No armor. No weapons. No theatrics.
Just boots scraping against sunbaked ground and the jacket my mother died in.
The heat hits me like breath from a sick animal. Damp, wrong, too close. It smells like rust and old oil and a sourness that clings to places held together by hate. Dust cakes the back ofmy throat. Sweat pools between my shoulder blades. My pulse is steady. My breath is not.
I walk slower.
Deliberate.
Let them see me. Let them question what this is. Another trick? A trap? Some last desperate maneuver?
Let them wonder.
A whisper catches—skittering through the yard like dry leaves. I don’t catch the words, just the tone. Suspicion. Unease. Nobody moves. Nobody fires. Their uncertainty is its own shield.
I stop in the center of the courtyard.
Same one they marched him through.
Still stained with blood. Still ringed with chains. Still bearing the stink of showmanship and spectacle.
I scan the balconies. Marj isn’t here. Not yet.
“Bring her out,” I say, loud enough to echo.
The Hooves twitch. Two shift their stances, hands tightening on their rifles. Another tilts his head like he’s waiting for orders that aren’t coming.
“I want to speak to Large Marj,” I continue. “Here. Now. Publicly.”
Still no movement.
I take one step forward.
That’s all it takes.
A radio crackles. Somewhere high up on the roofline, someone mutters fast into a comm unit.
I cross my arms.
“I’m not leaving.”
The silence grows teeth.
Then: a door slams open.
She appears like theater. Of course she does. Cloak flared behind her. Boots clicking down a grated catwalk. Hair pulledback tight and shining like lacquered wire. She moves like she’s already won and just came to sign the paperwork.
The crowd parts as she descends.
She stops ten feet from me.
Smiling.
“Well,” she drawls, “if it ain’t the Butcher’s widow.”
“I’m not his widow,” I say.
“You will be,” she replies smoothly.
