“You have food. I can smell it on you,” he snarls.
“That’s enough.” Horowin tries to step in again, ever the good-natured peacekeeper. “You need to go to your room and rest. Wasting this energy is pointless.”
“They have food.”Benj points a bloody finger at us. “I know they do. They’re hoarding it. They’re the ones who took it all.”
“Maybe we should let him speak,” Cindel says in an almost singsong way. Her eyes find mine with a predatory glint. “If they have food, shouldn’t the rest of us know? It’s not very Mercy Knight—like to be hoarding resources as your comrades struggle.”
“Let’s go,” Lucan says again, giving Benj a withering look like his words are little more than the ravings of a madman and wildly inaccurate.
Saipha looks positively murderous toward Cindel. Obviously, her warning after the vicar’s lecture has done little.
“I’m going to find it. I’m going to take it. I’ll eat it—eat it all—eatyouif I must!” Benj’s ravings echo off the ceiling.
“Benj.” Horowin doesn’t get another attempt at calming the man. The inquisitors approach, and Horowin readily backs away, making room as they encircle Benj. Horowin knows as well as the rest of us that nothing more can be done.
“Wait, no.” Cindel steps forward, but it’s far too late. “He was simply jesting. This isn’t that serious.”
The inquisitors ignore her.
Realization strikes Benj—of his circumstances, of what he said. He staggers back, but there’s nowhere to go. And the rest of usare powerless to help as the inquisitors close in.
“I didn’t… I wasn’t…”
The inquisitors grab him.
“Let me go!” he yells. “I wasn’t— I’m not cursed. I’m not!”
“Stop this!” Cindel shouts shrilly. “He’s just hungry. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.” Even though panic is rising in her voice, she doesn’t move. She knows if she did she’d be tying her fate to his—and Benj is now a lost cause.
They begin to drag him away. The rest of us are rooted in our horror. There’s nothing we can do. For the first time in my life, something other than a dragon has made me feel truly helpless—truly terrified.
Benj’s eyes dart around the room and find Cindel’s. They share a long look and, for a heartbeat, I think that they might have had something real between them. At least as real as any of Cindel’s emotions can be.
“Please don’t,” she whispers as a deathly silence overtakes him.
Benj is limp in their ironclad grips. Then a sound almost as horrifying as the bells begins to echo in the cavernous atrium:
Laughter.
Low and crazed. Then higher pitched. Faster. He roars bitter delirium with ferocity.
“Fine.Fine!You think I’m one of those beasts? You think I’m in league with the enemy?” His eyes swing to me again, but this time it’s me alone. “Or are you protecting your precious Valor Reborn? Is she afraid of me? You think I’m cursed?Are you afraid, Valor?”
“I don’t— I’m not—” I stumble over my words. Should I be stepping in? Should I try to stop this?I’m as helpless as the rest of you, I want to say when all their eyes turn to me. But I can’t say that as Valor Reborn, even if it’s true. Yet again, I’m trapped in a prison of the vicar’s making.
The inquisitors attempt to maneuver Benj through one of themany doors of the atrium, but he continues to resist. Without warning, Benj bites one of their arms.
“Kill me, then! Be done with it! Show mercy!”
They do.
A flash of silver. A dragon-curled dagger, laced with poison. And he falls, dead.
37
There’s no ceremony. Benj’s body is dragged off with the same regard as a sack of dirty laundry. Death is so common in Vinguard—more so among the Mercy Knights—that none of them spare it a second thought.
But, for the supplicants… Even if we’ve all seen death in one way or another, thisfeelsdifferent. I know all of us are now imagining how effortlessly their blades would strike our flesh. How quickly we would fall.
