The Agora would talk. How could it not? It was impossible not to draw attention when flanked by someone like Barlo. It would earn her all sorts of interesting gossip no doubt, half of it made-up nonsense. Granted, she wasn’t in chains, so her ultimate infamy would reach a kettle’s boiling whistle before the final bell of the evening chimed.

Stalls had made a come-back now that the worst of the snow storms were past, and curious eyes followed as they shouldered through the mid-eve crowd. What would the general assumption be? It wouldn’t be like in Diolo at least, where to be marched out by the guards meant you’d swing by the neck come morning, likely half-dead before even drawing on the noose.

She hadn’t been deaf to the city’s talk. Commander Falor, Prince inheritor of the Empire, had bested the Bane of Aztroa—they kept finding newer and more outlandish titles to lavish onto Tallah—and chased her out of Valen for good. The Storm Guard were the great heroes of the moment, a promise from Empress Catharina herself, finally upheld to the very last word. Cinder had come back and been beaten down and cast out. As she well deserved. Valen’s memory ran long, and its grudges even longer.

Salted slurry of half-melted snow and mud squished underfoot as they emerged onto the larger thoroughfares of the Lower City. A carriage ran past them on its rails, ringing its bell, the Enginarium’s service back at full strength once again.

“If it’s alright with you, miss Mergara, we’ll walk.” Quistis led them past the overcrowded station. “Fitting Barlo into one of those is likely to tip it over. We’ve had complaints in the past.”

Mertle shrugged. “It’s fine. I don’t mind the walk.”

She’d been doing a lot of it since the Descent, so much so that her calves had stopped protesting the abuse. She’d neglected herself for a long time, as much as Tummy let her get away with, but the recent efforts had brought some of her old vigour back. Another climb up to the Citadel wouldn’t be the worst thing about today.

What did they know? And what did they suspect? She needed those two questions answered ahead of any other.

Captain Quistis had given little enough away. Mertle would have to tease out the information. Unless they actually meant to arrest her without fuss, in which case everything would be moot.

An older, viler thought wormed its way into her head.

What if they send me back to Sarrinare?

Aelir’matar Gynneas of Sarrinare wouldn’t have forgotten her wayward tool. She had probably survived the poison, if Mertle had mixed it well enough, and for that the aelir’matar would still be livid all this time later. But she was a world away, deep into the ever-forest, as far from humans as it was possible to get without living on a boat in the middle of the ocean.

She shook her head and banished the insanity. She’d earned her freedom, from the Sarrinare household and from her fear. Instead, she turned her attention to what the two were discussing as they trudged up the hill towards the Daylight wall.

“You finally getting rid of those things?” Quistis cast a meaningful look at Barlo’s heavy scabbards.

“Nah. Heirlooms and all that. Not their time t’ be hung up.”

“The smith seemed to think otherwise.”

“Demi smith. Half-breeds don’t care for heirlooms.”

“Please don’t call him a half-breed,” Mertle said, angered and offended on Tummy’s behalf. That Barlo had seen him for what he was and not what everyone else assumed him to be—a larger than usual human—earned the vanadal her wary respect.

“My apologies.” Barlo inclined his head at her deeply. An honest apology from a steppe vanadal. “Didn’t figure he’d be a sensitive sort.”

“He’s not. I don’t like it. You know it’s an unkind moniker.”

He raised his chin and grinned, “Dominion problem, I take it? Unfit for the masters?” He said the word like it tasted bad.

Of course, he’d know all about being unfit. His people, living so far from the ever-forests, would have black blood with the aelir spanning back ten to twenty generations.

“Something of the sort. Aelir father. Human mother.”

“Ah, the indignity. Which household?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“That bad, eh? Aye, I understand.”

He raised a fist to her and, after a moment’s hesitation, she rapped her knuckles against the rough bone plates of his. Kindred indeed, a wild vanadal on a leash. She liked him.

“May they long burn upon their racks,” he said.

“Until not even their ashes stain the world,” she finished.

“I don’t follow.” Quistis looked from one to the other, one eyebrow perfectly arched above the rim of her glasses. “Make sense, please.”

“Dominion reminiscin’. Nothing t’ bother over.” He gave Mertle a bit more space between himself and Quistis. “Ya any good with weapons, elendine?”

“Not like Tummy, no. I mainly work leather.” Probably not what he asked though, but true altogether.

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“Still. I say we let her look the sword over. Maybe she sees something we’s blind to.”

Quistis answered with a shrug, “Worth a try, I guess. One blade’s the same as another in my opinion, but what would I know?”

Such a strange feeling to have people moving out of the way even as the three of them commanded most of the cobbled road. Everyone took one look at either Quistis’s staff or her bodyguard and buggered off. Eyes lingered on her for long enough that she itched. It was hard not to think of other moments where she’d been flanked by guards. Maybe she would’ve preferred the chains after all. People looked away from chains and their promise.

They had the elevator all to themselves by the time they reached it, and the sight of nighttime Valen emerging from under Winter’s cloak was alone worth the trip. The city shone with vibrant energy, the night as young as the new turn. Rooftops were still dressed in snow but the streets were cleared, blackened with mixtures of mud, salt, and sand. It made for an odd contrast, a labyrinthine mess of streets and alleys, stores, warehouses, tight clusters of homes and the many budding factories of the Enginarium.

Winter’s breath had come and was soon to be past, but her chill lingered, doubly-so atop the Daylight wall. Quistis imposed a quicker pace once out of the carriage, hurrying forward along the snaking way that led past the Guild and into the inner Citadel’s compound.

“Bloody, thrice-damned boots,” the captain complained loudly. “Third pair this Winter. Third. Leaks in all of them.”

“Buy better boots,” Barlo answered by rote.

“It’s my third pair. By this rate, I’ll be well into next Winter before I find ones that keep my feet dry.”

They conversed of nothing of importance as far as Mertle could gather. She paid polite attention, offered polite remarks, tried not to laugh at the captain’s distress. It wasn’t how she expected guards to behave when escorting a prisoner. She drew strength from that.

Her stories were sound, backed by the truth. Sil had been careful in her own right and there was nothing leading back to Tianna aside from the suspicion she’d planted over coffee and cake. If she maintained the right attitude, she might even understand how far the investigation had gone and what it had really uncovered. She’d be forewarned of any future surprises, even—

Five corpses hung in the Citadel’s courtyard, lit by spritelight as they swung at the end of very short ropes. Mertle had never seen gallows raised in Valen. Two empty nooses of thick rope twisted in the evening breeze next to the five men who hung. The last corpse in the line still twitched above the puddle of human waste it’d produced. Sprite lamps had been laid around the structure, as if to draw attention to the scene.

All corpses had scrolls nailed to their forehead, blood staining the parchment. They’d been alive when that was done to them.

“What…” She choked on the word and realised she’d stopped and stared.

Another man was being marched naked from the dungeons, shivering in the chill. He was bruised and bleeding from a bevy of cuts, had his mouth gagged and arms bound at the back. He staggered and was hoisted by the two guards flanking him, dragged forward and set to face the noose.

There was no fight left in him as he stood on the narrow shelf, cringing before the inevitable.

“You might want to look away,” Quistis said in her ear, not stopping to watch.

“She’s seen worse,” Barlo answered. “Haven’t ye, chit?”

One of the executioners fitted and tightened the noose around the prisoner’s throat. The drop wasn’t steep enough for a quick death. These were crude gallows, merely a shelf raised upon some stilts with the ropes tied in a row upon a high beam. The prisoner would be left swinging, to die slowly.

One guard held the man’s head—he wasn’t anyone she recognized, not from posters and not from criers, just a human savaged and afraid—and the other pinned a scroll to his forehead. One single hammer strike drove a short, thin nail through skin and bone with a gut-wrenching crunch. Before the man screamed they pushed him forward to dance on the end of the rope.

She couldn’t look away from how the body flailed, kicked and struggled. Its face swelled and turned blue, then purple. Bowels loosed.

Quistis sighed as she backtracked to stand by her. “This is not what I would’ve preferred. I was hoping they’d be done with the executions by now.”

“What—” Mertle swallowed the lump in her throat. She had seen worse, yes, but never like this from humans. “What were their crimes?”

“Written on their faces.”

“I-I can’t read…”

The scrolls, once unfurled fully, were nearly half the height of each corpse and crammed tight with neat, small writing.

“Flesh selling,” Quistis said and there was pure loathing in her voice. “Abduction. Children and women, mostly from secluded, helpless villages. We’ve found some of the victims. I would’ve had done to these men what was done to their victims. I’d rather not describe what that was; just know that what you see here is mercy.”

“Aye. The Commander decided t’ be practical. He wasn’t wi’h us when we found the bodies.” Barlo put a large hand on her shoulder and firmly led her away. “The less ye know of that, the better ye’ll sleep.”

“Why not hang them in the Guild square?” she asked, turning away from the last noose. “More people would see them.”

“Commander’s order. No ceremony for the bastards. We’ll let them hang until Cares sets and Winter ends, and then bury the remains. Word should spread by then.”

Already some finely-dressed people stopped and gawked at the bodies, whispering among themselves. They pointed at the body that was still kicking feebly above a puddle of waste. They all drew back, hands to mouths, retching at the spectacle.

“One of their own.” Quistis led Mertle up the steps to the heavy black doors. “Heir inheritor to the Paralla Holding. Protection from a high-born allowed this travesty. The Commander’s hand weighs equally to all.”

Unheard of, at least to Mertle’s ears. The aelir would execute their undesirables in any number of cruel, bloody ways, but their own were dealt with discreetly… by people like Mertle.

As they ascended the stairs, she caught sight of the final execution being prepared. A woman was brought out. She fought them to very little effect.

“Why are they gagged?” They stepped past the threshold and out of sight of the gallows.

“Commander got fed up wi’h their yapping. They bound and gagged their victims, so he ordered they be bound and gagged as well.” Barlo unclasped his cloak and handed it to a man at the entrance.

Quistis followed suit and encouraged Mertle to do the same. “We will return it. You are not being detained, miss Mergara.”

“Please, just Mertle.”

“Mertle, then. Liss here will only see about cleaning and then drying your cloak. It will be returned.”

Two knives were nestled within sealed inner pockets. She dreaded parting with them but did it anyway. Whatever plans she’d concocted on the walk up had been thrown to the winds by the haunting image of that final noose. Even as she knew the woman would be hung on it by now, her imagination provided cruel alternatives to who could be turning and twitching on the gathering night wind.