Because the cage we were in was bars all around, I could see ahead of us. What I saw blanked out my mind in a way I would have welcomed in the cell. They had torn down all the buildings in the span of a city block by the docks and erected a huge structure. People milled all around it—thousands of people. An avenue lay ahead of us, taking us through massive stands filled with people who cheered and waved purple triangles of silk with a white circle at their centers, embroidered with upward pointing arrows in black.
They were not courtiers, no jarls and jarldises, but the wealthier merchants, artisans, professionals of the city. At the base of the stands stood a line of Officers of Tyr in their black uniforms trimmed with purple. A new adornment on their upper left arms stood out against the black: a wide band of purple, with a white circle and black arrow, like the flags. They wore shining black metal helmets as well, rounded like bells.
The court sat in high, purple velvet-lined booths on both sides of the stage ahead of us. One monstrous banner hung behind the stage: a huge triangle of purple silk, with a white circle in the center, and inside that, a black arrow. High Vigja Galmr, his white hair smooth but his eyebrows still as wild, stood at the center of the stage on a raised dais in a ceremonial robe made of cloth of gold, but at his sides two of his lower vigjas wore black suits trimmed in silver, more like Officers’ uniforms than priests’ garb. On the upper sleeves on their left arms they each had a wide band of purple, with a white circle and black arrow, like the banner. They wore peaked caps with polished front visors made of black patent leather, the caps black trimmed with silver.
At the level of the stage, lower than the vigjas, all the way to the rear, lines of statue-like Officers remained at attention. At the front of the stage Eiflar stood, stiff and straight, wearing the purple uniform I had seen him in when he came to have me arrested, his golden head bare. In each corner of the stage three trumpeters waited, dressed all in black, their instruments gold.
“Where are the gallows?” Madr asked, his voice shaky. I glanced at him. He and Alflétta had their arms wrapped around each other. The wind cut through the bars of the cage, but I was already so cold, I hardly felt it.
“I don’t see any,” Liten said.
“Do you—do you think they’ve decided to spare us?” Madr asked.
“I doubt it,” Liten said, and Alflétta whispered in Madr’s ear. The younger man turned his face in towards Alflétta’s neck. My throat closed; it was the gesture of a frightened child, and I could not bear the reminder of the child I had failed to protect.
I turned my back on them again.
As the truck drove into the passage between the stands, the crowd’s cheers turned to catcalls and shouts. A balled up paper hit the bars near my right hand, and soon they pelted us with all sorts of trash and small stones. Concentrating on not flinching even as a bottle shattered against the bars, I stared out at them all as if I could memorize their faces for the purpose of haunting them after the hangman took me.
The truck rolled on, and we neared the vast stage. I turned just enough to see the booths high above, to search them for one face: Reister.
First I recognized Jarl Humli, and the Fastulfs. I scanned beyond, and there he stood, at the inner, lower corner of the booth on the right. His eyes met mine as the truck rattled on, as the bits of rubbish flew. Our eyes remained locked even as the truck came to a shuddering stop.
But I had to look away, for the stage itself began to make a terrible noise. A shudder passed through me at the shock. Sometime between the moment when I’d first seen Eiflar standing on it and now, he had disappeared. The dais rumbled and lifted from where it rested center stage, carrying with it the High Vigja and his associates. Beneath the dais the stage split, parting to make an opening that eventually widened enough for everyone to see the water beyond. Above the water hung six cages like the one my unhappy companions and I were caught in, from large robotic arms that bent out of the water like monstrous claws, towering over everything. The people in the cages—at least ten in each—were all emaciated, some elderly, some very young, a few in between. Eiflar and Galmr had remained true to their vision, choosing only the weakest for this sacrifice.
For there could be no doubt as to the fate of those imprisoned: beneath them the water was iridescent with oil, and standing on rafts mooring to the robotic arms at three points were Officers of Tyr holding flaming torches. They meant to lower the cages into the water, and set the water on fire. If the prisoners didn’t burn to death, they would drown.
Through the opening between the halves of the stage rolled a horse-drawn wagon. Eiflar rode the horse, and two men stood on the wagon, a pile of poles and rope between them. When the wagon reached the edge of the opening, it clicked like a puzzle-piece into place instead of continuing through the passage between the stands. I saw that the men, one with pale skin, one whose skin was deeply bronzed, both wore black velvet hoods. They were both executioners.
Why two?
They moved from the wagon to the stage, one on each side, taking pieces from the pile and erecting the gallows in a matter of minutes. The base on each side they fixed to the stage. I understood: when the time came to hang us, Eiflar would urge on the horse and the mechanism locking the wagon to the stage halves would release. We, formerly standing on the wagon, would drop to our deaths.
The pale executioner rolled a cylinder, about two feet high and perhaps two in diameter, onto the right stage. He settled it on one flat side, returned to the wagon, and when he came back to the cylinder, he was carrying an ax with the widest and most burnished blade I had ever seen. A headsman. So at least one of us was to escape hanging in favor of beheading.
A jolt under my feet almost unbalanced me. I grasped the bars tightly as our cage rose. The crowd howled with excitement as we traveled over the cab of the truck, some mechanism under us maneuvering to bring us to the edge of the stage on the left. A half a dozen Officers of Tyr marched out from the lines at the back of the stage in strict formation, halting before the cage. The side facing the ocean swung open on a hinge, and the Officers pointed their rifles at us.
Spraki scrambled to his feet as I passed him by, exiting first. Galmr stood on his dais, surrounded by his vigjas, staring down at us. I locked eyes with his, but an Officer jabbed me in the back with the muzzle of his rifle. It brought to mind my own treatment of poor Àdarf at the School of the Holy Hand. I wondered what had become of him. Was he in the crowd, screaming his support of the proceedings? And why not? At least he had reason to hate me.
As I walked slowly to the wagon, I let my eyes rove over the courtiers above. I spotted Jarl Snúa, and Jarl and Jarldis Hólmdórr, Jarl Almvin, the Øringers, and Jarldis Agvidar. Mother Tora stood at Reister’s elbow, of course, and I saw the two women I’d robbed on that illfated night Kolorma had saved me. Kolorma, where was she? I had not thought of her until now. In some part of my mind, I had sent her away, dreamt her free and safe in an aeroplane far from Helésey. I hoped I was right, for she was not among those above.
When all five of us stood by our nooses on the wagon, Galmr raised his hands in a V. The crowd froze, and when he brought the V down to make the arrow, every single one of them mimicked him. They did it again and again, chanting, “Hail Tyr! Hail Tyr! Hail Tyr!”
The trumpets blared, and the people quieted.
“Hear this, citizens of Helésey, people of Ódalnord,” Eiflar declaimed, his voice amplified through some trick of technology. “Behold the traitors, the insurgents, Tafglæggi Spraki, Lini Madr, Sefimund Alflétta, Farmann Liten, and Myadar Sölbói—although some know her better as Raud Gríma.”
There were yelps and whistles.
“It is true,” Eiflar went on. “The fearful highwayman was no man at all, but this degenerate woman. And to think, the vandals we’ve collected in yon cages sought to bring on revolution in her name!”
Eiflar never did understand the people. Even now, he had it all wrong. Raud Gríma might have given them the spark, but the re
bels were the conflagration.
The time had come, I decided, for my final act. The hangman would have my life, but not before I moved my final piece on this game table. I reached into my sleeve, and froze as they brought one last victim to the stage.
Where had they been holding her? Somewhere off to the right. They had her blindfolded as they marched her across the boards. There was no mistaking her auburn hair in the afternoon sun. They shoved her when the sound of the roaring crowd made her hesitate. She stumbled and they grabbed her arms. Her hands were manacled behind her. Yielding to the pressure of their hold she trudged to the cylinder. They thrust her to her knees before the headsman.
“And behold, my countrymen,” Eiflar continued. “A turncoat even within my royal house. The konungdis’s own sister, a conspirator in the plot to overthrow my rule.”
The crowd hissed and screamed, throwing refuse at Kolorma.
“I’ve set her sister aside—I can’t have traitors’ blood in my heirs’ veins,” Eiflar announced. My eyes searched. Leika-konungdis was nowhere that I could see. “And the one-time jöfurdis will die with the rest. Out of respect for her station, I’ve ordered her beheading.”
The people watching murmured in appreciation for Eiflar’s grand gesture. My stomach turned. My eyes moved from Kolorma to the headsman, and then to Eiflar, to Galmr, and to Reister.
I only had three darts.
In my cell, some hours before, my decision made, I fashioned three darts using the dagger Reister left me from the yew branch I could reach. I crushed the seeds and a few of the mistletoe berries—which would be rendered far more potent for growing from the poisonous yew—blending Luka’s vengeance with Alfódr’s, and Ullr’s too, why not? I only wished that Baldr and Frigga had poisons to add, but one could not ask for poison from the mother-goddess and her light-filled son.
I coated the darts I carved with the sticky poison; mistletoe berries made good glue, if one needed some in a pinch. With a little prayer to the three Gods I hoped would favor me, I fashioned a tiny bow from yew wood and threads from my britches, woven into a string.
It was a measure of the inexperience of the young Officers who came for me that they did not search me, but assumed I left my cell as unarmed as I had entered it.
Three. Tyr’s sacred number. I chose to make three darts—three arrows—to kill my three worst enemies: Eiflar, Galmr, and Reister, before I died. But if I used them as I had planned, the headsman would take Kolorma’s life.
What chance had she, my mind argued, if I managed to stop the ax? The Officers all had rifles; they would finish what the headsman started. But my heart had already decided.
Pulling the bow from one sleeve and the darts from the other (I had risked pricking myself in the hopes that my three patron Gods would see fit to spare me such a useless death), and fired the first up high: the tiny arrow lodged itself in the soft flesh under Galmr’s chin.
No time to hesitate, even as Galmr’s hand flailed at the dart, I shot the second into the back of Eiflar’s neck, and spun, loosing the last to bury it in the headsman’s exposed hand.
Eiflar’s horse stamped and whinnied as his rider convulsed. The wagon’s fasteners released as the horse leapt forward. Eiflar’s hands clawed at the miniature arrow stuck in the back of his neck. As the horse galloped forward, pulling the wagon free, I had just enough time to see Eiflar fall from his steed.
In the half-second that followed, I let the memory unfurl: Bersi, in the screen, standing by the mantel, touching things, then creeping to the door, creeping to his death. I dropped, the rope pulling tight under my chin, and then—it came loose, and I hit the ground below with a blow that knocked the wind from my lungs and the dagger from under my shirt.
Around me, four more bodies landed.
My companions coughed and groaned, freeing themselves from the nooses. Had the gallows malfunctioned? My breath returned and my chest heaved as I looked up. The hooded head of the hangman peered down at me, then he lifted the black cloth. Dark eyes under thick brows, the strong, arched nose and near-black beard shot with gray. I recognized him.
“Dihauti,” I whispered.
He winked at me, and then everything erupted into chaos of Lukan proportions.
They came from the entrance to the stands, from the water on boats, and some even climbed over the stands themselves: citizens of the Lavsektor and any from the Undergrunnsby who had escaped the purge. They probably made up most of the crowd outside the stands that we passed as we rode in the truck. Screams pierced the air as they attacked the spectators and stormed through to take on the Officers, the vigjas, and the courtiers above. Rifle fire—I thanked my trickster patron Luka that the ceremony called for simple rifles, not those rapid-fire automatic guns that vomited bullets, spreading staccato death. As the Officers pulled their triggers, sudden cracks joined the screaming in the cacophony.
Tucking the dagger in the waist of my britches again, I used the rope—still attached to the beam that had formed the top of the gallows but now rested like a narrow bridge across the gap between the two stages—and climbed up hand over hand to find Dihauti and Kolorma. Sure enough, as I crested the edge of the stage, I saw Dihauti, hood gone, untying Kolorma’s blindfold. As I pulled myself to my feet, I stopped.
Something in Dihauti’s gesture… Bersi, in the Sölbói salon, touching things. Touching the clock.
The clock. What time had it read?
When I returned to the machine, when I witnessed Bersi’s death, it had been well past dark.
But the clock had read four ten. That couldn’t be.
It couldn’t have been four ten in the morning. It was not so late as that.
It won’t work, Spraki had said. She already knows we can r—
What would he have said, if I had not interrupted?
All around me people shouted, fought, bled, pushed each other, some falling from the high booths to slam against the stage like rotten molding from the edges of a rooftop. Bullets tore into chests, limbs, heads. The rebels were hopelessly outclassed by the Officers and their guns.
I looked at Kolorma, who blinked as her eyes adjusted to the light. I turned round to catch sight of Spraki. He was below, heading for the water beyond. Someone had dropped a torch or lit the oil in the water on purpose—flames blazed across it.
“Kolorma!” I shouted as I ran along the edge of the stage, following Spraki from above. I flinched as bullets tore up the wooden boards just to the right of me. “Meet me where I first saw you!”
“I will!” she called after me.
Running all out, I pursued Spraki, ducking my head when bullets hit the dais just as I rushed beneath it.
That is when I saw the shine of metal. At first I thought it came from more helmets, but then I saw whole bodies reflecting dazzling sunlight. Robots. Streams of them, marching like soldiers around the outside of the stands, coming in through the gap between the halves of the stage and in through the entrance on the other side. For a moment I remained frozen, staring, wondering if they spelled doom for the rebels or the Officers. Then the latter pointed their rifles at them, and bullets rang off of their metal plating, and I knew.
Of course. Spraki had mentioned that the robots were altered, and Liten had said something about Dihauti having worked on them in the machine’s laboratory. My face broke into a smile—it felt so strange, but whether it was the sight of the robots or the memory of Bersi touching the clock, hope had blossomed once again in my heart.
~~~
I caught Spraki just as he would have entered one of the Torc’s spokes. He fled from me as from any other enemy, so I had to throw myself into his legs to bring him down. I grappled with him as he struggled to free himself from my grip, his eyes wild.
“Spraki!” I shouted. “Spraki, I’ve no intention of harming you! Stop!”
He grunted by way of reply and continued to fight me. As we tumbled to the street, the dagger clattered, and I had to choose whether to release Spraki to retrieve it. Grit
ting my teeth I let it go, grappling with Spraki in an attempt to destabilize him. He twisted and pulled me with him as he tried to drag himself down the lane. Losing patience, I released him and took a step away from him. Startled and unbalanced, Spraki faltered. I sprang forward, hitting his back and causing him to land on his stomach, his hands ahead of him to break his fall. Lunging, I landed with all of my weight on his back, and he gave a choked cough as he lost all the air in his lungs. Snatching his right wrist, I twisted his arm behind him. Many years had passed since I lived with my siblings in Asterlund, but I had not forgotten how to triumph in a wrestling match.
I drove my knee into his back and he rewarded me with a moan. “Do you yield?” I demanded.
Spraki moaned again and nodded his head, which had the effect of scraping the side of his face against the gritty street. Carefully, I eased off of him, but remained in position to squash him again if necessary.
“Why do you run from me?” I asked.
“You’ll know soon enough. You need only ask me what you really want to know,” he said miserably, spitting a little at the end as some of the grit had found its way into his mouth.
Two people rounded a corner—they were dressed in fine clothes that were torn and bloodied. I watched as they raced by, oblivious to us in their panic. Courtiers? Rich merchants? I didn’t recognize them.
Returning my attention to Spraki, I decided to do as he suggested. “Tell me, Taf. Where is my son?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, trying to raise himself up. I pushed him back down again, not very hard, but firmly. “I don’t! I swear.”
“And yet you know that he isn’t dead, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
My heart, already filled with hope, expanded and burst with joy. Not dead. It wasn’t too late—I wasn’t too late to find him, to take him into my arms and far away from this place, to be his mother again.
“Explain,” I barked at Spraki.
“It was Reister. He said you were losing focus, that you wouldn’t kill the konunger,” Spraki said.
The City Darkens (Raud Grima Book 1) Page 41