Allisander falls to his knees in the hallway, choking on blood and mucus and arrogance. Rust-colored dirt from the floor is in streaks on his pristine clothing. His breathing is broken and hitching, marked by a thin whimper every few breaths. I stare down at him for a second longer than necessary.
Perhaps I delight in some pain.
I drop to a crouch in front of him. “Look at me,” I say. “Is your nose broken?”
“I want him dead.” His voice is thick and nasally, but he doesn’t glance up.
“He will be,” I say. “But I can’t kill him twice. Now look at me.”
He spits blood at the ground, then draws a ragged breath and looks up. A lump is already forming above his left eyebrow. He’ll have two black eyes, and his lip is split, but his nose looks straight as ever. Pity.
The guards have filled the hallway now, chasing the other prisoners back from their bars. Lochlan is curled on the floor of his cell, dry-heaving over his broken arm. One of the guards has a hand on the cell door, but he looks to me, waiting for an order on whether he should take action.
I shake my head, and the guard gives a brief nod before stepping away. I draw my own handkerchief from a pocket and hold it out to Allisander. “Here.”
He takes it, somewhat sheepishly, and presses it to his mouth. I rather doubt he needs me to tell him he shouldn’t have stepped right up to the bars like that, so I don’t.
I straighten. “So,” I say brightly, and he blinks wearily up at me. “Who would you like to question next?”
Harristan is fit to be tied.
“Why would you bring him there?” he demands. “What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that our richest consul made a request, and I sought to honor it.”
“Well, now he’s requesting a spectacle.” My brother is pacing the floor along the windowed wall of his chambers. The weather has turned overcast, promising rain and lending enough shadows to match his mood. “He’s requesting that we send a clear message to anyone else who might be considering a similar plot.”
For all my brother’s anxious movement, I’m motionless in a chair. “We’re executing eight prisoners, Harristan. It’ll be a spectacle.”
He stops and looks at me. Some unspoken emotion passes between us, a mixture of regret and loss and fury, but he blinks and it’s gone. His voice goes quiet. “How are you going to do it?”
In moments like this, I sometimes wonder if Harristan regrets that moment with Allisander from so long ago, as if our father yielding to Nathaniel Sallister then would have somehow staved off Allisander’s manipulations now.
I doubt it. I think he’d be worse.
I think we’d be forced to do worse.
I inhale to answer, but a sharp rap sounds at the door. Harristan doesn’t look away. “Enter,” he calls.
The door swings wide, and a guard says, “Your Majesty, Master Quint would like—”
“No,” says Harristan. His eyes still haven’t left mine.
“Oh, let him in,” I say.
My brother sighs and glances at the doorway. “You have ten minutes, Quint.”
Quint was bouncing outside the door like an eager puppy, documents and folios clutched to his chest, but now he comes bustling through. His jacket is unbuttoned, his hair unruly. He never bothered with a shave this morning, so his pale jaw is dusted with red. “I only need nine.”
“I’m counting.”
Quint sets down his materials and launches into a litany of issues in the palace, from a shortage of straw bedding for the royal cattle requiring a decision on whether to substitute wood shavings, to a disagreement among the kitchen staff about whether Harristan prefers ivory tablecloths trimmed in green or burgundy tablecloths trimmed in gray. My brother casts me a withering glance when Quint shifts into a request from the Royal Sector to ring the dawn bells at two hours past dawn so people aren’t woken so early.
“Could they really be called dawn bells, then?” I say.
Harristan sighs. “I feel rather certain we’ve passed nine minutes.”
“It’s hardly been eight and a half,” I say. I really have no idea.
Quint makes a note on his papers. “I do still need to address the matter of pardon requests we’ve received this morning.”
Harristan waves a hand. “You’re done, Quint. Draft the usual response.”
“But—”
“Out.”
“I’ll just leave them with you, then.” Quint shoves most of the paperwork he was carrying toward the center of the table, then turns for the door.
“Wait!” says Harristan. “Leave what with me?”
I lean forward and take the top piece of paper from the pile. It’s scribbled and unsigned, but requests can be made at the palace gates by any citizen.
We’re all dying. You’re just killing them quicker. Show mercy.
I skip to the next one.
Free the rebels from Steel City.
I flip through a few more. Some are hastily written, some are more eloquent, but they all beg for the same thing.
“Pardon requests,” I say hollowly. We always get a few—but never to this extent.
“How many are there?” says Harristan.
Quint hovers by the doorway. “One hundred eighty-seven.”
I set down the letters and look at my brother. “As I said. A spectacle.”
“One is from Consul Cherry,” says Quint.
That gets Harristan’s attention. “Arella?” he says. “I thought the smugglers were captured in Steel City.” That’s firmly Leander Craft’s territory, while Arella speaks for Sunkeep, far in the south.
“They were.” I push aside the thinner parchments and scribbled pleas until I get to the folios at the bottom. Arella’s is black leather, the cover stamped with Sunkeep’s sigil in gold: half a sun descending into a rolling sea.
To His Royal Majesty, the Esteemed King Harristan,
I write to you in regard to the men and women imprisoned on charges of smuggling and illegal trade.
While I recognize that true crime deserves punishment, these men and women are not criminals.
They are acting out of desperation to help their families during a time of need. I humbly request that you might find it in your heart to pardon them.
We of Sunkeep are willing to welcome them into our territory if you will grant clemency.
Yours in service,
Consul Arella Cherry
I read it out loud, and Harristan looks at Quint. “You dragged me through twenty minutes of nonsense when this was sitting on the table?”
My brother’s voice could cut steel, but Quint doesn’t flinch. If anything, he looks somewhat incredulous. “I brought a day’s worth of issues to you and attempted to fit them into nine minutes. As per your request.”
Harristan swipes the leather folio out of my hands, but he’s still glaring at Quint. “I gave you ten.”
Quint opens his mouth to argue, but I have no desire to see him as the ninth victim today, so I say, “Did Leander issue a request?”
“No,” says Quint.
Harristan scans the letter I just read, then snaps it shut and looks back at the Palace Master. “Anyone else of importance? Or were you going to tell me tomorrow?”
“The usual elites from the Royal Sector,” Quint says. There are a few families who request a pardon for every captive. They’re always denied, but they always ask.
Quint glances at the pile. “A few others are from influential families. Many requests came from the Wilds. No other consuls.”
I look at the folio in Harristan’s hands. I’m surprised Arella submitted her request this way, instead of coming to speak with me directly. “Is Arella still here?” I say.
“She left at dawn,” says Quint. He pauses. “She and Roydan shared a carriage.”
Harristan goes still at this news. After a moment, he says, “That’s enough, Quint.” He sets the folio on the table.
“Your Majesty.” Quint offers a q
uick bow, then escapes the tension of the room.
We sit in the silence for a long moment, until Harristan eventually eases into the chair across from me. He picks up one of the pardon requests, reads it, gently sets it aside. Then another. Then another.
I wait.
He reads them all.
He’s been the fierce king for so long now that I sometimes forget how he was when he was the beloved crown prince, the boy who was sheltered and coddled and doted upon. I remember he once told me he was glad that Father took me along for hunting trips, because he’d go pale at the sight of blood, and he hated the idea of putting an arrowhead into a living creature.
When he finally looks up, I see a glimpse of that boy in his eyes.
I lean in against the table. “Allisander was already going to raise his prices before this happened. You have nearly two hundred pardon requests sitting here, but I imagine you’d have three times as many decrying their crimes.”
He holds my gaze. “Arella requested a pardon for smugglers on the same day Allisander claimed his supply chain is being attacked. He won’t be happy. It pits her against him.”
I snort. “Who’s not against Allisander?”
“You,” he says.
I lose any shred of humor. “Only in public.” I frown. “And you well know that.”
“In public is all that matters.” He pauses. “It likely pits her against Lissa Marpetta, too. I find it interesting that she shared a carriage with Roydan.”
Roydan Pelham. Some at court might think the old man was after Arella because she’s young, cultured, and beautiful, but I’ve known Roydan my entire life, and no one is more devoted to his wife than he is. He’s also played court politics for so long that he wouldn’t be seen climbing into a carriage with Arella unless it meant something. “Their sectors border one another.”
“Exactly.” He pauses. “It’s a risk to stand against Allisander. Especially now.”
“Arella’s people have always fared the best against the fevers,” I say. “Maybe she feels like she has less to lose.”
Harristan runs a hand across his face. He wants to pardon the prisoners. I can see it in the set of his jaw. I don’t know what about them has drawn his sympathy, whether it’s the number of captives, or the quantity of requests we received, or if it’s simply that he’s as tired of violence and treachery as I am, and he longs to be kind to someone. Anyone.
Kindness killed our parents.
Harristan coughs behind his hand, and my attention sharpens. I go stock-still.
His breathing sounds fine. His color is good. He’s fine.
I think it again, more emphatically, as if I can will it to be true. He’s fine.
“If they go free,” I say slowly, “Allisander will see it as the Crown taking a stand against him, too.” Again, I think. “We aren’t just talking about affecting the supply to the palace, Harristan.”
“I know.”
“We’re talking about the entire Royal Sector. We’re talking about all of Kandala.”
“I know.”
“We can’t side with criminals,” I say. “This is the first time we’ve seen a larger group attempt to organize. If we’re lenient, it will lead to more raids, to more thefts, to more—”
“Cory.” His voice is quiet. “I know.”
I say nothing. We’re in agreement, then.
We’ve come to an understanding.
I sigh. So does he.
My brother pulls his pocket watch free. “We’re two hours from midday. You never did tell me how you’re going to do it.”
My thoughts turn dark, a black cloak already dropping across my mind to stave off any emotion. I do what needs to be done.
“Wait and see.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Tessa
I have no desire to see eight people hung or garroted or chopped into bits or whatever other horrible fate the king and his brother will come up with, but Mistress Solomon wants to see the executions, and she expects Karri and I to join her.
“It’s right to see people punished for their crimes,” she says to us. “We could all use a reminder that there are punishments for those who take what they haven’t earned. We have a duty to be grateful for all our rulers do to provide for us.”
I remember my parents, killed for trying to bring more medicine to the people. I consider Mistress Kendall, executed in the street for crying out in her grief, or poor Gillis, who definitely didn’t deserve to die because his mother was too poor to buy medicine for them both.
I’m not sure what I feel, really, but it definitely isn’t gratitude.
There are wagons full of people heading for the gates to the Royal Sector, so Karri and I hitch up our homespun skirts and climb onto the first one with space available while Mistress Solomon pays an extra coin to sit up front near the driver. We’re pressed together at the back, sharing a bale of hay to sit on, but I don’t mind. The day is overcast and cool, with a hint of mist in the air.
Karri leans close. “Have you seen your sweetheart?” she murmurs. “He’s not one of them, is he?”
I meet her gaze. “No. He’s not.” I remember Wes’s eyes, almost hurt when I said I thought he was caught up with the others from Steel City. “He’s not a smuggler.”
“He’s well, then?”
I think of Weston in the firelight, his thumb tracing over my lip like it was something precious, and I press my fingertips to my mouth. I could almost taste his breath as he said, Not never, Tessa. But not right now.
Karri grins and bumps me with her shoulder. “He’s well.”
I wonder if he’ll be somewhere in the crowd today. He said a lot of the forge workers would likely be in attendance, but whether he meant it in solidarity or in judgment, I couldn’t tell.
Probably just like everyone else flocking to the gates: partly horrified, partly curious.
Partly relieved, because someone else’s downfall generally means your own isn’t imminent.
I don’t grin back at Karri, because it feels odd to smile while we’re being carted along to watch someone else die. Wes wasn’t among them, but I wonder if he knows them, or if he knows someone close to them. No one in Kandala is a stranger to what happens to smugglers, but always before it’s been one or two, like Wes and me. Never a group.
When the fevers first began taking lives, it wasn’t long after King Harristan had come to power, naming his brother, Prince Corrick, as King’s Justice. Father was a true apothecary then, providing real medicines and elixirs, not like the potions and herbs that Mistress Solomon dispenses. He knew how to ease an ache or salve a burn or calm a colicky infant. Mother and Father weren’t anxious about a new king, at least not at first. King Harristan and his brother were young, but the royal family was loved. We were all shocked by the assassination—and all of Kandala mourned along with the brothers.
That is . . . we all mourned until people began to fall sick and die. Father tried tinctures and poultices and every combination of herbs he could think of, but nothing worked—until a healer in Emberridge discovered that the petals of the Moonflower could reduce the fever and allow the body to heal itself. Within a fortnight, word had spread to all the sectors. Fights broke out over supply of the Moonflower. Raids and thievery became common. Deals were worked in back alleys and shadowed sitting rooms, where gold or weapons or anything of value would be traded for a few days’ doses. Emberridge and Moonlight Plains, the only sectors where the plant grew, quickly hired enforcers to guard their borders, and later they built a wall.
At first, King Harristan tried to maintain order, but desperate people take desperate actions, and there was never enough medicine to go around. We had people knocking on our door at all hours of the night, begging for whatever Father could do for them, and I’d mix elixirs and potions and teas in the hope that anything else would work.
Nothing ever did.
Out of desperation, Father found a smuggler who was willing to cut our family in on whatever he stole, prov
ided we gave him half our proceeds from selling the medicines to Father’s patients.
Father would charge half and gave all the money to the thief. He always said it was more important to save everyone we could. That a few extra coins in his pocket wasn’t worth the cost of a few more bodies on the funeral pyre. It was then that he discovered that spreading the medicine among more people would still save lives. He tried to share his records with the king, but there were too many apothecaries, too many theories, too much fear and death and pain. Everyone was afraid to take less.
Then King Harristan struck a deal with the Emberridge and Moonlight Plains sectors, using royal funds to provide doses for the people of Kandala, allocated by sector. It wasn’t enough—there was never enough—but it was something.
King Harristan also promised a death sentence for thievery, smuggling, and illegal trade.
His brother, Prince Corrick, the King’s Justice, made good on that promise.
Brutally. Publicly. Horribly.
But it was effective. Within a month, order had been restored. Many people had access to medicine.
Many, but not all.
Father tried to continue helping, Mother at his side.
And then they were caught. Sometimes I wonder if I was lucky that they fought back, that they were executed in the early dawn hours by the night patrol. That they didn’t have to stay in the Hold, waiting to die, knowing their daughter would have to watch.
Lucky.
Karri squeezes my hand. Her gaze has turned pitying. “I find it upsetting, too,” she whispers.
Not like I do. Her parents never do anything wrong. They’re almost afraid to take the medicine allotted to them, as if they’re being greedy. But she means well, so I squeeze back.
The gates to the Royal Sector are closed, but a massive wooden stage has been dragged into place before it. I’m too far away to see much detail, but the stage is high enough for everyone to get a good view. Eight armored guards stand in a line, crossbows in hand. At their feet kneel the eight prisoners. They’re all in muslin tunics, with burlap sacks tied over their heads, so I can’t tell who’s a man and who’s a woman. They must be bound in place somehow, because two seem slumped, their heads hanging at an odd angle.
Defy the Night Page 6