“I’m fine,” Emily said, surprised to realize it was true. “Sit down before you fall down.” She pulled Celine down beside her, and the two girls looked at one another. Celine’s eyes drifted upward to Emily’s wound.
“You don’t have to stare at it. I know it’s disgusting,” she told her, trying to make her voice light. Celine didn’t smile. She shook her head, then picked up Emily’s compact from where it lay between them and held it out.
Emily took it without looking away from her friend. “I’ve seen it already. I don’t think I need to see it again…”
“Look,” Celine said, and Emily finally realized just how terrified Celine was. The girl was good at hiding it, but they’d grown close enough in the last two weeks that Emily could sense it all the same. It wasn’t the freaked out, slightly hysterical fear she’d had when ghostly librarians had offered them candles to light their way. This was a total and bone-deep terror that had shaken her to the core.
Emily reached out to touch her shoulder, but Celine shrugged her off.
“Look,” she said again.
Emily raised the compact to her face and flipped it open.
There she was—dirty, bloody, and with minute fragments of glass sparkling in her hair. Some of the blood was gone, wiped away by Celine’s careful hand.
Gone, too, was the patch of skull. Emily reached up and touched where it had been. The flesh felt a little tender there, but was undoubtedly intact. She pulled on a lock of hair. It hurt, but her scalp did not swing open like a door on a hinge. What the hell?
She lowered the mirror, and they stared at one another. Emily thought of the wilting rose in the garden, and how, when Celine had touched it, there’d been nothing wrong with it at all. She thought of the way Celine’s grapevines had thrived, seemingly with no effort on her part while the other girls slaved and sweated to keep their charges alive.
A bell began to toll outside, and it was followed almost at once by Caireann’s voice reverberating off the stone walls of the stairwell.
“Everyone down here, now!”
Emily got to her feet, but Celine did not move.
“Come on,” she said, pulling Celine to her feet.
“What did I do, Em? What the ’ell did I do to yeh?” Celine breathed.
“I don’t know exactly…but it wasn’t anything bad. Come on, Caireann’s calling us.”
“I thought I was killin’ yeh. I couldn’t stop. It was like my fingers were stuck to yer ’ead.” Celine’s voice was rising hysterically. “And yeh were screamin’ and shakin’ and…”
Emily stared in alarm as the look in Celine’s eyes grew increasingly wild. She was spiraling out of control. What were you supposed to do when someone became hysterical?
Images from black-and-white television shows flashed through her mind, and without much time to think about it, she did the only thing she could think of. She slapped Celine across the face. The other girl’s mouth snapped shut, and she blinked in surprise.
“I’m sorry,” Emily said at once. “I’m fine. I swear. You didn’t hurt me.” She put an arm around Celine’s shoulders, guilt roiling inside her as a patch of red appeared on the smaller girl’s cheek. “We can talk about it later. Right now, Caireann’s calling us, and we need to go. Something’s happening.”
As if to emphasize her words, the bell outside tolled with more urgency. She didn’t know what it meant, but she was afraid.
“A’right. Sorry,” Celine said, taking a deep breath and pulling herself together. She looked at Emily imploringly. “I was just…so feckin’ scared…”
“It’s okay. Come on.” Emily took Celine’s tiny hand in hers, and together they left the room and joined the other girls making their way downstairs.
Caireann was waiting for them at the bottom. Her eyes widened slightly at Emily’s bloody and gruesome countenance, but she offered no comment.
“Stay together,” she said. “Follow me. Yeh’re not to wander off. Yeh will do exactly as I say, understood?”
Emily nodded along with the others, and Caireann led them from the tower back into the bright sunshine.
Halfway across the courtyard, they met Corbbmacc. His face was red and sweaty. He ran past Caireann, pushing his way through the girls, and grabbed Emily by the arm.
“You’re coming with me,” he said and yanked her out of the group. Celine’s hand slipped from hers.
Emily pulled free of Corbbmacc’s grip. “Let go of me,” she said. “Who the hell are you to tell me where to go?”
He looked at her, confused for a moment, then shook his head and looked a little contrite. “Sorry. You’re a member of the guard, and I shouldn’t forget that. The captain sent me to fetch you. It’s your duty to stand with the guard.”
“What do you mean, stand with the guard?”
“At the execution. Come on.” He started away, and Emily followed him across to the guard towers.
He led her through the stables and out the enormous arch that stood open now to the city. The streets were packed with people, all heading northward.
“Where are we going?”
“The square, of course.” He threw her a puzzled look. “Haven’t you been to an execution before?”
Emily shook her head. He rolled his eyes and quickened his pace, pushing through the sea of bodies.
They came out at last into an enormous square. The crowds remained just outside its boundaries without barricades or guards to hold them back. They pressed in on all sides. They filled the streets. They packed themselves in on the expanse of grass and filled the branches of the trees in what surely must be the town common on the square’s east side. Every window of the tall building across from them was occupied with spectators, and still more leaned out, looking down from its roof.
A group of the insectile people she’d seen in the city hovered in the air above the heads of the earthbound crowd, their wings beating so fast they were only a multicolored blur in the bright sunlight.
Emily stumbled over a small figure crouching in the dust of the road. As she straightened, she caught a glimpse of the boy with the horns scampering away deeper into the throng. Something inside her moved, but she did not have time to examine it.
Corbbmacc clasped her elbow, gently this time, and led her to a group of what must’ve been nearly the whole of the guard from Seven Skies. Marcom stood at the head of their formation, looking grim. He’d tied a scrap of cloth over his head like a bandana, and the corner of it covered the empty socket of his missing eye. He nodded at her and Corbbmacc but said nothing. She probably wouldn’t have been able to hear him over the roar of voices and the hum of enormous wings anyway.
She and Corbbmacc took places behind him, completing the roughly triangular formation, and Emily followed her captain’s gaze.
A stone dais marked the center of the square. Its middle was hollowed out and filled with a patch of earth, from which an enormous oak tree towered toward the sky. White wild roses grew between its roots in thick profusion. She shivered, remembering the queer greenery she’d seen—and then not seen—in Marianne’s tower.
A man, almost a boy, was tied to the trunk of the tree with thick ropes. He was not struggling against his bonds. He stood with his back straight against the bark and his head up, examining the crowd around him defiantly.
Beyond the dais, directly across from the guard, stood Caireann and the apprentices. Caireann had organized them into a triangular formation as well, albeit much smaller than that of the guards. From here, Emily could just see the flash of gold that was Celine’s blonde head past Josephine’s shoulder.
A loud groaning sound exploded over the din, and the crowd fell silent as though someone had turned them off with a switch. The groaning grew louder, and a vertical seam appeared in the branches of the oak, far above the prisoner’s head.
As the branches parted, a figure, clad in a gown of deepest green and trimmed with gold, drifted downward from the rift like a leaf upon an autumn wind.
&nb
sp; But there was no wind. Not a breath of air stirred the stillness of the square. The sudden silence of the crowd was frightening in its totality.
Marianne came to rest beside the man, but did not look at him. She rotated in a slow circle, taking in first the hopeful apprentices to be, then the guard, and finally the whole of the crowd that pressed in around the square.
When she spoke, it was in the same soft, musical voice Emily remembered. She did not shout, and yet her voice carried easily to every ear. No one strained to hear her words. It was as though she spoke directly to them from but an arm’s length away.
“A terrible crime has been committed today,” she said, and her voice was filled with a heartbreaking sadness. “Those who call themselves the Dragon’s Brood destroyed, without cause or provocation, a well-loved landmark of our city, and murdered more than a hundred innocent souls within.”
She paused, and now the crowd did begin to stir. Angry murmurs spread from person to person like wildfire.
“While the others who perpetrated this unforgivable attack lost their lives in the aftermath, there is but one still living to bear the fruits of these atrocious deeds.”
She turned now to face the bound man. He did not flinch from her gaze but regarded her calmly.
“You have pledged yourself to the Dragon’s Brood, have you not?”
“I have,” the man said. His voice was strong and clear, and he spoke loudly so his words would carry to the ears of the crowd. Even still, Emily could hardly hear him from where she stood.
“And you participated in the act of unspeakable violence that was wrought upon the innocence of our city, did you not?”
“I did not,” he said. The crowd stirred again, raising their voices in disbelief. “There are many who call themselves the Dragon’s Brood. I do not believe, as some do, that violence against the innocent is the path to freedom.”
“Liar,” Marianne said, but there was no venom in her voice. Again, as she had in the sorceress’s chambers, Emily sensed only that fathomless weariness in the woman’s words. Surely, someone capable of such anguish could not be so very bad.
With a motion almost too quick to see, Marianne had reached out with one hand and shredded the front of the man’s shirt, as though her fingernails were razors. The fabric fell away from his chest, revealing an enormous tattoo that covered the whole of his torso. It was drawn in brilliant crimson and depicted a dragon with its wings spread in flight. Devastating flames were etched across his muscular body, erupting from the dragon’s jaws in shades of gold and orange.
The sight of the tattoo seemed to break whatever spell had held the crowd in check, and there was an angry tide of roaring voices that swept across the square in a deafening crash.
Marianne went on speaking, and still every word was perfectly audible despite the din.
“You bear the mark of the Dragon’s Brood upon your flesh, the very symbol of their violent doctrine. We hold you responsible for the loss of life here today. We demand justice. We exact retribution.”
The roar of the crowd grew louder, but its aspect had shifted from that of an angry mob to one of hungry anticipation. The air was filled with the thunderous rhythm of stomping feet and clapping hands, and Emily could feel its beat in the pit of her stomach as it grew louder and more frantic.
Marianne stepped back, bowed her head as if in sorrow, and raised her clasped hands before her face like a woman in prayer.
There was a low creaking sound as the oak began to move. Branches bent and twisted and swung as though jointed like human limbs. Boughs reached down toward the man, who at last began to struggle. Leaves fell around him like snow. Vines crept up from the ground, winding themselves around first his ankles, then his calves. Thorns tore through leather and flesh, dotting the soil at his feet with drops of scarlet.
When the end of one leafy branch plucked the man’s eye from the socket and speared it like a grape on a toothpick, the crowd’s approval crested like a wave and drowned out his screams.
A thick bough twisted and locked around the man’s neck, and a collection of smaller twigs pulled his lips apart like fingers. They tore his tongue from his mouth. Blood spewed from his jaws and coated his chest like a scarlet bib, obscuring the dragon tattoo from sight.
The tree limb around his neck tightened as still more branches scratched and tore his flesh. As the blood flowed, the roses at his feet turned their pale faces upward to catch the drops between their delicate petals.
When at last the man’s suffering ended and his head was wrenched from his body with the sickening pop of a knot in a fire, the crowd’s response could be mistaken for nothing other than what it was—bloodthirsty ecstasy.
Emily watched it all in horror. How could this be happening, no matter what had been done that morning at the inn? Despite the fact that she’d very nearly lost her own life, to make anyone suffer like this was beyond her ability to understand. She felt sick. Her hand fell to the handle of her sword, but before she could even think of drawing it, another hand closed firmly over hers.
It was Corbbmacc. She looked up into his face. His expression was set, but she saw something that gleamed wetly beneath one of his clear blue eyes. He squeezed her hand and shook his head very slightly, before letting go of her and returning his gaze to the horrifying spectacle before them.
Marianne’s sad, musical voice floated above the noise like the foam upon a crashing wave. “Justice be done.”
Tears blurring her vision, Emily turned away, scanning the faces of her fellow guards. Surely they couldn’t just accept this. Her gaze fell on Marcom. He was still staring at the dais. His jaw was clenched, but his expression was otherwise inscrutable.
His lips formed an echo of Marianne’s words. “Justice be done.” It looked as though they tasted bitter on his tongue.
In her mind’s eye, she saw the gold coin turning end over end to splash into the fountain beside the statue of the dying mermaid, and she thought of her wish.
She supposed that now she had her answer. Part of her wished she could take it back. A larger part of her knew that, even given the chance, she never would. It was better to know, whatever the consequences.
She turned back to face the twitching oak, letting the image of the now unidentifiable hunks of bloody flesh be burned into her memory. The roar of the crowd was deafening. The air was thick with the coppery scent of death.
She set her jaw and took it all in.
It was time to take matters into her own hands.
Chapter Fourteen
The rest of that day had been subdued. Marcom had sent Emily back with the other girls, and, apart from meals, they’d spent the afternoon hours in their respective rooms. Neither she nor Celine had felt like talking. It was all that Emily could do to keep the image of the man’s tongue and eyeball skewered on the rattling branches of the oak like a cannibal’s shish kebab from skittering around her mind.
Now she sat with her back to the window, letting the last light of the day fall on the contents of the blue folder she’d forgotten was in her backpack. Coach Anders had given it to her after that last day spent in what her mind insisted on continuing to think of as “the real world”, though she no longer had any doubts that this world was every bit as real as the one she’d left. She didn’t believe her mind was capable of creating delusions as vivid and terrible as the things she’d seen that day—not by a long shot.
The folder’s contents consisted mainly of photocopied pages from various school papers and newsletters where she’d been featured with her teammates at various levels of play; they stretched all the way back to second grade. How had Coach Anders, who had only started coaching her when she’d entered high school, managed to find all of these?
Some were from the local papers. One showed her and Casey standing at center ice, hoisting a trophy together over their heads. It brought a pang to her heart. That had been a good day. Had it really been less than a year ago? She could remember the weight of the cup in her hand
s. She could remember the warm rush of pride that had filled every part of her as she’d held it aloft. The memories were as sharp and vivid as the photograph before her now, but they felt strangely alien, too.
She looked at Casey’s easy smile, and wondered if she’d ever see it in the flesh again. She missed Casey more as the days rolled on, but her feelings were horribly conflicted. Seeing Casey again would mean facing her old life and confronting her stepfather. Those were things she couldn’t fathom coping with as the memories of that last terrible day faded.
She closed her eyes and pictured Casey as she remembered her at age eight or nine, her face smeared with garish makeup of half a dozen clashing hues. Growing up, the two of them had spent countless happy hours in Casey’s bedroom, putting lipstick and mascara on one another until they resembled nothing so much as freakish little clowns. The ache in her chest intensified, but she couldn’t help smiling all the same. A tear escaped the corner of one eye, and she brushed it away.
What are you doing now, Case? she wondered.
With a sigh, she opened her eyes and continued flipping through the pages.
Here were stat sheets and lists of forward line combinations, complete with Coach Anders’s spidery handwriting in the margins. At the top of most of the stats—goals, assists, ice time, plus and minus—was her own name. Somehow, he’d known she would need to see this one day, when her confidence was shaken. He’d known, and he’d gathered it all together to remind her that she’d accomplished a lot. He’d known she would hit a wall someday—a wall made of more than simple glass and boards—and he’d wanted to make sure she wouldn’t lose her footing on the ice.
It wasn’t the same kind of knowing as her own, but it was no less magical for that. Perhaps it was more so, not being guided by some mysterious force that science had yet to define.
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