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I think we’d be forced to do worse.

I inhale to answer, but a sharp rap sounds at the door. Harristan doesn’t look away. “Enter,” he calls.

The door swings wide, and a guard says, “Your Majesty, Master Quint would like—”

“No,” says Harristan. His eyes still haven’t left mine.

“Oh, let him in,” I say.

My brother sighs and glances at the doorway. “You have ten minutes, Quint.”

Quint was bouncing outside the door like an eager puppy, documents and folios clutched to his chest, but now he comes bustling through. His jacket is unbuttoned, his hair unruly. He never bothered with a shave this morning, so his pale jaw is dusted with red. “I only need nine.”

“I’m counting.”

Quint sets down his materials and launches into a litany of issues in the palace, from a shortage of straw bedding for the royal cattle requiring a decision on whether to substitute wood shavings, to a disagreement among the kitchen staff about whether Harristan prefers ivory tablecloths trimmed in green or burgundy tablecloths trimmed in gray. My brother casts me a withering glance when Quint shifts into a request from the Royal Sector to ring the dawn bells at two hours past dawn so people aren’t woken so early.

“Could they really be called dawn bells, then?” I say.

Harristan sighs. “I feel rather certain we’ve passed nine minutes.”

“It’s hardly been eight and a half,” I say. I really have no idea.

Quint makes a note on his papers. “I do still need to address the matter of pardon requests we’ve received this morning.”

Harristan waves a hand. “You’re done, Quint. Draft the usual response.”

“But—”

“Out.”

“I’ll just leave them with you, then.” Quint shoves most of the paperwork he was carrying toward the center of the table, then turns for the door.

“Wait!” says Harristan. “Leave what with me?”

I lean forward and take the top piece of paper from the pile. It’s scribbled and unsigned, but requests can be made at the palace gates by any citizen.

We’re all dying. You’re just killing them quicker. Show mercy.

I skip to the next one.

Free the rebels from Steel City.

I flip through a few more. Some are hastily written, some are more eloquent, but they all beg for the same thing.

“Pardon requests,” I say hollowly. We always get a few—but never to this extent.

“How many are there?” says Harristan.

Quint hovers by the doorway. “One hundred eighty-seven.”

I set down the letters and look at my brother. “As I said. A spectacle.”

“One is from Consul Cherry,” says Quint.

That gets Harristan’s attention. “Arella?” he says. “I thought the smugglers were captured in Steel City.” That’s firmly Leander Craft’s territory, while Arella speaks for Sunkeep, far in the south.

“They were.” I push aside the thinner parchments and scribbled pleas until I get to the folios at the bottom. Arella’s is black leather, the cover stamped with Sunkeep’s sigil in gold: half a sun descending into a rolling sea.