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“He isno lord,” Mother said, her tone sharp. “Speaking of him as such elevates this usurper above what he truly is: a criminal who pillages, kills, and rapes his way across the kingdom, sparing no human soul.”
“Of course you are right, my lady.” With a dip of her head, Risa returned her attention to the row that had slipped off her needle, carefully gathering it back up. “Our lord has crushed a great many rebellions over the years, and so it will be with this one.”
My teeth clenched.
This was no mere rebellion.
We’d had a great many of those ever since I was a child. Over the years, surviving Ravens had rallied together, vowing to avenge the decimation of the royal House of Khysal. They’d always ended up slaughtered—not comfortably seated insideourstrongholds.
It was open war.
And I wasn’t sure we were winning.
After a while, a pound on the roof of our carriage had Mother blow out a long breath. “We might as well be on this road for two months if we keep pulling into each forsaken village.”
The steady beat of hooves slowed to a walk as the carriage turned, letting the fields beyond the window change into age-cracked wattle and daub. A forge soon came into view, where red embers slept inside a massive stone hearth, the bellow as quiet as the black anvil that stood nearby.
Mother opened the gilded shutter and her window, wrinkling her nose deeper the longer she glanced about the sizable village. “Why are we stopping?”
“It’s one of the horses, m’lady,” a soldier’s voice sounded from outside. “It’s gone lame after throwing a shoe.”
“Again?” An exaggerated sigh and a dismissive wave of her hand later, she slammed the window shut once more, looking close to a headache with the way she pressed two fingers against her temple. “This journey is insufferable.”
Alas, finally, Mother and I agreed on something. “I will take some fresh air.”
Perhaps for the first time in my life, the Lady Brisden neither confined me to the carriage with a command, nor preached how the autumn air carried the white plague. Oh, my poor mother must have grown weary indeed. Two weeks of pretending I didn’t exist cannot have been easy while sitting right across from me.
With no time to spare, I gathered my skirts and made my way to the end of the carriage. “Open.”
The wooden door lowered down into a short set of steps, and a soft drizzle settled on my face. Even though dark clouds blanketed the dreary sky, I squinted at the sudden brightness after hours inside this thing.
“Water and hay the horses. Have the innkeeper ready rooms for her ladyship.” Captain Theolif shifted in the saddle of his mare, his hair shorn as short as those whiskers on his face. No human cursed with black hair wore it with much pride these days. “House guards! Stay by the Lady Galantia’s side!”
“Oh, these knees will be the death of me,” Risa murmured behind me, making her way down the steps on wobbly legs. “Your dress will get dragged through the muck, Galantia. It’s best to stay in the carriage, not catch a cough out here.”
“However would I survive it?” I clasped her arm to help her down. “Curse this drizzle, but I need a moment away.”
If for my own or Mother’s sake, I couldn’t say, but I immediately spun toward the team of six gray horses that snorted plumes into the chilled air. Two soldiers followed to guard my life, and Risa followed to remind me to guard my damn virtue.
Veering left, I followed along the jagged line of a fence, its stacked rails rough against how my fingers glided over the wood. “Where is everyone?”
“Sitting inside by a dry fire, I would assume.” Old knees forgotten, Risa huffed and puffed beside me, putting even the soldier’s brisk steps to shame. “Where are you going?”
“Anywhere.”
Anywhere that wasn’t Tidestone, with those thick walls I’d never left. I wanted to see a drunkard stumble from a tavern, a man haggle with a merchant over exotic wares, a woman loudly scold her husband. I wanted to see all those things I only ever heard maids whisper about!
When bellows and shouts shattered through the drizzle, I stopped. “Did you hear that? There’s commotion behind the chapel.”
I followed along the stone building, but the crowd of villagers didn’t appear until I rounded the apse in the back. Men, women, and children congregated in a half circle before a wooden platform that abutted the building, which held two wooden posts and a crossbeam.
Gallows.
My pulse throbbed inside my ears, drowning out Risa’s grievance about how this was no place for a lady. “Will they hang someone? Here? Now?”
“Hanging’s no good here, my lady.” A guard approached my side, clearing me a path through the crowd of gaunt faces with one plated arm, finally bringing a man into sight who violently brought down a whip. “Not for her kind.”
The hairs along my arms lifted more with each silent lash, not a single crack in the air. Only the jingle of metal hooks attached to the fall, which smacked and bit into the back of a woman who lay splayed out on the platform, her dress in bloodied tatters.
