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“Lots of possibilities, right? I bet you’ve got little bastards crawlin’ all over the city, haven’t ye? But no, I won’t give ye a name. What I’m doin’ ain’t unlawful.” He rolled from his heels to his toes and back again with an air of pride. “And the identities of my business associates is confidential. You know better’n most, I never outed you for all those opium deliveries, now, did I?” His grin widened.
“I will hear no more!” the king roared. “How dare you level these false accusations at me?”
“False accusations, Majesty?” Raymond did not seem to understand the trouble he was in. Or if he did, he’d given himself over to his fate and was determined to cause as much chaos as possible. “Facts is facts. Wishin’ ’em false and declarin’ ’em fake don’t make it so.” He raised his hand. “I swear, if you let me go, I won’t tell ’em about the pantsless parties you host once a month at the Stein and Flagon, either.”
The king spat out, “Raymond Thackery, you are hereby condemned: forty days in the gibbets for your treacherous falsehoods.” He seemed to have forgotten all about the smuggling charge. To the guards, he said, “Take him.”
“Forty days? My ol’ friend Gilroy got fifty! Come on, you gotta at least give me as much as him!”
Under her breath, Kate said, “Most don’t last ten.”
I stopped to watch, mesmerized and horrified as they gagged Thackery and dragged him to a waiting cage of iron at the wall. They clapped him in, one guard attaching the gibbet to a chain while another, waiting above on the parapet, cranked a pulley and the cage began to rise.
I hoped, for his sake, that Ray did not end up like Gilroy. To die in the gibbets would be terrible; to have your spirit trapp
ed there with your moldering remains would be a misery almost unfathomable.
I never thought I’d view the Tribunal’s executions—?hangings, beheadings, burnings—?as merciful.
17
When we returned, Zan was waiting impatiently, shifting from foot to foot on Kate’s doorstep. “You’re late,” he said crossly.
“Not true,” Kate said, “and you know it.” Hands on her hips, she added, “Did you do what I asked?”
He gave an impertinent shrug and a half nod.
Delighted, Kate grabbed my hand and pulled me down the walk. “This way,” she said.
We didn’t have to go far; Kate led me to the hut behind her house, the one next to the goose pond. We waited while Zan worked the lock of the hut with a rusty key, and when the door finally opened, it did so with a groan.
“Zan, you were supposed to clean it first,” Kate said, swiping her finger across a dirty table.
“I did.”
Kate pursed her lips. “I suppose this is what I get for assuming cleaning is something you’d know how to do.” She turned to me. “Do you like it? I know it’s small—?I’ve only ever used it as an extra place to store my dried herbs and extra bottles of tonics and preserves. I’m sorry it’s such a mess—?that’s what we get for letting Zan draw here unsupervised—?but it’s not terrible, right?”
It was dim, the only light coming from one grimy back window. There was a stone fireplace with a hook for a kettle, a small table and rickety chair. The walls were lined with shelves, mostly containing rows of colored bottles and jars of herbs, but two or three were completely crammed with papers and pencils and charcoal sticks of varying lengths. I lifted a sheet of paper from a stack and had to turn it twice to make sense of it. At first glance it looked like a mess of furious black charcoal marks zigging and zagging in no meaningful pattern. But as I looked at it more closely, an image began to emerge from the chaos. It was a detailed study of a bird’s wing, I realized, but it was so unlike the fussy, meticulous renderings that populated books and paintings that I wondered if I’d ever actually seen a bird before. This was less a catalogue of traits—?feather, beak, bone, breast—?and more an encapsulation of all the joy and terror of flight. It was breathtaking.
The paper was tugged out of my hands mid-stare. Zan added it to a stack he was hastily trying to straighten before giving up and roughly shoving it out of sight. Sheepishly, he said, “Just make a pile in the corner there. I’ll come collect everything later.”
I turned back to the sparsely equipped room. “I love everything about this,” I said happily as I lowered myself onto the single cot set up in the corner. It creaked mightily in protest. “But I have no money to pay rent.”
Zan started to say something, but Kate gave him a pointed glare before smiling sweetly at me. “No rent is needed. Zan will cover it with the money he owes you for borrowing your horse. Won’t you, Zan?”
He gave a tightlipped nod. “Of course.”
“And he’s going to pay you a wage,” Kate added.
“Yes, but not until after—?”
“A daily wage. With a bonus when the work is done.”
I tilted my head. “A gold statue in my likeness, I was told.”
“It will be erected in the town square the next day,” Zan said, beleaguered. “On my honor.”
“Don’t let him sculpt it himself,” Kate said. “His drawings are all right if you know what you’re looking at first, but his sculptures . . .” She cringed and shook her head.
