Part 1
The Citadel
Chapter 1
We died in blood, their guns in our hands,
Our treasures chipped away like earth.
We died in homes, no longer our lands,
But oh, what did they birth?
—Songs of Astola,collected and compiled by Mahira Nazir
Yaseema
The knock at the door was likely for my cousin, but she was in no shape to go gravedigging tonight.
For a moment my heart lurched to my throat, and I scrambled to pack up the scrolls and books I had littered across the kitchen table, betraying me. My mother’s two thick gold bangles lay on the table, and I wrapped them up in her old dupatta, my fingers resting on them for a moment in reverence, before sticking the bangles back in the flour tin and hiding them from sight. There was a small chance it was the Citadel patrols conducting an unplanned raid, and they certainly couldn’t find out what I had been searching for in the darkest hours of the night.
But it wasn’t the Citadel patrols.
As I suspected, I opened the door to find Bair, his sunken eyes staring darkly at me, the rusted shovel slung over a shoulder that didn’t look as if it could support the weight.
“Safiyya can’t dig tonight,” I said, adjusting the spectacles on my nose to peer through the darkness at him, wanting to usher him away as quickly as possible.
I had a limited amount of time to hunt for the key to unlock the hidden vault, and he was cutting into it.
Bair’s face didn’t change at my abrupt words, but his body swayed slightly as if he were about to faint. My stomach gave a twist. The darkness under his eyes had increased since I’d last seen him, and he had a slight rasp in his breath that spoke of more than just illness.
Exhaustion. Malnourishment. Desperation.
“Have you eaten?” I asked, despite everything in my body screaming at me to get rid of him. I couldn’t afford this type of treason as well. And I couldn’t afford the time it would waste to do it.
Bair shook his head, his eyes darting around the kitchen as if it was a trick. As if his gaze could ask,what would I have eaten?
I glanced behind me to make sure my papers and books were safely tucked away, then met his eyes once more.
That dark, desperate stare broke me.
“Come.” I beckoned him inside, chewing my lip.
I weighed my options—if the Citadel found out that Bair and Safiyya were burying our dead, contrary to the Citadel’s edicts that prevented us from doing so, we’d have patrols on our doorstep in an hour. The Citadel—and by extension, the Angrezian Empire—viewed Astolan attempts to follow our traditional customs as both backward and rebellious. If we didn’t bury those who had died, the Citadel would cremate them, which meant they would never get their proper funeral rites. And they would never get a chance to cross over into the afterlife.
But if Bair and Safiyya got caught, they’d likely be executed.
The Citadel would then have an excuse to search our tiny house in Ginshal village at the edge of the mango orchard and would discover more than just the treason of going against the antiburial edicts. They’d discover my research, the maps to other lost fae relics I was searching for, and my mother’s bangles.
They’d find an entire revolution.
But Safiyya could barely lift her head from fever, and Bair couldn’t bury the bodies on his own. Not when he looked like he’d blow over with a strong wind.
And given that, he needed to be fed before anything else.
I knew what Nani would say at giving away a portion of the small ration I received from my job, but if Bair died on our kitchen floor, I’d have to bury him too.
Besides, I was one of the few in the village that received the extra rations from the Citadel, due to my work there. I was one of the few Astolans who was even allowed to work for them.
