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“My people are not my enemies,” I insisted even as a fist-pumping chant burgeoned around me: Let them swing! Let them swing!
Right then I saw a dim shadow pass in front of the younger lady—?Mabel—?and pause next to her. The shadow flickered at her feet, gathering form from the morning mist until it became starkly clear. The air grew even colder in the square as the spirit pulled heat and energy into his cloudy form. It was a young boy, no more than seven. He clung to the skirt of the shackled woman.
No one touched him. No one even looked his way. I was likely the only one who could see him. But Mabel knew he was there, and her face shone with something I could not name: perhaps pain, perhaps joy, perhaps relief.
“I know that woman,” Kellan whispered. “Her husband used to come through Greythorne, selling books, at least two or three times a season. He died last year, one of those who caught that awful fever that went around the first part of winter. Him and a son, too, I think.”
I knew Mabel too, but I couldn’t risk telling Kellan that.
The tower clock showed it only a minute away from the hour, and Toris’s florid speech was winding down. “It is your time to speak,” he said to the women as the executioner situated a rope over their heads and around their throats. “Madam M
abel Lawrence Doyle, you have been tried and found guilty by fair Tribunal for the distribution of illicit texts and for attempting to raise the dead through use of magic and witchcraft, in defiance of our Book of Commands. By the blood of the Founder, you have been condemned to die. Say your last words.”
I stiffened, waiting for her to point a finger at me, to call me by name. To bargain for her life with mine.
Instead she said, “I am at peace; I have no regret.” And she lifted her face to the sky.
A familiar scent drifted around me: roses, though it was too early in the season for them. I knew what it meant, but when I looked right and left, I saw no sign of her. The Harbinger.
Toris turned to the second lady, whose whole body was shaking violently. “Hilda Everett Gable, you have been tried and found guilty by fair Tribunal for attempting to use witchcraft to harm your son’s wife, in defiance of our Book of Commands. By the blood of the Founder, you have been condemned to die. Say your last words.”
“I’m innocent!” Her voice rang out. “I did nothing! She lied, I tell you! She lied!” Hilda pointed her bound, shuddering hands at a woman near the front of the audience. “You liar! You liar! You’ll pay for what you’ve done! You’ll—?”
The clock struck the hour, and the bell reverberated across the multitude. Toris bowed his head and pronounced over the sound, “Nihil nunc salvet te.” Nothing can save you now. Then he gave a nod to the executioner, and the floor dropped out from beneath the women. I let out a cry, and Kellan pulled me into his shoulder to muffle it.
The bell tolled nine times and fell silent. Their feet were still twitching.
Kellan’s voice was gentler now. “I don’t know what you thought you’d see here.” He tried to turn me away to protect me from it, but I twisted from his grasp. Even though being near a transition from life to death always made my stomach turn, I had to bear witness. I had to see.
Mabel’s body had gone completely still now, but the air around her shimmered. It was a strange thing to watch a soul extricate itself from its body, slipping out from the grotesque shell the way a fine lady might step from a muddied, cast-off cloak. When she emerged, she found her son waiting and she went to him. In the instant they touched, they were gone, moving from borderland into whatever lay beyond, out of my sight.
It took longer for Hilda to die. She gagged and spluttered, her eyes bulging from their sockets. When it did happen, it was an ugly thing. Her soul tore itself from its body with what would have been a snarl, if there had been any sound. Hilda’s specter lunged at the woman she’d pointed at in the crowd, but the woman did not seem to notice. Her attention was on the sloppy sack of bones swaying at the end of the gallows rope.
“Would you like to claim your mother-in-law’s body?” Toris asked the woman.
“No,” she said emphatically. “Burn it.” And Hilda’s ghost silently screamed, dragging her intangible nails across her daughter-in-law’s face. The woman paled and put her hand to her cheek. I wondered if Hilda’s rage had given her spirit enough energy to exert a real touch.
I didn’t envy the daughter-in-law. Hilda would probably remain in the borderland indefinitely, following her betrayer, silently screaming, clouding the air around with her hate. I’d seen it happen before.
“Let’s go, Aurelia,” Kellan said. He used my name instead of my title; he was becoming distressed.
The crowd was starting to get raucous, pushing forward as the bodies were dragged down from the stage. Someone next to me gave me a hard shove, and I stumbled forward toward the cobblestones, putting my hands out to catch my fall but coming down hard onto my wrist instead. I wasn’t down for long, though; Kellan was already lifting me to my feet, his arms circling me like a protective cage as he forced our way out of the mob.
My hand went to my empty wrist. “My bracelet!” I cried, straining to look over my shoulder at the place where I’d fallen, though the ground could no longer be seen through the mesh of bodies. “It must have broken when I fell—?”
“Forget about it,” Kellan said firmly but kindly—?he knew how important it was to me. “It’s gone. We have to go.”
I slipped from his grasp and turned back into the crowd with my eyes on the ground, pushing when I was pushed and shoving when I was shoved, hoping for any glimpse of my bracelet. But Kellan was right; it was well and truly gone. He reached me again and this time held fast, but I didn’t want to fight him anymore; the whistles had begun to blow. Within minutes the Tribunal’s clerics would be marching on the gathering, rounding up any who seemed to lack the requisite enthusiasm for the cause. There were two new vacancies in the Tribunal’s cells, and they were never left empty for long.
* * *
It wasn’t more than an hour later when I found myself standing in the beam of my mother’s antechamber skylight, staring at the half-finished confection of ivory gossamer and minute, sparkling crystals—?thousands of them—?that would soon become my wedding dress. It would be the most extravagant costume I’d ever worn in all my seventeen years; the Tribunal’s influence in Renalt extended even to fashion. Clothing was meant to reflect the ideals of modesty, simplicity, and austerity. The only allowable exceptions were marriages and funerals. Celebration was reserved for the events that curtailed one’s opportunities to sin.
The dress was my mother’s wedding gift to me, every tiny stitch done by her own hand.
I touched the lace of the one finished sleeve and marveled at its fineness before reminding myself how unhappy I would be the day I had to wear it. Every day brought the occasion closer and closer. Set for Beltane, the first day of Quintus, my wedding was now little more than six weeks away and looming large on the horizon.
Sighing, I straightened and went through the door into the next room, ready for battle.
