Chapter Four
For the second morning in a row, the capital city of Bellacosta greeted flames before sunlight. Funeral pyres dotted the beach, the sea waters close at hand if they needed to be extinguished. Though they were outside of the city proper, they still attracted a large crowd of civilians and soldiers.
Silas watched stoically from the sidelines, hands clasped behind his back. He wanted to wrap his arms around himself—or better yet, to have Archer’s arms wrapped around him—but didn’t want to show any signs of weakness. More than he already had, at least.
The first to burn were the Bellacostan soldiers who had died betraying their country.
It was speculated that they were the ones who set the palace on fire the night before.
Whether that was true or not still needed to be determined, but they’d used the fire as a distraction to break into the prison and free the disgraced General Varro.
During their escape, they’d destroyed the prison, killing and severely wounding the Arnsveldian soldiers who tried to stop them.
These traitors had been stacked face down on their pyre.
When Silas asked Archer why, he’d explained that Arnsveldians traditionally laid their dead to rest face up, so they would be ready to walk into the afterlife.
Anyone buried or burned face down could only walk deeper into the earth and feed the roots beneath the surface.
Silas had never heard such stories before, and he suspected none of the Bellacostans watching understood the significance either. Still, he recalled the two funerals he’d attended—his sister’s first, and then his mother’s—and was glad they had both been entombed face up.
The pyre would burn through the day, with attendants keeping an eye on it to make sure the fire didn’t get too low or too hot.
As Silas watched the flickering flames, memories of the palace fire flashed through his mind.
The frenetic energy as everyone tried to extinguish the blaze.
The smoke clogging his nose and lungs. His aching arms and stinging hands as he passed wooden buckets overflowing with water down a line.
A large hand grasped Silas’ shoulder and he looked up into Archer’s eyes. Orange reflected in his dark irises, adding a touch of warmth to his grim expression. “You don’t need to watch this,” he said, keeping his voice low so only Silas could hear.
Silas swallowed roughly. “I want to.” Want wasn’t quite the right word—he certainly wasn’t enjoying the smell of charred flesh or the overbearing heat from the flames. But he did want to see the end.
Once the traitors were dealt with, Alistair came next.
Griselda had suggested making an example of the former Head Advisor, a warning to his co-conspirators and followers: “Let’s show the bastards what’s waiting for them when we finally catch them.
” But Silas couldn’t stomach the thought of mutilating the corpse while a crowd watched.
There was no ceremony, no final words. No one even explained to the citizens what was happening.
A group of Arnsveldian soldiers simply approached the second, smaller pyre, carrying a cloth wrapped bundle on their shoulders.
They dropped it onto the wood pile and looked to Archer and Silas for direction.
“Do you want to keep the body wrapped?” Archer asked.
It would be easier if Silas didn’t have to see Alistair’s face again so soon after killing him, but unease tightened his gut.
Some irrational voice in his mind whispered hidden fears: what if that’s not really Alistair?
What if it was all a trick, and he’s escaped somehow?
What if he’s still out there, biding his time, waiting to complete the plans he’d spent decades working toward?
Silas had no idea what the mage was capable of.
The only way to quiet the voice in his head was to see the body for himself.
To watch Alistair turn to ash and fade into oblivion. “Remove it.”
The soldiers each grabbed one corner of the cloth and yanked it away, allowing the body to roll and flop over, tangling with the wood beneath. It landed with the face toward Silas, one eye clouded with death, the other a bloody hole where he had stabbed it with a dagger.
Silas’ stomach lurched and he swallowed bile. I wanted to see this, he reminded himself, I can’t turn away now.
Someone stepped forward and lowered a torch to the pyre.
Once the flames caught, they spread quickly.
The white hair burned away first. Then the robes, stained with dirt and blood from the fight that led to Alistair’s death.
Though the rest of the body would take hours to burn, it quickly became unrecognizable.
Silas expected some relief, a sense of release as the man who manipulated him his entire life burned away. His muscles remained tight, his stomach clenched. Invisible puppet strings still ensnared him, even with no one on the other end to pull them taut.
He forced himself to turn away and watch the last pyre.
These were the Arnsveldian soldiers who had died during the prison break or while helping others escape the palace fire.
There was a clear difference between the treatment of these soldiers and the traitors.
They had been carefully cleaned, given fresh uniforms, and gently placed face-up, their eyes closed to mimic sleep.
Murmurs rose from behind Silas and he tensed, expecting criticisms from over-opinionated Bellacostans.
Alistair purposefully cultivated animosity between Arnsveld and Bellacosta for decades.
It would take more than a few sacrifices to repair their relationship.
Silas tilted his head to hear the whispered words, prepared to intervene if anyone disrespected the men and women who had laid down their lives to protect them.
“—may Death guide you—”
“—shield you as you have shielded others—”
The words were unfamiliar, not part of any funeral rites Silas had witnessed. They had the cadence of an old, practiced prayer.
At a Bellacostan funeral, they could spend hours talking about a person’s life: the impact they’d had on the people around them; the good they’d done for their community; sharing happy memories or small moments of joy.
His sister Gessa’s had focused on her love of books and hopes for the future, now dashed.
His mother’s had focused on her accomplishments as queen.
Silas wondered what people would say at his funeral.
It would probably depend on the speaker.
He imagined all the Bellacostans silent.
Tradition forbade them from speaking ill of the dead during a celebration of their life, but Silas couldn’t picture them saying anything positive about him.
The Arnsveldians might praise his attempts to form an alliance and arrange a peace treaty to end the fifty years of conflict.
If they didn’t damn him as part of the problem.
He didn’t know what Archer would say. Flowery speeches were not his strength. Griselda, on the other hand, would probably find some way to compliment and insult Silas at the same time. “Dumbass could never properly block, but he learned how to stab in the end, so he wasn’t a complete loss.”
A small snort of laughter escaped him before he covered his mouth to suppress it. He glanced around guiltily to see if anyone had noticed. Only Archer looked at him instead of the dead, a dark brow arched inquisitively.
“I’m imagining Griselda giving my eulogy,” Silas whispered.
Instead of finding amusement in the image, Archer’s jaw tightened. He grabbed Silas’ hand and squeezed it. Although both of their hands were wounded from their last few days of struggle, the pain was oddly comforting. “No eulogy. We survived.”
Silas noted the shortened sentences. Over the past few weeks, Archer worked to voice his thoughts more completely, instead of leaving people to interpret his grunts and expressions.
Mentioning his potential funeral had upset Archer more than Silas expected.
“We did,” he agreed, smiling in reassurance.
“And we’ll continue to survive, whatever Varro or any of the other bastards throw at us. ”
Despite the lingering crowd, Silas leaned his head against Archer’s shoulder, wanting the comfort of his warm, steady frame. Together, they watched the fires burn and a new dawn rise over Bellacosta.