Once I’m finally restrained, I’m bundled out of the dungeons and up the stairs. As we climb, I smell old smoke, and when we step out into a bright winter morning, I turn back to see the ruin of Lormere castle, two of the towers still standing, but half of the keep and the other two towers have been destroyed. Most of the stone is blackened, and the sight makes me sad, despite everything. My jailers pull me away, pushing me into a cage on wheels, drawn by a donkey, no room to sit and barely enough to stand. As the cart begins to move, I fall, smashing into the bars and biting my tongue. The men laugh and I spit blood at them. After that I stand, gripping the bars, looking out as we make our way to the main gates.
No one lines the route into the town square. I saw executions here before I came to the castle, and back then, there would be crowds. People would come from all over Lormere for the biggest ones. But today there is no one, just me in my cart, and the guards, and I wonder if Aurek banned them from attending. There seems little point executing me publicly if no one will see it. I look up at the houses and shops as we pass, expecting to see people peering out, if not in the streets, but there’s no one. It’s like a ghost town.
Wind like knives rushes through the town square, sending the triple-starred pennants Aurek has had mounted fluttering loudly, snapping against each other. My eyes are drawn to him instantly, sitting alone in a box, four golems outside it. He makes a pretense of lounging in his chair, surveying his nails, dressed entirely in gold, his hair pulled back into a low ponytail beneath his crown. Merek’s crown. I look around and see more golems, and count them: fifteen. Fifteen golems that I can see.
He’s frightened, I realize. Still.
Then I look around the rest of the square.
Here are the people who were missing from the route, hundreds of them. It seems he’s had his soldiers drag every single man and woman of Lortune into the square. People are pressed shoulder to shoulder, surrounding a dais, at its center a block of thick wood. The wood is already stained dark, and I shudder.
Not one of the people assembled looks as though they want to be there; every single face is grim, flint-eyed, their mouths set in lines, but they stand dutifully and stare at the block. So Lortune was not one of the places that rose up. I feel a moment’s terror then, that I’m wrong and that nowhere rose up. What if the Rising really is over? What if this is where it all ends?
No, I tell myself. Something happened; Lief almost said as much. And Aurek is frightened. I know he is. He wouldn’t have made his offer if he was winning.
When the cage door is opened, I step serenely forward, imagining my skeleton is made of iron, locking down my fear. In my whole life I have never been as afraid as I am now, never felt a maelstrom inside me as violent as the urge telling me to run, to at least try. I won’t give him the satisfaction. When one of the men grabs my arm roughly, a low hiss runs through the crowd. Until then, they were utterly silent, no jeering, no shouting or calling me names. They said nothing. Now the small sound, the small rebellion, gives me courage.
The crowd parts as I begin to walk toward the platform, and I find myself meeting their eyes, smiling gently left and right to them. They murmur “my lady” as I pass, bowing their heads to me. None of them seem frightened of my white eyes. None of them seem to care at all. Instead, they offer me smiles, and bows, their affection radiating from them.
And I know Aurek will have every single one of them slaughtered for it when this is over.
When I reach the top of the stairs, I turn to face them, and another hiss, low and guttural, threatening, begins to rise from the crowd.
Lief has arrived. Dressed all in black, his face blank of all expression.
His sword—Merek’s sword—in his hands.
He doesn’t look at me. He climbs the stairs to the dais slowly, heavily, as though he’s the one sentenced to die, and I realize this must have been where Aurek whipped him. That it’s possible some of the old bloodstains I’m standing on came from his back.
All at once the fear that evaporated as I smiled at the people fills me.
I’m going to die.
Now. At the hands of the first man I ever loved.
It’s not fair.
I look at him, bewildered, and see something like regret flicker in his eye.
“Make her kneel,” Aurek calls.
Lief looks at me as though he expects me to do it, but I shake my head. He reaches for me and pushes at my shoulder. I resist him, but he keeps pushing.
“You need to kneel,” he says. “You don’t want to be standing for this. Please.”
The finality in his voice—the kindness—has me sinking to my knees as though I’m melting.
“Twylla Morven, Sin Eater of Lormere,” Aurek calls in his rich, velvet voice. “You have been brought here to die for your crimes against the House of Tallith, both historic and present. Your blood is a disease; your existence is an abomination. And for that, you shall die, and your body will be desecrated like that of a beast.” He pauses, casting a filthy look at me before he stands, stepping forward and leaning on the edge of his box, staring at the crowd.
“Behold her, your scarecrow queen. Look upon this puppet mirage of safety. Nothing but a parody of leadership, nothing but straw stuffed in old clothes. And that’s what stood, hoping to frighten the crows away.” He pauses. “It ends, today.” Aurek’s voice rings across the square. “Give me your fealty, give me your respect, and I will see you rewarded. I was heir to the greatest kingdom this world has ever known, and I can give that to you—will give that to you. Wealth, prosperity can all be yours. A better land, free from superstition. Free from foolishness. No more weakness. And we will move forward together.”
He looks out at them and then nods to Lief.
Lief pushes my head down onto the block, and I let him. Gently, he turns it to the side, so I’m facing away from Aurek, and I think that’s a kindness, too, that he won’t let the last thing I see be Aurek’s golden eyes.
Scarecrow queen. Nothing but a dupe, alone in a field, hoping to keep the crows at bay.
“You should close your eyes,” Lief says.
“No.” Dupe I might be, but I’m not a coward anymore. I want to see the world as I leave it.
He sighs, then frowns. He bends down and pulls at the ties on my wrists, tightening them. Then he straightens.
It hurts to force my eyes so far to the side, but I do, watching Lief draw his sword and raise it above his head. His eyes follow the blade and he looks to the sky before looking straight ahead. He pauses, waiting for Aurek’s permission.
Then he nods.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
There is a whooshing sound, and the sword begins to fall. Without meaning to, I close my eyes; I can’t help it.
They fly back open when I hear screams, a bullish bellow of anger, and a thud behind me. I jerk upright and turn.
Lief is on his back, knees bent under him, his one eye wide as he stares at the sky.
There is an arrow in his chest.
I turn and look out to see Merek standing on the roof of a merchant’s house, bow in hand, another arrow already nocked.
“Run,” he screams, then turns his bow on Aurek.
I stare at Lief, waiting for him to move, groan, or even blink. But as I watch, a dark stain blooms beneath him, thick red liquid spreading along the wooden platform.
But he can’t be dead; we thought that before and we were wrong. He’s Lief. He’s …
I move toward him, and something smashes down where I was, sending shock waves through the platform and making me stumble. I turn and see a golem, faceless, lifeless, raising a club high over its head to strike again. I roll aside a split second before it crashes into the dais, sending splinters of the wood through the air. I scramble back, and the golem swings again, and I move, until I’ve fallen off the dais and onto the ground, breath forced from me as I land on my back.
For a horrible moment I can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t even hear, staring
at the clouds racing overhead as my chest feels as though it’s collapsing in on itself. Then I manage to gasp, and air fills me, and sound returns. Roars and clashes and shouts, and my panic rises. I roll again, under the dais, trying desperately to untie my wrists. I move my fingers, slow and sluggish from the cold, and feel something attached to the rope, some kind of cylinder. I need to free my hands or I’m dead.
Beyond the platform, feet move, back and forth, from this angle strangely indiscernible from dancing, until one of the pair nearest to the dais hits the ground, blood spilling from his lips. He reaches out, his knife still gripped in his hands, toward me. Then he jerks, and I see steel glint as it’s pulled out of his back. I meet his eyes as he dies, see them dull. I shuffle toward him like a worm on my stomach, turning until I hold the knife in sweating fingers.
I saw and saw at my bindings, guided by touch alone, no idea whether the blade is cutting the rope at all, as all around me people fight. I see the feet of the golems as they move amongst the crowd, see people scatter before them. Above me, there is a crash as something hits the dais again, and I saw faster.
Finally, I feel the rope start to give, and I tug, a thrill moving through me as the rope snaps and my hands are free. At once I twist and grab the cylinder, covered in paper, my fingers trembling as I unwrap it.
A single vial of a bright white liquid.
And wrapped around it, a note in my own childlike writing. A note that says I love you.
Everything falls away—the fighting, the screams, the golems—as I stare at the first thing I ever wrote.
He kept it all this time. And the vial. It’s the Opus Mortem. It has to be.
But I watched as he crushed the last two beneath his boot. I watched him do it.
Except here is one, somehow secreted away and given to me, deliberately, in the moments before …
I remember the way he looked out into the crowd, and then the nod of his head.
He knew what was going to happen.
Then the wood above me vanishes, peeling back with a shriek, and the sky appears again briefly before two of the golems are there, hands reaching into the hole they’ve just made. I stuff the vial down my bodice and grab the knife, once more escaping the crushing blow of a club by the skin of my teeth. Their clubs slam again and again into the wood as they destroy the executioner’s platform in a bid to end me.
I roll out, and a man in Aurek’s livery, armed with a short sword, lunges at me. I sidestep, just as Hope taught me, and slash at his back, causing him to cry out. I kick him in the back of the legs while he’s still surprised, sending him to the ground before dropping and slamming the hilt of my knife into his head.
When I turn back to the dais, Lief’s body has disappeared, and as I bend for the fallen sword of the man I’ve just knocked out, I see a shape beneath the dais—it’s him, fallen through the holes made by the golems in their attempts to get to me. The sight of him there, like a broken toy, makes it hard to breathe for a moment, until an arrow embeds itself in a post level with my eyes and reminds me that there is a battle raging.
I look around, scanning the fighters at first for Aurek, who has seemingly vanished, then for Merek: a pang of fear when I can’t see him, either. The entire square is filled with fighting, men in the black tabards of the Sleeping Prince fighting people in everyday clothes with swords, knives, sticks, whatever they have to hand, or have stolen from others. I recognize the faces of people I know amongst the crowd: Hobb wrestling with a man before lifting him and throwing him through a window, Ema battering another guard with what looks like a butcher’s mallet, malice lighting her face.
On the other side of the destroyed dais, Hope is fighting, whirling like a dervish, a short sword in each hand as she battles three of Aurek’s soldiers, a snarl at her lips. As I watch, her sword slashes out, and one of the men falls, his throat spilling crimson. I see the uncertainty in the others as Hope stalks toward them.
Ulrin has taken on one of the golems, but even he is no match in size for the might of the clay creature, and he’s losing ground. Then there is a flash of green, and Stuan appears from nowhere with a blazing torch, which he thrusts at the golem. With a flare of emerald fire the golem goes up in flames—someone has brought Errin’s firewater—and Ulrin pulls its own club from its grasping hands and smashes it around its head, felling it like a tree.
He meets my eyes over the crowd and nods, and then his eyes widen and I duck instinctively. There is a breeze across the top of my head and I spin, lashing out, and my sword bites into the thighs of a soldier. As he falls to the ground, I stand again, and move, but a hand grasps the hem of the dress and pulls.
I stumble and drop my sword as I try to stop my face smashing into the ground. I reach for it and the hand tugs, moving from dress to my ankle and pulling me back vital inches from the hilt. I roll onto my back as the soldier tries to drag me toward him, half climbing me in the process, his eyes wild, his teeth bared. I sit and punch him in the face, forgetting to keep my thumb outside my fist, moaning as the impact wounds me, too.
He doesn’t let go, fingers digging into my calves, and I cry out again, trying to kick him away. I grab a fistful of his hair and pull, and he punches me, catching my jaw. My teeth click together and my head rolls back, but then he lets go and I’m free. When I look again at him, blinking away the stars in my eyes from the blow, there is an arrow in his throat. I look around for the shooter but can see no one, so I haul myself to my feet and grab my sword.
No sooner is it in my hand than two more soldiers run toward me, and panic starts to mount; I’m not good enough to take on two men at once. I back up, sword raised, as they close in.
Then Nia is beside me, her skin glistening with sweat.
“Sorry we took so long,” she says. “Got a bit held up.”
“Just fight,” I breathe, choosing an opponent and lunging at him. There will be time for clever chat afterward.
Though neither of us is especially skilled, we’re an even match against the shopkeepers-turned-guards that Aurek has blackmailed or coerced into his service, and soon enough they start to flag. I’m gaining ground, preparing to strike, when something hits me, making the right side of my body explode in pain and sending me flying into the air before I crash back down, landing badly. But the first thing I do is pat my chest, checking the safety of the vial, the relief at feeling it whole rushing through me.
Nia screams, and so do the men, as the golem swings indiscriminately. Its club piles into the head of the man I’d been fighting, killing him instantly, and his friend flees.
Nia rushes to me and tries to lift me, but I cry out. “Ribs,” I gasp, sure the blow has broken at least two of them. Nia glances over her shoulder and then moves me anyway, causing my vision to white out.
“Get up,” she shrieks at me, passing me a round green bottle. I bite down on my lip and stand, whimpering at the pain, and throw the bottle at the golem. It does nothing to deter it, but we both watch as the firewater soaks into the golem. “Here,” she calls to someone, ducking as the golem swings at us, and then Stuan appears. He hands the torch to me and I throw it, even as my chest screams in protest. But it does the job, and the firewater catches, burning so fast and so hot that in seconds the golem is turning pale, and cracking. We all move back as it stumbles and weaves, until it finally explodes into dust, covering us all.
Stuan grins at me. “Was it like that when you did it?” he asks.
“I didn’t have the firewater,” I say, but manage a smile back.
“Look out!” Nia cries as a new soldier rushes in to take the golem’s place, leaping forward to fight him with the ringing of steel against steel. “Get out of here!”
Stuan takes my arm, pulling me toward the shadowy labyrinth of alleyways that lead away from the square. Each step, each breath is like a dagger to the chest, but I push the pain away, trying to ride out the dizziness, crossing my arms over my chest. As soon as we’re out of the thick of it, I draw him to a stop, nee
ding to pause for just a moment. “Where’s Merek?”
“I don’t know. He was supposed to free Errin.”
“Supposed to? Where was she?”
“In a cage, just behind yours. Gagged. I think he wanted her to watch you die.”
“Did Merek get her?”
He shakes his head. “The Sleeping Prince went straight for her. He didn’t even try to fight, just used some of the golems as cover and went for her. I didn’t see what happened then; I was trying to get to you. Watch out!”
A man flies at me from the left. I barely register the three stars on his chest before Stuan has spun around, reaching across me to stab him in the heart.
“Thank you.”
He shrugs, and bends down to take the man’s sword from him, offering it to me.
As soon as I take it, I know I won’t be able to use it; it would be too heavy even if I wasn’t injured. I drop it to the ground.
Stuan looks at me, and then pulls a knife from his belt. “You can’t be unarmed,” he says.
“Again, thank you.” I take it.
“Where do we go?” he asks.
“After Aurek,” I say.
“Do you know where he’ll be?”
There’s only one place he could have gone. There’s only one thing that might save him now, and he’ll head straight for it.
“The castle,” I say. “He’ll have gone for Silas.”
It’s time to finish this.
Stuan peers around and then nods at me. “Now,” he says.
It’s hard to move because of both my chest and my skirts, and I’m soon urging Stuan to stop again while I slash panels out of the dress so I can move. I use some of the panels as a makeshift binder for my ribs, as Stuan nods his approval and helps me tie them.
“Wait,” he says, shrugging his cloak off and throwing it around me. “It’s not much of a disguise, but …”
“Thank you,” I say for the third time.
Then we keep moving, him in front and me behind, scanning everywhere for golems, soldiers, or bowmen.
The Scarecrow Queen Page 29
