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Bring her home!

BRING HER HOME!

“PULL THE LEVER!” Queen Alvira calls, her eyes wide with alarm, spit flying from her lips.

There is no sound to reach Dawsyn’s ears beyond the tumult of the people, the screams of the women, and shouts from the men. The floor disappears from beneath her feet, and she falls into the dark space below.

Before the noose snaps taut, she meets the eyes of the Queen, feels her blood slither with hate. She gives a silent promise of revenge, in whatever form she may take in the afterlife.

CHAPTERSIX

She dangles.

The noose does not break her neck like she’d hoped. There is nothing to hear anymore and nothing to see. Vessels in her eyes have given way to strain, her airways are crushed, and despite it, her body still fights for air. Her jaw struggles to open, her hands clench and release in vain. Where her mind has departed, the rest of her still claws for life uselessly.

Spasms take her chest first, then the rest of her. As she spins for the audience in a hapless circle, her body convulses and quakes until it begins to give in. The spasms slow. Her bare toes, earth-sodden, give their last twitch.

It is just as Dawsyn’s body stills that the people of Terrsaw finally overrun the guards barricading the gallows. They swarm in a titanic wave, swallowing the shine and polish of the guardian’s armour in one mighty heave. The guards fall below the crowd and not one of them raises a sword.

A woman, cloaked and slight, darts between the fists and feet and finds her way over the wooden platform, to where Dawsyn twirls and twirls at the end of the noose.

The mob behind riots, too busy to see the woman take her palm to the rope and snap it with nothing but a squeeze. They do not see how the trapdoor came to close itself again before Dawsyn Sabar could fall.

Dawsyn herself does not know how she came to be sprawled upon the wooden planks, her lungs gasping at the air, her head and palms and feet burning with the return of oxygen.

“Get up!” a hiss in her ear demands, “Now!”

And before she can, heavy fabric envelopes her, blankets her. It is tugged over her head, its hood bracketing her ears – a cloak. Hands pull at her underarms, heaving her to her feet.

“This way!” the voice hastens, deeper, more urgent than before, and Dawsyn stumbles forward, choking, eyes streaming. She pitches her body off the end of the platform, blood pounding back into her brain. The hands at her back thrust her along the outskirts of the crowd, where the young and the old spectate as the riot builds.

Together, the two women run the length of the courtyard walls and out into the Mecca, where the streets are hollow but for the sounds of rebellion at their backs, and not a person they pass stops to glance at the cloaked girl from the Ledge, now the girl missing from the noose.

Down the cobblestone alleys they run, their path adjacent to the palace. It towers over the Mecca’s many roofs and spires. Dawsyn’s legs and feet are leaden but somehow they move quickly, keeping pace with the dark figure who leads the way out.

Dawsyn’s hood falls to her shoulders, but she cannot spare a moment to conceal herself again. What little she sees of faces pressed against windows pass too quickly. She does not know if those faces will recognise her, if they will reveal her escape to the Queens.

The road becomes nothing more than dirt, and soon the buildings begin to bunch, their roofs sagging. Dawsyn recognises the outskirts. Beyond, green fields unfold to the forest line and as she and her saviour sprint into the dew-slickened grass, the sun breaks through the cloud and meets Dawsyn’s shoulders.

It takes only minutes to leave the Mecca behind. A handful of moments between death and freedom. Soon, she is far away from the castle and the courtyard, where a cloud of dust is stirring, mudding the Queen’s face.

CHAPTERSEVEN

The bedlam in the courtyard only worsens as they meet less and less resistance. Already, the Queen’s guards fall back, their shields just barely holding the people off.

Cut them down,Alvira thinks.Just a few. Make an example. The rest will heed the warning.

The balcony is not all that far from the ground. Any bastard could climb to it should they possess the gall.

A guard at Alvira’s back pleads for her retreat inside the castle. “Your Grace,” he implores. “Keep clear of the balustrade.”

She ignores him. Her eyes flit between her subjects, raising their fists, their faces twisted and vehement. How ungrateful they all are. She should send them over the Boulder Gate. Let them see how they fare within reach of the very beasts she shields them from.

“Come, dear,” says Cressida, taking Alvira’s cold fingers in her hand. “Don’t spare them a glance.”

But the Queen of Terrsaw resists still. She hears the commands of her most favoured guard call for her soldiers to retreat. She watches them back into the safety of the palace gates, and a cold fear invades her.

How quickly it can all fall,she thinks.