50

SARINE

Public Tribunal

Market District, New Sarresant

Sarine, please. Listen.

The buzz of the crowd made ignoring Zi that much easier. Anger seethed beneath her skin at his words, fitting with the mood of the men and women around her. She had often sold her sketches here in the central market, what felt like an age ago. Now the only wares on offer were flavors of violence, death disguised as justice. And rage. The hunger for food she had seen so often in the eyes of her fellow citizens had been replaced by a hunger for blood. They clamored together, congregating at the base of a hastily erected platform in the middle of the fountain square, watching as d’Agarre’s men prepared the stage for the afternoon’s work.

A cold sky looked down on their gathering, empty and blue with the promise of ice lingering now the storms had gone. A few of the crowd called out, impatient to see the accused, or just to profess their support for the causes of freedom and égalité. Most were content to wait, breath misting in the biting cold.

Sarine, Zi tried again. Please.

She cleared her mind, focusing on watching the stage for signs of another kaas.

The wound of Zi’s betrayal was too raw, too near the surface to listen to him speak. Her relationship with Zi had never been easily understood, but it was one thing to know her companion had a strange, often cryptic manner and another entirely to have him intervene to keep her from knowing the truth of her place and purpose. When she’d been a girl her gifts had been mysteries, mysteries she was content to leave alone. She’d had no cause to believe herself more than an orphan girl upon whom Father Thibeaux had taken pity, enough to keep her from being taken and trained as he had been, as all children were when they showed the signs.

Now she saw Zi’s touch in it, in what she had once believed to be her uncle’s charity and good heart. It made her anger flare again. How far did her companion’s reach extend? Had every step of her life been some machination toward a deeper purpose, a hidden path she walked unknowing to satisfy Zi’s design? She had counted him more than a friend. Zi was part of her, had saved her from the horrors of the streets. Without Zi she would have been dead a hundred times over. She had never truly questioned him before, but now she began to see the childish mistake of that blind trust. Hadn’t d’Agarre been led to his madness by the same force, his kaas? Could she assume Zi was not guiding her toward a similar end?

I have not been corrupted, Zi thought to her. I do not compel you, only protect you from that for which you are not prepared to face.

“Shut up, Zi,” she whispered, tears stinging the corners of her eyes.

He complied for the moment, thank the Gods, falling silent in the recesses of her mind. Just as well that one of d’Agarre’s men chose that moment to unveil the instrument of the afternoon’s justice: a guillotine, on loan or stolen from the city watch. The man climbed the side of the elevated stage, drawing eyes and excited whispers as he pulled back the linen sheet that had been draped over it for just such a dramatic effect. He pulled the cord and the steel blade rose up, glinting in the afternoon sun, with all the promise of swift death the next time it fell. Excited whispers became hushed anticipation as he tied the cord, stepping back with a twisted grin.

“Citizens of New Sarresant,” another man proclaimed as he strode up the steps, raising his arms to draw their attention. “Citizens, we gather here today to see justice done, before a tribunal of the peers of the accused.

“I speak, of course, of you, the citizens of our city. For as we know in our hearts, we are all one peerage, never mind what our onetime King might have had us believe. A lie, I call it!” He paused for effect, his words having already stilled the crowd to silence. “A lie, to claim nobility, to claim the exaltation we owe to the Gods. Do these so-called nobles not eat, the same as we do? Do they not sleep and shit and fuck?”

He stepped back, gesturing toward the guillotine, where the steel blade had been raised taut and fastened beside him. “Tell me, my brothers and sisters. Do the nobles not bleed red and true, the same as any man?”

Cries shattered the silence of the crowd as the man put on a broad smile. He let the moment linger before turning behind his stage and calling out, “Bring forth the accused!”

She scanned the crowd as d’Agarre’s men hauled their captive up the steps, drawing jeers and cries of hate. No sign of manipulation from d’Agarre’s kaas-mages; this crowd was a fire that needed little in the way of kindling. It seemed their captive was an army officer today, though the uniform seemed strange to her eyes, looping tethers in place of buttons on the coat, with a cut unlike any she had seen in the days since the army had moved into the city. The accused bore the mockery of the crowd with stoic grace, eyes upraised to the horizon as if the assembled citizens were beneath his notice. If the prisoner had calculated it as an act of defiance it had the desired effect, spurring the onlookers to hurl insults with ever-increasing fury even as the plain-looking man at the center of the stage raised his hands to beg for calm.

“Citizens,” the man called, then again. “Citizens, please.” The crowd paid him little mind, stirred to a frenzy by the officer’s haughty disdain. If not for Zi’s warnings she might have thought the display a product of the kaas’s influence—Yellow, to irritate the emotions. That Zi had not abated in using his gifts on her behalf stirred mixed feelings; she’d grown accustomed to his magics and his warnings, even as she resented their source. Enough that Zi would reveal one of d’Agarre’s kaas-mages here today, if they were foolish enough to show themselves. Across the square she met Axerian’s eyes, the hook-nosed God standing as she was, waiting hidden in the crowd for sign of a kaas’s powers in use. He gave a subtle shake of his head, indicating he had detected nothing so far, and she returned the same gesture.

The Nameless. Working with her to hunt Reyne d’Agarre’s lieutenants, and d’Agarre along with them if he dared to show himself. Her head spun as she reflected on their strange alliance, a God walking the streets of the market, breaking bread with her at suppertime. An oddity beyond belief, but there it was all the same.

“State your name for the tribunal, prisoner,” the speaker demanded, having wrested a measure of control over the crowd. The officer-turned-prisoner looked back at him for a long moment, the crowd’s energy as taut as the cord that upheld the guillotine’s blade. And then he spat at the speaker’s feet, a subtle gesture without exaggeration.

Once more a tide of insults broke against the officer’s iron exterior, redoubled in force when the first man—the one who had tied the cord—donned a black hood in plain view of the crowd. Always before at the executions she’d attended the headsman wore his mask from start to end, a messenger of death, faceless, unknowable, inhuman. This man had gone from grinning bystander to executioner in a moment, a perversion of the typical ceremony that only added to the gruesome spectacle.

She’d seen enough. If there was a kaas-mage here they would not reveal themselves; no outside power would be needed to stir this crowd. One last chance to draw them out.

Yellow flared at the edge of her vision. She hadn’t asked for it, but it was there at the moment she willed it. A sign of Zi’s attentiveness, and another spark to fuel the anger in the back of her mind. She felt his power weave through the crowd, reading their emotions: rage, hatred, envy, satisfaction. Zi replaced them all with shame and fear.

The crowd broke.

Even the headsman tore off his hood, flinging down his axe and leaving the guillotine cord taut and uncut as he fled into the snow. Across the square Axerian stood, watching for signs as the crowd surged around him. The officer looked bewildered watching from the stage, as even the speaker dove from the platform in a flying leap, running away on a hobbled ankle.

Only one woman stood her ground, her eyes wide as saucers as she darted uncomprehending looks at her fellows, who moments before had been raging and screaming for blood.

She and Axerian closed on the woman from opposite sides of the square, stalking toward her like alley cats sighting a wounded pigeon.

“What is—?” the woman started, pivoting between them. “I don’t—”

Understanding dawned in the woman’s eyes and she flung herself at their feet. “Mercy, please. Please!” the woman cried. “I never meant to touch the lines, I swear it. I’ll never do it again, I swear on the Exarch himself, please.”

The tension melted away, she and Axerian exchanging a look on hearing the woman’s pleading cries. Axerian reached her first, kneeling and peeling away one of her woolen gloves. Binder’s marks.

“Please!” the woman cried, twisting beneath his grasp. “Please, I swear!”

He let go of her arm, standing in a swift motion. “You’re free to go, my dear,” he said. “So long as you honor the Gods.”

Her eyes remained wide, looking between them before she scrambled to her knees. “Oh thank you, my lord, my lady, thank you. I swear it, I do. I promise.”

She watched the woman run, trailing after the other members of the crowd, long since vanished down snow-covered streets.

“A freebinder,” she said.

“Yellow is a fickle thing,” Axerian said. “Xeraxet detected nothing here, only an ordinary slice of mob justice.”

She looked up to the stage where the officer stared at them, as if unsure whether he should flee along with his captors.

“You’re free, my lord,” she called to him. “Do you have a safe haven here in the city? Or with the army outside the walls?”

The officer steadied himself, giving a slight shake of his head as he considered them both. “My thanks,” he managed at last. “Who are you, madam? And what was …?” He left the question unfinished, glancing around the square.

“‘And he came forth from shadow, and his eyes were the twinned pearls of a viper, shining the light of judgment upon the souls of the unworthy,’” Axerian said. She recognized the passage, from an old translation of the holy books.

“We’re enemies of Reyne d’Agarre,” she said firmly. “I can escort you back to the camps if you like. Bold of them, to risk abducting an officer. I hadn’t seen it before today.”

The man knelt, stepping down from the front of the stage. “I’m no officer of this army, madam,” he said. “My name is Vaudreuil, a captain in His Majesty’s navy. Master and commander of the Redoubtable. My crew and I have been imprisoned here in your city since we refused the High Admiral’s dictum to support the rebels.”

“Ah,” Axerian said. “I take it you’d as soon we not return you to your cell.”

The captain frowned.

“There is a safe place here in the city, Captain,” she said. “A haven for the nobles and others we’ve managed to rescue from d’Agarre’s mobs. I can take you there if you prefer.”

“What did you do here, madam?” the captain asked. “How did you scatter these people? A new binding?”

“Of a sorts. And my name is Sarine. This is Axerian.”

“Thank you both, again,” the captain said with a slight bow. “And yes, failing a way to use that binding to return me to my crew and my ship, a haven from the madness of this city would be welcome.”

She nodded, and a spark of an idea took hold in her mind.

“Follow me then, Captain.”

“I’m telling you, I think I could do it,” she said, keeping her voice low. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. With Zi’s power, and my gifts, I could get all of them to the Harbor.”

“A ship,” Donatien said, scratching his chin where stubble had blossomed into the makings of a full beard in the absence of enough razors to go round at the chapel. “It would be a risk, and this city is still—”

“This city is still mad. They are killing nobles in the streets, Donatien. We can’t stay here forever.”

He winced, reclining up against the wooden paneling that separated her loft from the chapel nave below. “There is bound to be chaos,” he said. “Until order can be established, until elections, real elections can be held.”

“You don’t understand,” she whispered back in a rush. “Whatever d’Agarre might have claimed to believe, whatever philosophy was debated at the salons, this all has a mind of its own now. If order is going to be restored, it’s going to be done on the back of noble corpses.”

He frowned.

“Ask Captain Vaudreuil,” she said. “Ask him how close he came to being executed for the crime of probably being noble.”

Donatien went quiet, turning around and rising to his knees to observe the goings-on in the chapel below. She let him have his look, remaining seated beside him. After a moment he spoke. “So, you’d secure us a ship and have us sail away,” he said. “Bound for where? Villecours? The Old World?”

A fair question. She hadn’t considered it.

“This madness isn’t going to stay confined to the city,” she offered.

“The Old World, then,” he said. She gave a tenuous nod, and he continued. “You know most of us have never made the crossing. We’re all ostensibly peers to the King and the families of his court, but the Revellion family here in the colonies has no significant ties to the Revellions of the old country. Much the same for the rest of us. We’d be putting ourselves at the mercy of the King’s charity.”

“Better than anyone would get from d’Agarre.”

He slumped beside her.

“None of this is what I wanted,” he said. “I imagined reform, yes, and perhaps even some measure of violence, if only in furtherance of the cause. Not this.”

“I know. You’re a good man, Donatien Revellion.”

He reached an arm around her, sharing a moment of mutual contemplation.

He gestured to one of her sketches, a portrait of her uncle displayed above the small chest that held her wardrobe, half street clothes and half tailored by way of the generosity of Reyne d’Agarre. “You hardly draw anymore,” he said.

“I’ve had more on my mind of late,” she said, smiling as she remembered the struggle it had been to get her uncle to sit still long enough for that particular sketch. Such was her uncle’s nature, always active, always working. And never a word of complaint, even when she brought a hundred noble refugees to his door.

Allowing herself a moment of reverie, she had missed Donatien tensing beside her. “And where is your Axerian tonight?” he asked.

“Donatien. He’s not my Axerian. He comes to the chapel when he has information. I’ve told you—”

“I know,” Donatien said. “He’s helping you with d’Agarre. But I don’t like him, Sarine. Something about him makes me uneasy.”

He is dangerous. He cannot be trusted.

Anger burned hot as Zi’s thoughts rang through her mind. But before she could reply to Zi, Donatien pulled away.

“Fine,” he said. “I understand. I’ll stay out of your way.”

“No. It’s only—”

“You don’t have to explain,” he said, rising to his feet.

“Donatien,” she said quietly. “Sit, please.”

He gave her a long look, then settled back onto the floor of her loft.

“It’s Zi,” she said. “He’s keeping secrets from me. It’s put me on edge. I’m sorry.”

“Secrets,” he said slowly.

“Yes. More than that I can’t say, only that he knows something of my nature, of the bond with the kaas. Something he isn’t telling me.”

“Well. If he knows somewhat of your nature, perhaps he’d tell me. I’m still trying to figure it out.”

A laugh came unbidden, and Donatien gave a wry grin.

“Truly though, Sarine,” he continued, “I’m only worried for you. And I think your idea with the ship has some merit. You’re right that we can’t stay here forever, not with the city like this.”

“And the Gandsmen,” she said. “They’re still coming.”

“Just so. Perhaps leaving the city is our best option.” They shared a look, and she could almost hear the unasked question simmering behind his eyes: Would she be on the ship, if they managed to secure it?

“I’ll talk to Captain Vaudreuil,” she said before he could speak. “He said his crew had been imprisoned. I’ll need to find out where, and arrange to find supplies as well.”

Donatien rose to his feet. “I can start getting the nobles organized to move. The last of the wounded should be recovered within a few days. We’ll cover ground much faster than we did before.”

“Thank you, Donatien,” she said, rising along with him, accepting an arm as he helped her descend the ladder from her loft.

In the back of her mind she acknowledged for herself the answer to Donatien’s unasked question: She wouldn’t be on that ship. Not unless Reyne d’Agarre was a corpse, dead and buried by her hand, and the rest of his kaas-mages along with him, before it sailed. She laid the innocent lives lost in the city at their feet, from the Crown-Prince to the lowliest urchin caught up and trampled by the chaos. And she would see them pay the price for their corruption before this was through. By the Exarch and the Oracle and all that was good, it was time she use her gifts to do more than survive. It was time she shoulder the responsibilities of who and what she was.

You must not continue on this path, Zi thought to her. You are not ready to bear this burden.

She ignored him, feeling the weight of the nobles’ expectations as she made her way through the crowd.