“This man is convicted of the death of a family of seven. He poisoned two parents, a grandfather, and their three adult children, one of whom was with child. All died.”
The roar of the crowd turned deafening.
I resisted the urge to look to either side. Neither Alize nor Garrick would show any clues. I wondered if the others had narrowed down the possibilities for the perpetrator among us, as well. Maybe that was part of the challenge. We would carry this knowledge with us beyond the Justice Gate.
I kept my gaze carefully trained on the man. His throat bobbed up and down, his jaw working, eye twitching. I could easily imagine him as a poisoner.
Gender was not a clue. The man we’d let go free had committed Nimra’s crime. So it truly could have been either of them. Neither spoke to motive, not really, not in a way that fit with what I’d experienced of either of them so far.
But Garrick had to be the poisoner. He was a bounty hunter. We all knew it. He must have committed all kinds of sins in his jobs for hire. Though maybe that was a trick from Edravos, as well, to assign a crime that we would all naturally attribute to one supplicant but that truly belonged to another.
None of that changed the crime of the man before us. An entire family was dead by his hand. The members of the crowd were not the only ones desperate to conclude the ordeal.
Nimra— “Hang.”
Nash— “Hang.”
Alize was already halfway to her feet. “Hang.”
My vote was immaterial.
In the space of an exhale, the guard tugged the noose tight and shoved the man out over the trench. My hands balled into fists, bracing for the scream of the crowd.
But none came. In a blink, the crowd had disappeared. The jailers, too. The courtyard of the fortress was entirely emptyexcept for the three bodies dangling over the trench, and the five of us that had condemned them.
I could not help looking around at the others. Nash was already halfway to the gate, an open portcullis that had appeared in the solid stone wall behind us.
Alize stood, peering down into the trench as if checking that nothing was going to leap out at us when we tried to walk away. Garrick had taken a similar stance, though he scanned the perimeter and the crenulations on the curtain wall, checking for a last-minute twist.
“None of us died. We weren’t even injured or in any real danger. I do not understand,” Nimra said, now avoiding my eyes, speaking to no one and everyone.
Her crime was stealing bread. Of course, she did not understand. The person convicted of her crime was released. It was an easy decision.
But for the rest of us, the Justice Gate was meant to inspire terror. To force us to reckon with the darkest parts of ourselves and pass judgment that would be inflicted not on us, but on another?—
Guilt washed through me, so powerful I nearly fell from my chair as the true gravity of what I’d done hit me. I had not sentenced a woman justly to death.
I’d punished her for my crime. Not her own. I had no idea what context surrounded her actions. I could have shown mercy. But this was not the Mercy Gate, and I’d shown none. I’d sentenced her for the crime thatIcommitted, to the fate I believed thatIdeserved—but had been too cowardly to bestow upon myself.
I deserved to be punished for the happiness I’d stolen from my sister. Instead, I’d lived for nearly four hundred years. Instead, I’d sentenced a woman to death to assuage my own guilt.
I turned my head and emptied my stomach into the dirt.
I left my head hanging there, accosted by the scent of my own sick. Waiting, hoping that there was some twist of fate. That there was a final punishment the gods would inflict for the crimes we had all committed. But they’d already played their game, and now I understood just how truly I’d lost.
Death was too good a punishment for me. Living with the guilt was what I deserved.
“Not all wounds are physical,” Alize said.
Nimra did not have the same scars on her soul as the rest of us. For her, the Justice Gate had been unpleasant. For me, it was devastating.
PART III
SACRIFICE
They chase their will beyond all bounds,
And reap the debt they sow?—
