Chapter Nine Lord Tanner
Lord Tanner did not return to his residence that evening. He was too filled with a need to act—to do something. He was the bloody Head of House, for God’s sake. He could not sit on his hands and allow a fucking chit from Scurry to bend him over.
When he returned to his office, he knocked a glass sculpture of Saint Merlo off his desk, drank a generous pour of port, and ripped his robes from his arms, feeling as though they had suddenly become snakes, constricting him.
He was soon drunk, muttering at the walls.
Who was he but an Artisan who had only ever sought to protect this continent, its heritage?
He stood over the old book, Idia’s Seam hidden somewhere in its fibers, and considered, briefly, throwing it into the hearth.
Lord Shop appeared before him sometime after that. The clock chimed low—a midnight dirge.
“I’m afraid there’s no avoiding it,” Shop said to him, and he couldn’t make heads nor tails of the words. How long had the man been talking?
Shop shook his head when Tanner offered him the bottle of port. “You were never one for fun,” Tanner said bitterly, then upended the bottle into his own glass. A fair amount splattered onto the floor.
“My lord.” The bottle was removed from his hands. Shop laid heavy palms on his shoulders, shook them slightly. His eyes swam into existence. “Time is of the essence. Can the earth Charmer be convinced?”
“No,” Tanner said. The mention of her brought venom to his mouth. “Scum bitch,” he muttered.
“Then what are your orders?”
Tanner was the Head of House. A Mason of high order. An Artisan.
Nina Clarke was a fraud. A rebel. A traitor to this continent.
“Have the gallows prepared,” he said. “We’ll see how her loyalty fares then. Bring the Alchemist, too, and the Union chairman. Bring everyone.” Let them be reminded of who he was. “At dawn, we’ll have a willing earth Charmer.”
At dawn, Tanner was sober. Washed. He had replaced his robes and covered the port stain on his shirt with a gold pin.
His hand brushed over the Artisan brand on his wrist once, then straightened the cuff.
The courtyard beyond the window awaited him.
He had listened to the Crafters preparing the platform through the night.
The wood Masons were not woken for the task; none had idium enough to snap a stick.
Now, the courtyard was filling in the gray of morning. He could hear the voices rising, feel their presence. They awaited him, their leader.
He was suddenly bone-weary. He wondered what his life might have been like in the outskirts of the city, a dish maid in his bed.
Infantrymen flanked him down the stairs into the atrium. The doors opened onto those imperial steps as they did on siphoning day, only now the sky was bleak, the courtyard attended only by solemn-faced guards, rebels, ministers, and one prisoner, standing at the end of a rope.
Rose Harrow had become a sickening thing to look at.
It was difficult to imagine her as she’d once been—a servant of the House, neatly kept, willing to come to his bed on occasion, with the suggestion of idium for her family if she was discreet.
Of course, then Olivette had put a stop to it all, and really, he’d never truly promised Rose Harrow or the others a damn thing, had he?
When he’d traced the twelve-year-old Nina Clarke back to the source, he’d assumed this woman had taken matters into her own hands, that she’d stolen idium on behalf of her daughter.
He’d thrown her back into the brink for it.
How odd, to learn much later that it hadn’t been Rose Harrow’s doing at all.
She stood in the dawn atop the platform in too-large clothes, in skin that sagged from her skeleton.
When Tanner had first brought her out of exile, she’d been more robust, if mad.
Months later, she was unpleasantly frail.
Blond hair matted, streaked in gray. Soft features turned painfully sharp.
Tanner had instructed the infantrymen to make her time in the cellars uncomfortable.
He now wondered what exactly that had entailed.
The Miners Union chairman stood to the side of the gallows. His hands and feet were bound, and he appeared distinctly unclean. Even so, he stood with unaccountable dignity. It was infuriating. Whatever had so succeeded in thwarting the spirit of Rose Harrow had done little to John Colson.
At his side was a man who presented a great conundrum to Tanner.
A Craftsman who was now the most powerful man in the courtyard, in a way.
He, too, seemed oddly prideful. Still strong in body and will.
His jaw was set, his shoulders straight.
He looked Tanner dead in the eye. That was the problem with Crafters.
It was difficult to teach barbarians to be afraid.
The lords stood in their tones of deepest blue before the gallows. Lord Shop and his son headed the pack. Terrence had his hand pressed into young Theodore’s shoulder, as though to keep him there.
Tanner descended the steps and stamped over the dust. The ministers bowed their heads respectfully, the prisoners glared, and clouds rumbled overhead, threatening a downpour. The first flecks fell, darkening the dirt.
Uniformed soldiers stood at every interval. Three of them had mounted the platform where Nina’s mother stood. The woman had closed her eyes and begun to pray.
Tanner smiled. Even he could not find it within himself to put this pitiful woman to death. But Nina Clarke needn’t know. The gallows would be convincing enough. She would fold, and quickly.
The guards brought the girl out last, as instructed. Let Nina Clarke see the mess she had made, the lengths she had brought them to.
Her hands and feet were not bound, yet she stumbled, almost toppled in a great heap down the steps to the foot of the gallows.
Her eyes settled over the ropes, the trapdoor, and her mother atop it, shaking like a leaf in the wind.
“Ma,” she whispered, mouth agape.
Then she looked over her shoulder at an angle that must have been painful, the soldiers trying not to let her look away.
But there was no avoidance. There was only murderous rage. It was Tanner she searched for.
“LET HER GO!” she bellowed. Loud enough that those beyond the walls would hear.
Loud enough to send the pigeons in the gutters swarming into the sky.
Her eyes were stark, uninhibited in the frame of her wild blond hair.
She fought the soldiers who held her arms, throwing herself toward the platform.
And Tanner, for the first time in many months, felt serene.
Powerful.