reach for its promise, knew it offered her salvation.
“More,” she said. “Please, more.”
A new sound reached her ears—not the clamor of the other prisoners. Nor was it Salikh shouting strange names at her, as he did with such persistence.
“Companion, remember yourself. Remember Hira! Remember who you are!”
It was the horrible sound, the sound that intruded on her daydreams: the sputtering hiss of the hose. The tray of needles was gone, replaced by the canister she had come to know with horror. She returned to her body with a thump. She gazed at the tall man in confusion. Now there were other men with him. Three men instead of three heads.
“What’s this?” she asked. “What have you done with the needle?”
A hollow voice echoed through the gas mask. “This is a test,” it said. “The white needle amplifies the effects of the gas. Some die on its first application; others last for months. We are attempting to accelerate its effects.”
“No,” Sinnia whispered. “Give me the white needle. Can’t you see that I need it?”
“Oh, yes, I can see.” She heard a sickening anticipation in the eerie throb of the tall man’s voice. “But this is my first experiment on a Companion of Hira. I want you to live through the night.”
AN INHUMAN SCREAM PIERCED THE WALLS. IT REBOUNDED THROUGH the prison’s courtyard, followed by a flurry of activity and noise. It sounded like an animal, twisted and broken in the savage rites of death. But Elena knew the scream—she’d heard it from her own throat, as a source of infinite horror, and also from Larisa, a sound that had almost killed her.
The Technologist had come.
The scream sounded again. It was a woman’s scream; it could have been one of the followers of the Usul Jade.
But in her heart, Elena knew it wasn’t. She knew it was the Companion of Hira, the woman she’d never met—a woman she was risking their lives for. All at Larisa’s bidding, while Illarion paced like a hungry jackal at their side.
“What’s that noise?”
Elena looked at him with hatred in her heart. “That noise is you and everything you stand for. The Ahdath, the Crimson Watch. Torturers who now inflict their savagery on a Companion of Hira.”
Illarion stared back at her, his clever face unreadable.
“Go,” she muttered. “The lights will sweep from the tower in thirty seconds. If we run out of time, you must divert their attention at the door.”
“I know what I’m doing, Anya. Whether you believe it or not.”
Larisa and Elena waited in the shadows as Illarion crossed Jaslyk’s courtyard. Torches flared at the gate, men’s voices ringing out. Illarion showed them something from his pack. A pass? A document? Elena couldn’t guess.
“Now.”
She tugged at her sister’s hand, guiding her through the barricades in the courtyard, the secret hiding places, the small patches of cover, ducking out of the path of the lights. Dogs began to howl in the distance. A patrol shifted on the perimeter, doubling back to the gate. The Salikh sisters moved forward, darting ahead under the great weight of the ominously pooling shadows.
The courtyard was as vast as the prison itself. Neither sister could look at its walls with anything other than despair. How many members of the resistance had been broken at Jaslyk? Drugaddled and pain-ridden, they had told the Crimson Watch everything they knew before they had died, painfully, pitilessly rendered from themselves. Based on their confessions, new prisoners had been captured, Basmachi hunted through the Hazing, and still there was no shortage of screams to shatter the sightless eyes that watched over Jaslyk.
One day she’d burn the prison down.
But not this night. She had no fighters or armory at her disposal. All she had was Larisa, and she could see Larisa was faltering, overcome by the memory of her time at Jaslyk. Both sisters had been drugged, raped, and tortured; both had suffered the full range of the Technologist’s experiments. Both had lost their ability to hear the Claim. Though the loss of it had once been unbearable, for Larisa’s sake, she had pretended to a strength she didn’t possess.
“Don’t think of it, Larisa.”
Another high-pitched scream scraped against the walls, spurring Elena on. The sisters found their way to the door that fronted the basin of the lake. There were dogs at the door, accompanied by guards. They had picked up the sisters’ scent, and now they began to howl.
“Hurry.”
Behind the outer rings of its walls, Jaslyk was composed of irregular shapes designed to maximize the interior space, while giving guards and staff the ability to transition easily between the courtyard and the prison blocks. This allowed the Crimson Watch greater vigilance. It also reduced the possibility of escape. Elena and Ruslan’s mission to rescue Larisa, a year ago, was the last time a prisoner had left Jaslyk alive.
But the diamond-shaped construction of the prison also concealed a weakness. The Basmachi had been able to dig tunnels beneath the transition areas, and the Crimson Watch couldn’t cover them all, particularly as more and more men were being summoned to the Wall.
The sisters skirted the barricades that had been erected over Larisa’s escape route.
It was meant as a feint, of course. Elena pressed her sister’s hand, holding a finger to her lips. She had no intention of using the same tunnel. One of the dogs barked, closer than she expected. She stumbled against the barricade. Her hand pulled something from the pack she carried—a scented powder that she flung over the risers. The dogs began a frantic whining. She pulled Larisa around a corner. “Let them cover their ears for once.”
She led Larisa along the south wall, away from the patrol. As they’d planned, the torches along the southern perimeter had been redirected to the gate, where Illarion engaged the guards. It was the first sign to suggest that perhaps Illarion could be trusted.
Feeling her way along the wall, Elena stopped when she came to the stone she had etched with Basmachi signals. She’d imprinted each of the prison blocks with a series of directions, distinguishing the Technologist’s Wing from the others. She picked out the command center at the intersection of the blocks, a heavily guarded nexus she knew they needed to avoid.
“It’s here.”
Elena dropped to her knees, running her hands along the stone base of the wall. She looked over her shoulder at Larisa. “What’s our mission here?”
She knew the answer; she was making sure Larisa understood the cost of what they were leaving undone: their friends in the resistance left behind to face the Technologist.
Larisa hesitated. Then she confirmed her choice. “The Companion of Hira. Her safety is paramount now.”
Elena shifted a stone. A narrow and airless passageway opened beneath it. She’d heard a dozen rumors about the fall of the Registan, yet she still didn’t know which of the rumors were true. “Why? Because you swore an oath to the Silver Mage? Did his comeliness bewitch you?” This had been rumored as well.
Larisa slid into the tunnel first, Elena following behind, careful to shelter her ribs. She’d smoked timbaku to dull the pain inflicted by the Ahdath’s blade in Marakand, something she’d withheld from Illarion. She wasn’t in the habit of confessing weakness, especially to an Ahdath. Once they reached the corridors of Jaslyk, her injury would be the least of her concerns.
“Don’t insult me,” Larisa answered. “You know what I think of men. I swore my oath to the First Oralist. And I would do it again.” She turned to face Elena suddenly, a cold and deadly warning in her eyes. “We have one purpose, Elena, one.