ONE
HIGHTOWER
Everyone loved a good execution.
From the walls of Imperial Cathama to the farthest reach of the Revolution, there was no citizen of the Scar who could think of a finer way to spend an afternoon than watching the walls get painted with bits of dissidents. And behind the walls of Revolutionary Hightower that day, there was an electricity in the air felt by every citizen.
Crowds gathered to watch the dirt, still damp from yesterday’s execution, be swept away from the stake. The firing squad sat nearby, polishing their gunpikes and placing bets on who would hit the heart of the poor asshole who got tied up today. Merchants barked nearby, selling everything from refreshments to souvenirs so people could remember this day where everyone got off work for a few short hours to see another enemy of the Revolution be strung up and gunned down.
Not like there was a hell of a lot else to do in Hightower lately.
For her part, Governor-Militant Tretta Stern did her best to ignore all of it: the crowds gathering beneath her window outside the prison, their voices crowing for blood, the wailing children and the laughing men. She kept her focus on the image in the mirror as she straightened her uniform’s blue coat. Civilians could be excused such craven bloodlust. Officers of the Revolution answered a higher call.
Her black hair, severely short-cropped and oiled against her head, was befitting an officer. Jacket cinched tight, trousers pressed and belted, saber at her hip, all without a trace of dust, lint, or rust. And most crucially, the face that had sent a hundred foes to the grave with a word stared back at her, unflinching.
One might wonder what the point in getting dressed up for an execution was; after all, it wasn’t like the criminal scum who would be buried in a shallow grave in six hours would give a shit. But being an officer of the Revolution meant upholding certain standards. And Tretta hadn’t earned her post by being slack.
She took a moment to adjust the medals on her lapel before leaving her quarters. Two guards fired off crisp salutes before straightening their gunpikes and marching exactly three rigid paces behind her. Morning sunlight poured in through the windows as they marched down the stairs to Cadre Command. Guards and officers alike called to attention at her passing, raising arms as they saluted. She offered a cursory nod in response, bidding them at ease as she made her way to the farthest door of the room.
The guard stationed there glanced up. “Governor-Militant,” he acknowledged, saluting.
“Sergeant,” Tretta replied. “How have you found the prisoner?”
“Recalcitrant and disrespectful,” he said. “The prisoner began the morning by hurling the assigned porridge at the guard detail, spewing several obscenities, and making forceful suggestions as to the professional and personal conduct of the guard’s mother.” He sniffed, lip curling. “In summation, more or less what we’d expect from a Vagrant.”
Tretta spared an impressed look. Considering the situation, she had expected much worse.
She made a gesture. The guard complied, unlocking the massive iron door and pushing it open. She and her escorts descended into the darkness of Hightower’s prison, and the silence of empty cells greeted her.
Like all Revolutionary outposts, Hightower had been built to accommodate prisoners: Imperium aggressors, counterrevolutionaries, bandit outlaws, and even the occasional Vagrant. Unlike most Revolutionary outposts, Hightower was far away from any battleground in the Scar and didn’t see much use for its cells. Any captive outlaw tended to be executed in fairly short order for crimes against the Revolution, as the civilians tended to become restless without the entertainment.
In all her time stationed at Hightower, Tretta had visited the prison exactly twice, including today. The first time had been to offer an Imperium spy posing as a bandit clemency in exchange for information. Thirty minutes later, she put him in front of the firing squad. Up until then, he’d been the longest-serving captive in Hightower.
Thus far, her current prisoner had broken the record by two days.
The interrogation room lay at the very end of the row of cells, another iron door flanked by two guards. Both fired off a salute as they pulled open the door, its hinges groaning.
Twenty feet by twenty feet, possessed of nothing more than a table with two chairs and a narrow slit of a window by which to catch a beam of light, the interrogation room was little more than a slightly larger cell with a slightly nicer door. The window, set high up near the ceiling, afforded no ventilation and the room was stifling hot.
Not that you’d know it from looking at the prisoner.
A woman—perhaps in her late twenties, Tretta suspected—sat at one end of the table. Dressed in dirty trousers and boots to match, the sleeves and hem of her white shirt cut to bare the tattoos racing down her forearms and most of the great scar that wended its way from her collarbone down to her belly; it was the sort of garish garb you’d expect to find on a Vagrant. Her hair, Imperial white, was shorn roughly on the sides and tied back in an unruly tail. And despite the suffocating heat, she was calm, serene, and pale as ice.
There was nothing about this woman that Tretta didn’t despise.
She didn’t look up as the Governor-Militant entered, paid no heed to the pair of armed men trailing behind her. Her hands, manacled together, rested patiently atop the table. Even when Tretta took a seat across from her, she hardly seemed to notice. The prisoner’s eyes, pale and as blue as shallow water, seemed to be looking somewhere else. Her face, thin and sharp and marred by a long scar over her right eye, seemed unperturbed by her imminent gruesome death.
That galled Tretta more than she would have liked to admit.
The Governor-Militant leaned forward, steepling her fingers in front of her, giving the woman a chance to realize what a world of shit she was in. But after a minute of silence, she merely held out one hand. A sheaf of papers appeared there a moment later, thrust forward by one of her guards. She laid it out before her and idly flipped through it.
“I won’t tell you that you can save yourself,” she said after a time. “An officer of the Revolution speaks only truths.” She glanced up at the woman, who did not react. “Within six hours, you’ll be executed for crimes against the Glorious Revolution of the Fist and Flame. Nothing you can say will change this fact. You deserve to die for your crimes.” She narrowed her eyes. “And you will.”
The woman, at last, reacted. Her manacles rattled a little as she reached up and scratched at the scars on her face.
Tretta sneered and continued. “What you can change,” she said, “is how quickly it goes. The Revolution is not beyond mercy.” She flipped to a page, held it up before her. “In exchange for information regarding the events of the week of Masens eleventh through twentieth, up to and including the massacre of the township of Stark’s Mutter, the destruction of the freehold of Lowstaff, and the disappearance of Revolutionary Low Sergeant Cavric Proud, I am willing to guarantee, on behalf of the Cadre, a swift and humane death.”
She set the paper aside, leaned forward. The woman stared just to the left of Tretta’s gaze.
“A lot of people are dead because of you,” Tretta said. “One of our soldiers is missing because of you. Before these six hours are up and you’re dead and buried, two things are going to happen: I’m going to find out precisely what happened and you’re going to decide whether you go by a single bullet or a hundred blades.” She laid her hands flat on the table. “What you say next will determine how much blood we see today. Think very carefully before you speak.”