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 one 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?”
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.