, I want to say. Our holy men have better things to do, like locking themselves up in caves and reading sheep entrails.

      ‘Doubt it,’ is all I say.

      ‘I guess it would get tedious after five hundred years.’ Helene says this without a trace of irony, and I wince at the sheer idiocy of the idea. How can someone as intelligent as Helene actually think the Augurs are immortal?

      But then, she’s not the only one. Martials believe that the Augurs’ ‘power’ comes from being possessed by the spirits of the dead. Masks, in particular, revere the Augurs, for it is the Augurs who decide which Martial children will attend Blackcliff. It is the Augurs who give us our masks. And we’re taught that it was the Augurs who raised Blackcliff in a single day, five centuries ago.

      There are only fourteen of the red-eyed bastards, but on the rare occasions that they appear, everyone defers to them. Many of the Empire’s leaders – generals, the Blood Shrike, even the Emperor – make a yearly pilgrimage to the Augurs’ mountain lair, seeking counsel on matters of state. And though it’s clear to anyone with an ounce of logic that they are a pack of charlatans, they’re lionized throughout the Empire not just as immortal, but as oracles and mind-readers.

      Most Blackcliff students only see the Augurs twice in our lives: when we’re chosen for Blackcliff and when we’re given our masks. But Helene has always had a particular fascination with the holy men – it’s no surprise that she hoped they’d come to graduation.

      I respect Helene, but on this, we don’t agree. Martial myths are as believable as Tribal fables of jinn and the Nightbringer.

      Grandfather is one of the few Masks who doesn’t believe in Augur rubbish, and I repeat his mantra in my head. The field of battle is my temple. The swordpoint is my priest. The dance of death is my prayer. The killing blow is my release. The mantra is all I’ve ever needed.

      It takes all my control to hold my tongue. Helene notices.

      ‘Elias,’ she says. ‘I’m proud of you.’ Her tone is strangely formal. ‘I know you’ve struggled. Your mother …’ She glances around and drops her voice. The Commandant has spies everywhere. ‘Your mother’s been harder on you than on any of the rest of us. But you showed her. You worked hard. You did everything right.’

      Her voice is so sincere that for a moment, I waver. In two days, she won’t think such things. In two days, she will hate me.

       Remember Barrius. Remember what you’ll be expected to do after graduation.

      I jostle her shoulder. ‘Are you turning sappy and girly on me?’

      ‘Forget it, swine.’ She punches me on the arm. ‘I was just trying to be nice.’

      My laugh is falsely hearty. They’ll send you to hunt me down when I run. You and the others, the men I call brothers.

      We reach the mess hall, and the cacophony within hits us like a wave – laughter and boasts and the raucous talk of three thousand young men on the verge of leave or graduation. It’s never this loud when the Commandant is in attendance, and I relax marginally, glad to avoid her.

      Hel pulls me to one of the dozens of long tables, where Faris is regaling the rest of our friends with a tale of his latest escapade at the riverside brothels. Even Demetrius, ever haunted by his dead brother, cracks a smile.

      Faris leers, glancing between us suggestively. ‘You two took your time.’

      ‘Veturius was making himself pretty just for you.’ Hel shoves Faris’s boulder-like body over, and we sit. ‘I had to drag him away from his mirror.’

      The rest of the table hoots, and Leander, one of Hel’s soldiers, calls for Faris to finish his story. Beside me, Dex is arguing with Hel’s second lieutenant, Tristas. He’s an earnest, dark-haired boy with a deceptively innocent look to his wide blue eyes, and his fiancée’s name, AELIA, tattooed in block letters on his bicep.

      Tristas leans forward. ‘The Emperor’s nearly seventy, and he has no male issue. This year might be the year. The year the Augurs choose a new Emperor. A new dynasty. I was talking to Aelia about it—’

      ‘Every year, someone thinks it’s the year.’ Dex rolls his eyes. ‘Every year, it’s not. Elias, tell him. Tell Tristas he’s an idiot.’

      ‘Tristas, you’re an idiot.’

      ‘But the Augurs say—’

      I snort quietly, and Helene gives me a sharp look. Keep your doubts to yourself, Elias. I busy myself with piling food on two plates and shove one toward her. ‘Here,’ I say. ‘Have some slop.’

      ‘What is it, anyway?’ Hel pokes at the mash and takes a tentative sniff. ‘Cow dung?’

      ‘No whining,’ Faris says through a mouthful of food. ‘Pity the Fivers. They have to come back to this after four years of happily robbing farmhouses.’

      ‘Pity the Yearlings,’ Demetrius counters. ‘Can you imagine another twelve years? Thirteen?’

      Across the hall, most of the Yearlings smile and laugh like everyone else. But some watch us, the way starving foxes might watch a lion – hungry for what we have.

      I imagine half of them gone, half the laughter silenced, half the bodies cold. For that is what will happen in the years of deprivation and torment ahead of them. And they will face it either by living or dying, either by accepting or questioning. The ones who question are usually the ones who die.

      ‘They don’t seem to care much about Barrius.’ The words are out of my mouth before I can help myself. Beside me, Helene’s body stiffens like water freezing into ice. Dex frowns in disapproval, a comment dying on his lips, and silence falls across our table.

      ‘Why would they be upset?’ Marcus, sitting one table away with Zak and a knot of cronies, speaks up. ‘That scum got what he deserved. I only wished he’d lasted longer so he could have suffered more.’

      ‘No one asked what you think, Snake,’ Helene says. ‘Anyway, kid’s dead now.’

      ‘Lucky him.’ Faris picks up a forkful of food and lets it plop unappetizingly back onto his steel plate. ‘At least he doesn’t have to eat this swill anymore.’

      A low chuckle runs up and down the table, and conversation picks up again. But Marcus smells blood, and his