Prologue
1476 Words
The sky was crying.
Or so it had seemed to her. The little girl knew the water tumbling from
the charcoal-colored smudge above was called rain—she'd been barely
ten years old, but she was old enough to know that. Yet she'd still fancied
tears falling from that gray sugar-floss face. So cold compared to her own.
No salt or sting inside them. But yes, the sky was certainly crying.
What else could it have done at a moment like this?
She'd stood on the Spine above the forum, gleaming gravebone at her
feet, cold wind in her hair. People were gathered in the piazza below, all
open mouths and closed fists. They'd seethed against the scaffold in the
forum's heart, and the girl wondered if they pushed it over, would the
prisoners standing atop it be allowed to go home again?
O, wouldn't that be wonderful?
She'd never seen so many people. Men and women of dif erent shapes
and sizes, children not much older than she. They wore ugly clothes and
their howls had made her frightened, and she'd reached up and took her
mother's hand, squeezing tight.
Her mother didn't seem to notice. Her eyes had been fixed on the
scaffold, just like the rest. But Mother didn't spit at the men standing
before the nooses, didn't throw rotten food or hiss "traitor" through
clenched teeth. The Dona Corvere had simply stood, black gown sodden
with the sky's tears, like a statue above a tomb not yet filled.
Not yet. But soon.
The girl had wanted to ask why her mother didn't weep. She didn't
know what "traitor" meant, and wanted to ask that, too. And yet, somehow
she knew this was a place where words had no place. And so she'd stood in
silence.
Watching instead.
Six men stood on the scaffold below. One in a hangman's hood, black as
truedark. Another in a priest's gown, white as a dove's feathers. The four
others wore ropes at their wrists and rebellion in their eyes. But as the
hooded man had slipped a noose around each neck, the girl saw the
defiance draining from their cheeks along with the blood. In years to
follow, she'd be told time and again how brave her father was. But looking
down on him then, at the end of the row of four, she knew he was afraid.
Only a child of ten, and already she knew the color of fear.
The priest had stepped forward, beating his staff on the boards. He had
a beard like a hedgerow and shoulders like an ox, looking more like a
brigand who'd murdered a holy man and stolen his clothes than a holy
man himself. The three suns hanging on a chain about his throat tried to
gleam, but the clouds in the crying sky told them no.
His voice was thick as toffee, sweet and dark. But it spoke of crimes
against the Itreyan Republic. Of treachery and treason. The holy brigand
called upon the Light to bear witness (she wondered if It had a choice),
naming each man in time.
"Senator Claudius Valente."
"Senator Marconius Albari."
"General Gaius Maxinius Antonius."
"Justicus Darius Corvere."
Her father's name, like the last note in the saddest song she'd ever
heard. Tears welled in her eyes, blurring the world shapeless. How small
and pale he'd looked down there in that howling sea. How alone. She
remembered him as he'd been, not so long ago; tall and proud and O, so
very strong. His gravebone armor white as wintersdeep, his cloak spilling
like crimson rivers over his shoulders. His eyes, blue and bright, creased
at the corners when he smiled.
Armor and cloak were gone now, replaced by rags of dirty hessian and
bruises like fat, purpling berries all over his face. His right eye was
swollen shut, his other fixed at his feet. She'd wanted him to look at her so
badly. She wanted him to come home.
"Traitor!" the mob called. "Make him dance!"
The girl didn't know what they'd meant. She could hear no music.
The holy brigand had looked to the battlements, to the marrowborn and
politicos gathered above. The entire Senate seemed to have turned out for
the show, near a hundred men gathered in their purple-trimmed robes,
staring down at the scaffold with pitiless eyes.
To the Senate's right stood a cluster of men in white armor. Blood-red
cloaks. Swords wreathed in rippling flame unsheathed in their hands.
Luminatii, they were called, the girl knew that well. They'd been her
father's brothers in arms before the traitoring—such was, she'd presumed,
what traitors did.
It'd all been so noisy.
In the midst of the senators stood a beautiful dark-haired man, with
eyes of piercing black. He wore fine robes dyed with deepest purple—
consul's garb. And the girl who knew O, so little knew at least here was a
man of station. Far above priests or soldiers or the mob bellowing for
dancing when there was no tune. If he were to speak it, the crowd would let
her father go. If he were to speak it, the Spine would shatter and the Ribs
shiver into dust, and Aa, the God of Light himself, would close his three
eyes and bring blessed dark to this awful parade.
The consul had stepped forward. The mob below fell silent. And as the
beautiful man spoke, the girl squeezed her mother's hand with the kind of
hope only children know.
"Here in the city of Godsgrave, in the Light of Aa the Everseeing and
by unanimous word of the Itreyan Senate, I, Consul Julius Scaeva,
proclaim these accused guilty of insurrection against our glorious
Republic. There can be but one sentence for those who betray the citizenry
of Itreya. One sentence for those who would once more shackle this great
nation beneath the yoke of kings."
Her breath had stilled.
Heart fluttered.
"… Death."
A roar. Washing over the girl like the rain. And she'd looked wide-eyed
from the beautiful consul to the holy brigand to her mother—dearest
Mother, make them stop—but Mother's eyes were affixed on the man below.
Only the tremor in her bottom lip betraying her agony. And the little girl
could stand no more, and the scream roared up inside her and spilled over
her lips
nonono
and the shadows all across the forum shivered at her fury. The black at
every man's feet, every maid and every child, the darkness cast by the light
of the hidden suns, pale and thin though it was—make no mistake, O,
gentlefriend. Those shadows trembled.
But not one person noticed. Not one person cared.
The Dona Corvere's eyes didn't leave her husband as she took hold of
the little girl, hugged her close. One arm across her breast. One hand at
her neck. So tight the girl couldn't move. Couldn't turn. Couldn't breathe.
You picture her now; a mother with her daughter's face pressed to her
skirts. The she-wolf with hackles raised, shielding her cub from the murder
unfolding below. You'd be forgiven for imagining it so. Forgiven and
mistaken. Because the dona held her daughter pinned looking outward.
Outward so she could taste it all. Every morsel of this bitter meal. Every
crumb.
The girl had watched as the hangman tested each noose, one by one by
one. He'd limped to a lever at the scaffold's edge and lifted his hood to
spit. The girl glimpsed his face—yellow teeth gray stubble harelip gone.
Something inside her screamed Don't look, don't look, and she'd closed
her eyes. And her mother's grip had tightened, her whisper sharp as
razors.
"Never flinch," she breathed. "Never fear."
The girl felt the words in her chest. In the deepest, darkest place,
where the hope children breathe and adults mourn withered and fell away,
floating like ashes on the wind.
And she'd opened her eyes.
He'd looked up then. Her father. Just a glance through the rain. She'd
often wonder what he was thinking at that moment, in nevernights to come.
But there were no words to cross that hissing veil. Only tears. Only the
crying sky. And the hangman pulled his lever, and the floor fell away. And
to her horror, she finally understood. Finally heard it.
Music.
The dirge of the jeering crowd. The whip-crack of taut rope. The guhguh-guh of throttled men cut through with the applause of the holy brigand
and the beautiful consul and the world gone wrong and rotten. And to the
swell of that horrid tune, legs kicking, face purpling, her father had begun
dancing.
Daddy …
"Never flinch." A cold whisper in her ear. "Never fear. And never, ever
forget."
The girl nodded slow.
Exhaled the hope inside.
And she'd watched her father die.
- Writer
