The silence stretched on.

Still, Rosalind stood like a statue of a goddess, and still, the guards from the Holy Army stood, almost unbreathing. Cardinal Octavus remained at the centre of the platform, eyes closed, three fingers over his lips.

Ari tried to mirror Rosalind, tried to straighten her body, as if there was a thread from the top of her head pulling her heavenwards, shoulders wide, feet together.

~Silence!~

In this nightmarish pose she remained. She wasn’t a tree, grounded by the strength of her roots; instead, she had become a dandelion: an easy target for another assassin. Come, blow off my head and make a wish.

It’d only take a good shot from the top of the cathedral to pierce her clean through the skull. She counted the windows: five large and three medium, but each consisting of fifteen smaller windows, then twenty-five arrowslits spaced between them, and another fifty closer to the roof. Instead of a cathedral, this place had been built like a castle.

Still, no-one else moved, and no-one else bothered to shoot anyone else. No one apart from Lady Oriana. Ari tried to keep her gaze respectfully at the Cardinal and the cathedral, but out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lady Oriana scratched at her finger again, which flashed… blue?

Had Natty seen? She was standing behind them, with a much better vantage point. Keeping her head still, Ari strained her eyes to take a better look.

No, she’d made a mistake. There was no blue, but it was as if there was a red gem buried under Lady Oriana’s fingertip. The shade was almost pink, and glistened in a way altogether unlike blood. Lady Oriana pressed the gem down. No. She was trying to stick back a piece of skin over the gem, as it had peeled, bloodless, from where her nail met her flesh.

Badump. Badump. Badump.

Claribel’s heartbeat pounded in her ears. Slow down. Slow down. What if they were all like that inside? Afterall, she was in the body of a character from a novel. Perhaps people here were made of latex over pink stone. But… Wasn’t there a description of someone bleeding in the final battle scene, where Galan the healer went around to take care of injured soldiers?

If that was some kind of dangerous magical weapon instead, her best bet would be to throw Duke Aquilon in to hold back the attack, then grab Natty and aim for the golden carriage that belonged to the royals. Twenty steps? It might provide some protection, depending on the attack, but what of an explosion? The shrapnel from the carriage would pierce her as easily as an arrow. The cathedral would be a better bet; they’d take shelter behind the carriage, then zigzag across to the cathedral.

‘We give thanks to the Fated One,’ said Cardinal Octavus, finally breaking the silence.

Shoulders slumped, and the onlookers shifted their feet. One or two sighed and rubbed their necks.

Ari turned to steal a glance at Lady Oriana. Who was staring at her through wide, gem-blue, unblinking eyes. A chill went down her spine.

Lady Oriana’s smile didn’t reach her eyes, though it did reveal a row of perfect white teeth. She mouthed, ‘I saw.’

‘Me too,’ Ari whispered back, trying to salvage an unsalvageable situation. ‘I saw the grace of the Fated One.’

A cry of horns drowned out her words.

‘Faithful followers of the Fated One,’ Cardinal Octavus spoke once more in a voice hardly louder than a murmur. She had to lean in to hear him, so his words were surely lost to the crowds. Yet they remained silent, spellbound. ‘It is on a day like this that we must think upon the story of the Blacksmith and the Knight from Taur.

‘Long, long ago, a famous blacksmith toiled away in his smithy and forged a beautiful suit of armour. He polished it, oiled it, and marked it with his insignia. Its breastplate was strong enough to withstand a strike of a lance, and its pauldrons barely creaked should you wish to raise your arms. During his travels, a young squire from Taur came across the smithy while trying to find a place that could repair his master’s helm. He laid eyes on this suit of armour, and dreamed of owning it.

‘Years passed, and the blacksmith refused to part with his masterpiece for any amount of gold, until one day, the squire returned, and he asked the blacksmith, “Why will you not sell that suit of armour?”’

‘“That is my creation,” said the blacksmith. “If I do not wish to part with it, what is it to you?”

‘“A suit of armour’s purpose is to protect men and women during combat,” said the squire. “It is true that through battle, the armour will dent, and through rain, the armour may one day rust, but only then can it fulfil its purpose and become more beautiful than before.”

‘Today, as we uncover plots against Ventinon, against the Fated One’s most loyal followers, we must remember this: king, queen, cardinal, pope, guard or peasant, we are all human, and by being human, we bear the marks of the Creator within our hearts.

‘It is our nature to look to the past. Why did I not come up with a clever quip when Thomas insulted me yesterday? Why did I trust Madame Lucretia from the tavern with my savings? Why have I done nothing with my life, while Jonny who is ten years my junior has already become a Master carpenter? We struggle to look at our past and realise the truth, and the truth is, every day we should see ourselves with new eyes, and every day we should live to fulfil our fate. Our fate is yet to come, until the Fated One takes us.’

He raised three fingers to his lips, and so did everyone else.

Ari copied them, trying to catch another glimpse of Lady Oriana’s fingers. There was a smoothness to them that was uncanny. Every nail seemed perfectly oval, filed to the same template. The tips looked pearl-white, even without a French manicure.

The crowd murmured, and Ari took it as permission to murmur to the person next to her too.

‘Where is Duke Taur?’ she asked the human, weapon or something in between that was Lady Oriana.

There was nothing robotic about her voice or her words. ‘He’s most likely drowning himself in his usual spot.’

‘You don’t think he will come to bid her goodbye?’

Lady Oriana shrugged. ‘It depends on whether you think Lady Malory is already gone.’

With another blare of horns, the Holy Guards led a young woman up to the top of the pyre. Her hair might have once been as night-black and as neatly braided as Claribel’s, but now it was tangled and peppered with hay. Her stained linen smock flapped in the wind. A second bad sign, along with the firewood that looked too dark to be dry enough.

It had been a long time since Ari feared death, but she did fear dying. As people liked to say, death was about the journey, not the destination.

In a situation of certain death, the shorter the journey, the better. But with the wind dancing through the crowd as it did today, setting Natty’s bells jingling like a windchime, there’d be nothing clean, nothing fast about it.

‘Today,’ said Cardinal Octavus, working up a crescendo, ‘we will rescue the body of the Lady Malory of Taur from the clutches of a Khurammian follower of the Creator. Once her body has been cleansed by fire, her spirit shall finally fly free to the Fated One!’

The crowd cheered on, whooping, stomping, clapping.

‘A farthing for your thoughts, Lady Claribel,’ said Lady Oriana. ‘Who do you think is in that body?’

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

‘Someone who is about to die,’ she said.

Was it Miri? Even if it was, what could they do now? Two against the world.

She squinted at the young lady, no, girl, stumbling across the firewood to reach the stake, bare feet caked in dried blood and dirt. The guards twisted the ropes around her feet, once, twice, knotted it, then repeated the same for her arms, and she let them.

There was no hatred in those eyes. No light. Khurammian or Miri, or Lady Malory herself, the girl was someone who had given up, someone who had suffered, and believed that she could not suffer more.

Whoever she was, she was not Agent Hannah Temple, because an Agent would know that the worst was always yet to come.

Cardinal Octavus raised his hand, and with that, another guard carried a torch of flames from inside the cathedral and set the pyre alight.

Duke Aquilon took her hand in his calloused ones and patted her with a gentleness that struck her like a kick to the diaphragm. She counted her inhalation. One, two, three, four, five. Then out for ten.

Perhaps the girl tied to the stake was doing the same. The flames spluttered, and the wind carried away the smoke that could have seared her lungs and ended her less painfully, but she saw none of it. Her eyes were draped shut, blocking out the flames and the jeering crowd.

If she thought it could also block out the pain, she was wrong.

As the flames licked her feet, she let out a gasp, then a groan. Sweat beaded on her forehead, and her groans grew into a scream, then died down, and morphed into an animalistic moan. There was no pink crystal under the girl’s skin: it was flesh that was burning, blackening under the flames. Her eyes flew open, now filled with desperation. She searched for someone, anyone.

A hush fell over the crowd, and King Leolin ran his hand through his hair, again and again, knocking his crown askew. Duke Aquilon held on tighter to her hand.

On and on it stretched. The clocktower of the cathedral struck half-hour.

The fire should have been hot enough to damage her nerves, to make the pain meaningless, but it crept up lazily, expanding its empire, leisurely claiming new, undamaged skin.

If the gods were real in this world, Ari prayed that the smoke would rise up, that the fire would burn hotter, that the cries would turn to silence, that she could stop, stop drinking in the joyous cries that marked another person’s demise, that marked her own survival.

‘Fuck this,’ cried one of the common folks near the front of the crowd with uncommon courage. The burn scars on his right cheek must have a story of its own. ‘Someone put her out of her misery.’

A Holy Guard swept in and dragged him away.

The crowd shifted, and then another voice cried out, ‘Kill her now!’

Before the guards could locate the second commoner, another voice joined in, ‘Kill her now!’

The corner of Lady Oriana’s mouth twitched, and she rose, shaking out the glory that was her crimson dress, scattering specs of reflected light from her diamonds over the faces of the other nobles.

‘What are you–’

‘Kill her now!’ she cried, adding in a stamp of her foot. ‘Kill her now!’

The crowd roared, pushing against the guards. The Cardinal glared at Lady Oriana, but she merely smiled wider, too wide to be human.

‘Heresy!’ cried the Cardinal, pointing at Lady Oriana.

‘Heresy! Heresy!’ A different cry pierced the crowd.

‘Heresy!’ Another voice joined in. ‘Heresy!’

‘Kill her now! Kill her now!’

‘My son! My son has fallen over. Please… someone. Don’t step on him. Don’t… Please…’

‘We must cleanse the body of Lady Malory with fire. It is the only way she will–’

‘Kill her now! Kill her now!’ Lady Oriana cried louder still as a stream of Holy Guards rushed towards her. ‘Look at that. Aren’t they brave?’

‘Do you want people to die?’ said Ari. Because once a crowd lost its inner control, it would eat itself alive, and the collateral would be living, breathing human beings, trampled, crushed.

‘That’s why I’m saying, “Kill her now! Kill her now!”’ said Lady Oriana. ‘What are you going to do? Let the Cardinal make a fool of us?’

Knights sworn to House Auster leaped over their seats and fanned out in front of them.

Now was the time to take sanctuary in the cathedral; she couldn’t gamble with Claribel’s life. But her foot, no, Claribel’s foot, refused to lift from the ground.

She might as well have become a statue then and there. In a day or two after her death on her feet, the body would eat itself from within. The friendly bacteria from her gut would have nothing to feed on but Claribel’s remains, and the enzymes that once helped to keep her alive would break free from within and melt her with acid. Then, the flies–

~Fated One have mercy! Must you think of weapons or death every two minutes?~

Which was a lie. She was her job. And perhaps Claribel was no different.

~I am staying. I can help.~

Slash. Pierce.

The sweet smell of newly-shed blood dripped down a knight’s sword. One Holy Guard down.

‘Shameless harlot!’ screamed a commoner with hollow cheeks. She spat in Lady Oriana’s direction.

Then another woman punched a tall, elderly man. Someone cried out with a blooded mouth.

Whoosh. Parry. Slice.

Three Holy Guards laid at Lady Oriana’s feet, and one of her knights gurgled, and stilled.

Compliance descended into chaos.

King Leolin sprang from his seat, crying out, ‘Order! Order!’

But the voice of one king could not drown out the voices of a thousand commoners. Queen Rosalind tugged at his sleeve and motioned the nobles to take sanctuary in the cathedral. The Royal Guards flapped about them; a few hastened towards the ladies to usher them to safety. One with a well-manicured mane that rivalled the gold of King Leolin’s marched towards her.

Parry. Clang.

A Holy Guard’s blade slipped, threatening to nick her arm.

Ari spun Claribel’s body out of the way.

Thunk. Two swords also stopped the stray in its way: Duke Aquilon and the Royal Guard with the golden hair and a golden badge. Was that…? Man whose name she couldn’t remember, whom nobody liked?

‘Clary, you and Fabia go! Quick!’ cried Duke Aquilon. ‘Get yourselves to safety. This is too dangerous…’

‘Lady Claribel! Please come with me!’ The Royal Guard offered her his arm.

‘Your Grace,’ said Lady Oriana, speaking over them without meeting Duke Aquilon’s eyes, staring emptily at the back of a Holy Guard. ‘I believe you have spent the last few months building a better relationship between House Aquilon and House Auster. Isn’t it time to see that friendship in action? Sir Beren, Sir Dagon, I am waiting for one of you to impress me.’

‘Order! Order!’ Still the King cried. At least he hadn’t abandoned his people.

~Now let me take over! I can control the wind! I can carry his voice farther.~

Shouting louder wouldn’t be enough to quell the kindling of pandemonium. And no, she’d not be at the mercy of the other spirit. She needed something shocking. Something to stop people in their steps.

~Then kill her now.~

~No, Lady Oriana. Cut off her head.~

Ari wasn’t one for politics, but even she knew this would be a setting to start a war between duchies.

~Like you saw, she’s not Lady Oriana. She’s a golem-gone-wild. Lady Oriana will pay for sending it in her place, but others are already paying with their lives.~

~Just do it! Women from Aquilon are supposed to know how to fight anyway. I’m just a flower that blossomed after the season.~

She should have read about Aquilon, read about golems, and she should have sharpened the fruit knife she’d taken from the library. But if she had one certainty right now, it was that she knew how to cut someone’s throat, human or otherwise.

Slash.

It was like cutting through jelly. The thing that was not Lady Oriana gurgled, and pink crystals and blue goo tumbled out of the gaping hole that was the front half of her neck. There was no satisfying splatter from a freshly-sliced carotid artery. The creature merely deflated, like a foil balloon, scattering pink gems that stunk of melted slushie.

This was it. This had to be it. After killing a supernatural creature, it was dropping gems. Ari clawed at the crystals, waiting for an inventory to appear, waiting for her fruit knife to upgrade into a jewelled dagger. But the gems slipped through her fingers and crumbled.

At least the knights fighting on Lady Oriana’s behalf froze, as did the Holy Guards. Their plan to interrupt the chaos was working. Good. Next was Lady Malory. If Ari threw the fruit knife… If she threw the fruit knife and killed Lady Malory in a way that was not by fire, would it make things worse? Natty would know. Natty truly understood the intricacies of people’s minds, not just the insides of their bodies and the positions of their organs. She turned, and–

A wall of blue flames flared up, encircling the nobility, pushing the crowd back to their places.

Then the pyre flickered, and blue flames ate up its original orange glow. The firewood steamed; the girl’s linen smock burst into a ball of fire. She took a ragged breath, her head drooped, her skin blackened to ash, and all was silent but for the crackle of flames and the cries of children.

Hesperus. The genius fire mage, master of the blue flames. Ari glimpsed a hooded figure pressing against the crowd. With a shudder, it closed up and swallowed him.

The Cardinal straightened his hat and stepped forth.

But before he could formulate his words, Natty brushed past Ari and tapped her twice on the right shoulder. Clean up time.

Ari shook out Claribel’s cloak and covered the faces of two fallen Guards. Duke Aquilon and Sir Dagon followed suit at once, one cloak for the other Guard, and the last for Lady Oriana’s knight, all as Natty cartwheeled towards the bewildered crowd, finishing off with a triple backflip and a wonky bow. She donned her fool’s jingling hat with one hand, fastening it on crooked, while she bandaged a boy with a blooded elbow with the other, twirling the white fabric like a ribbon wand.

‘We thank you, Fated One,’ Natty said, projecting her voice theatrically, ‘for bringing us here today and letting Lady Malory be cleansed with the purest flame of all! But alas, we have seen too many wise men play the fool today. As my dear Cardinal just said, let us look to the future, not the past. Let us move past this day, and on the morrow, may you see a fool play a witty man instead.’

With a flourish, she used up the last bit of bandage to cover the boy’s eyes and sang,

‘When you open your eyes,

This will be but a mid-winter day’s dream

Where fools give advice,

And our anger will fade like the sunbeam.’

Just then, the wind blew a wispy white cloud across the sun.