“I won’t show him the passages. We must protect the resistance at all costs, and I won’t risk the Basmachi on the word of an Ahdath who survived the fall of the Registan. I doubt he was even there.”
Derision colored her voice; Illarion stiffened at the imputation of cowardice. He turned to Larisa. “I don’t need you to guide me in. I’ll say I was sent by Araxcin to assess Jaslyk’s security after the attack on the Registan.”
“Impregnability, not security.” But Elena wasn’t speaking to him. The words were prodded from some distant memory. She brooded over the sight of the prison, its black walls rising like a cliff against the night. Here there were no traceries of stone or iron, no glazed tiles or patterned bricks. No vegetation grew along the high stone walls, no creepers abloom with desert flowers. Jaslyk was a place whose ugliness couldn’t be borne, a place of unremitting death. And she knew each watchtower, each guard, each passage the Basmachi had tunneled underground like others remembered a lover’s face. The memory of it was suffocating.
They discussed the plan once more. Finally Illarion said, “Let’s go.”
But as they picked their way down the dune, he was left in no doubt that it was Elena who was in charge.
SINNIA NO LONGER NEEDED THE RESTRAINTS. HER LIMBS WERE FILLED with a wondrous languor, and the dark skin she prized was outlined with radiant flares of gold. Her arms were weightless. She was floating above the world, buoyed on a wave of inaudible sound.
She smiled at the man in the gas mask, trailing her fingers along the tray of needles. The floor of her cell was crimson and gold, colors and patterns bobbing along the Sea of Reeds. Her hands were filled with delicate spiny shells. She flung them to the shore with a smile.
“Please,” she said to the man in the gas mask. “It’s wearing off. I need more.”
A thunderous sound filled her ears. It was Salikh and the others banging against their cell doors. Salikh’s oddly insistent murmurs whispered through Sinnia’s mind, shattering the needle’s delights. She knew the others were jealous. They craved the white needle as she did—they’d do anything to steal the tall man’s attention, but she was the prisoner of choice.
Her full lips pouted. She was—what was she, again?—the words seemed difficult to recall. A woman of the Negus. A Companion of a stronghold on the banks of the High Road. She wore a pretty silk dress and—intricate bands on her arms. She tossed her head. It didn’t matter. Why should any of it matter when she was black and gold and weightless? She would soon be cast upon a sea of languid bliss. If she could ignore Salikh’s imperceptible cautions in her mind.
“The needle,” she begged again. “Give me the white needle.”
The tall man in the mask moved his head from side to side. He had three heads, each equally beautiful. He stroked a gloved hand down Sinnia’s arm, setting her on fire. When he grasped her upper arms, the tiny barbs on the palms of his gloves felt good. They scored a path on the place on her arms that had lately come to feel bare. Scarlet drops were added to the pattern of black and gold that engulfed Sinnia in an airless cocoon. Her dazzling smile indicated her sense of transcendence. But was it the white needle? Or did some other power soothe her senses? A power that was inexplicably familiar, as though rooted deep in her soul. She could feel it flickering before her—she needed to 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
