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.
I spooned a bowl of too-thin lentils into a chipped bowl and handed him a flat piece of bread dusted with mustard seeds to accompany it.
It wasn’t much, but Bair stared down at the offering as if it had been a viceroy’s feast. I looked away as he devoured the soup, the familiar buried anger rising in my blood at seeing how starved he was, but Bair was not self-conscious about eating in front of me.
“Thank you, Haz Yaseema,” he said between hurried bites, not even pausing to consider if he should call me by the honorific.
I stiffened. “It’s just Yaseema, Bair. I’ve known you since we were both babes.”
He nodded, but didn’t look up at me when I corrected him.
After a few spoons, his hands no longer shook. I stepped into the hall, my feet pressing into the date palm mat. Pausing before Safiyya’s door, I let out an exhale before cracking it open.
“Safiyya,” I whispered, my voice soft in the darkness. She was a small mound on the bed, her black hair strewn about the pillow looking almost as wild as mine. The hoarse bark of a cough answered me, so rough it hurt my chest to listen to it.
There was no way she could go out sounding like that. I’d already spoon-fed her crushed black cardamom seeds in honey and made her a very weak kahwah tea with the last of the cinnamon and ginger, but she needed medicine, something that was in short supply to us.
She certainly couldn’t slip into the night with Bair, illegally bury bodies as our funeral rites demanded, and then run back to our house without attracting attention.
But something heavy sat in my chest at the thought of telling Bair that Safiyya couldn’t help him, at the villagers who desperately wanted to bury their dead having to burn them instead.
Could I do her job?
Should I?
I had been searching for the key to the fae vault that might change everything for Astola, that would bring the magic we once had back to us. I couldn’t afford to do anything that would jeopardize my search.
Something like this might be too foolish of a risk.
It was one thing to ignore what Safiyya did when she left the house in the middle of the night, to pretend she wasn’t actively engaging in open rebellion every time she slung the shovel over her shoulder, but it was another thing to do the same.
It was so public.
Everything I did was done alone and was relatively untraceable. But for her, everyone in our village knew what she was up to at night. Her acts against the Citadel were smaller than mine, but no less deadly.
It isn’t treason if I haven’t pledged loyalty to them.
It isn’t treason if they invaded.
Safiyya’s sharp retort filled my mind, what she would have said had I run the options by her.
But for now, moonlight spilled across Safiyya’s supine form on the bed, and I could make out the sheen of sweat on her forehead. She coughed again, and her entire body shook.
“Safiyya,” I said softly into the room. “Bair’s here.”
“Hold on,” she croaked, trying to rouse herself. “I’m coming.”
“You shouldn’t be going out. Not when you’re so ill. Leave it for tonight. The dead will keep.”
A heavy, wet cough wracked her body, and I winced.
“No, I have to go with him. It’s the only time we have. Soon the Citadel patrols will find the body and we won’t be able to bury him anymore.” It was painful to listen to her voice, and even worse to watch her struggle to rise from the bed.
It’s the only time we have.
I felt the same every night. Poring over the ancient texts, trying to find clues to a key I didn’t know if I’d ever locate. It was the last piece of the puzzle I needed to be able to cross the wall into the fae world.
And from there I could finally find the crown that could take down the wall completely, bring the magic back to the earth, and stop the famines decimating our people.
Safiyya come to a seated position and then swayed, as if she were about to pass out.
My breath caught in my chest, and I clenched my hands tight at my side. How many hours had I devoted to searching for a key to an ancient fae storage chamber, only to come up empty-handed? And here my cousin was, about to pass out on the wooden floor of her room.
In all the months I’d been looking, I’d never come any closer to unlocking the vault door, and I certainly wouldn’t be able to now, hours before the Citadel were planning to excavate.
I closed my eyes, my decision easing the heaviness from my shoulders and solidifying my resolve. “I’ll do it with him.”
She froze at my words as she struggled to stand, and blinked at me in the scant light. “You will? But you hate me doing this. You hate me doing anything that goes against the Citadel.”
I frowned, but she couldn’t see my face in the darkness of the doorway. To everyone else, I was a model scholar, working in the Citadel archives and helping them unearth the magical objects that gave Astola its life magic.
Even Safiyya didn’t know the extent of my betrayal.
She didn’t know about my hunts for fae relics at night. Or the times when I’d even managed to steal them out from underneath the nose of the Citadel.
Because every single fae object removed from our land was a death sentence for us.
The life magic imbued in every crown, necklace, goblet, ring, and all the other relics hidden in the earth kept our crops alive and our rivers flowing.
And every time the Citadel dug one up and shipped it off to the Empress, more people died.
But everything depended on the lie that I embodied by day—I was a scholar for the Citadel, helping them find the ancient magical relics. If it ever got out that I betrayed them by stealing the fae objects instead, both Safiyya and Nani would suffer the consequences of such duplicity.
They might still.
“Yes, I do,” I said finally. “I’m worried about you whenever you go out, of course. And I’d rather you didn’t try to bury the dead when the Citadel has specifically declared that illegal. But you can’t go, not like this. So that leaves me.”
Safiyya chewed on the side of her lip, her eyes glassy. She didn’t want to give in, I could tell by the look on her face.
I smiled, despite myself. She’d be defying the Citadel on her deathbed, which was, fortunately, not today.
“Safiyya,” I said in a cajoling way, “I promise I won’t make a mess of it. But Bair needs someone who isn’t going to keel over the moment they try to lift a body. I’ll go. I’ll wear your cloak so no one will even know it’s me.”
That seemed to settle it for her, and she collapsed back into the pillows on her bed. “Thanks, Yas,” she murmured, her eyes fluttering closed, letting sleep claim her once more.
I closed the door and turned back to Bair, resignation on my face. “I’m coming with you tonight instead.”
He lifted his gaze from the last few lentils in the bowl, his jaw falling slack. “The Citadel won’t like that.”
“That’s an understatement,” I snapped. “With hope they’ll never find out.
Besides, you can’t do this on your own.” My tone was too harsh in the faint light of the kitchen, and I exhaled, measuring my temper.
It wasn’t Bair’s fault that Safiyya was sick.
And he didn’t know I’d had other plans for this night; no one did.
And it wasn’t any of our faults that we were now forced to bury bodies illegally under the cover of night instead.
I grabbed Safiyya’s dark cloak from the hook beside the door. This needed to be done, and as much as I didn’t want to thwart the Citadel and give them another reason to reconsider my loyalties, to shine the light of suspicion on me and unveil my other secrets, I would do it.
If I didn’t, the Citadel would burn the bodies, and their spirits would be left wandering.
Like my father’s.
At least with these villagers we could do the proper burial rites and release their spirits into the afterlife.
Safiyya’s cloak was hefty, bought during a winter when the Citadel had made a rare discovery.
I had done the research in my position as a scholar, hoping to get to the fae relic first. Rage burned inside me when I’d been unable to steal the delicate gold tikka that had been vital for the rice fields in our area.
When the tikka had been discovered by the Citadel and shipped off to the Empress, the lush fields had dried up over the next few months, the fae life magic gone.
I wanted to scream when they congratulated us and gave bonuses to the scholar department. The Empire didn’t seem to realize the damage they did to Astola with every stolen fae artifact.
Or maybe they just didn’t care.
“Hide your hair.” Bair’s voice was rough and determined.
I glanced up at him and a flush stained his cheeks, making him look healthier than he had in years. “It’s distinctive,” he muttered as he waved his hand in my general direction, shifting uncomfortably on his feet and avoiding my eyes.
He was right, my hair was a wild mane next to Safiyya’s sleek tresses.
My fingers brushed my thick curls, trying to tame them under my hood. I grimaced, pushing them under the heavy fabric and having little luck. My hair wouldn’t be controlled, and I ended up braiding the thick mass over my shoulder instead and tucking it into my cloak.
Because I certainly didn’t want to be recognized this night.