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“Miss Sabar escaped by making a deal with a Glacian, and it was this same beast that helped her away from the Ledge and led her to Terrsaw. But this was not before she killed some of her own people on the Ledge who would have stopped her.Ourpeople. Our fallen ones.”

The crowd stiffens in increments, growing stunned, then appalled.

Clever, Dawsyn thinks, watching the throng as it shifts. She waits for their shock to subside, for the fury to take hold.

“Miss Sabar and her Glacian were welcomed into the palace, and they turned their swords on us too. This girl came to take the crown for herself. She may bear the Sabar name, but she has inherited none of the virtue of her family long since passed. I am sure she has suffered much on the Ledge… and I fear it has corrupted her.”

Dawsyn remembers the day she swept through the streets of the Mecca, the patrons backing away as she passed them with a blade in her hand, her face etched in murderous rage. She closes her eyes in defeat.

“I had wished, as you all did, that her presence would bring us hope. But I cannot allow you all to suffer under the pretence that others might find their way off that forsaken mountain. This girl is not our miracle. She is a monster, and I banished monsters from our lands long ago.”

The Queen turns to her wife, and Cressida reaches out with trained movements, to place her hand in Alvira’s. “We will protect you, our people, at all costs,” she proclaims, her voice thundering over the heads of her countrymen, ringing down the streets of the Mecca beyond. “Prepare her,” the Queen calls, her voice lower, softer once more. A well-executed trick.

Dawsyn is shunted backward. Suddenly her feet are stumbling over the loose timber of a trapdoor, and a ring of heavy rope falls over her shoulders. Automatically she lifts her hands to pull the rope away, but the shackles tug painfully at her wrists, and she cannot stop the guards from cinching the noose around her throat.Wait,she thinks.Not yet.

“Who was the informant?” a voice shouts from the crowd.

Quiet descends once more. Even Dawsyn’s heart stops to hear it speak again.

“Who knew o’ her misdeeds on the Ledge? How did yeh learn of it?”

The Queen squints down into the crowd, her jaw taut. “Who speaks?”

“I do.” And from the crowd steps Salem.

Dawsyn’s breath stutters. Her throat closes.

Salem, his nose reddened and bulbous as ever, his paunch prominent and height more so. He stares, steely eyed up at his Queen.

Stop, Salem,she thinks, panicked to see him there alone.Please, be quiet.

“I’ll ask again. How could yeh know anythin’ o’ the Ledge?” Salem bellows to all, but his eyes are fastened on Dawsyn’s.

“Don’t!” Dawsyn shouts at him, her head shaking. “Salem–”

“Seize him,” the Queen says calmly, regretfully. “I will have no man nor woman corrupted by this girl.”

Guards descend on Salem, pulling his arms to his back, pushing him to the ground.

“NO!” Dawsyn shouts.

“He only asks a question!” someone calls, a voice Dawsyn does not recognise. “For what reason will he be detained?”

The crowd rumbles. More shouts. A woman, tears streaming down her face, clutches a baby and yells, “Show us this Glacian! Show us!”

“The girl may know a way up the slopes!” another calls.

“SILENCE!” the Queen roars, but it does nothing. The crowd is roiling, the undercurrent shifting. Their clamour begins to fill the air. Fists rise, bodies shift with agitation.

“Let her live!” Some call.

“Grant her pardon!”

“A Sabar has returned to us!”

The crowd converges, moving closer to the platform, to the palace walls. And all the while their demands unify to become a single chant – the same call Dawsyn heard from her dungeon cell, the call that could not be drowned out by earth or stone.

Bring her home!