“Just three?” Constantine says mildly. The tone of his voice doesn’t match the dark emotions welling in his chest, and the mismatch makes me uneasy.
The mayor seems to hear it as well, but she doesn’t react to it. “Three,” she confirms, her voice full of confidence. She turns a scornful eye down to the prisoners. “And if we find more, Premier, I will bring them before you.”
He smiles thinly at her. “You do me a great favor, Mayor Elland.”
She gives him that wink of hers. “I’ve known you since you were a boy, Premier. It’s the least I can do.”
Constantine’s gaze slides to the workers kneeling on the floor. “It looks like we’ve found a few rats in our midst.”
My heart tightens. It’s a direct call to me. I’ve been called a Basean rat too many times to miss the pointedness of this particular insult.
But I force myself to keep calm. He doesn’t know anything yet, or else he would have mentioned it already. And Mayor Elland is putting up a good front. So I stare at the prisoners too, saying nothing through our bond.
Mayor Elland nods at Constantine. “How should we deal with them, Premier?” she asks in a low voice. “I have my executioners ready. The Chief Architect also says they had to put down two of their Ghosts whose bones weren’t setting properly. Shall I simply deliver them to her? She certainly has space for them.”
She’s trying to save them.
Constantine looks up to meet the mayor’s eyes. Some unspoken understanding passes between them, and I feel the Premier’s emotions twist slightly between us, there and then gone.
“No,” Constantine says. His voice is harsh this morning, rock grating against rock. “My Skyhunter will take care of them here.” He shifts his eyes to me. “Now,” he addresses me aloud.
I look quickly up at him.
“I have no patience for anything else this morning,” he says. The language he uses now is Basean. “Let’s make quick order of this, Talin.”
He is testing me. No, punishing me. I search his eyes, wondering what he knows. I keep expecting him to say something more to me through our bond, but he doesn’t. I turn my gaze to the mayor now. If I’m not mistaken, there’s a flicker of what looks like grief in her eyes.
But she makes no movement to intervene.
The boy is so young, but he looks at me without any fear. The older woman is already listless, the spark of hope gone from her eyes, and the third is a man who won’t look up from the floor.
I have walked the line enough; I can’t afford to disobey Constantine again. There is no way out of this, no chance to seek mercy. So I walk forward without giving myself a chance to hesitate. As I go, I recite a bit of Basean poetry that my mother had once read to me as a child.
The bird wakes early for the morning sun. It waits even on days of rain, knowing just because the sun cannot be seen, that does not mean it isn’t there.
I make it quick. It’s all the kindness I can offer. My wings flash silver through the air. The soldiers nearby flinch at the speed of my movement. Most people have never seen me execute someone, or the damage I can do when put to use. The prisoners each stiffen, shudder. There is blood.
They slump to the floor. Then, silence.
I look at the bodies, wondering why I can no longer feel the tips of my fingers. Why my exhaustion dulls the pain of executing them. Why I don’t pay attention to the blood dripping from my steel wings.
When I look back up, I see that the mayor’s eyes are slightly averted, as if she can’t bear to watch.
But the Premier, he is staring directly at me.
What rats deserve, he says through our bond, his voice echoing in my mind.
The unsaid part of his words crawls through my body and fills me with dread. What if he knows everything? The Chief Architect, my meeting with Red, the escape of Aramin and Adena? What if he knows what the mayor is up to, and just playing his games with these executions? What if these words are a threat? What will he do to punish me? My mother?
Still, I keep my chin high and match his stare. I’ve spent six months in Cardinia worrying about how he feels and what he’s capable of doing. I know how to handle it.
As guards remove the bodies, I return to my place beside Constantine. The bond between us settles into its usual state, tense and uneasy. I stay calm. He’s going to send me out into the city, most likely, to comb every inch of the streets, supervised by teams of soldiers. He’s going to want me to be the one who finds Adena and Aramin and ends their lives.
But when he speaks again, that’s not what he says. Instead, he turns to me and gives me a bitter smile. “I have another surprise for you this morning, Talin. I think you know why. After all, given what’s been happening, I think it’s wise to move your mother a bit early. Don’t you agree?”
The mayor’s gaze flickers to me, and there, I see a hint of fear. She hadn’t expected this from him.
I meet Constantine’s look without blinking, determined to hold my own. But his words cut straight through my defenses, the claw of it clenching around my heart. He knows.
