“What, by the Guardians, do they do to prisoners not destined for the gallows?” Lory barely dared think there could be anything worse than execution.
“Ashthorn.”
“What is an Ashthorn?”
“NotanAshthorn. Ashthorn Ward.” The woman shook her head as if in disappointment. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of Ashthorn Ward.”
Awkward silence spread in the feet of sweat-inducing heat separating them.
“Well, not surprising for a street rat like you. After all, Ashthorn Ward is the most secretive academy in Brestolya.”
It wasn’t meant to be condescending, Lory could tell that much, yet a canyon of things she’d never seen or learned because of growing up on the streets opened up between them as Lory studied the woman with her good eye.
“Academy for what?” Education wasn’t necessarily Lory’s strong suit, and it wasn’t like she could get her hands on any books of value on the streets, even when she and Evven had taught themselves how to read and write when they were ten years old, with the aid of scraps of paper from the markets and pages discarded in the rich citizens’s trash.
“Oh dear, you do have a lot to learn, don’t you? All I can tell you is I doubt people would want to go there if they knew what happens to the conscripts. Not that many survive their education.”
Lory was about to tell the woman she could keep her chattering to herself if she couldn’t spew anything of use, when two men in beige-and-black uniforms strode across thesmall, sand-and-stone yard, up to the cell, their expressions grim and their eyes squinted against the sun.
“Shit, they’re back. Pretend you’re dead.”
Lory didn’t get to dissect why she’d pretend when she basically felt like she wouldn’t make it through the day, anyway. The men had arrived at the cell, one of them unlocking it with a long, sturdy key while the other drew his shortsword.
“You’ve been summoned for trial,” he said, measuring her with a pair of unforgiving eyes, while the other one stood back, opening the door to let the first man into the cell.
Before Lory could object, she was hauled to her feet, her winces ignored as the man dragged her from the cell by the arm, his blade pointed at her throat as if she could even think of attacking.
Lory staggered along, wondering if she’d cut herself on the blade if she stumbled, and a glance at the woman in the other cell told her it was an option worth considering.
“Nice meeting you,” she called after Lory, a half-smile full of pity on her face, and waved with one hand until she was out of sight.
“Where are you taking me?” Lory demanded, forcing steel into her spine as the man shoved her through a narrow door into a low building at the edge of the yard, followed by the second guard, who had also drawn his blade and was surveying her like she was an actual threat.
“Shut up and walk,” he barked. “You only speak when spoken to. You don’t lie, and you don’t try to run. Any attempt will be punished by death.”
Well, great.
A long, three-foot wide, dark corridor and two turns around limestone corners later, they made it to another door, this one guarded by two men in gold and beige. With a nod at the men framing Lory, they opened the inconspicuous door.
Wherever it led, at least it was cooler here, the midday heat blocked out by thick, windowless walls. She’d gladly keep her mouth shut if it meant she wouldn’t be tossed back into the searing sun. And now that her eyes had adjusted, Lory could actually make out her surroundings.
“Move.” The guard behind her poked her back with the hilt of his sword, and Lory set in motion, but her mouth already hung open, even when she still kept all words to herself.
A set of stairs—wide, marble stairs—spread before her like an invitation to trip and break her neck, but that didn’t seem to interest the guards. They merely marched her ahead, not offering her an opportunity to gawk at the golden symbols on the high, polished walls or the silver band trickling from the ceiling one floor up, filling the air with the sound of a drizzle in the night.
They didn’t stop to allow her to marvel at the excess of water dripping from a hole in the wall just where it met the ornate carvings of the ceiling, but shoved and pulled her forward until everything became a blur of hues of sand and gold and the silver of the water, the background noise lulling her into a near dreamlike state.
Never—not even when she’d scouted the houses of her wealthier victims—had she come across anything similar tothis. The grandeur, the use of water as a piece of furniture, the utter luxury of feeling its cool, humid touch with every movement of air—Lory wished she wasn’t in pain and walking to her execution so she could actually enjoy it.
As it was, all she could think was that she’d be with her brother soon when they cut her head off and that she’d tell Evven of this moment when she’d see him again behind Eroth’s Veil.
Another door stopped them at the end of the next hallway, this one wide enough for four men to walk side by side. Two more guards in beige-and-gold inclined their heads at the men in beige-and-black, and the door swung open, revealing the largest room Lory had ever seen. Ridiculously large. The entirety of Lu’Shen’s would have fit in there.
At the front of what could only be called a ballroom, a stage hosted an assembly of maybe twenty people, half of them in familiar shades of sand and beige highlighted with accents of gold and lapis lazuli, and the other half in deepest black. They seemed to be in a discussion of sorts, while on the floor before the stage, a man was kneeling, a blade pointed at his neck by a guard dressed just like the men shoving Lory over the threshold.
The group at the front fell silent at their approach, turning their heads in unison, and Lory’s heart seized as she spotted Observant Eye in the black half, his gaze vigilant rather than bored—let alone drunk—as he let them glide up and down her form. Each limping step, each shallow breath, he noticed, the way he’d marked the details of the game the night before, and if Lory was honest with herself, the cool airof the room turned into a chill along her spine at the way his eyes turned into chips of ice as they met hers.
“Sit her down over there while we finish this one up,” a woman with a long, gray braid said, gesturing at a single marble bench growing out of the wall along the windowless side of the room, and Lory didn’t complain when her guards dropped her there and the hard marble caught her weight.
