The peddler pointed over his shoulder. “That way, on the other side of the Kar Crescent. I’d go around if I were you, though.”
“Why?”
He shook his head and walked away.
Mysterious. Why would I need to go around?
I bit into a pie. The crispy, buttery pastry practically melted on my tongue.
Mmmm. How could mushrooms and bread be so tasty?
I wolfed down half of the pie. My stomach gave it a standing ovation. It was time to get going.
I started walking. The square ended, flowing into a street, and the city blocks crawled by. Every place I had seen so far was within fifteen minutes of the square, so that signboard only advertised nearby rentals. There had to be other signboards out there. Kair Toren had several markets. Maybe I would go to one of those next.
The street curved slightly to the left, widening. Ah, so that’s why they called it a crescent. I followed it, rounding the bend.
Yes, I hadn’t found a place to rent yet. But the sun was shining, and I had a delicious handpie. Life wasn’t so bad . . .
The bite of the handpie turned to cement in my mouth.
A man sat in the street in a puddle of half-dried blood. He was young, maybe eighteen, and so thin he looked like a little kid, slumping against the building, thrown there carelessly, like trash. Gore caked his face. Thin streaks stretched from his pale blue eyes where his tears had made a path through the blood. His lips were swollen and split. His arms ended in bloody stumps, partially charred with black. Someone had hung a signboard around his neck and tied his severed hands to it. Two city guardsmen in teal and black tabards with the white towers on them stood by the body talking in low voices, their expressions flat, their eyes haunted.
The signboard saidI STOLE FROM BARON HREBAN.
It felt like I had sprinted face-first into a brick wall.
The contemplation.Ulmar Hreban’s special brand of atrocity.
Nausea squirmed through me. I’d read about it over and over in the two books, but never in my life did I think I would actually see it. Common sense told me I needed to walk away, but my feet must’ve sprouted roots, because I couldn’t move.
The thief must’ve broken into Hreban’s mansion. Hreban’s guards had caught him, beat him, cut off his hands, partially cauterized his wounds, and thrown him on the street.
He looked so desperate now, his eyes dead but still full of pain. When they dumped him here, he would’ve known that he was about to die and nobody would save him, so he just sat and stared at the sky, bleeding out and waiting for the end. His life must’ve been hard and brutal for him to risk breaking into Hreban’s mansion, and then it ended in agony on this street.
A city of three hundred thousand people, and nobody lifted a finger to help him. How was that even possible? How could anyone ignore this? Did all of them go blind? Why weren’t the guards moving the body? They were just standing there.
The younger guard on the left raised his head and looked at me. Our stares connected. His eyes were filled with shame and fear. He looked away.
It hit me like a hammer. Hreban had paid the city guards to watch the body. They were standing there to make sure nobody removed it. He had a pet phrase for it,sunup to sundown. He could’ve ordered his private guards to secure the corpse, but he paid off the City Guard instead. He wanted everyone to see his special punishment and know that nobody could stop him, and moreover, that the city condoned it. A preview of what awaited Rellas when he rose to power, and I was the only one who understood.
There was nothing I could do for the dead man. It was too late. And even if it hadn’t been, even if he was still alive and dying, what could I have done? Hreban had everything, the name, the magic, the wealth, the private soldiers, and I couldn’t even rent a room at an inn.
If Hreban ever found out that I had helped Galiene, he would do this to me, and nobody would do anything about it either. The thief probably had people who knew him. Family, friends. I had no one.
I felt so helpless. So angry and scared and helpless.
The young guard raised his gloved hand and motioned to me.Move on.
This was so wrong.
The guard took a step forward and jerked his hand toward an alley branching off the street.Go!
I forced myself to turn and fled into the alley, walking as fast as my feet would carry me.
I walked into the Three Moons just as the East Tower bells struck, announcing five pm. Historically, medieval taverns were supposed to be filthy places, noisy and dark, with floors covered in layers of rushes or straw and soaked in a lovely mixture of mud, vomit, rotten food, and horse manure brought in on boots.
The Three Moons was the opposite of that. Large windows let in plenty of light, the wooden floor had been scrubbed clean, the tables had actual chairs instead of a wooden plank propped up on a couple of barrels, and the clientele skewed, if not affluent, then at least comfortable. The patrons had good clothes, groomed hair and beards, clean faces, and decent shoes. The sign outside, a carved wooden board with a stylized depiction of the planet’s three moons, had three circles of colored glass hanging from it on thin chains: green, amber, and red, meaning they served green ale, mead,andwine.
