Curse of the Celts

by Clara O'Connor

  The hours ticked by slowly as we waited for the Mete to reconvene. We sat in silence, contemplating the evening ahead. So far, we had a one-for-two conviction rate with a death sentence. Marcus believed that the city might vote in my favour. I wasn’t so convinced, and if Matthias was to be believed, it wouldn’t matter anyway. Whatever happened out on the sand, there was no future in which Governor Actaeon would allow us to live if he had any say in it. Which of course he did.

  The sentinels came to collect us at the allotted time, tying our hands in front of us – a new precaution against wielding magic, I guessed, now that we had stopped eating their food and thereby consuming the inhibitor they laced it with. Once we were secure, Praetorian Alvar entered the room, his head tilting as he surveyed us with satisfaction.

  “Nice to see you all where you belong.” He smiled his quick, fake smile – or rather, produced the baring of teeth he believed passed for a smile. “I’m informed that you failed to eat the food provided. Such a big day, are you sure you don’t care for it?”

  He pushed the tray towards us with his foot.

  “Too kind,” Marcus answered for us with impeccable manners. “We’re all fine, thank you.”

  Alvar bared his teeth again. “I thought you might say that. No matter.”

  At that, Kasen, Alvar’s ever-present sidekick, entered the room. Despite our current circumstances, I felt oddly relieved to see that Kasen had suffered no repercussions from having lost us the night of the pre-wedding revels. Although, as I now knew, he hadn’t lost us at all. In fact, they had been in the exact right spot outside the wall waiting for us. How had they got there before us if they had been following us? It seemed that Marcus’s defection to our cause hadn’t been as much of a surprise to the authorities as it had to Devyn and me.

  Kasen was carrying a covered tray which he presented to the senior praetorian. Alvar lifted the cover to reveal three syringes, one for each of us. Devyn immediately began to struggle with the guard holding him, and two more guards entered at the commotion. He pulled away from his guard and rushed at the two incoming sentinels but, bound as he was, he was no match for them, and was quickly tackled to the ground where the three of them pinned him down. He made no sound, but his dark glare was filled with hate and defiance as Alvar injected him in the arm through the sleeve of his black shirt.

  “Hold him down,” Alvar instructed as he turned away, and handed a fresh syringe to Kasen before turning to Marcus. “Do I need to invite more guards to join us?”

  In reply, Marcus merely turned his shoulder towards the praetorian who had always been so courteous when he had been on my protection detail. Marcus stood unmoving, staring into the middle distance, as Kasen injected him in his upper arm.

  Kasen picked up the last syringe and made his way to me. Devyn started to struggle against the guards who held him down. Alvar crossed the cell and kicked him in the stomach with his heavy boots. I felt the pain caused by the blow and whimpered.

  “Wild animals will not be tolerated in the city, dog,” he said, kicking Devyn a second time before he had managed to gain his breath from the first blow. I folded over at the second blow.

  Turning, Alvar found Marcus now standing in front of me. He quirked a brow at my protector.

  “Marcus, it’s fine. I’m fine,” I said, though I had backed myself up against the wall. Marcus ground his teeth and stood aside, letting Alvar pass.

  “Donna Shelton.” Alvar nodded to me as he pushed the syringe into my upper arm. I winced at the stinging sensation caused by the liquid as it made its way under my skin. My fears were quickly confirmed; it was indeed the inhibitor. I had started to recognise the difference in myself when it was in my bloodstream; the world felt a little less raw, my senses were just a little duller than they had been moments earlier. Perhaps, given the next hour or so, that was no bad thing.

  Alvar nodded at the guards holding Devyn on the ground and they let go of him before hauling him to his feet. His eyes met mine, asking if I was all right. I nodded slightly, sending a reassuring pulse through our bond which seemed unaffected by the drug. Job completed, they untied our hands and started to march us to the door.

  “No masks?” I asked Alvar, surprised.

  “No,” he replied shortly.

  This was a considerable change in protocol. Nobody was ever brought into the arena unmasked; it was the way it had been for centuries. Calchas must not want a repeat of yesterday; Marcus’s friends identifying him before the vote had caused uproar yesterday. It wouldn’t take a genius watching my reel to figure out that the girl whose identity was obscured, the one standing beside Marcus Courtenay on the sands and accused of crimes not dissimilar to his, was his bride.

  Making our way out to the arena for the second time was no less intimidating. If anything, the thunderous pounding was louder tonight. I felt weighed down by the thousands of eyes that stared down at us as we entered the arena. Behind my mask, I had known they were there, but it had made me focus on myself and on the hands that held mine. Now, my head bared, my face revealed, I felt the accusing stares, the appalled gasps, the whispering of the crowd as they conveyed their shock at my identity and speculated on my offences. Thousands in the arena, hundreds more in the balconies above, and in homes throughout Londinium, the entire city watched as I made my way across the sands. I looked around me,. Rows upon rows of faceless, nameless citizens salivated at the prospect of seeing my offences. My eyes flicked to the area at the side of the arena reserved for relatives and witnesses of the accused. Empty. No sign of my parents. Had they so easily washed their hands of me? I thought of Anna who served our family faithfully for years. Had they turned up when she was brought here to be judged and executed? Or had she meant as little to them as the girl they raised as a daughter? Had they turned their backs and publicly refused to support her by not turning up? Had no one turned up for me? I felt a wave of emotion from Devyn. I closed my eyes to savour it. The bond between us was vibrant with his strength, his belief in my ability to survive, and his admiration for who I was. I didn’t need anyone else. I had Devyn. I would always have Devyn. Even when he had believed me dead, he had been there for me, risking everything to come and find me; against all evidence he believed in me. I could do this.

  We stood in the late autumn sunshine, awaiting the council, which was another change in protocol. Typically, the council arrived first, events began, and the accused were the last to be brought in. The warm, soft light streamed down, turning everything golden. I looked at the proud, defiant profiles of the men standing each side of me. Devyn’s dark curls waved in the breeze which swirled around the arena and his dark eyes stared straight ahead while his high cheekbones were accented by the play of the sunlight on his face. Marcus’s chestnut hair was as impeccable as ever, and his green eyes caught mine, warmed, and told me to be strong. I smiled in return, looking around to see the last of the council taking their places as the praetor and the governor arrived and stood at the front of the balcony.

  The governor and the praetor stepped forwards together.

  “Friends, Romans, citizens,” the Governor greeted as usual. “For two thousand years we have convened here to mete out the justice of the city. We are the first and last defence of the Empire. The walls keep us safe but the Code keeps us strong. Yesterday saw the trial of a young man who should have been the best of us. He has failed. We, in turn, showed him mercy he did not deserve. He failed us. He failed the Code.”

  A ripple ran through the arena. What was happening?

  “We cannot let this stand. He used magic within the walls. He undermined everything we are and everything the Empire is. We thereby have decided to adjust his sentence to that meted out in all such cases. Death by fire.”

  I gripped Marcus’s hand tightly. Matthias had been right. The crowd was silent, stunned by the unprecedented move. The governor had ignored the city’s vote for clemency and overruled the sentence of the praetor.

  “In the Code we are one.”
/>   The crowd returned, “We are one in the Code.”

  Today, nobody objected. The pandemonium, the division of the night before, had been quieted by the age-old response, the reminder that our unity as a province, as a city, was stronger if we were united as one under the law and customs of our Code. Their Code. Not mine; I was no longer protected or bound by the Code.

  Calchas stepped forwards and raised his hands to quiet the cheering of the crowd.

  “Citizens, welcome. Today you are returned to this special Mete to bear judgement on the last of these accused. We have dispensed with anonymity here today as it is our belief that you have a right to know when a fellow citizen has grievously and repeatedly broken the laws of our city. Cassandra Shelton has taken all the blessings bestowed upon her and thrown them back in our faces. For this, you have the right to look in her eyes and see her shame when you bear witness. She has forfeited the right granted to citizens by thus offending you all so mightily.”

  Woah, talk about leading the vote. By revealing my face and allowing the mob time to absorb my identity, Calchas ensured the result would not be fractured by any reflex of mercy that a late revelation of my well-known face and name might grant me, as it had for Marcus the previous day. Denying me anonymity as a privilege of which I was no longer worthy, he was making sure that the very fact that I was known to these people was proof that I had thrown all the privileges of my station and their good wishes in their faces.

  He turned to gaze down his nose at me where I stood on the sands before him.

  “Cassandra Shelton, you are accused of crimes across the spectrum, of aiding the Codebreaker Oban, assisting in his escape and that of his sister, a magic user. You have also betrayed your handfast by having sex outside of wedlock. You concealed and aided a hunted Codebreaker and, with him, attempted to escape justice, not once but twice. You persuaded an innocent citizen to aid you, for which they lost their life. And through the wilful use of magic, you destroyed citizen property in Richmond. How do you plead?”

  I reeled from the list of offences of which I was accused. The crowd had reacted with increasing volume as Calchas dropped each one into the silence on which he insisted before continuing. By the end, the crowd were a seething morass of jeers with vile names being thrown down upon me from all sides. Calchas had staged it well; there was no need to go to a public vote. I was already judged. I was no longer the pretty girl on the arm of their golden boy. I was reviled, beyond redemption in the eyes of the crowd.

  I would not throw myself on their mercy. There would be none for me. I smiled defiantly at Calchas, not breaking his gaze. I refused to sink to my knees. I lifted my chin. I was guilty. And proud of it.

  The din of the crowd heightened as the mob screeched its anger at being denied the pleasure of informing me of their belief in my guilt. I did not doubt that if it went to the public vote, I would be convicted at one of the highest rates the city had ever seen. Many like me preferred to abstain from the capital cases. I’m sure even those people would make an exception for me. In truth, a part of me was shocked at the depth of the hate that was raining down upon me.

  In moments, I ceased to be an obedient daughter of the city with a bright future who was matched to the city’s most eligible bachelor. Calchas was right; I had been given so much. I was an elite, matched to a veritable prince of the city. Many of the populace wouldn’t even aspire to a fraction of all I had thrown away. I had broken all levels of the Code, and they hadn’t even been informed of my fraternisation with a Briton. Calchas had refrained from using that one; he hadn’t needed to. But that was the crime of which I was proudest.

  It was only now, as I stood awaiting the sentence that Calchas was about to pronounce, that I realised how unjust the system truly was. How unfair. I was offered no chance to defend myself. Despite its supposed transparency – the way justice appeared to be in the hands of the citizenry – it actually never left the hands of the praetor and the rest of the council. It was they who decided who should appear on the sands, they who edited the evidentiary reel to show unmitigated guilt or justifications for offences against the Code on which they chose not to frown for their own reasons. Calchas played his audience like a fiddle. Crimes that when punished would fill the council’s coffers inevitably resulted in scant mercy. Crimes that didn’t benefit them one way or the other were an offering spread beneath the feet of the city to condemn or not as they framed it, the final judgement of little concern to them. At the Mete I had attended, the sea captain who had evaded taxes had lost everything and would spend the rest of his life working to enrich the council further. Meanwhile, Oban, the apprentice tailor who had stolen from his master, was portrayed doing it because of undeniable talent and to aid his impoverished family; he had been duly raised up thanks to the wisdom of the manipulated mob. All hail the great people of Londinium. They were too blind to see that they merely participated in their own imprisonment inside the punishment and reward system of their prison guards.

  “Cassandra Shelton, you stand guilty, ready to accept the sentence you so richly deserve. In doing so, I fear you seek merely to avoid having your shame witnessed before the city. You have broken the Code again and again in the most heinous of manners. You are a disgrace to this city. You have debased yourself by betraying your match and all that we stand for. You have offended the Code in ways that go against the very fabric of our society, employing magic to bring destruction upon the property of citzens. You are a threat to the wellbeing of everyone in the city. There can be no mercy for you. Death by fire.”

  I closed my eyes, unable to hold Calchas’s malicious gaze any longer as the manner of my death was named. My stomach dropped. Fire. So I was to burn. No trace of me but ash and smoke would remain by the time they were finished.

  The praetor raised his hands to quiet the crowd’s cacophonous reaction to Calchas going straight to sentencing, reversing yesterday’s policy of insisting we kneel and have our misdeeds displayed for the city’s entertainment.

  “People of Londinium and the Empire. Three among you have been found guilty and sentenced to death for their crimes. Despite the depth of their insults to the city, we shall offer them that which is always offered to the condemned on their last night on this earth.”

  My eye snagged on Governor Actaeon. His expression was thunderous. He clearly did not deem us entitled to the single last wish offered by tradition.

  “Marcus Courtenay. Speak. What would you have on this, your last night on earth?”

  Marcus looked miserable and in shock. He shook his head, asking for nothing.

  My knees threatened to give way. I couldn’t fall now. An arm reached under mine, steadying me. Unthinking, I turned to thank the guard for his assistance. The not unsympathetic eyes of Kasen met mine.

  “Cassandra Shelton, what would you have as a boon on your last night on earth?”

  I blinked, trying to extract a coherent thought from my scrambled brain.

  “Lord High Justice, it is my wish to spend my last night in the arms of my lover.” I spoke clearly, projecting my voice so my answer was heard. I smiled as I turned to my partner in amorous crime. “The Briton, Devyn Agrestis.”

  If I was going down, I might as well make sure that the full extent of my crimes was disclosed to the city. As the crowd erupted at this latest revelation, the governor grabbed hold of Calchas, forcing him to turn and face him, no doubt telling him how to deal with the unruly cat I had just let out of the bag. What would they do now that Devyn’s true origin was revealed? Would he get a stay of execution? My aim had merely been to stick one in the eye of the oh-so-clever praetor, but I smiled as I realised the bonus effect of my revelation.

  Praetor Calchas had not named Devyn as a Briton when judging him yesterday, calculatingly remiss for the sake of the peace. The Britons could not protest the execution of one of their own if the council could plead ignorance. Publicly killing Devyn as a Briton, while not in violation of the terms of the 1772 Treaty, would be diplomat
ically disruptive.

  Calchas stepped forwards once more, raising his arms until the furore calmed.

  “Donna Shelton, your claim appears to be a desperate attempt to delay justice being done. We found nothing to support such spurious claims in our investigations into your friend’s activities. However, we would welcome anyone who can come forward and substantiate such a claim.” Calchas smiled to the audience in what would appear to be a magnanimous manner; they had already begun hissing their displeasure at this perceived generosity, hungry for the promised blood. Calchas raised his hands once more to quieten the growing grumbles.

  “Devyn Agrestis, unfortunately, there can be no last wish for you while this matter is open. For now, a stay of execution is in place.” Again, his sodding pause for dramatic effect. “You have until noon tomorrow, after which your blood will stain the sands as your lover burns.”

  So much for my plan to outwit Calchas. Nobody would step forward, not if they valued their own lives. No one from beyond the walls would confirm his origins – word simply wouldn’t reach them in time – but the Praetor would be seen to have tried to discover the veracity of my claims when the Britons came to learn what had happened. All too late, of course.

  With a wave of his hands, we were pulled from the sands. I felt numb, disconnected from my body, slumping to the floor when we returned to our cell.

  Marcus didn’t recreate his light when the door closed. I was glad; I couldn’t face them, couldn’t have them see me. I needed the moment to fall apart. Devyn had risked his life to find me and Marcus had tried to help us escape. Now we were all going to die.

  The heavy silence was broken by the sound of someone opening our door. But no solitary guard stood outside with our dinner. In his place stood many heavily armed sentinels with Alvar at their head. He was glaring in at us. Involuntarily, I curled in on myself away from the sliver of light coming in through the open doorway. It was too soon. I locked eyes with Devyn. I wasn’t ready.