The Invasion of the Tearling

The Circus was New London’s unofficial plaza, a wide oval of broken paving stones at the center of the city. It was a convenient place for meetings, for it stood at the intersection of five streets and its perimeter was dotted with pubs. But today the plaza was dominated by a high wooden structure: a scaffold, built by contractors in the past week. The platform was taller than Kelsea had expected, perhaps ten feet high, and the scaffold itself seemed to loom over the crowd below.

Three long, twisted ropes, ending in nooses, dangled from the crossbar. Two of them were already occupied, tightened around the necks of Liam Bannaker and Brother Matthew. Kelsea had expected some pushback from the Arvath; technically, only the Holy Father could sentence one of his people to death. But there had been nothing from the Holy Father for days, no complaints or demands. He was waiting for something, Mace said, but if Mace knew what the something was, he kept it to himself.

Kelsea had hoped that the sight of the rope would touch Thorne, even a little, but he continued to smile broadly, and the crowd screamed louder, and their fury fed his smile, and his smile fed their fury, until it sounded as though the world was ending. Everywhere she looked, Kelsea saw clean hate, eyes and faces and mouths burning with it. Even the evacuees—men and women in the thick, patched trousers and loose shirts of the Border Hills and eastern Almont—had come into the city to see Thorne hang. But Thorne seemed not to care.

There must be something, Kelsea thought, her eyes pinned on him. Something that would break him.

She turned to Mace, but he was keeping a careful eye on the boy, Ewen, watching to see that he did not get distracted. Mace thought all of this energy expended on Ewen was a waste of time, but there were some things that you could never explain to Mace. For perhaps the thousandth time, Kelsea wondered what had happened to him, to make him so immune to kindness. In this respect, at least, Thorne had won the chess match: Kelsea never really stopped wondering about Mace anymore, about the strange childhood where Mace and Thorne and Brenna had somehow intersected. But if she asked Mace, he wouldn’t tell, and if she ordered him, she would be a tyrant and he wouldn’t tell anyway. Thorne had refused to speak another word, even to the last, but Kelsea had kept her end of the bargain. Brenna was now installed in the Keep proper—five floors below the Queen’s Wing, to Kelsea’s relief—and each day one unfortunate guard had to go down, bring her food, and guard her chamber for the day. Mace had begun to treat the duty as a punishment for small infractions by the Guard, and according to him, it had been surprisingly effective. Kelsea could ask Brenna about Mace’s origins, perhaps, but she couldn’t imagine that the albino would be willing to tell her anything. She had considered bringing Brenna down here today, but in the end decided that such a move would be too cruel. Now she wished she had done it, just to see the look on Thorne’s face. Maddening, to have so many questions to which the answers were hidden by a single pitiless mind.

Kelsea was pleased to see that Ewen’s size, at least, was an advantage here. After they stopped the wagon, Ewen held Thorne’s arms tightly while Elston dealt with the knots. Normally, it would have been Kibb with Elston, as always, but Mace was still testing Kibb, trying to analyze what had changed since his illness. Kibb was different, even Kelsea could see it. He sang less, laughed less, seemed more introspective. From time to time Kelsea would catch him staring at her, puzzled, as though trying to decipher some code that only the two of them understood.

At the foot of the scaffold, Kelsea dismounted and headed up the stairs to the platform, surrounded by her Guard. The crowd howled around her, a sound for nightmares, but she no longer minded, for the cacophony fit her mood. After months spent hunting for Thorne, this should have been her day of triumph, but somehow everything had gone wrong. Thorne had not stood trial, and Kelsea could feel Carlin’s certain disapproval, like a low headache at the back of her mind. Eight days ago, the Mort had crossed the Crithe, and no amount of ingenuity from Hall or Bermond could hold back their numbers; soon Kelsea would have to evacuate the sprawling camp outside the city and move the refugees inside. Whenever she closed her eyes now, she saw the Mort: a faceless black horde, waiting, at the end of the New London Bridge. What did they wait for? Kelsea shrank from the answer.

She beckoned her herald, Jordan, who had hung back from the group of Queen’s Guards in clear discomfort. The guards were not unkind to him, certainly, but there was little doubt that Jordan was a mouse among hawks.

“See if you can get them to settle down.”