Kauf’s studded, spiked portcullis is flung wide open. I see no wagons making their way into the prison—it is too late in the season for traders. When I hear a whip crack, I finally understand why the gates aren’t shut. A cry breaks the quiet of the morning, and I see several bent, gaunt figures shuffling out of the gate under the unforgiving eye of a Mask. My hands go for my dagger, though I know I can do nothing with it. Afya and I watched from the woods as pits were dug outside the prison. We watched as the Martials filled those pits with dead Scholars.
If I want the rest of the Scholars in the prison to escape, I cannot reveal my position. But still, I force myself to watch. To bear witness. To remember this image so that these lives are not forgotten.
When the Scholars disappear around the eastern edge of Kauf’s wall, I slide through the gates. This path is not unfamiliar to me. Elias and I have exchanged messages for days through Tas, and I’ve come this way every time. Still, I stiffen as I pass the eight legionnaires who stand watch at the base of Kauf’s entry gate. The space between my shoulder blades twinges, and I look up at the battlements, where archers patrol.
As I cross the garishly lit prison yard, I try to avoid looking to the right at the two giant wooden pens where the Martials keep the Scholar prisoners.
But in the end, I cannot help but stare. Two wagons, each half-filled with the dead, are parked beside the closest pen. A group of younger, maskless Martials—Fivers—load in more dead Scholars, those who haven’t survived the cold.
Bee and many of the others can get them weapons, Tas had said. Hidden in slop buckets and rags. Not knives or scims, but spearheads, broken arrows, brass beaters.
Though the Martials have already killed hundreds of my people, a thousand Scholars still sit in those pens, awaiting death. They are ill, starved, and half-frozen from the cold. Even if everything goes as planned, I do not know if they have enough strength to take on the prison guards when the time comes, especially with such crude weaponry.
Then again, it’s not as if we have many other choices.
At this hour, there are few soldiers wandering the blindingly bright halls of Kauf. Still, I sneak along the walls and steer clear of the few guards on duty. My eyes flit briefly to the entrances that lead to the Scholar pits. I passed them the first day I came here, when they were still occupied. Moments after, I had to run to find a place to retch.
I make my way down the entry hall, through the rotunda and past the staircase that, according to Helene Aquilla, leads up to Masks’ quarters and the Warden’s office. Time for you soon enough. A great steel door looms ominously on one side of the rotunda wall. The interrogation block. Darin is down there. Right now. Yards away.
Kauf’s drums thud out the time: half past five in the morning. The hallway that leads to the Martial barracks, kitchen, and storage closets is far busier than the rest of the prison. Talk and laughter drifts from the mess hall. I smell eggs, grease, and burned bread. A legionnaire veers out of a room just ahead of me, and I stifle a gasp as he passes within a hair’s breadth. He must hear me, because his hand falls to his scim and he looks around.
I don’t dare to breathe until he moves on. Too close, Laia.
Go past the kitchens, Helene Aquilla told me. The oil storage is at the very end of the hall. The torch-lighters are always coming and going, so whatever you’re planning, you’ll have to move quickly.
When I find the closet, I am forced to wait as a sullen-faced aux wrestles out a barrel of pitch and rolls it down the hall. He leaves the door cracked open, and I eye the closet’s contents. Drums of pitch line its base like a row of stout soldiers. Above them sit cans the length of my forearm and the width of my hand. Blue-fire oil, the translucent yellow substance the Empire imports from Marinn. It reeks of rotted leaves and sulfur, but it will be more difficult to spot than pitch when I dribble it all over the prison.
It takes me nearly a half hour to empty out a dozen canisters in the back hallways and the rotunda. I stuff each can back in the closet when it is empty, hoping no one notices until it’s too late. Then I pack three more cans into my now bulging bag and enter the kitchen. A Plebeian lords over the stoves, bellowing orders at Scholar slave children. The children whiz around, their speed driven by fear. They are, presumably, exempt from the culling going on outside. My mouth twists in disgust. The Warden needs at least a few drudges to continue doing the chores around here.
I spot Bee, her thin arms shaking beneath a tray of dirty dishes from the mess hall. I sidle toward her, stopping often to avoid the scurrying bodies around me. She jumps when I speak in her ear, but covers her surprise swiftly.
“Bee,” I say. “In fifteen minutes, light the fire.”
She nods imperceptibly, and I move out of the kitchen and to the rotunda. The drum tower thuds six times. According to Helene, the Warden will head to the interrogation cells in a quarter-hour. No time, Laia. Move.
I bolt up the rotunda’s narrow stone staircase. It ends in a wood-beamed hallway lined with dozens of doors. Masks’ quarters. Even as I get to work, the silver-faced monsters exit their quarters and head down the stairs. Every time one passes, my stomach clenches and I look down at myself, making sure my invisibility is still intact.
“Do you smell something?” A short, bearded Mask stumps down the hall with a leaner companion, only to stop a few feet from me. He takes a deep sniff of the air. The other Mask shrugs, grunts, and moves on. But the bearded Mask continues to look about, sniffing along the walls like a hound that’s caught a scent. He stops short at one of the beams I’ve anointed with oil, his eyes dropping to the pool gleaming at its base.
“What in the hells …” As he kneels down, I slip behind him, to the end of the hallway. He spins at the sound of my footsteps, his ears keen. I feel my invisibility falter at the rasp of his scim leaving its scabbard. I grab a torch off the wall. The Mask gapes at it. Too late, I realize that my invisibility extends to the wood and pitch, but not the flame itself.
He swings his sword, and startled, I back away. My invisibility drops entirely, a strange rippling that starts at my forehead and cascades down to my feet.
The Mask’s eyes widen, and he lunges. “Witch!”
I throw myself out of his path, hurling the torch at the nearest pool of oil. It flares with a roar, distracting the Mask, and I use the moment to tear away from him.
Disappear, I tell myself. Disappear! But I’m going too fast—it’s not working.
But it must work, or I’m dead. Now, I scream in my mind. The familiar ripple runs back over me just as a tall, thin figure steps out of a hallway and swivels his triangular head toward me.
Though I wasn’t sure I’d recognize him based on Helene’s description, I know him immediately. The Warden.
The Warden blinks, and I cannot tell if he saw me wink out of sight or not. I don’t wait to find out. I hurl another can of blue-fire oil at his feet, rip two torches off the wall, and throw one down. When he shouts and jumps back, I swerve around him and hurtle down the stairs two by two, dropping the last can of oil as I do and pitching the final torch over my shoulder. I hear the whoosh of flame as the stair railing catches fire.
I have no time to look back. Soldiers rush through the rotunda, and smoke pours from the hallway near the kitchens. Yes, Bee! I pivot around to the back of the staircase, the spot where Elias said he would meet me.
A heavy thud sounds on the staircase. The Warden has leaped over the fire and stands in the rotunda. He grabs a nearby aux by the collar and snarls at him: “Have the drum tower deliver the evacuation message. Auxes are to herd the prisoners in the yard and muster a cordon of spearmen to prevent escape. Double the perimeter guard. The rest of you”—his crisp roar brings every soldier in earshot to attention—“proceed with the evacuation in an orderly fashion. The prison is under attack from within. Our enemy seeks to sow chaos. Do not let them succeed.”
The Warden turns to the interrogation cells, pulling open the door just as three Masks spill out.
“Bleeding inferno down there, Warden,” one of them says.
“And the prisoners?”
“Only the two, both still in their cells.”