13. Brannok #3
She trails off, her gaze moving to the scattered remains of the Grand Gallows. Ropes coiled among the rubble. Beams that could serve as gallows. The raw materials of an execution apparatus, waiting to be assembled.
“You want me to hang the Judge.” The words seem strange in my mouth—absurd and inevitable at the same time. “Execute the entity that was about to execute me.”
“Ironic, isn’t it?” A ghost of her usual humor surfaces through the exhaustion. “The Gallows Warden’s final hanging. Though I suppose this one deserves it.”
I look at the entity thrashing against the spirits that hold it. The faces cycling through expressions of fury and fear and disbelief. The fused-corpse form coming apart at the seams as the magic sustaining it continues to drain.
For two decades, I hanged people who didn’t deserve to die. Pulled the lever on innocents and guilty alike, told myself I was maintaining order, serving justice, keeping the peace. The gallows made me what I am. Now they’re asking me to be something different.
Now I have a chance to use those skills for what they were meant for.
“Can you hold it?” I squeeze her hand once, then release it. “Keep it manifested long enough for me to—”
“Build a gallows?” She’s already turning toward the Judge, already gathering what remains of her stolen power. “For you? I’ll hold it until the sun burns out.”
“That seems excessive.”
“I’m feeling dramatic.” She glances back at me, and for a moment the death witch disappears and there’s only Ismerie—sharp and sarcastic and defiant, the woman who needled me with truths I didn’t want to hear and made me want things I’d trained myself to ignore.
“Don’t take too long, though. I’d rather not test the limits of excessive. ”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
She moves toward the thrashing Judge, ending magic coiling around her hands. The spirits part before her—recognizing the power she now commands, the authority she’s claimed over their domain.
I turn to the ruins of the platform and get to work.
The rope first. There’s plenty of it scattered among the wreckage—witch-hair braided fibers designed to suppress magical resistance. I gather the longest sections, fingers working through the familiar motions of braiding despite the tremor in my hands.
A proper hangman’s knot requires thirteen coils.
I’ve tied thousands of them over the years, can form the pattern in my sleep.
This one takes longer—my neck is still on fire, my ribs screaming where the Judge’s strike landed, my vision still blurred at the edges.
But I work through it, the way I’ve always worked through pain. I get it done.
The beam next. I need a crossbar sturdy enough to bear weight, tall enough to provide a proper drop.
The old support posts are scattered among the rubble—I find one that’s relatively intact, drag it upright, brace it against a pile of stone.
Each heave sends a lance of pain through my side where the Judge struck.
I breathe through it, refuse to give it ground, and keep working while Ismerie holds the monster at bay.
It’s not elegant. Not the refined execution apparatus I spent decades perfecting. But it’s functional, and functional is all that matters.
Behind me, Ismerie confronts the Judge. Her words carry those ending-magic harmonics—commanding the spirits, directing their assault, keeping the entity too distracted to escape or reform. Her presence throbs in my awareness—a fierce point of heat that matches my heartbeat.
She’s magnificent. Terrifying and beautiful and completely, utterly mine.
And I’m not going to let her down.
I throw the rope over the beam. Test the weight. Calculate the drop.
Then I turn to face the monster that tried to kill us both.
“Judge.”
The word cuts through the chaos. The spirits pause. The entity’s rotating visages turn toward me, stolen eyes widening as they register what I’ve built.
“The court recognizes the condemned.” My words carry the same formal weight I’ve used to pronounce sentences for twenty years. “For the crime of consuming innocent souls. For the crime of perverting justice into vengeance. For the crime of attacking the Gallows Warden and his mate.”
Ismerie’s power flares behind me. The spirits surge forward one final time—forcing the Judge toward the makeshift gallows, positioning it beneath the dangling noose.
“The sentence is death by hanging.”
The Judge screams. Countless voices raised in fury and terror and disbelief.
“You cannot—this is not—I AM justice—”
“No.” I loop the noose around its composite neck. “You’re a weapon that told itself it was righteous.”
The entity’s faces cycle through expressions of rage, of pleading, of desperate bargaining—all the reactions I’ve seen a thousand times from the condemned, now playing out across a multitude of stolen features.
“I can give you power,” it hisses. “I can make you feared beyond any warden before you. I can—”
“I don’t want power.” I meet its countless eyes without flinching. “I want to keep a promise.”
I pull the rope.
And somewhere in the foundations of my soul, a weight I’ve carried for twenty years finally begins to lift.