“Go ahead,” I say. “Question whoever you’d like.”
He looks at me like he was expecting . . . more. As if I were going to walk down the line of cells and personally introduce him to each captive.
I lean against the opposite wall, fold my arms, and raise my eyebrows. “You can’t very well do it after they’re dead.”
Allisander starts to sigh, thinks better of it, and turns for the first cell.
This one holds a man named Lochlan. He’s not more than twenty-five, with coal-black hair, pale, heavily freckled skin, and arms bearing a lifetime of burn scars from a forge. When I questioned him, he stared back at me fearlessly and refused to say a word. This is the kind of man Allisander would torture, but I know it wouldn’t make any difference. I’ve seen Lochlan’s type before, men who think they can survive an execution through sheer force of will.
They can’t.
He’s sitting in the back of his cell, glaring darkly at both of us, but when the consul approaches the bars, Lochlan rises to his feet and comes forward. His expression is similar to one I’d wear if I were free to make my feelings for Consul Sallister known.
Allisander clears his throat as if he’s addressing a dinner party. “I would like to know the names of any associates you—”
Lochlan spits right in his face. Some hits the handkerchief, but most hits Allisander right between the eyes.
He sputters and swipes at his face, then takes a step forward, rage transforming his features. “You will pay for that, you stupid—”
“Consul!” I start forward, but I’m too far. Lochlan has already reached through the bars to grab the front of Allisander’s jacket. He jerks him face-first into the steel. Blood blossoms on the consul’s face.
“I know who you are,” Lochlan is snarling. Down the hallway, the other prisoners have been drawn to their own bars by the sound of the commotion, and those who can see begin yelling.
“Kill him!” they scream. “Kill him!”
Lochlan jerks Allisander against the bars again, and it’s clear he needs no encouragement. “You’re the killer. I know what you’re doing to your people.”
The guards are nearly upon us, but Lochlan rallies to jerk Allisander against the bars again. This time might really be a killing blow. I draw back a fist and throw a punch right into Lochlan’s wrist where it extends through the bars. The bones give with a sickening crack. He lets go and drops back, screaming, clutching his arm to his chest.
Allisander falls to his knees in the hallway, choking on blood and mucus and arrogance. Rust-colored dirt from the floor is in streaks on his pristine clothing. His breathing is broken and hitching, marked by a thin whimper every few breaths. I stare down at him for a second longer than necessary.
Perhaps I delight in some pain.
I drop to a crouch in front of him. “Look at me,” I say. “Is your nose broken?”
“I want him dead.” His voice is thick and nasally, but he doesn’t glance up.
“He will be,” I say. “But I can’t kill him twice. Now look at me.”
He spits blood at the ground, then draws a ragged breath and looks up. A lump is already forming above his left eyebrow. He’ll have two black eyes, and his lip is split, but his nose looks straight as ever. Pity.
The guards have filled the hallway now, chasing the other prisoners back from their bars. Lochlan is curled on the floor of his cell, dry-heaving over his broken arm. One of the guards has a hand on the cell door, but he looks to me, waiting for an order on whether he should take action.
I shake my head, and the guard gives a brief nod before stepping away. I draw my own handkerchief from a pocket and hold it out to Allisander. “Here.”
He takes it, somewhat sheepishly, and presses it to his mouth. I rather doubt he needs me to tell him he shouldn’t have stepped right up to the bars like that, so I don’t.
I straighten. “So,” I say brightly, and he blinks wearily up at me. “Who would you like to question next?”
Harristan is fit to be tied.
“Why would you bring him there?” he demands. “What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that our richest consul made a request, and I sought to honor it.”
“Well, now he’s requesting a spectacle.” My brother is pacing the floor along the windowed wall of his chambers. The weather has turned overcast, promising rain and lending enough shadows to match his mood. “He’s requesting that we send a clear message to anyone else who might be considering a similar plot.”
For all my brother’s anxious movement, I’m motionless in a chair. “We’re executing eight prisoners, Harristan. It’ll be a spectacle.”
He stops and looks at me. Some unspoken emotion passes between us, a mixture of regret and loss and fury, but he blinks and it’s gone. His voice goes quiet. “How are you going to do it?”
In moments like this, I sometimes wonder if Harristan regrets that moment with Allisander from so long ago, as if our father yielding to Nathaniel Sallister then would have somehow staved off Allisander’s manipulations now.
I doubt it. I think he’d be worse.
I think we’d be forced to do worse.
I inhale to answer, but a sharp rap sounds at the door. Harristan doesn’t look away. “Enter,” he calls.
The door swings wide, and a guard says, “Your Majesty, Master Quint would like—”
“No,” says Harristan. His eyes still haven’t left mine.
“Oh, let him in,” I say.
My brother sighs and glances at the doorway. “You have ten minutes, Quint.”
Quint was bouncing outside the door like an eager puppy, documents and folios clutched to his chest, but now he comes bustling through. His jacket is unbuttoned, his hair unruly. He never bothered with a shave this morning, so his pale jaw is dusted with red. “I only need nine.”
“I’m counting.”
Quint sets down his materials and launches into a litany of issues in the palace, from a shortage of straw bedding for the royal cattle requiring a decision on whether to substitute wood shavings, to a disagreement among the kitchen staff about whether Harristan prefers ivory tablecloths trimmed in green or burgundy tablecloths trimmed in gray. My brother casts me a withering glance when Quint shifts into a request from the Royal Sector to ring the dawn bells at two hours past dawn so people aren’t woken so early.
“Could they really be called dawn bells, then?” I say.
Harristan sighs. “I feel rather certain we’ve passed nine minutes.”
“It’s hardly been eight and a half,” I say. I really have no idea.
Quint makes a note on his papers. “I do still need to address the matter of pardon requests we’ve received this morning.”
Harristan waves a hand. “You’re done, Quint. Draft the usual response.”
“But—”
“Out.”
“I’ll just leave them with you, then.” Quint shoves most of the paperwork he was carrying toward the center of the table, then turns for the door.
“Wait!” says Harristan. “Leave what with me?”
I lean forward and take the top piece of paper from the pile. It’s scribbled and unsigned, but requests can be made at the palace gates by any citizen.