He dropped the parchment and scrubbed at his face with the palms of his hands. Why, oh why, had he retired from the army and come to live in this tiny little town of absolutely no consequence in the middle of nowhere? Furthermore, how was it that his little hamlet had managed to produce not one, but two criminals worthy of execution?
To be fair, he hadn’t even looked at the death warrants. Royce had simply counter-signed the documents below the Magistrate’s signature and filed them in the pile to be sent on to the capital. He supposed that he should take more pride in his work, but he was so tired of taking pride in anything. The entire reason he had picked this particular posting, out of all those that the king had offered him, was that it was sparsely populated and people would leave him alone. That way he could continue dying, slowly, in peace. In theory, at least.
“Fine,” Royce finally acquiesced with a sigh. “I’ll be there momentarily. Please go and let the executioner know that we will be proceeding as planned.”
“As you command, Constable.” The Magistrate accorded him a half-bow and withdrew, leaving the door standing open. One day that man was going to get his comeuppance, Royce thought bitterly. He only hoped that he was still around to see it when the happy day came to fruition.
Standing brought a fit of coughing that shook his fighter’s frame. In a few moments, the fit subsided. The taste of copper was thick in the back of his throat. He took a vial from his belt pouch and swigged it down, grimacing at the vile taste. He wiped his mouth with his handkerchief, the cloth coming away from his lips tinged pinker than he would have liked.
His vigor drained, Royce walked out on the wide porch that surrounded the tiny, single room office. He pulled the door shut behind him and walked slowly toward the square and the throng of people who had congregated there. He was in no mood to deal with this nonsense today. Best to get it over with, and quickly.
The executioner was already on the platform, a hulking vulture of a man with the wardrobe to match. He was clad head to toe in the traditional black sackcloth vestments of his trade. His instrument, a wicked ax with a blade as long as Royce’s arm, was slung over his shoulder, gleaming in the morning sun.
As Royce climbed the short steps, he was struck by how surreal the scene before him was. Normally the prisoners brought before the blade were the type of ruffian one would expect: murderers, thieves, rapists and the like. The girl that stood on the platform between two heavily armed guards couldn’t have possibly been a threat to anyone.
Five feet tall if she was an inch, she was a mousy little thing, unsteady on her feet and swaying from side to side. Royce wondered if she might not be entirely in control of her faculties. She stood facing execution and yet seemed not to have a care in the world. She stared off into space, her eyes glazed, and her fingers twitching along to the songbirds nesting in the trees at the edge of the village.
If Royce had been pressed to pick the person least likely to be slated for execution out of the crowd, this girl would have easily made the top of the list. Something was wrong here. Perhaps he should have paid closer attention to the death warrants that crossed his desk. The crowd fell to a murmured hush as the Constable crossed the platform to his customary position near the Magistrate.
“What’s the meaning of this, Magistrate?”
“The meaning of what, Constable?” The Magistrate withdrew his spider-like hands from the folds of his robe just long enough to motion for the executions to proceed.
“You know damn well the meaning of what,” Royce seethed. “If that girl is a day over fourteen, I’ll turn into a dragon and fly away.”
The Magistrate spared him a sidelong glance before his eyes returned to the executioner, who was fitting the little blond girl with a hood.
“I wasn’t aware that age had any bearing on the ability to commit a crime, Constable. You signed the death warrants yourself. Surely you don’t dispute their validity now?”
“I don’t give a lead crown over validity,” Royce snapped. “What did this girl do to end up with her neck on the block?”
Finally the Magistrate turned, according the old soldier with his full gaze. His large watery eyes were full of contempt.
“She murdered another girl in cold blood. Are you going to argue that murder is no longer an offense that carries the penalty of death?”
Royce tugged at his lower lip. The executioner raised his blade.
“Wait!”
It was the right of the king’s law for the Constable to commute any sentence, even death, but it was rare enough that only a handful of the elder folk in the crowd could remember such an occurrence. Royce had never nullified a sentence. Most of the people who ended up on platform deserved it. With this one, he wasn't so sure. Maybe his curiosity was getting the better of him, but there was something here. Something he could feel at the back of his neck and the base of his spine.
He approached the girl and raised the hood from her head. It was then that he noticed the witchmetal collar around her neck. He sighed. She was a slave. That changed things. The girl’s eyes seemed to look through him. He snapped his fingers in front of her nose until her lazy gaze met his.
“What’s your name, girl?”
“Darcy,” she said in a sing-song voice that sent a chill up Royce’s spine.
“Did you kill a girl, Darcy?”
The little blond girl smiled a smile so wide and white that it put Royce in mind of the predatory fish that sometimes washed up on the shore at Blackbeach.
“Oh, yes. I killed her dead. I beat her down until she bled. In the head! Now she’s dead.” The girl cackled. “Dead! Bled! Dead! Bled!”
Royce shook his head and dropped the hood back over her head. He nodded soberly to the executioner and retreated to his station. The blade man pressed the girl’s head to the block and an instant later, the crowd roared with approval. The executioner kicked the body off the platform, into a straw-filled cart parked below. Royce felt sick.
“Justice is done,” the Magistrate remarked.
The Constable remained silent.
The village crier called for the next condemned and there was a commotion at the foot of the steps leading to the platform. There was a girl in chains, desperately fighting against the guards who struggled to keep her in place. Though she was shackled at wrist and ankle, she still fought, trying to tear the weapons from the belts of the men-at-arms attending her.
As the guards tried to march her up the short stairs, the girl went to ground, falling so quickly that the men had little time to react. When she hit the ground, she scrambled away as quickly as her bindings would allow. She was quick, but not quick enough. One of the guards ran her down and taking a blackjack from a belt loop, thwacked her soundly in the back of the head. The girl went limp, face down in the dirt. They lifted her under the arms and dragged her up the steps into the platform, her feet dangling between them. They dumped her at the executioner's feet.
Royce watched as the ax man lifted the girl’s body and placed her head in the block. The blow to the back of the head had knocked her senseless. Though her eyes were open, she was staring at some point far across a distant horizon. She also wore a witchmetal collar, its thin gray band a stark contrast against her pale skin. Her eyes were a deep, clear blue; the color of sapphire. Hair the color of corn flax dropped to her shoulders in a tangled mass. There had obviously been neither comb, nor brush, nor looking glass in whatever dank hole she had been assigned to for the night before her date with the sharp end of the blade.
She was definitely pretty, for a slave. Her nose was straight and unbroken, her eyes not sunken by years of abuse and neglect. She was newly collared then. A slave's life was notoriously hard and short, no matter how pretty they were. In fact, sometimes being pretty made it worse. There were those who would pay a premium for the chance to break such a lovely creature.
This one's high cheekbones and thick frame placed her in the far north before her capture. The Frozen Frontier, or very near, unless Roy
ce missed his guess. He didn't. He was rarely wrong. There was something about her that piqued his curiosity. Something he couldn’t quite place his finger on. There was a resonance about her, something that made the hair on his arms stand on end.
The girl had roused enough to start to struggle again. Rather than suffer through a repeat of her games with the guards, the executioner locked her shackles to the block, rendering her thrashing mostly ineffective.
Royce went rigid as the executioner offered the girl a hood, which she declined in a spate of colorful curses and epithets. She turned her head as far as the block would allow and attempted to spit at the blade man.
“Don’t,” the Magistrate said quietly. “This one deserves it too, just as the last one did.”
The old soldier wasn’t so sure. He watched as the girl tried to spit at the executioner a second time. It was a futile gesture, but enough to earn her a backhanded slap across her high cheekbones with a thick leather gauntlet. The executioner put his boot between her shoulder blades, pressing her neck into the edge of the block. The ax gave a dull ring as it was drawn across the platform and lifted to his shoulder.
The executioner hefted the blade and Royce found himself riveted. Most people closed their eyes in that final moment, or opted for the hood. She didn't. She kept her eyes open and fixed on the platform mere inches beyond her nose. The ax man’s arms tensed for the swing and Royce sprang forward, landing on the balls of his feet. His hand flashed out, arresting the ax mid-stroke.
“Hold your blade,” he said quietly but firmly. The crowd groaned. They were growing tired of the interruptions in their entertainment. Two executions and both stopped at the penultimate moment. Their dissension spread like wildfire through those who had assembled.
A swarthy little man with a bulbous red nose waddled onto the platform, his face suffused purple with rage.
“Enough! What's the meaning of this? She needs to die, and die now! She's filth. Vermin. A pestilence to be destroyed.”
Royce eyed him up, studying the fine cut of the tunic, the flash of the large gems on each finger, the full purse tucked into his belt, the neck twisted and folded over to ensure that no coin could find its way out until it was called upon. He didn't know the man, but he knew the type. Royce raised an eyebrow and the ghost of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
“Who are you, tiny creature, to question the Constable, former Knight of the Flame and Sergeant-at-Arms to the One True King?”
Rocking back on his heels, the man seemed to deflate, his face going from rage to confusion, to fear. He was obviously used to barking orders and expecting them to be followed without challenge. Probably backed by the bite of a whip. Slavers. Royce snorted derisively. They were all the same.
“My name is Cerrin, Mi’lord. I am a purveyor of…resources, foreign and domestic.”
“What did this vermin do to have her neck placed on the block, slaver?”
The tips of the man's ears went red and he stammered a moment. He snapped his mouth shut and swallowed convulsively, then seemed to find his backbone.
“She’s a menace. She attacked one of the other girls without provocation. Killed her in cold blood that one did. She cost me good crowns and I’ll see to it that the others learn their place.” The girl’s spine went rigid as she fought against the restraints that held her down. It wasn’t hard for Royce to believe that she had killed another slave. She fought like a caged animal.
“I didn’t kill anyone, you filthy lying pig!” Spittle flew from her lips as the girl screamed at the little man. “Darcy was only defending herself and you know it!”
“Do you dispute her claim?” Royce asked, almost conversationally. He fixed such a piercing gaze on the slaver that Cerrin went white.
“Erm, no. Not exactly, Mi’lord.”
“So she didn’t kill directly? She was merely the cause of the, ah, altercation?”
“Yes. Yes! That’s it precisely, Mi’lord.” A smile flickered across the slaver’s face. “She was an accomplice!”
Royce dropped his hand from the executioner's ax and waved him away. He knelt beside the girl and flipped up her thin shift, exposing the pale skin of her back all the way up to her breast band. Her sides were mottled in the green, purple, and yellow of aging bruises. It was an old slaver trick. Keep them in line, but only where the paying customers can't see. He ran a calloused hand down her side and the girl shied away from the touch. There were new layers of bruises on top of old here. There was no telling how long she had been brutalized this way.
“So she's to lose her head,” Royce remarked quietly. “As an example for the others.”
Royce jerked his head at the other girls, chained wrist to wrist, each with a thin witchmetal collar, clustered at the edge of the square.
The slaver had brought them here to teach them the consequences of rebellion. It was an age-old trick. Kill the usurper and keep the rest of the subjects in line. It was a trick Royce had used himself from time to time.
The slaver shifted from one foot to the other. Royce expected that he knew a trap when he walked into one, but he had offered the girl little mercy. He should expect none himself.
“So she dies as an example, the others fall in line.” Royce was stalling now and he couldn’t fathom why.
“Y-yes, Mi’lord.”
Royce nodded, scratching his gray-black beard with gnarled fingers.
“How much,” he asked after a long pause.
“Mi’lord?”
“How much did you pay for her? Surely she must have been quite a nuisance for you to waste perfectly good coin on executing her as an example. You could have done it with your own blade for free. But, then I don’t suppose you like getting your hands bloody. So I ask you again, how much did you pay?”
The slaver's eyes darted from Royce to the girl and back again. The trap was sprung, he knew. Now all that was left was to see how much of his leg he'd have to lose to get free.
“Twenty crowns, Mi’lord. And a pair of aurochs.”
Royce raised an eyebrow. “That's no small sum.”
“Well, sir, she is untouched,” the man blurted, then snapped his jaws shut as if he could cut the words off before they slipped out. He knew he had said too much.
“Ah.” It was a softly spoken syllable, almost a sigh. Royce looked from the slaver down to the girl. He knelt and with a gentle touch, flipped her shift down to hide the bruises. “So you were looking to sell her to a man, then. One with, shall we say, peculiar tastes. Surely you’d have gotten top crown for her once she was fully functional.”
“Not worth it,” Cerrin sneered. “She’s worth more to me minus her head.”
Royce stood, his hand dropping to his belt. It hovered there a moment, poised over the foot-long dagger that was sheathed there. Beads of sweat stood out across the slaver's brow. He licked his lips in a constant nervous motion, his eyes watching Royce's hand and the blade hilt for any movement.
“You’ve no right,” the Magistrate interrupted, stepping forward. Royce merely looked at him. The Magistrate withered under his glare. “Fine, do as you will.” He threw his hands up and stormed off the platform, his robes swirling around his ankles.
Slowly, Royce dropped his hand to his purse and tugged it free. He unthreaded the lace and shook some coins into his hand, dropping the first few back into the pouch and palming the larger, thicker gold coins that sparkled in the muted morning sun. Each bore an underscored numeral twenty on the face and the namesake crown of the king on the reverse.
“Twenty crowns and two aurochs. I should think that forty crowns should cover your expenses and your, ah, inconvenience.” Royce tossed the coins at the slaver's feet. They struck the platform and bounced with a dull ring, spinning for a moment before falling flat.
The slaver made no move to retrieve the coins. He stood there, still shifting from one foot to the other, his eyes flicking between Royce, the coins, and the girl. Royce tucked his purse back into his belt and tugged the
loop from the hilt of his knife, laying his hand on the cap.
“You’ve made your sale, slaver. Take your payment, and go. Now.”
A sudden cry of derision burst from the crowd, breaking the tableau. Shouts went up from the commoners as they collectively realized they had been denied any more entertainment for the day. The slaver snatched up the coins and scampered off the platform, dodging and weaving through the crowd of hands that tried to pluck the coins from his grasp and the purse from his belt.
Royce took a knee beside the girl and put a rough hand under her chin. A shock went through his fingers, traveled up his arm, and down his spine, settling into the pit of his stomach like a writhing sickness. Whoever this girl was, she had power to spare.
They would have time to discover the nature of her power later. For now, they had to get off the platform and away from the commoners. Things were growing ugly, and quickly.
“Get up,” Royce grunted, unlocking her shackles from the block. “I own you now, so you're my responsibility.”
With some effort the girl got to her feet. The glance she shot Royce was wary and vengeful. He owned her now, this demon, full of rage and fire. Royce shook his head. What in the name of nine different hells had he thought he was doing? He had purchased the girl outright, so she belonged to him. Now all he needed to figure out was what he was going to do with her.
A rotten tomato slapped into Royce's heavy leather chest guard, spraying him with fermented juice and bits of pulp. Denied their prize, the crowd was rapidly taking on the mob mentality. Assaulting the Constable was an offense that could merit a death sentence itself, but the surging mass of people granted anonymity and they were angry.
Royce drew the long dagger from his belt and grabbed the girl by the arm, ignoring the second jolt that coursed through his thick frame. He all but dragged her from the platform into the torrid sea of flesh. He swept the blade back and forth, forcing the crowd to yield before them as they made a hasty retreat from the square.
The Last Swordmage (the swordmage trilogy) Page 2
