But he wouldn’t have time. His mouth was open, shouting silently into the sphere of pure silence she’d created. Part of her was tempted to drop the sphere just a little, to let him hear her words and in turn hear his gibbering cries of terror, but she knew she couldn’t. She was too close to Tralione’s home to do that. Instead, she raised the knife, the long, thin, metal blade almost shining in the dim light of the alley. She’d settle for hearing his last, gurgling breath instead. The knife-blade rose, long, slim edge turning for Jaceb’s throat. He was closing his eyes tightly, probably praying to whatever god he worshipped that—
Blinding light exploded all around them, filling the alleyway, and she let out a shout as her eyes burned with pain. Something slammed into her side, throwing her off balance and tugging her away from her quarry. Stars erupted across the white void her world had become as she fell, her head slamming into the dirt-encrusted surface of the alley. Everything began ringing, her body going limp as all that had transpired seemed to collide in a kaleidoscope of colors, thoughts, and images.
What had happened? Where had the light come from? Had someone seen her? Where had her knife gone?
She could feel herself being yanked to her feet now, with no small amount of unkindness either. Her head was ringing, but both her ears and her vision were clearing, the world around her coming into focus. Someone—no, two someone’s—were holding her arms up behind her back, and as everything swam back into focus she felt the cool tightness of metal bands being snapped into place around her wrists.
There was sound again, too. She was no longer muting everything. She could hear voices, lots of them. What …?
Everything was clear now. The alley was being brightly lit—probably by a glimmer or two, judging from the steadiness of the source. Jaceb, her target, was still standing over by the wall, two individuals with red bands around their wrists attending to him. Medical practitioners of some kind. And standing off to one side was …
Alexes Tralione. Except it wasn’t. Gone was the soft, innocent look on her face, the bubbly, carefree look to her eyes. It wasn’t Alexes Tralione … except it was. It was the same young lady she’d been tracking for the last few weeks, following as she courted Jaceb Orilles … but it wasn’t her at all, though she wore the same clothes and had the same face and build.
But where Alexes had been soft and simple, this woman looked tough and professional. Where the one had been relaxed and innocent, this one looked tight and crisp. Professional. And her eyes … Her eyes were fixed right with Varay’s, boring right into her as if somehow, she could see through her skin to examine the mind that lay beneath.
“You all right, Urcel?” the woman asked, turning her head slightly towards Jaceb, but not breaking eye contact. Even her voice was different, the tone and inflection one of command, not whimsy.
“I’m fine,” Urcel said … though that didn’t make sense. His name was Jaceb, not Urcel. “She was faster than I thought. Glad you made it in time.” Her gut was twisting now, sinking as the mystery woman who was clearly not Alexes Tralione, never had been Alexes Tralione, took a step forward.
“Who—?” Varay coughed, clearing her throat, and then shot a glance backwards, glaring at the two men holding her arms. The motion made the world spin, and she involuntarily recoiled from their touch. Or tried to, anyway. She managed a faint jerking motion before they tugged her back into place with a glare.
“You’re not Alexes Tralione,” she said, turning back to glare at the woman. “Do you have any idea what you’ve just done?”
“Of course I do,” the woman said. Even her voice was different. It was … calculated. Cool. “I’ve prevented a murder.”
She felt her eye twitch. “You’ve prevented a mercy!” she shouted. “I’m helping the world! Helping young women like Alexes Tralione—”
“There was never an Alexes Tralione,” the woman said, cutting her off with a calm voice. Then she smiled. “Just like there was never a Jaceb Orilles. They were fiction. An act, created just for you. And,” she said, grimacing. “One that almost cost us the life of a good man—”
“There are no good men,” Varay said, the snarl in her own voice almost surprising her.
“Yeah, well, you might be a pretty good judge of that,” the woman said as she bent over to pick up something from the alley floor. She came back up with Varay’s knife held carefully between two fingers. “After all, you seem to be a questionably bad woman yourself, so perhaps you’ve got a point. But as far as any of them are concerned,” she said, passing the knife to another man—this one wearing the uniform of a city peacekeeper. “Now that I’ve caught you, I’ve got all the more time to track down all of them.”
“You’re making a mistake,” Varay said, her own voice almost a hiss as she tugged against her captors’ holds. “I’m a noblewoman, a widow. I—”
“What you are is under arrest on suspicion of being the serial killer known as ‘The Ripper,’” non-Alexes said. “Which, even if you’re just a copycat, is still going to sting, because you just attempted to murder one of the men under my command.”
“You … you …” Her fingers had curled into claws, and she jerked forward, making it only a few inches before the angle of her arms forced her back. “You don’t know what you’re doing!” she shouted. “You can’t stop my mission!”
“I know exactly what I’m doing,” the woman said, a small smile on her face. “I, Lieutenant-Inquisitor Meelo Karn, am placing you under arrest for the separate murders of six men and women over the last nine months—”
A scream tore free of Varay’s body. An Imperial Inquisitor. This couldn’t be happening. Not now. Not after she’d worked so hard. It couldn’t. But she could feel the arms at her back tugging her away, pulling her back even as she shouted again.
“—as well as suspected involvement in the disappearance of one more young man,” the woman named Meelo continued without batting an eye. “A peacekeeper will explain your rights to you—”
She played her last card, unleashing every last speck of energy inside her body in one giant blast. A wave of sound rippled out around her, a deafening shriek of highs, lows, and everything in between that seemed the make the very stars vibrate. The glimmer-light flickered as the sound overwhelmed its casters, and she jerked herself forward, trying to run for the end of the alley.
Nothing. She was yanked back hard against her captors, her eyes opening wide in shock as the massive blast of sound faded. She could hear animals making noise from the nearby blocks, woken by the sudden, shrill shriek, but none of her captors seemed phased. Even the glimmers were already back on their feet, the light from their hands shining steadily once more.
“But …?” That had been her trump, her final card. “How?”
“Really?” the inquisitor asked, shaking her head and tapping at one ear. “There are at least seventy-thousand mufflers in Indrim alone, and a good number of them could try that trick. You think you’re the first one we’ve arrested?” She turned her head to the side so that Varay could see the soft, rubbery substance inside her ear. “That was pretty impressive, but we came prepared.”
No. It couldn’t end like this. She had a mission. A calling. A purpose. “No!” The word ripped free of her throat as the two peacekeepers at her back began to pull her away. “No!”
But there was nothing she could do. Her reserves were gone, and dampening the peacekeepers wasn’t going to get her anywhere. All she could do while they pulled her over to a specially made, armored carriage, shackled her on her knees in the back, and began taking her who-knew where, was scream.
It was the only sound she had left.
THREE
The shackles binding her were a bit much, Varay felt. They were heavy things—truly heavy, the kind of heaviness that made her shoulders sag with each step. Steel, from the look of them, and tempered for toughness, though there was no doubt in her mind that there had been something added to the mix that made them heat resistant as well.
> Still, she couldn’t remove them—which was rather the point, after all—so the best she could do was continue forward down the hall, each step making the binding chains rattle through the protective covering atop them.
She had smirked at that last feature when she’d seen it. The peacekeepers were apparently no strangers to dealing with gifted prisoners, though she wasn’t sure why the fact had surprised her. No, surprise wasn’t the right word. It had horrified her at first. The cell they’d placed her in had been deadened by design, with cloth-coated walls that were angled to trap and weaken sound. For the first time in her life she’d only been able to extract the barest energy from her surroundings, little more than the power of her own voice.
It’d taken time to get used to the silence. She’d spent the first few hours curled in a ball on the cloth-covered floor, shaking as she tried to adapt to the absence of power around her.
She’d shaken it off before long, though. The capture, the betrayal of someone she’d assumed had been an innocent woman in need of saving, the silence … it had all been too much at first. But she’d soon come around, realized that despite her losses, her setbacks, she couldn’t afford the weakness. She was a noble, a woman of breeding, not some common fool who couldn’t see the truth of the world right in front of them. That she, Lady Amacitia Varay, was helping them, not hurting them.
None of them had wanted to see, however. They’d sent her a doctor to speak with her from outside her cell. A man. They’d learned quickly enough after she’d blasted his eardrums with what little reserves she’d been able to regain how poor a choice that had been. Though he’d deserved it. The man had even been foolish enough to not wear the earmuffs he’d been given.
He would recover, unfortunately. Her blast hadn’t been a large one. An hour or so of ringing in the ears, no more, and he would sadly be well again.
The next doctor they’d sent had been a woman. But she’d been like all the rest. Swallowing the lies. She’d tried to claim that something was wrong with her, Lady Varay, rather than the rest of the empire. She’d wanted to talk about her parents, about her brother, her late husband.
She’d finally given in. Told the woman what she’d wanted to hear. That there had been no “accident.” That the incident that had taken all of them hadn’t occurred by chance at all. It had felt good to at long last let the story free, to tell someone else how she’d done it, how she’d planned and carried out the entire thing so that it had simply been an accident waiting to happen. A terrible, tragic accident that had only needed time and her firm hand to guide into place.
But for whatever reason, the woman hadn’t seemed nearly as thrilled by her relation as she’d expected. In fact, she’d looked almost sickened. A sure sign that she was a willing drinker of the lies.
She’d been there, in the court, when Varay had been taken before a judge-adjudicator. The doctor. She’d even gotten up and spoke, talking about “mental instabilities” and how her acts were part of some sort of reaction to her upbringing and treatment at the hands of her father, brother, and husband. The judge-adjudicator, along with her entire council, had listened intently to the doctor’s presentation.
It had not been the only presentation, however. The inquisitor who had arrested her, Meelo Karn, formerly Alexes Tralione, had been there as well. She had given the judge-adjudicator and her council a thorough and detailed explanation of what she considered Varay’s many “crimes.”
In the end, Varay had been forced to admit to herself that she’d not been as careful as she’d thought in concealing her tracks. Several times during the report Karn had brought up small details about Varay’s work that had been quite intuitive. She’d not only correctly deduced that Varay was a muffler based on the location of each of the bodies, but also had concocted the scheme, the trap—the lie—that had lured Varay in.
She’d been given a chance to speak for herself, of course. The judge-adjudicator had looked her in the eye and asked her quite plainly if she wished to explain herself.
She’d told them that there was no need. They wouldn’t believe the explanation she offered. Their eyes were blind, unseeing. None of them could see how downtrodden, how abused they really were. They were already determined to defend their abusers.
They were as bad as the men were. Worse, even.
So they had sent her back to her cell, to wait out the night in silence while they debated what to do with her, probably at the behest of men. And now she was being called back, back to her sentencing, a muffler guard on either side of her in case she tried anything. She wasn’t planning on it. Even at full power, two mufflers were more than enough to absorb any sound she put out. And even if they weren’t, what was she going to do? Run? The weight of the shackles around her arms, in addition to the chains around her feet, would keep her from going far.
No, she was a lady. Purpose. Control. She would meet her end with a dignity befitting her station.
And it was her end she was being sent to. She could see it in the eyes of the judge-adjudicator as she was led into the courtroom, harsh and unyielding. She could see it in the eyes of the council, many of which were hard and cold. She could even see it in the eyes of what few members of the public were in attendance. Some of them had pencils, as well as sketch sheets with which to draw the last few public appearances of Lady Amacitia Varay. She held her head high. She would give them a face to remember, if only for a few weeks. But even in their eyes, she saw it as well. A hunger, a burning desire for a story they could deliver to an uncaring, subservient public.
She wanted to kill them all. They were the real monsters. She was the only one who saw the truth. She wanted to tear the shackles from her hands and send her voice booming across the room, so that all who were present would know that she had been doing the right thing.
But it wasn’t going to be possible. Not with guards watching her, guards that would be upon her if she even tried.
Instead, she strode into the room, her head held as high as possible, eyes fixed on the judge-adjudicator with her finely pressed, dark-blue suit, and sat down in her seat, taking a single, sweeping glance around the room as if she had just arrived for lunch.
Inquisitor Karn was there, standing in the back, her hands clasped behind her back, and for a moment, Varay felt her control slip. It was just for a fraction of a second, but a bubble of rage boiled up from deep within her, her face contorting ever so slightly before she could lock her emotions down.
But it was enough. There was a small flash of recognition to the inquisitor’s eyes. She’d seen.
Fair enough. Her rage was justified. Karn … she had been the one to ruin everything.
I will make her pay if possible, Varay thought as she turned her gaze back to the front of the room. If I ever get the chance I will make her pay. Then she locked the thought down, pressing it away with ironclad control as she crossed her hands on her lap. It was hard to look proper in a cheaply made, rough, yellow jumpsuit with shackles around her wrists, but she needed to give it her best attempt.
If I am to die, I will die a martyr, she thought, tilting her head back and sticking out her jaw. I will hold my head high, and let them see that they killed someone innocent of any wrongdoing, that they killed a woman who was helping this world. Purifying it.
“Lady Amacitia Varay,” the judge-adjudicator began. Her voice was clear and cool, a little deeper than would have been expected. Perhaps that was just how she projected her voice. Still, there was a tone of command to it … as well as a tone of something else. Regret?
“We are here today to pass sentence on you in regards to the numerous crimes that you have committed. Such crimes are, as a reminder to those in attendance …” The judge-adjudicator looked down at a slip of paper in front of her. “Willful and knowing premeditated murder of six men and one woman, each innocent of any wrongdoing against you or others as far as the court is aware at this time. In addition, attempted murder of an undercover inquisitor, though for your sake,” she sai
d, her eyes flicking to Varay, “we will are only hanging the attempted murder charge on you, not any sort of charge for attempted murder of an inquisitor, as you did not know he was such at the time.”
They were going to execute her. She could feel it in the energy of the crowd, in the stares of the council members sitting behind the judge-adjudicator on the raised bench. How would they choose to do it? Would they tighten a noose around her neck, hang her for all to see? Or would they merely remove her head? Shooting, perhaps? There had been others executed in that manner, according to the papers.
She was a dead woman either way.
“In addition the these heinous acts perpetrated on our city and against citizens of the empire—”
As if you would know what a heinous act was, she thought.
“—you have confessed as well to the murder of your own parents—”
They deserved it. He and her both.
“—your brother—”
Used to torture me for hours.
“—and your husband.”
He only married me because of my family’s money. All he ever wanted out of me was to serve him.
“And while this court has understood your explanation and reasoning for doing such, your actions were still far beyond the scope of the law, as have been your activities as of late. We find you, Amacitia Varay, guilty of eleven counts of murder of citizens of the empire, and we will now pass sentence.”
Here it comes, she thought, closing her eyes. Death. She had done all she could. Now she would face the consequences of her mission with dignity. She opened her eyes once more, followed by her mouth.
“Do what you will,” she said, her eyes narrowing and locking with the judge-adjudicator’s as she spoke. “I do not regret my actions. What I did, I did for all.”
“We disagree,” the judge-adjudicator said, shifting in her seat. “What you did, you did to satisfy yourself in some twisted way. You did it for pleasure.”
She’d been poisoned. Someone had ruined the judge-adjudicator’s mind. She couldn’t see. None of them could.
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