I WHIRLED AROUND, drawing Nessie closer to me, lingering at the back of the crowd. I didn’t want Grey to see me now. I felt like a vulture, waiting for the prisoners to die, and even if I was doing nothing wrong, I still didn’t want him to see me. I could not forget the last word he’d spoken to me at the end of our fight on the ship, the label he slapped upon me, as if he had not witnessed the very reason why I’d become what I had.
Grey was talking to another man, probably around forty years old or so, plump in the middle. “I don’t need this,” Grey said, and he moved as if to walk away from the man.
The man blocked him. “You should at least be aware of what you did.” He swept his arm toward the prisoners’ wagon.
I frowned.
“I didn’t write the order,” Grey grumbled. The fingers on his left hand tapped the pommel of a sword strapped to his waist. Where did Grey get a sword?
“No, but you signed it.”
I was so close to Nessie that I could feel the coolness of her skin. I reached out, grabbing her hand, intertwining her icy fingers in mine.
Grey mumbled something, but whatever it was seemed to make the other man angrier. “Don’t you see?” he said, his voice so loud that Grey tried to shush him. “These men don’t deserve death.” He snorted derisively. “They’re not even all men. That boy—he’s younger than you. And all he did was carry messages.”
My breath caught in my throat as I remembered what Bunchen had told me about my father. He had carried messages for the rebellion. Would he have hung, too?
“Mr. Astor?” a servant said, approaching Grey. “Your presence has been requested by His Imperial Majesty.”
Grey turned without bidding farewell to the man he’d been speaking to. But the man stepped forward, blocking Grey from following the servant. “You heard him yourself,” the man said. “You know he’s seeking an underdog, a scapegoat for the plague. You think people will be satisfied by one hanging? Thirteen dead don’t make up for thousands. And once they’re gone, he’ll need another scapegoat.”
Grey’s brow furrowed in true worry.
“Make sure it’s not you,” the man said.
“That’s not what concerns me,” Grey answered, knocking past the man and following the servant away.
The man stared at Grey as he strode around the platform. I did, too. And so when the man finally turned around, his eyes met mine directly.
And he recognized me.
I could see it in the slight widening of his eyes, followed by the palpable fear that washed over him.
I didn’t hesitate. I walked straight toward him. My fingers were already twining around his soul, ready to force him into silence. But the man didn’t flinch as I drew near.
“Hello,” he said.
“You know who I am.”
His eyes slid over to Ernesta, and I knew he recognized her, too. “I was there that night,” he said. “In the castle.”
I inclined my head but did not speak.
“My name is Hamish Hamlayton,” he added. I didn’t bother telling him my name. He already knew it. “Did you want me to get Greggori?” he asked, looking over his shoulder.
I shook my head. “What did you mean?” I asked. “How is Grey to blame for . . . ?” I gestured to the prisoners’ wagon.
Hamish’s face was inscrutable. “He signed the execution orders for the prisoners’ deaths,” he said after only a moment’s hesitation.
“Grey wouldn’t do that,” I said immediately.
“The Emperor chose him to be the colony’s representative,” Hamish said. “Didn’t you see the sword he wore? ‘Defender of the people.’” I didn’t know what such a title entailed, but Hamish seemed to think that was enough of an explanation.
Behind us, the guards called out an order. Servants appeared, pushing the onlookers back as the prisoners’ wagon rolled into motion.
“Come this way,” Hamish said, leading me to the right as all the elite guests followed servants to the left. While the others went to a roped-off and guarded section to observe the execution, Hamish led me to the other side. There were more trees on this side of the platform, and no food vendors. People hung around—several schoolboys and schoolgirls had climbed the trees for better viewing—but it was relatively secluded, and no one spared us a second glance.
When we stopped, Hamish turned to me. Before he could speak, I said, “You know who I am and what I’ve done,” I said. “But you’re not afraid?”
“I’m not an idiot,” he said. “I’m terrified.”
I cocked my head.
“You do things no person should ever do,” Hamish said. “But you’re not a monster.”
“Am I not?” I asked, unable to keep my lips from twisting into a sardonic smile.
Hamish saw nothing funny about what he’d said. “You’re honest about what you do and who you are. Nothing true can be monstrous.” He turned, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the Emperor, seated on the gilded chair in his viewing box, high above the crowd gathered to see the hanging. The Emperor drank wine from a goblet, as if this were a cocktail party, not an execution.
But my eyes were on Grey, seated beside him.
“Grey told me about his mission from the Emperor, but I did not know that they were so close,” I said. My words were drowned out by the chorus of “Oryous Bless the Empire” the crowd had started singing.
I tasted bile on the back of my tongue. Grey looked nervous, sitting in the small chair beside the Emperor’s ornate one.
The prisoners’ wagon cut through the crowd, and the people cheered wildly, as if they were greeting war heroes, not condemned prisoners. Soon enough, people started picking up rocks from the ground and hurtling them against the wagon’s wooden sides, the cracking thuds loud enough to carry over the rest of the noise.
I flinched and reached for Nessie’s hand. Hamish noticed, but he didn’t say anything.
The prisoners, weighted down by shackles and chains, staggered from the cramped wagon out into the open, blinking in the bright sunlight. They were herded toward the stairs leading up to the stage, and for a moment, they were out of my sight on the opposite side of the platform.
“This isn’t right,” Hamish muttered. “They only talked.” I was surprised to hear him so openly contradicting the Emperor’s decree. It was the same sort of talk that had led to the prisoners’ death sentences. “There’s lots of grumbling against the Empire. People want change. They want fair representation in their own government. But the Emperor needs something from them.”
Hamish looked out over the crowd. I couldn’t see an end to the sea of people on the far side of the gardens. There had to be hundreds, maybe thousands here.
But then I thought about the mass graves in the center of Lunar Island, the forest cleared away to accommodate all the dead. Because despite how many living people stood in this crowd, I was still certain the mass graves held more.
Once every prisoner was lined up in front of a rope noose, the Emperor stood up. The crowd watched him.
“We can grant mercy,” the Emperor called loudly.
Hamish snorted. “He only says that because he knows no one will back down now,” he said in a low undertone, meant for my ears alone. “This is all his way of manipulating the crowd. Let him appear merciful, so that, later, when everyone’s in bed tonight, and they can’t get the idea of swinging bodies out of their heads, they’ll feel as if they only have themselves to blame.”
“Let ’em swing!” a voice shouted, clear and distinct from the crowd, which roared in agreement.
The Emperor touched Grey’s forearm lightly.
Hamish followed my gaze. “It’s very purposeful,” Hamish said, still in that low voice. The executioner, shrouded in a black hood, started to mask the prisoners and loop the nooses around their necks.
“Young Mr. Astor doesn’t even see it,” Hamish continued. “The way the Emperor is using him. Puppets never feel their own strings.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Hamish gave me a sidelong glance. “I suppose you don’t get news sheets on your island.”
“No.”
“Nearly every day Astor was abroad, some article or another mentioned him and his mission. Some of the Elders in the church led a prayer day for him. The Emperor has ensured that praise was heaped upon that young man before he even did anything praiseworthy. If he hadn’t been successful in getting a trade commission, I wonder if someone else would be hanging instead.”
My eyes shot up to the prisoners.
“Plans for an event this day have been in place since we started organizing the rally yesterday. Why do you think the stage was designed to hang not just banners but also people? The Emperor’s idea has always been to both celebrate his people and remind them of his power.”
My eyes widened. “Are you suggesting they would have hung Grey if he hadn’t succeeded?”
Hamish shook his head. “No. They would have hung you. Or maybe the news sheets would have changed the story, touting Grey’s association with you, shifting the blame to him until he was poisoned in the people’s eyes. It doesn’t matter, not in the end. This is the Emperor’s game. A constant push and pull of the people’s emotions.” Hamish watched the executioner walk behind the prisoners on the gallows. “The people are happy now, and they’ll remember the Emperor was the one who created a whole day of celebration. But later, when they’re unhappy, when they’re reminded of why others have spoken against the Empire, and the cost behind such words, the person they’re going to remember is Greggori Astor. The person they’re going to blame is him.”
I stared up at Grey’s face. He was too far away for me to really see him, but I imagined him looking proud, sitting beside the Emperor, oblivious to the role he had played.
“The Emperor was always going to kill these people,” I said. “Whether or not Grey signed the papers.”
Hamish nodded, his jaw tight. Then he said, “But he still didn’t have to.”
“I know,” I whispered. And I agreed.
I had truly thought Grey was different after Yūgen. He may have started school to raise his rank in society and be one of the elite at the Governor’s Hospital, but he had worked in the quarantine hospital with me, he had seen the amputations, he had held the hands of victims alongside me. I had thought he cared.
But maybe he wasn’t who I thought he was. Because the Grey I loved would not sit idly by, watching an execution that he was responsible for.
Before I could say anything else, the first man was pushed from the platform, his body swinging wide, then jerking back as the noose tightened.
Grey watched them die.
I watched Grey.
And when the last of the thirteen dangled lifelessly from their ropes, I squared my shoulders and pulled out my iron crucible.
“What are you going to do?” Hamish asked, fear creeping into his voice.
“One of those things no person should ever do,” I said.