THE NEXT DAY, I STOPPED EATING DINNER.
Well, mostly. I ate just enough to convince the guards and other prisoners that I wasn’t doing anything wrong, but then I pulled out strips of silk I’d torn from the remnants of my dress, and wrapped bread and fruit and slabs of fried meat. Everything went into my pockets and down my shirt.
“What are you doing?” Tirta hissed as I took my tray to her window. “You’re going to get in trouble again.”
“The Book of Love says to ensure our neighbors have enough to eat, and my neighbors are in need. If I can help, I should.”
“Is it Gerel?” Her frown said she disapproved.
“If I try hard enough, she will like me.” Surely Tirta could understand. This was a basic Daminan need: without friends, without love, we could not be whole. I might not have had the divine gifts that made people want to like me, but that didn’t mean the desire wasn’t there. “But also for the boy in the cell next to mine.”
Tirta’s eyes widened. “Do they mean that much to you?”
If I told her how much I wanted to escape, and about my alliance with Aaru, she’d protest. Instead, I whispered, “Please don’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t.” And, because she was Tirta and she was kind, she slipped a small container of water through the window. It wasn’t much—a few swallows at best—but I could give it to Gerel; Aaru had his cup.
“Fancy!” Altan roared from the far side of the mess hall, and I sucked in my stomach as far as I could, as though I stood a chance at hiding all the food stashed inside my shirt.
His eyes narrowed, but if he noticed the bulge, he didn’t mention it. Instead, he escorted me back to the first level without speaking. Or, rather, with the sort of expectant quiet that hinted he was waiting for me to speak first.
In the anteroom, he paused before opening the cellblock door. We stood alone in a small room, me with a bundle of contraband food stuffed into my shirt, and him with his arms crossed over his chest. “This is your chance to tell me what else you know.”
My heart thrummed in my chest. Last time he’d confronted me outside the cellblock, he’d left me in the dark.
“I don’t know anything.” The words came breathy. Scared.
He sighed and opened the door. Voices threaded through the hall, bringing a slight measure of relief. “All right,” Altan said. “Have it your way.” Finally, I was deposited in my cell, along with the dark sense that he had something terrible in mind.
As soon as he was gone, I divided the food into three even parcels, then took the first one under the bed. “Aaru.”
He was already there. ::Mira,:: he tapped, and then switched to speech. “I have questions.”
“About?” A thread of worry spun through me. Had he figured out my identity?
“How dragons make fire.”
Oh. Now that I was happy to answer. “Take this. Then I’ll tell you more than you ever wanted to know.” I pressed the package of food through the hole.
A moment later, he peeled open the layers of silk. “Mira.”
I waited.
“This is too much.”
“It’s not nearly enough.” When I slipped my hand through the hole to his side, flashes of last night played through my mind. The way his skin had heated under my fingers, the quickness of his breath, but mostly the in-between moments, when we’d finished discussing a topic and hadn’t yet found a new one. I should have pulled my hand away. Or he should have. But neither of us did.
And now, his hand breezed over mine again. ::You need to eat too.::
::I should have been bringing food for you all along. I get plenty, and allies share resources.:: I scooted out from under the bed before he could protest further. “Gerel, I hope you’re good at catching.”
“Keep it.” She crossed her arms. “After we were moved out, Aaru told me about your alliance, but alliances with you are too dangerous. It’s not worth the risk.”
“Don’t you want to”—I dropped my voice—“escape?”
“I want to live.”
“This isn’t living.”
She glared, and I almost backed down, but warriors admired strength. She hadn’t said anything about the way I mimicked her exercises, but there was a sense of approval sometimes. She didn’t talk with me the way Aaru did, but she liked me better than the previous occupant of my cell and she was glad I wasn’t dead. That was something.
“Fine. I’m not really hungry, but toss it over.”
I did. First the bundle of food, the ends of the silk tucked into a fold so it wouldn’t come undone, and then the small water pouch Tirta had given me.
The food was gone before I realized she’d even opened the bundle.
“I have another,” I said. “For Chenda.”
In the cell next to Gerel’s, Chenda looked up at the sound of her name. But she didn’t move or reach out for her food.
“Pass it to her.” I tossed Gerel the third package, and though she tried to hand it around the bars, she was resolutely ignored.
“I don’t think she wants it.” Gerel eyed the bundle like she’d gladly dispose of its contents.
“We should share it,” I said at last. I wouldn’t accept defeat, though. This would not be my last overture of friendship. “If Chenda won’t eat it, then we should share it with the others.”
“You have food?” asked the singing girl down the line. Kumas. “I love food.”
Gerel frowned, but she said, “Yes, Mira brought food for you all. Make sure you share it evenly.”
There wasn’t much food to split between four people, and it would be a challenge to toss the parcel from cell to cell without spilling, especially since most of the cells weren’t currently occupied.
Gerel barked dire warnings about what would happen if they dropped food, or if the guards caught them, or if they even whispered about what I’d done. Miraculously, everyone swore to keep silent as they took some of the food and passed the rest on.
After several minutes went by, filled only with quiet moans of food-induced pleasure, the silk square came back to me. I pulled out a knot, and a smooth brown pebble fell to the floor: a weight, so the cloth could be tossed.
“Good job,” Gerel said. “They’re yours now.”
That hadn’t been the point of bringing food, but I hoped she was right.
AARU AND I made a short list of ways to prepare for our escape:
1. Help allies by feeding them.
2. Get stronger by exercising with Gerel.
3. Learn about the layout of the Pit, and especially its exits.
4. Behave for the guards so they wouldn’t suspect anything.
5. Look for opportunities to escape.
It wasn’t much, but given our limited movement within the Pit, the sharp knife of constant hunger, and our general lack of experience in great escapes, it was what we had. As if it were a dream that might slip away if we didn’t discuss it, we spent the next decan polishing our plan until it felt real.
And in the pure blackness after the noorestones went dark, I found Aaru’s hand, and we talked until we fell asleep.
“I ACCEPTED THE job.” Aaru’s whisper slithered through the dim space as I passed him a bundle of food through our hole. “Start tomorrow.”
A bright spark of hope shot through me. “Good. That gets us one step closer.”
He made a faint noise of affirmation.
“We’ve been here a month and a day now.”
Again, another noise—a barely audible hmph.
“Three decans and a day,” I said. “Thirty-one days.” Thirty-two for him, if we wanted to be accurate. Which my brain did.
Another hmph. Now he sounded a little annoyed. Of course he knew. Idris had the same calendar as the rest of the Fallen Isles.
I pulled back to the actual conversation, forcing my numbers to the background. “This is going to make a difference.”
“We will escape.”
Progress was slow, but we’d agreed from the start that we needed to be careful. Deliberate. We’d get only one chance, and we needed to make it work.
Fortunately, we had Gerel. She didn’t really believe we’d accomplish anything, but she played along. She knew the Heart better—she said—than any other trainee in her group, so she was able to give us a full list.
There were three exits:
1. The one I’d been brought through (it opened into a small grove of trees outside the city).
2. The exit for dragons (which I’d suspected, but now I had confirmation).
3. An exit into Warrior’s Circle (very public, not ideal for escape).
I’d have preferred to map the routes in my head myself, counting steps and intersections, but my movements were carefully monitored. Gerel’s instructions would have to do.
And now Aaru was going to work, too.
That meant he would be allowed out of his cell every day. He’d get to move around. Exercise. Eat. It wasn’t cleaning, like me, though. He’d been selected to work in the forge, where prisoners helped build the great chain links of the God Shackle.
Neither Aaru nor I had even half a clue about what the God Shackle was, so Gerel had rolled her eyes and explained that it was part of the Khulani solution to the Great Abandonment. Decades ago, when it was first noticed that there were fewer dragons than ever, the Khulani people had begun work on the immense chain—to literally bind their god to the seabed.
It seemed horrible to me, but the Warrior and the Lovers had such different views. It was probably a comfort to them.
::We will escape,:: Aaru repeated in quiet code, as I shimmied out from under the bed to distribute the rest of the food.
I glanced at Chenda, but her back was turned toward me, as usual. Even so, her changes were evident. Her braids looked ragged. Her copper clothes gathered snags and rips. Her perfect skin turned blotchy and blemished.
It was more difficult to see into her cell than Gerel’s, but sometimes as I walked by to and from work, I caught Chenda running her fingers across a tattered sleeve or down a long braid, like she could smooth the hairs back into position. She mourned her beauty. I understood. And that was why I kept trying to befriend her, no matter her rebukes.
Again tonight, she didn’t accept any of my food, but when the package went down the line, a few cheers went up. “Mira!” shouted Varissa. “My daughter the food bringer!”
Shortly after I’d started bringing food, Varissa—the woman who thought she had a daughter but didn’t, and thought she was from Bopha but wasn’t—decided to claim me as her daughter. I didn’t particularly want to be caught up in the fantasies of troubled minds, but resistance posed just as many problems.
I’d learned to give Aaru-like grunts when Varissa talked about our lives. She blamed our incarceration on a theft of mercy; apparently, we’d stolen bread for a homeless child with a magical singing voice and a box full of kittens. For that small crime, we’d been sentenced to the most horrible place on the Fallen Isles. At least, that was usually the story. The other story she liked involved a palm tree, a duck, and twenty-seven officer jackets “borrowed” from the town militia.
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.