A legionnaire strides past, and a tendril of panic unfurls down my spine. “Where the burning hells is everybody?” a voice bellows near my ear.

The prisoners have learned that silence is the only way to avoid suffering. Soon, the whimper of a child breaks the quiet. The pins within are enigmas to my freezing, clumsy hands. Snow gusts down in flurries, stinging my face as I get to the first wagon and begin working the lock.

Most of the soldiers busy themselves with the horses and campfires. Six wagons sit in a half circle, with two supply carts sheltered between them. The lock picks are blades of ice in my hand. The Tribeswoman who helped me free Darin from Kauf is the only reason we know of these ghost wagons-and the prisoner they transport. Afya and her men, responding to my signal, preparing to attack. For this caravan is different.īeyond the perimeter, familiar black-clad figures move in on the camp from the trees. Still, that does not guarantee success with this caravan. But together with Afya Ara-Nur and her men, we have helped to free more than four hundred Scholars and Tribesmen over the past two months. I have not responded to the letters from Araj, the Scholar leader who escaped Kauf Prison with us. My brother has not forged a single scrap of Serric steel. From our camp on the outskirts of the Waiting Place, twenty miles from here, Darin and I have planned and carried out six raids on Empire prisoner caravans. The nearby ridgeline is empty, and the Martial auxiliary soldiers on guard do not so much as twitch. When I am through the perimeter of the prisoner caravan, I pitch my voice low and hoot like a snowy owl, common enough in this part of the Empire.Īs I prowl toward the ghost wagons, my skin prickles. Midnight passes, and the few lamps that burn in the village sputter in the rising wind. But this close to Antium, the capital, winter still whips its chill fingers across our faces.

Elsewhere in the Empire, spring has scattered its blossoms. My breath wreathes up in white clouds, like a snake undulating to some unknowable song.

I reach for my invisibility, a power awoken within me recently, and one that I’m still settling into. I rise from the snow-heavy bushes where we’ve taken cover and nod to Darin. The ghost wagons we track finally roll to a stop outside a Martial village. Though my brother does not speak much these days. Darin and I both know it, even if neither of us is willing to say it. I think I will not hear her again.Įverything about this raid feels wrong.

Sabaa tahir a reaper at the gates