Harristan never visits the Hold. If he wants to see a prisoner, they’re dragged into the palace in chains and deposited on the oor at his feet. To my knowledge, he’s never set foot inside the prison since the day our parents died. Possibly not even before.
I, however, am well acquainted. I know every guard, every cell, every lock, every brick. When I was een, already drowning in grief so thick I could barely breathe past it, I quickly learned how to block emotion once I stepped past the heavy oak doors. We couldn’t afford one single moment of weakness, and I would not be the one to cause my brother’s downfall. I have heard every manner of scream without inching. I have listened to promises and threats and curses and lies—and occasionally, the truth.
I have never hesitated in doing what needs to be done.
Today, Allisander has accompanied me to the Hold. Aer learning of the smuggling operation, he delayed his return home. Both he and Lissa have stated that they will remain in the palace until they can be certain there is no danger to their supply runs.
I’ve oen imagined Allisander walking through these halls, but in my imagination, he’s usually in chains, a guard prodding him with a blade, instead of how he looks right now: exasperated and huffy, with a handkerchief pressed over his nose and mouth.
“Is there nothing you can do for the smell?” he says.
“It’s a prison,” I say to him. “e residents aren’t motivated to make it pleasant.”
He sighs, then winces, as if it required more inhaling than he was ready for. “You could have brought them to the palace.”
“e last thing I need is eight martyrs being marched through the Royal Sector.” I glance over. “I told you they’re a sympathetic lot.”
He glances back and seems to be taking shallow breaths through his mouth. I have to force my eyes not to roll.
“Did they reveal the names of any other smugglers?” he says.
“No.” We reach the end of the hallway, which leads to a descending staircase. e guards here snap to attention and salute me. e smell is only going to get worse, but I don’t warn Allisander.
“Nothing?” he demands. “And you questioned them thoroughly? You were convincing?”
“Are you asking if I tortured them?”
He hesitates. Most of the consuls—hell, most of the elites, if not most of Kandala—don’t like what I do, but they say nothing because they believe it keeps them safe. ey don’t mind it as long as they don’t have to talk about it. ey’ll wrap it up in pretty language and dance around terms like torture and execution by asking if I’m encouraging forthright answers or terminating a risk to the populace.
Allisander is bolder than most, though, and his hesitation only lasts a
second. “Yes. at’s precisely what I’m asking.” “No.”
“Why not?”
Because despite all outward appearances, I’m not cruel. I don’t delight in pain. I don’t delight in any of this.
And they’re all sentenced to die. e penalties for the and smuggling are well known, and each prisoner knew it before they stole the rst petals. Half of them are terri ed. I only had to question one to discover that they were working together in the loosest sense of the word. One outright fainted when the guards let me into her cell.
Cutting off their ngers or whatever Allisander is imagining feels like overkill.
“In my experience,” I say, “those who are facing execution are not eager to share information that will help their captors.”
He’s frowning behind his handkerchief. “But there could be more. Our supply runs could be at greater risk than we expected.”
“ey’re roughshod laborers, Consul, not military strategists. From what I can tell, they’re not very organized.” It’s likely the reason they were all captured so quickly.
We reach the bottom of the staircase. While the palace and many of the homes in the Royal Sector have been wired for electricity, the lowest level of the Hold has not. Outside, it’s morning, but down here, it’s dim and cold, lit by oil lamps hung at odd intervals, with gray walls and black bars. ere are twenty cells, but they’re never occupied for long.
“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 aer they’re dead.”
Allisander starts to sigh, thinks better of it, and turns for the rst cell.
is one holds a man named Lochlan. He’s not more than twenty- ve, 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. is 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.
ey 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-
rst 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.”
e guards are nearly upon us, but Lochlan rallies to jerk Allisander against the bars again. is time might really be a killing blow. I draw back a
st and throw a punch right into Lochlan’s wrist where it extends through the bars. e 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 oor 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 le eyebrow. He’ll have two black eyes, and his lip is split, but his nose looks straight as ever. Pity.
e guards have lled the hallway now, chasing the other prisoners back from their bars. Lochlan is curled on the oor 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 t 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 oor along the windowed wall of his chambers. e 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.
e door swings wide, and a guard says, “Your Majesty, Master Quint would like—”
“No,” says Harristan. His eyes still haven’t le 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 shis 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. Dra 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.
 |
I skip to the next one.
Free the rebels from Steel City.
I ip through a few more. Some are hastily written, some are more eloquent, but they all beg for the same thing.
“Pardon requests,” I say hollowly. We always get a few—but never to this extent.
“How many are there?” says Harristan.
Quint hovers by the doorway. “One hundred eighty-seven.”
I set down the letters and look at my brother. “As I said. A spectacle.” “One is from Consul Cherry,” says Quint.
at gets Harristan’s attention. “Arella?” he says. “I thought the smugglers were captured in Steel City.” at’s rmly Leander Cra’s territory, while
Arella speaks for Sunkeep, far in the south.
“ey were.” I push aside the thinner parchments and scribbled pleas until I get to the folios at the bottom. Arella’s is black leather, the cover stamped with Sunkeep’s sigil in gold: half a sun descending into a rolling sea.
To His Royal Majesty, the Esteemed King Harristan,
I write to you in regard to the men and women imprisoned on charges of smuggling and illegal trade.
While I recognize that true crime deserves punishment, these men and women are not criminals.
They are acting out of desperation to help their families during a time of need. I humbly request that you might find it in your heart to pardon them.
We of Sunkeep are willing to welcome them into our territory if you will grant clemency.
Yours in service, Consul Arella Cherry
I read it out loud, and Harristan looks at Quint. “You dragged me through twenty minutes of nonsense when this was sitting on the table?”
My brother’s voice could cut steel, but Quint doesn’t inch. If anything, he looks somewhat incredulous. “I brought a day’s worth of issues to you and attempted to t them into nine minutes. As per your request.”
Harristan swipes the leather folio out of my hands, but he’s still glaring at Quint. “I gave you ten.”
Quint opens his mouth to argue, but I have no desire to see him as the ninth victim today, so I say, “Did Leander issue a request?”
“No,” says Quint.
Harristan scans the letter I just read, then snaps it shut and looks back at the Palace Master. “Anyone else of importance? Or were you going to tell me
tomorrow?”
“e usual elites from the Royal Sector,” Quint says. ere are a few families who request a pardon for every captive. ey’re always denied, but they always ask.
Quint glances at the pile. “A few others are from in uential families. Many requests came from the Wilds. No other consuls.”
I look at the folio in Harristan’s hands. I’m surprised Arella submitted her request this way, instead of coming to speak with me directly. “Is Arella still here?” I say.
“She le at dawn,” says Quint. He pauses. “She and Roydan shared a carriage.”
Harristan goes still at this news. Aer a moment, he says, “at’s enough, Quint.” He sets the folio on the table.
“Your Majesty.” Quint offers a quick bow, then escapes the tension of the room.
We sit in the silence for a long moment, until Harristan eventually eases into the chair across from me. He picks up one of the pardon requests, reads it, gently sets it aside. en another. en another.
I wait.
He reads them all.
He’s been the erce king for so long now that I sometimes forget how he was when he was the beloved crown prince, the boy who was sheltered and coddled and doted upon. I remember he once told me he was glad that Father took me along for hunting trips, because he’d go pale at the sight of blood, and he hated the idea of putting an arrowhead into a living creature.
When he nally looks up, I see a glimpse of that boy in his eyes.
I lean in against the table. “Allisander was already going to raise his prices before this happened. You have nearly two hundred pardon requests sitting here, but I imagine you’d have three times as many decrying their crimes.”
He holds my gaze. “Arella requested a pardon for smugglers on the same day Allisander claimed his supply chain is being attacked. He won’t be happy. It pits her against him.”
I snort. “Who’s not against Allisander?” “You,” he says.
I lose any shred of humor. “Only in public.” I frown. “And you well know that.”
“In public is all that matters.” He pauses. “It likely pits her against Lissa Marpetta, too. I nd it interesting that she shared a carriage with Roydan.”
Roydan Pelham. Some at court might think the old man was aer Arella because she’s young, cultured, and beautiful, but I’ve known Roydan my entire life, and no one is more devoted to his wife than he is. He’s also played court politics for so long that he wouldn’t be seen climbing into a carriage with Arella unless it meant something. “eir sectors border one another.”
“Exactly.” He pauses. “It’s a risk to stand against Allisander. Especially now.”
“Arella’s people have always fared the best against the fevers,” I say. “Maybe she feels like she has less to lose.”
Harristan runs a hand across his face. He wants to pardon the prisoners. I can see it in the set of his jaw. I don’t know what about them has drawn his sympathy, whether it’s the number of captives, or the quantity of requests we received, or if it’s simply that he’s as tired of violence and treachery as I am, and he longs to be kind to someone. Anyone.
Kindness killed our parents.
Harristan coughs behind his hand, and my attention sharpens. I go stock- still.
His breathing sounds ne. His color is good. He’s ne.
I think it again, more emphatically, as if I can will it to be true. He’s ne. “If they go free,” I say slowly, “Allisander will see it as the Crown taking a
stand against him, too.” Again, I think. “We aren’t just talking about affecting the supply to the palace, Harristan.”
“I know.”
“We’re talking about the entire Royal Sector. We’re talking about all of Kandala.”
“I know.”
“We can’t side with criminals,” I say. “is is the rst time we’ve seen a larger group attempt to organize. If we’re lenient, it will lead to more raids, to more thes, to more—”
“Cory.” His voice is quiet. “I know.”
I say nothing. We’re in agreement, then. We’ve come to an understanding.
I sigh. So does he.
My brother pulls his pocket watch free. “We’re two hours from midday.
You never did tell me how you’re going to do it.”
My thoughts turn dark, a black cloak already dropping across my mind to stave off any emotion. I do what needs to be done.
“Wait and see.”
