The Executioner's Rebellion (The Executioner's Song Book 4)

by D. K. Holmberg

  That wasn’t what Finn wanted. That couldn’t be what the king wanted either.

  “We might be able to stop this before it gets to that point,” Finn said.

  “Why do you care?”

  “Because those people don’t deserve to be slaughtered,” Finn said.

  “Them people are nothing.”

  Finn turned and faced the Realmsguard. “Those people are citizens like anyone else in the city. And they deserve the same protections.”

  He hurried forward. He didn’t want to argue about whether the people in the poorer sections deserve the same protections, and given what they had done, and how it had led to the uprising, Finn understood it was going to be difficult to convince anybody that they needed to do anything more than what they already had, but he wasn’t going to stand aside and wait.

  By the time he reached the carpenter shop, Finn was drenched. The two Realmsguard stayed with him, but they’d fallen silent.

  Finn pounded on the door and ushered the soldiers back.

  Master James pulled the door open, peering into the rain before beaming as he spotted Finn. “Mr. Jagger! Are you here to visit with Jamie? She’s just popped out to get an elixir I need, but I’m sure she won’t want to miss you.”

  Finn shook his head. He held out the coin. “Is this your work?”

  Master James stared at it, looking up at him. Something in his expression changed. “You know it is, Mr. Jagger.”

  Finn nodded to the Realmsguard and they grabbed Master James. “What is this about?”

  “Under the orders of King Porman, we’re taking you into custody,” Finn said.

  “For what charge?” He looked at the coin. “It is not a crime to create carvings, even this one.”

  “It’s not a crime, but you told me how much it costs you to make each one of these. And I can only imagine why you would have done something like this.” Finn leaned forward, shaking his head. “Jamie will be so disappointed to learn that you’re leading the Black Rose movement.” Finn nodded to the Realmsguard. “Take him to Declan.”

  The Realmsguard dragged Master James along the street as he continued to try to protest, arguing for his innocence. Finn stood in the pouring rain for a long moment, debating what he would do.

  They needed to end the violence.

  Capturing the Black Rose would hopefully prevent the king from taking drastic action, but only if Finn could get to him and tell him that he had been captured.

  “Finn?”

  Finn turned to see Jamie coming down the street. Her dark brown dress was drenched, and her leather satchel was completely saturated.

  He swallowed.

  Finn was going to be responsible for what happened to Jamie. He was going to be responsible for what took place with her father. And now he was going to have to be responsible for telling her.

  “What are you doing here? After what you went through the last time you left the city, I figured you’d be gone longer.” She glanced behind her. “The city is not well.”

  Finn nodded. “I know.”

  “Then you shouldn’t be out. Gods, Finn. With the rain, you should just head back to your home and wait it out.” Her gaze darted to the bundle he carried, then up at his face. “You aren’t here to see me though. You aren’t here to visit.”

  Finn shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

  Her eyes widened. “What happened?”

  “It’s your father.” He had to get the words out quickly, tell her then move on. She deserved that much from him. He glanced to the shop. “We can get out of the rain, if you would like.”

  She nodded, heading past him and into the shop, and looked at him in a way he had never seen from her before. Throughout the time he had spent with Jamie—especially when they had wandered the city, talking and connecting in a relaxed and peaceful manner—Finn had never felt that tension from her. There had always been comfort between them.

  And now that was gone.

  It would never return, especially after Finn told her what he needed to.

  He stepped inside the shop and closed the door. Jamie had gone to one of the tables, grabbing a lantern and lighting it. She stood and waited, water dripping off her.

  “I told you I had been on an errand for the king,” Finn said slowly. He tried to ignore the water pouring off him too, as well as the puddle beneath his feet, the hammering of his heart, and the nausea within his belly that came from what he had to say. “He tasked us with finding the Black Rose.”

  “I figured as much,” Jamie said. “With everything that has been going on in the city, it isn’t surprising that the king would want to find this person.”

  “Well, I found him.”

  Jamie had turned away to grab something out of one of the cabinets, then paused. “What do you mean, ‘you found him’?”

  “I’m terribly sorry, Jamie. Your father is…”

  She shook her head. “No. He couldn’t be.”

  Finn sighed. “It fits.” He wasn’t about to tell her that she was responsible for sharing the details to confirm that it fit. The Black Rose. The places where the uprisings had started throughout the kingdom were the places her father had traveled to within the last year. “Everything fits. Including this.” He pulled the marker out of his pocket and held it out.

  Jamie came toward him, grabbing it.

  “No,” she whispered.

  “I’m so sorry, Jamie. I wish it wasn’t true. I wish it wasn’t your father. But the Black Rose has caused terrible violence throughout the city. The king needed to have him stopped. It’s the only way the city will be able to relax again.”

  “Not my father,” she said.

  Finn wanted to reach for her, to wrap her in a hug, but he didn’t dare.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said again.

  She stared at the marker. “This doesn’t mean he’s the one responsible.” She looked up at Finn, and he recognized the desperation in her gaze. It was the same desperation he saw in so many other criminals he questioned—only this time, it was a desperation in the eyes of somebody he cared about.

  “No, it doesn’t,” Finn said. “But that’s not the part that matters. It’s everything else.” If it were only the marker, Finn could have believed that Master James had been hired to create them, but it was the other pieces that fit too.

  What didn’t make sense was why the Alainsith structures had been targeted within the city—and outside the city. When he questioned her father, he hoped to have answers for that. Once he learned, then he could go to Esmerelda, and perhaps the two of them could figure out how to protect the remaining Alainsith structures from crumbling into the strange dark decay.

  “You can prove this?” she asked him.

  “I can prove most of it,” Finn said. “The rest… My job is to uncover the truth, Jamie. I serve the king.”

  “You serve the king.”

  Finn looked up, taking a deep breath and nodding. It was the first time that Finn wished he hadn’t worked with Master Meyer. It was painful in a way that it had never been before. It was a burden in a way that it had never been before.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He started toward the door, then froze.

  His mind was working differently now than it should have been. Normally, he would have processed things much more rapidly, especially considering the circumstance, but he hadn’t reacted quite the way he thought he should have when it came to the comment Jamie had made when he’d first come across her.

  “What did you mean earlier when you said, ‘after what I went through the last time I left the city’?” he asked, turning toward her.

  He’d never told her what happened to him.

  The Black Rose.

  They’d been after the sword—something that could disrupt witchcraft.

  Jamie was only a few steps away from him, and she had her arm behind her back. “I really wish you wouldn’t have come here,” she said.

  “I never told you I was attacked.�
� He hadn’t told anyone besides Esmerelda, Lena, and Meyer.

  The attacker had the mark of the Black Rose on them.

  Either her father had told her what happened—and given her reaction, that seemed unlikely—or he had the wrong person.

  “You told me you traveled with your father when he went out of the city. You traveled with him.”

  Jamie looked at Finn and took a deep breath, bringing her arm around. She held a long, slender wand in one hand. A witchcraft wand.

  “I really wish you wouldn’t have come here,” she said again.

  “Your father isn’t the Black Rose, is he? It’s you.”

  She darted toward him, though the movement was clumsy, not from somebody used to attacking. He caught her hand, twisting her wrist, and forcing the witchcraft wand out of her hand so it dropped to the ground.

  “I never figured out how you were even still alive. They wanted you dead. That was part of the agreement. Part of why they’d fund Verendal.”

  His mind spun as Finn tried piecing it all together.

  Fund.

  The money paid to the protesters.

  The Black Rose was a part of it, but not directly.

  And Esmerelda’s warning that there was someone else out there, someone powerful, came back to him. More than that, he thought he understood why she hadn’t wanted him looking into the damage to the Alainsith structures.

  She’d wanted to protect him.

  “Unfortunately, whoever is paying you overlooked many things,” Finn said, flicking his gaze to the wand lying on the ground before looking up at her. “You and I are going to talk about why the Black Rose is supporting witchcraft.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Finn had returned to the debtors’ prison, curiosity getting the best of him—and he no longer felt guilty about having that curiosity. Perhaps he shouldn't have felt that way in the first place. He stood in front of Reginald's cell, studying its bars.

  The thud of boots echoing along the stone caught his attention, and he looked up to see Warden Arlington coming toward him.

  “Can I help you with anything, Mr. Jagger?”

  “I was just completing my investigation.”

  “In this cell?” Arlington didn’t bother to hide his irritation with Finn.

  “I'm not completely convinced that Reginald killed himself.”

  The warden stopped a few paces away. “I assure you that the guards had nothing to do with his death.”

  “I didn’t say that they did.”

  “You didn’t need to say it. You implied it by your presence here.” Finn looked over to Arlington. There was no point in arguing with him about that. “Does Master Meyer know that you have persisted in this investigation?”

  Finn smiled tightly. “I’m sure he doesn't care.”

  “Which means he doesn't know.”

  Finn ignored Arlington as he looked into the cell. There had to be something more here. He just hadn’t found it yet. He could look in the cell, he could go to Reginald’s home, and he could question the iron masters, continuing to dig, but he wasn't sure there was anything to those threads that he would uncover.

  And maybe it didn’t matter.

  He had another place he needed to go. More questions to get answered.

  “If you see anything unusual, please pass it on,” Finn said.

  Arlington regarded him for a moment. “That’s it?”

  “I am concerned about what happened here, but I don’t have the answers. If you find anything, anything at all, let me know. It might be useful. It might not. But we won't know until we look into it.”

  He started off, and could practically feel Arlington’s gaze on his back.

  Finn headed across the city, eventually reaching the women’s prison.

  The inside of the women’s prison was different than most of the other prisons. For one, there was more sunlight drifting through the large, curved windows, and there was also a different energy to the place. It was quiet, though the warden of the women’s prison brought in an instrumentalist on many days, who played soothing tunes. Finn smiled to himself as he made his way through the halls. He rarely came here, mostly because the women’s prison was not occupied at the same rate as the other prisons throughout the city.

  He had ensured the iron masters at all prisons were trained the same though. In this case, given what had happened with other prisoners, he was determined to ensure Jamie lived. Partly that was selfish. He still couldn’t believe she could be the Black Rose.

  He reached the cell where Jamie sat, her back facing him. Chains linked her legs to the wall, keeping her from running or getting too close to the bars of the cell. Finn glanced to the iron master at the end of the hall before reaching for his keyring and unlocking the door, stepping inside.

  “I have nothing to say to you,” Jamie said.

  “I think you owe me some answers.”

  She snorted. “Owe you?” She glanced over her shoulder, darkness in her blue eyes. “Why would I owe you anything? And here I thought you would understand, coming from the section that you did. A man who managed to get out, if only a little.”

  “That doesn’t mean I would hurt others who came from my section.”

  “Not hurting them. Freeing them.”

  Finn took a seat. There wasn’t a place like the chapel in the women’s prison. In that way, it was more like the debtors’ prison, more of a holding cell than anything else—primarily to ensure those who owed would be given the opportunity to pay their debt.

  “You weren’t freeing them,” Finn said.

  “And you know this?” she asked.

  “Turn and look at me.”

  She grunted, but she didn’t turn toward him.

  “At least talk to me. Help me understand why you did what you did.”

  “You know why I did what I did,” she said.

  “I know what I read. I know what I’ve seen published. I know what others in the city have claimed. But I still don’t really know,” Finn said.

  “Then you haven’t been paying attention.”

  “Because you feel slighted in some way?”

  “Is that what you really believe?”

  “How should I not?” he asked. “Your father had gotten out of his section as well.”

  She snorted again. “He’d gotten out. Do you remember what happened when you first met me?”

  “I remember I came looking for information about Reginald. But you were using him.”

  “He deserved what he got.”

  “And what was he guilty of?”

  “He hadn’t paid,” she said. “Like so many others. They think themselves better than us. Than my father. All his work for nothing. He showed me how those who viewed themselves as above you would take advantage of you. There were far too many people in the city who were eager to hire a craftsman with my father’s skill, but they knew his background. They knew he was from the wrong side of the river,” she said, shaking her head. “And because of that, he was cheated.”

  “You could have reported it,” Finn said.

  “Do you think we didn’t? We reported it time and time again and got the same response each time.”

  Finn studied her for a moment. “I reopened the investigation into Reginald. I looked into the others listed in ledger. You were moving money. Laundering it to the movement. What I still need to know is who is behind it all.”

  Jaime may have coordinated the movement, but it had become clear she wasn’t behind the funding of it. That was probably tied to whoever had wanted them to use witchcraft on Alainsith structures.

  Would she even know?

  Jamie looked away from him.

  It had taken Finn the better part of a morning to investigate, but after the first five shops that he had visited, the truth had come out. None of the entries in the journal had known what they were doing. They were passing money through, getting a cut, and moving it out and to Reginald to fund the Black Rose movement.

  “You don�
�t even want to acknowledge it? Why did Reginald have to die?”

  Finn had never been convinced that it was suicide.

  “Once he was jailed, I needed him out of the way.”

  Finn was shocked by her coldness. It left him wondering how he had sold misread her. He had never misread somebody so poorly before.

  Jamie looked up at him, and for a moment, there was a flickering in her eyes, the woman that he thought he knew her to be. Then it was gone.

  “Who funded you?” Finn asked.

  She stared at him, then smiled defiantly. “I don’t even know. And I don’t care.”

  He had failed reading her once before, but he believed this.

  “When you first came to us, I thought maybe you understood,” she said, her voice still hard. “I thought you knew what it was like to have no real standing in the city. To have those with power trample on you. But you didn’t. You outgrew who you were.” She looked up at him. How could he have thought her innocent before? “I never did.”

  “So you started a rebellion.”

  “I didn’t start it. And I’m not the only one responsible for it—perhaps I am in Verendal, but not elsewhere.”

  That was more than what he’d learned so far. “You only continued what had already been started in other cities,” Finn said.

  She laughed bitterly. “The Black Rose is in more places than just Verendal.”

  There was a threat underneath the comment, and she offered him a knowing look. Would he be able to question her the way he questioned others? In order to find the truth, he would have to.

  That was his path. That was his responsibility.

  “You’re saying you’re not the leader of the rebellion.”

  “Oh, no.” She said, a dark smile coming to her face. Finn had always thought her beautiful, and she was, but her current expression made her seem terrifying, and it disturbed him. “You aren’t going to like what’s coming.”

  “And what is coming?”

  She turned away from him.

  “Why did you have them attack the Alainsith structures?” he asked, and she stiffened. “You didn’t know I made that connection.”