Bair and I certainly counted as insurgents with what we were doing—by burying our dead we were going against a law that had been in place since the last uprising. The uprising that had killed my father in an execution firing line. The thought of it nearly froze my limbs and prevented me from walking. It was only through sheer force of will that I still followed Bair through the hollow streets devoured by silence and fear. If we did get stopped by a Citadel sentinel, we didn’t even have a weapon to protect ourselves with and it might be us this time facing an execution squad.
“Bair, did you bring a rifle?” My hushed voice fell like a cymbal crash in the quiet streets.
He snorted in response. “Traded that months ago for extra rations.” He glanced back at me, his face curious. “The other villagers won’t bother us if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Not for them.” I shook my head, wishing I’d had the foresight to bring Baba’s gun that was hidden away under Nani’s bed.
He was quiet so long I didn’t think he’d answer me. “You wouldn’t shoot a Citadel soldier, Yaseema. Neither of us would.”
I clutched my shovel tighter at his certainty that I wouldn’t fight.
He didn’t know what anger brewed under the surface. He had no idea what I had already done to thwart the Citadel, the risks I’d already taken. I released a deep breath, a puff of smoke in the cold air.
Would I shoot a soldier?
Even after all this time, I didn’t know if I had the bravery of my father in me to directly go against them, out in the open. My treason was in the shadows, in the halls of fae vaults, deep under the earth.
Bair pulled to a stop in front of a dilapidated house at the edge of the village, the stone crumbling like the edge of a cliff wracked by one too many waves.
“Here?” I breathed, realizing that I knew this house. Dread sat in my stomach and began to fester, its black tendrils curling around my body.
“Yes. The man who lived here killed himself.”
“Ghassan Javed?” I gasped, taking a step back.
“You knew him?” Bair stared at me, his brow furrowing.
“Yes... I... he used to work at the Citadel. As an excavator.” He was one of the few Astolans who even made it to the position of excavator, before he was fired for arguing with the chief excavator. They had claimed he’d stolen something and sent him packing.
So many Astolans had looked up to him, especially after everything he’d done to make working conditions at the Citadel better for us.
“I can’t believe he killed himself,” I whispered, looking at the little crumbled house. Sorrow filled my bones. He’d died alone, and by his own hand. That wasn’t the Ghassan I knew.
“Things are hard when the Citadel marks you,” muttered Bair. “He wasn’t allowed to be hired anywhere, and so he starved.”
My chest felt hollow, as if my heart had been pulled out of me. I remembered his smile every morning when I came into the archives at the Citadel, his little wave when he passed me in the bookstacks.
And now he was dead.
Anger and sorrow pulsed in my veins as I wondered what the end of his days would have been like, the desperation it took for him to get to this point.
Those that didn’t have the Citadel ration got less than nothing, only what they could scrape together from their own gardens and meagre goats. The Citadel controlled all livestock, trade, and crops as the Empress took more and more from us. Last winter I stepped over bodies of two Astolans who had died of the famine, their corpses left to rot in the streets outside the Citadel. I tried my best to avert my eyes from their bloated bellies and protruding ribs. My heart had pounded with rage, my hands shaking so badly I had to hide them in the tan skirt of my Citadel uniform.
I hadn’t slept that night.
Instead, I’d focused my fury on trying to stop the slow leaching of life magic from Astola. I began searching for a hidden fae relic the Citadel had been looking for for over a year.
And I’d found it.
Using my mother’s journal which detailed fae history in Astola, the maps I’d unearthed in the archives, and clues I’d sifted from the folk songs my mother had collected and recorded, I’d managed to locate the ornate golden cup with an ancient fae inscription carved into the bottom. It was hidden in a small cave in the low mountains, a place the Citadel hadn’t yet searched. It had cracked my heart in two, but I destroyed the fae vault I’d taken it from, making the theft look like vandalism. I then reburied the goblet near the River, and new sprouts grew from the earth above it, yielding onions and a small harvest for the nearby village. That had been the first time I’d stolen a relic from the Empire and given it back to the people of Astola.
But my anger had nearly cost me.
The Citadel excavators had eventually found the fae vault where the relic had been hidden. Despite the fact I had covered my tracks, they still clamped down on their security when they’d discovered the relic was taken.
The senior excavators breathed down the necks of the scholars, so much so that I’d had to do my secret research at night over candlelight in my bedroom, instead of covertly in the archives. But it was probably a good thing I had to be more careful—I knew they were still watching me—the daughter of an executed rebel who couldn’t fully be trusted, despite my job at the Citadel. It had been the start of my small defiance, a way I could keep what was being taken from us. And yet, it hadn’t been enough.
I stared at the door to Ghassan’s house, wishing I’d known he had ended up like this, wishing I’d been able to stop it.
