Inked

35

The crowd was restless. Word was not one, but two, traitors to the crown were to be sentenced to death today. Mo had never seen people so excited about Death, and if only they knew it personally, they would feel much differently.

"Hush, they're coming!" someone called into the crowd, and an eager silence fell over the room. Devondria sat on her throne with a smug smile on her lips, but Mo could not help but think he saw a hint of worry in her eye, a sense that until the prisoners' necks were broken and their hearts had stopped beating, she would not truly be safe. Which made Mo all the more curious as to who these powerful traitors were.

When the prisoners -- a man and a woman -- were first marched into the room, cloth hoods over their heads, Mo shared the same sense of eagerness and curiosity that filled the soldiers and noblemen around him.

Then the hoods were removed: first Dustfinger, then Meggie, and Mo could not restrain himself from crying out. Breathing deeply, he assured those around him that he had simply not been expecting such a young girl -- a portion of the truth, anyway. What he did not -- could not -- reveal was that that was his daughter up there, his own flesh and blood about to be sentenced to hanging or beheading or even burning at the stake, supposed witch that she was. How had he let this happen? How had Resa let her leave the camp after he had commanded her to keep their daughter in sight? Oh, this could simply not be happening, and the worst part was, Mo had to stand and watch with the same bloodthirsty enthusiasm as the rest of the lot.

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"Come on, they've begun!" Soleil whispered, dragging Farid through the throng of people to the front row, where Soleil beamed up at Devondria and gave Farid a hard kick in the knee to reinforce his status as a prisoner. Farid swallowed down the pain, reminding himself that at least it was not he up on the stage, being sentenced to death -- yet.

"Loyal citizens," Her Ruthlessness cooed, drawing out the word "loyal" as she rose from her seat in all her dark glory. "Today we will properly punish those who have made it clear that they are not with us, and if they are not with us" -- she paused, making eye contact with Dustfinger and then Meggie, who both stared back with pure loathing in their eyes -- "then they must be against us."

Farid tuned out the cruel laughter of the queen and the barbaric cheering of the crowd. He tuned out the queen's droning about the necessary loyalty to the crown in times of trouble, and how foolish acts of treachery really were in the long run. It was all a load of rubbish, but the crowd ate up the words ravenously, punctuating Devondria's speech with cries of "Death!", "War!", and "Long live the queen!"

Farid heard none of it. He was in a different place, a place of the past. When he had first met Meggie, how he had marveled at the confident cadence of her voice and the strength in her bright eyes. Later, when his feelings for her grew, and hers did too; the softness of her hair through his fingers, the musical sound of her laughter as he kissed her, the gentle pull of her fingertips against his neck, drawing him closer, closer...And what had he done? He had pushed her away. Not all at once, but gradually, until there was more space between them than there had ever been, too much to erase any time soon. Oh, what had he done? He had held the world in his arms, smiled with it, cried with it, fought by its side, and then he had traded it all for a flame that had betrayed him, a spark that could in no way compare to the one that had blossomed between him and Meggie. And now he would never get the chance to rectify his mistake.

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Death patrolled the room, looking for its mark. It could feel the presence of the one who had cheated it, but the entire room reeked of pain and the lust for blood. They were all calling for Death, and it was its duty to answer the call.

As Death neared the front of the room, where the impassive fire-eater and the restless word-witch stood, bound and awaiting their punishment, it found its target. The boy that had escaped Death had his eyes glued to the stage, to the girl, but he was in a far-off place, a place to which even Death itself rarely ventured: memory. Later, Death said to itself, and reached its hungry hand to another victim, one who had demanded Death's services many, many times.

His payment was overdue.

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The executioner, who had been standing beside Devondria's throne, listening to his marvelous queen deliver an empowering call to action against those who opposed her rule, felt what began as a small tickle in his throat. He tried to cough quietly, but the tickle simply trickled down into his lungs, where it built into a horrible burning pain that left him choking and gasping for breath. The queen hesitated just before she could declare the sentence, as she felt the crowd's attention shifting from her to the man behind her. No sooner had she formed the sentence, "What is going on?" in her mind than the executioner dropped to the stage like a stone, the life gone out of him.

The excitement of the crowd melted into hysteria as the news -- "He's dead, the executioner is dead!" -- rippled through the throng of people. Wealthy noblemen, robust soldiers, and lowly servants alike scrambled for the throne room doors in a panic, shouts of "The witch! It was the witch!" and "She cursed him!" following them out of the palace.

Soleil ushered Farid through the side door and up to the tower room, muttering about how Meggie, "that filthy, rotten witch," and her cohorts always ruined everything. Farid wanted to mention that he had been one of those cohorts, but he was far too overwhelmed with gratitude that Meggie and Dustfinger had bought themselves more time, for surely they had planned and written the events of the trial, simply to be read and made true by Meggie's magical voice.

Back in the throne room, Meggie and Dustfinger were roughly dragged from the stage. "Throw them in the dungeons for now," Devondria called to the guards. Turning to Meggie, she growled, "You may think you have saved yourself from death for a little while longer, but you will not escape it, even if I have to swing the ax myself."

As they descended into the belly of the castle, Dustfinger whispered to Meggie, "Did you do that?"

Stunned, Meggie replied, "No, but I wish I had thought of it."

"Quiet!" one of the guards barked, and Dustfinger thanked Death, wherever it had run off to, for sparing them another day. Out in the courtyard among the rowdy, skittish remnants of the trial's attendees, Mo did the same.