A gold ring pierced her lower lip.
“And you would be?” he asked.
“Sister Penthea. Here to wield my talent in service to His Excellency, Emperor Jagang.”
Her smooth flow of words was laced with crystalline frost.
Dalton bowed his head. “Minister of Culture, Dalton Campbell. Thank you for coming, Sister Penthea. We are most appreciative of your courtesy in lending your unique assistance.”
She had been sent to wield her talent in service to Dalton Campbell, but he thought better of putting too fine a point on it. Dalton didn’t need to remind her she was the one with a ring through her lip; it was obvious to them both.
At the sound of screams, Dalton again glanced across the room, out the window, thinking it was the parents or family returned to see the sight of the grisly deaths the night before. People had been coming by all morning, leaving flowers or other offerings at the site of the deaths until they looked like a grotesque garden midden. Frequent wails of anguish rose up into the gray day.
Sister Penthea turned his attention to business. “I need to see the ones chosen for the deed.”
Dalton motioned with a hand. “Rowley, there, he will be one of them.”
Without word or warning, she slapped the palm of her hand to Rowley’s forehead, her fingers splayed into his red hair, grasping his head as if she might pluck it like a ripe pear. Rowley’s eyes rolled back in his head. His entire body began to tremble.
The Sister murmured thick words that had no meaning to Dalton. Each, as it oozed forth, seemed to take root in Rowley. The young man’s arms flinched when she stressed particular words.
With a last phrase, raising in intonation, she gave Rowley’s head a sharp shove. Letting out a small cry, Rowley crumpled as if his bones had dissolved.
In a moment, he sat up and shook his head. A smile told Dalton he was fine. He brushed clean his dark brown trousers as he stood, looking no different, despite his added lethality.
“The others?” she asked.
Dalton gestured dismissively. “Rowley can take you to them.”
She bowed slightly. “Good day, then, Minister. I will see to it immediately. The emperor also wished me to express his pleasure at being able to be of assistance. Either way, muscle or magic, the Mother Confessor’s fate is now sealed.”
She wheeled around and stormed away, Rowley following in her wake. Dalton couldn’t say he was sorry to see her go.
Before he could return to reading his reports in earnest, he again heard the cheering. The sight when he lifted his head to look out the window was unexpected. Someone was being dragged into the square, a mob of people following behind as the people already in the square parted to make way, cheering on those entering, some of whom carried scraps of crates, tree branches, and sheafs of straw.
Dalton went to the window and leaned on the sill with both hands as he peered down at the sight. It was Serin Rajak, at the head of a few hundred of his followers all dressed in white robes.
When he saw who they had, who they were dragging into the square, who was screaming, Dalton gasped aloud.
His heart pounding with dread, he stared out the window, wondering what he could do. He had guards with him, real guards, not Anderith army soldiers, but two dozen men. He realized it was a futile thought even as he had it; armed though they were, they stood no chance against the thousands in the square. Dalton knew better than to stand before a crowd intent on violence—that was only a good way to have the violence turned your way.
Despite his feelings, Dalton dared not side against the people in this.
Among the men with Serin Rajak, in among the man’s followers, Dalton saw one in a dark uniform: Stein.
With icy dread, Dalton realized the reason Stein was there, and what he wanted.
Dalton backed away from the window. He was no stranger to violence, but this was an atrocity.
At last, he ran back into the corridor that echoed his footfalls, descended the steps, and raced down the hall. He didn’t know what to do, but if there was anything . . .
He reached the entry set behind fluted stone columns outside the building, at the top of the cascade of steps. He halted well back in the shadows of the interior, assessing the situation.
Outside, on the landing partway down the steps, guards patrolled to keep people from thoughts of coming up into the Office of Cultural Amity. It was a symbolic gesture. This many people would easily sweep aside the guards. Dalton dared not give people in such a foul mood a reason to turn their anger to him.
A woman, holding the hand of a young boy, pulled him along as she pushed her way to the front of the crowd. “I am Nora,” she proclaimed to the people. “This is my son, Bruce. He’s all I got left, because of witches! My husband, Julian, was drowned because of a dark curse from a witch! My beautiful daughter Bethany was burned up alive by a witch’s spell!”
The boy, Bruce, wept, mumbling it was true, wept for his father and sister. Serin Rajak held up the woman’s arm.
“Here is a victim of the Keeper’s witchcraft!” He pointed to a wailing woman near the front. “There is another! Many of you here have been harmed by curses and hexes from witches! Witches using evil from the Keeper of the Dead!”
With a crowd in this ugly a mood, Dalton knew this could come to no good end, but he could think of nothing to do to stop it.
It was, after all, the reason he had released Serin Rajak: to rouse anger against magic. He needed people to be stirred up against those with magic, to see them as evil. Who better than a zealot to foment such hatred?
“And here is the witch!” Serin Rajak thrust his arm out to point at the woman whose hands were bound behind her, the woman Stein held by the hair. “She is the Keeper’s vile tool! She casts evil spells to harm you all!”
The mob was yelling and screaming for vengeance.
“What should we do with this witch?” Rajak shrieked.
“Burn her! Burn her! Burn her!” came the chant.
Serin Rajak flung his arms toward the sky. “Dear Creator, we commend this woman to your care in the flames! If she be innocent, spare her harm! If she be guilty of the crime of witchcraft, burn her!”
As men threw up a pole, Stein bore his captive facedown to the ground. He pulled her head up by her hair. With his other hand, he brought up his knife.
Dalton, his eyes wide, was unable to blink, to breathe, as he watched Stein slice from one ear to the other, across the top of Franca’s forehead. Her scream ripped Dalton’s insides, as Stein ripped back her scalp.
Tears ran down Dalton’s cheeks as blood ran down Franca’s face. Shrieking in pain and immeasurable terror, she was lifted and bound to the pole. The whites of her eyes stood out from a mask of blood.
Franca didn’t argue for her innocence or beg for her life. She just screamed in paralyzed horror.
Straw and wood were thrown up around her. The mob pressed in, wanting to be close, to see it all. Some reached out and stole a swipe at the blood coursing down her face, eager for a memento of witch’s blood on their fingertips, to prove their power, before they sent her to the Keeper.
Horror dragging him by his throat, Dalton staggered partway down the steps.
Men with torches pushed through to the front of the roaring mob. Serin Rajak, wild with rage, climbed the clutter of wood and straw at her feet to shout in Franca’s face, to call her every sort of vile name, and accuse her of every sort of evil crime.
Dalton, standing helpless on the steps, knew all the words to be false. Franca was not one of those things.
Just then, a most extraordinary thing happened. A raven swooped down from the gray sky, fixing its angry claws in Serin Rajak’s hair.
Serin screamed that it was the witch’s familiar, come to protect its mistress. The crowd responded by throwing things at the bird while at the same time Serin tried to fight it off. The bird flapped and squawked, but held on to the man’s hair.
With such frightening determination that Dalton
began to think that the charges it was the witch’s familiar seemed true, the huge inky black bird used its beak to stab out Serin’s good eye.
The man screamed in pain and rage as he fell from the tinder around Franca. As he did, the mob heaved on the torches.
A wail such as Dalton had never heard rose from poor Franca as the flames exploded through the dry straw and up the length of her. Even from where he stood, Dalton could smell the burning flesh.
And then, in her terror, in her pain, in her burning death, Franca turned her head, and saw Dalton standing there on the steps.
She screamed his name. Over the roar of the crowd, he couldn’t hear it, but he could read it on her lips.
She screamed it again, and screamed she loved him.
When Dalton read those words on her lips, they crushed his heart.
The flames blistered her flesh, till the scream pushed from her lungs sounded like the shriek of the lost souls in the world of the dead.
Dalton stood numb, watching it, realizing only then that his hands were holding his head, and he was screaming too.
The crowd surged forward, eager to smell the roasting flesh, to see the witch’s skin burn. They were wild with excitement, their eyes mad with it. As the mob pressed in, the ones in front were pushed so close it singed off their eyebrows, and this, too, they relished, as the witch screamed and burned.
On the ground, the raven was pecking wildly at the blinded, almost forgotten, Serin Rajak. He swung his arms, unseeing, trying to get the vengeful bird away. Darting in between his flailing arms, the raven’s big beak snatched, twisted, and tore chunks of flesh from his face.
The crowd began pelting the bird anew with anything handy. The bird, finally looking as if it was losing strength, flapped helplessly as everything from shoes to flaming branches arced through the air toward it.
For reasons he didn’t understand, Dalton, weeping, found himself cheering the bird against all odds, knowing it, too, was about to die.
Just as it looked as if the end was near for the valiant, avenging raven, a riderless horse charged into the square. Blocked by the mob, it reared wildly, knocking people aside. It spun and kicked, injuring people, snapping bones, breaking heads. People fell back as the golden chestnut-colored horse, ears pinned back, snorting with an angry scream, charged into the center of the crowd. Frightened people, trying to fall back, were unable to make way for the press of other people behind them.
The horse, seeming to have gone insane with anger, trampled anyone in its way to get to the center of the square. Dalton had never heard of a horse running toward a fire.
As it reached the middle of the melee, the raven, with a last desperate effort, flapped its great black wings and made it up onto the horse’s back. When the horse wheeled, Dalton thought for a moment that it had another bird on it, as if there were two black ravens, but then he realized the second was just a splotch of black color on the horse’s rump.
With the raven’s claws clutching the horse’s mane just above the withers, the horse reared up one last time before coming down and charging off in a dead run. The people who could, leaped out of the way. Those unable to do so were trampled by the enraged beast.
Alone on the steps, Franca’s screams thankfully ended, Dalton saluted the golden chestnut mare and avenging raven as they fled at a full gallop from the city center.
Chapter 63
Beata squinted out over the plains in the dawn light. It was good to see that the sun was going to shine, once it reached the horizon. The rain of the last few days had been wearing. Now there were only a few dark purple clouds, like a child’s charcoal scribbles, across the golden eastern sky. From up on the stone base of the Dominie Dirtch, beneath that immense sweep of sky overhead, she could see forever, it seemed, out onto the vast plains of the wilds.
Beata saw that Estelle Ruffin was right in calling her up top. In the distance a rider was coming. He was taking the dry ground, right toward them. The rider was still a goodly distance, but by the way he was running his horse, he didn’t look like he intended to stop. Beata waited until he was a little closer, and then cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled.
“Halt! Halt where you are!”
Still he came on. He was probably still too far away to hear her. The plains were deceptive; sometimes it took a rider much longer to reach them than it seemed it should.
“What should we do?” Estelle asked, having never had a rider approach so fast before, looking like he didn’t intend to stop.
Beata was finally used to Anders relying on her and asking her for instructions. She was not only getting used to her authority, she had come to delight in it.
It was ironic. Bertrand Chanboor had made the laws that enabled Beata to join the army and command Anders, and Bertrand Chanboor had caused her to avail herself of the laws. She hated him, and at the same time he was her unwitting benefactor. Now that he was Sovereign, she tried, as was her duty and hard as it was, to feel only love for him.
Just the night before, Captain Tolbert had come by with some D’Haran soldiers. They were riding down the line of Dominie Dirtch to take the votes of the squads stationed at each weapon. They’d all talked about it, and though Beata didn’t see their votes, she knew her squad all marked an X.
Beata had a strong feeling about Lord Rahl, having met and talked to him, that he was a good man. The Mother Confessor, too, seemed much kinder than Beata had expected. Still, Beata and her squad were proud to be in the Anderith army, the best army in the world, Captain Tolbert told them, an army undefeated since the creation of the land, and invincible now.
Beata had responsibility. She was a soldier who commanded respect, now, just as Bertrand Chanboor’s law said. She didn’t want anything to change.
Even though it was for Bertrand Chanboor, their new Sovereign, and against Lord Rahl, Beata had proudly marked an X.
Emmeline had her hand on the striker, and Karl stood close to it, too, anticipating Beata ordering it out. Beata, instead, motioned the two away from the thing.
“There’s only one rider,” Beata said in a calm voice of authority, settling their nerves.
Estelle heaved a sigh in frustration. “But Sergeant—”
“We are trained soldiers. One man is no threat. We know how to fight. We’ve been trained in combat.”
Karl shifted his sword on his weapons belt, eager for the responsibility of doing some real soldiering. Beata snapped her fingers, pointing to the steps.
“Go, Karl. Get Morris and Annette. The three of you meet me down at the front line. Emmeline, you stay up here with Estelle, but I want both of you to stand away from the striker. I’ll not have you ringing this weapon for no more threat than a lone rider. We’ll handle it. Just stay at your post and keep watch.”
Both women saluted with a hand to their brow. Karl did a quick version before he raced down the steps, breathless with the possibility of real action. Beata straightened her sword at her hip and went down the steps in a dignified manner more befitting her rank.
Beata stood beside the huge stone weapon at the line, as they called it; beyond, the Dominie Dirtch would kill. She clasped her hands behind her back as Karl raced up with Morris and Annette. Annette was still putting on her chain mail.
Beata finally understood the shouts coming from the rider racing toward them. He was screaming for them not to ring the Dominie Dirtch.
Beata thought she recognized the voice.
Karl had his hand on the hilt of his sword. “Sergeant?”
She nodded and the two men and one woman drew steel. It was the first time they’d done so for a potential threat. They were all three beaming with the thrill of it.
Beata cupped her hands around her mouth again. “Halt!”
This time the rider heard her. He hauled back on the reins and drew his lathered horse to a stumbling, clumsy halt a little distance out.
Beata’s jaw dropped.
“Fitch!”
He grinned. “Beata! Is th
at you?”
He dismounted and walked his horse toward her. The horse looked in sorry shape. Fitch didn’t look much better, but he still managed to swagger.
“Fitch,” Beata growled, “get over here.”
Disappointed that Beata knew the man and there didn’t look like there wasn’t going to be any swordplay, Karl, Norris, and Annette returned their weapons to their scabbards.
They all stared openly, though, at the weapon Fitch was wearing.
It was held on with a baldric running over the right shoulder opposite the sword and scabbard at his left hip, thereby helping balance the weight. The leather of the baldric was finely tooled and looked old; Beata knew leatherwork, and hadn’t seen anything that fine. The scabbard was embellished with simply peerless silver and gold work.
The sword itself was remarkable, what she could see, anyway. It had a downswept, brightwork cross guard. The hilt looked wound in silver wire, with a bit of gold, too, glinting in the early light.
Fitch, chest puffed up, smiled at her. “Good to see you, Beata. I’m glad to see you got the job you were after. I guess both of us got our dream after all.”
Beata knew she, had earned her dream. Having known Fitch a good long time, she doubted the same of him.
“Fitch, what are you doing here, and what are you doing with that weapon?”
His chin lifted. “It’s mine. I told you that someday I’d be Seeker, and now I am. This here is the Sword of Truth.”
Beata stared down at it. Fitch turned the weapon out a little so she could see the hilt with writing in gold wire. It was the word Fitch had drawn in the dust that one day at the Minister’s estate. She remembered it: TRUTH.
“The wizards gave you that?” Beata pointed, incredulous. “The wizards named you Seeker of Truth?”
“Well . . .” Fitch glanced back over his shoulder, out to the wilds. “It’s a long story, Beata.”
“Sergeant Beata,” she said, not about to be outdone by the likes of Fitch.
He shrugged. “Sergeant. That’s great, Beata.” He glanced over his shoulder again. “Um, can I talk to you?” He cast a wary eye to those watching their every word. “Alone?”
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