Chapter Three #3
Neville’s face is too close to mine for me to miss his twist of disgust at Trick’s words. I can’t believe he said it, either, but for a different reason. Trick Jovann, one of the highest-ranking Guild thieves in Pallanhold, always says luck is for losers.
But wait. Why is Trick in chains? Yet another thing the king got wrong, unless he considers all criminals to be nobodies.
Lil shrieks again, and I realize my mind has been filling my head with irrelevant nonsense to protect me from the scene before me. The guards are dragging the sobbing girl closer to the box.
The sorcerer waits there, her head held high but her eyes stark pools of despair. She also holds one hand over her abdomen, as if she’s in pain.
I hope she’s in pain. I hope she never lives a day—a moment—without pain again.
“It’s all right, Lil,” she says, and I recognize the lie as soon as she speaks it. The Air Touched doesn’t think that any of this is all right, but she’s still going forward with her horrific plan.
Lil, desperate to believe anything that means she won’t die, grabs onto the sorcerer’s hand with both of hers. “Do you promise?”
Her childish voice, high and sweet and terrified, shatters something in me, and I lurch away from Neville and bend over, clutching my head to keep it from exploding into a thousand pieces. I don’t want to see this.
I don’t want to see this.
But I force myself to look up, although it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. If Lil can be brave enough to do this, I can be brave enough to stand witness.
Elianna, whose hands are trembling so slightly as to be barely noticeable, slowly reaches out and removes the lid. Then she exhales a shuddering breath and places it next to the box on the table.
“Now?” Lil asks, her voice barely a whisper.
Elianna nods but then clears her throat and speaks. “Yes, please. Now.”
Slowly, and with several false starts and flinches, Lil reaches one shaking hand toward the box.
I send up a quick, desperate prayer to Artemisen. Please let the sorcerer be right. Please let the girl touch the amulet safely.
With one final, guttural sob, Lil shoves her hand into the box.
And she doesn’t die.
She touches it, and she doesn’t die.
A rousing cheer goes up from every throat in the room—a wordless roar that swells to the ceiling. I want to join in, but I notice that neither the king nor the Air Touched is celebrating. Instead, they’re both watching Lil with sharp focus.
It’s not over? A full minute passes. Then two.
The sorcerer suddenly flinches and takes a half step back, and the king leaps behind the guard flanking him.
It’s not over.
I scream something—I don’t even know what, but it’s too late, too late, far too late.
Lil bursts into flames and dies, screaming, right there in front of us.
The guards rush forward with their buckets of water. The king knew this could happen, and he prepared, which means this exact horror has happened before, and probably more than once. Probably right here in this room.
He knew, and he did it anyway.
“No!” I scream, over and over, while the horrified guards hurl water to put out the flaming, oddly scentless column of ash that used to be an apprentice pig keeper. A girl who kissed a boy at Harvest Fest.
“Silence,” the king roars, and everyone in the room goes quiet.
Neville raises a hand to cover my mouth again, but I shake my head and clamp my lips together.
“Do you still believe you’re right?” the king demands.
“Yes,” the sorcerer answers, but her voice is broken and thick with tears. She takes a shaky breath and lifts her chin. “Yes. I’m right.”
The king studies her and then nods. “Bring the thief.”
What?
Three guards drag Trick forward. He’s fighting silently, not wasting breath to yell, using every skill in his arsenal to escape, but it’s futile. The guards are too strong for him to overpower, and there are too many of them.
When they halt in front of the table, side-stepping the watery ash that used to be a person, my mental paralysis fractures.
“No,” I call out, my voice ringing in the silent room. “No, it won’t work with him. Trick Jovann, superior thief, is not a nobody.”
“She’s right,” Trick says, whirling to face me, a sick hope on his face. “I’m somebody in the crime circles of this city, begging your pardon, King Pallan. Put me in the dungeons. Lock me up. But don’t make me touch that amulet. I’ll just make another ugly mess on your floor.”
I flinch when he calls Lil’s remains an “ugly mess,” but the terrified ought to be forgiven their trespasses.
“He’s right,” I say, as steadily as I can manage. “I’m the real nobody here. I should try it.”
“No!” Trick shouts. “Not you. Anybody else!”
One of the guards slams the hilt of a dagger into the back of Trick’s head, and he collapses to the floor. I cry out, but Neville tightens his grip on my arm.
The king studies my face, then nods.
Neville’s hand drops from my arm. “Oh, lass,” he whispers, but I don’t have time for him.
Trick is unconscious on the floor, and I whisper goodbye to his unmoving form, hoping he survives this day.
Kaelen is fighting the guards with savage ferocity, his neck bleeding freely now, but I have no attention to spare for him. My entire concentration has tunneled down to a single point of focus: that ravens-begotten box.
If I’m going to die, I should finally be allowed to swear, right? Especially in the privacy of my mind.
When I reach the table, I stare in silence at the box. It’s a deceptively simple thing to hold so much pain and death. Carved from wood, probably teak, it’s free of flourishes or swirls, but for a bit of silver inlay on the lid.
Silver inlay that part of my mind distantly realizes spells out DANGER.
And below that, BLESSED BE THE GODDESS.
When I hesitate, the sorcerer’s golden eyes glow with muted power. “Are you ready?”
I force myself to look at Lil’s ashes. “Did you ask her if she was ready?”
She flinches, then squares her shoulders. “No. And I shouldn’t have asked you. This is bigger than any individual.”
I give her my nastiest smile. “If I’m about to die, I should at least be spared your tired cliches.”
“I’m sorry.” Oddly enough, I’m sure she’s telling the truth, though it’s too late to matter.
My hand rises almost of its own volition, and I tilt my head to look at my trembling fingers. “Let’s do this, then. Maybe …” I need to swallow before I can continue. “Maybe you can say a prayer for Lil and one for me, after I’m gone.”
“You carry all of Altarra’s hopes with you,” she whispers.
I shake my head. “Storms pass.”
“What?”
“Storms pass. Pain ends. Even the pain from burning alive.” I barely choke out the words. “I will never quit.”
Then, before terror can break me, before my mind can betray me, I aim all the defiance I can muster at the monstrous king, and I try to speak last words that maybe someone, someday, will remember.
I want desperately to say Fuck you all but don’t think it’s quite what I’m aiming for, so I try to do better.
“I freely choose this, in the hope that it might make a difference. Finally, today, I choose to be the architect of my own destiny.”
I whisper, “Pain ends,” plunge my hand into the box, and grab the amulet.