Jeweled (7 page)

He gave a quick grin. “Hatmakers. They lived—live, I guess—in Ameranzi Province. I don’t know much about them. They’re not dirt-poor, more middle class, but I haven’t seen them since I was a child. Belai strongly discourages visits, but I remember them trying to see me.”

“Mine never tried.” There was no note of sadness in this sentence. It was a statement of fact.

“You don’t know that. They may have tried many times and were turned away without your knowledge.”

For a moment, he thought he saw pain cross her face. But then she settled back against the wall and said, “I’m going to try and rest now.”

“Yes. You should. Tomorrow will be eventful.”

He suspected what would happen. Gregorio Vikhin had gotten exactly what he wanted, exactly the result he’d sown for so many years, but it had come with a brutal twist. Anatol could hear the voices in the street, the jubilance, the drunkenness. The people had what they wanted and now they were elated, power hungry . . . and frightened. They were excising hundreds of years of life under an unfair yoke.

There would be bloodshed and it would be legion.

Tomorrow the steps of Belai would run red with the murders of the royals, the nobles, and the J’Edaeii alike. There would be no mercy. The people would wrap themselves in the wise words of Gregorio Vikhin, but those words would be viewed through a haze of hatred and revenge.

Anatol saw the truth of things. He knew it would come to pass.

And where was Gregorio Vikhin tonight? Undoubtedly, he was mortified to see his dreams running so out of control. Anatol just hoped the great man could find a way to stem this tide, bring the people back to their senses and get some real work done. But that wouldn’t happen tomorrow.

Tomorrow would be day one of the nightmare. This illness would need to run its course, work itself out. Until then they would just have to find a way to survive.

He pulled Evangeline closer to him.

 

 

Gregorio Vikhin stood looking out the window of his town house at the bonfire made of expensive furniture in the street below. The houses and storefronts on either side glowed with the reflected red light while the drunken, celebrating citizens of Milzyr danced around it like devils. They were so drunk on alcohol and their newfound power that they even burned the fine things they’d wrested from the dead or soon-to-be-dead nobles, things they could have kept or sold for food.

He let the curtain fall back and stepped away from the window. They wouldn’t come into his town house. They wouldn’t steal his furniture, or drag him off to the steps of Belai to be executed. No, they gave him respect. Respect he didn’t deserve.

This was his fault.

He pressed the heel of his hand to his eye socket and sank into a nearby wingback chair. His ideas. His words. His fervor that he’d whipped from one end of Rylisk to the other. But not like this. He’d never meant for it to happen like this.

He wondered what Kozma Nizli would make of this.

But maybe this was the only way. Clearly, the royals and their cronies hadn’t been listening to anything they had to say before now. Perhaps bloodshed and chaos were the only way to get change in Rylisk.

After all, it wasn’t like the royals were ever going to give the people a say in their governance without violence. Blessed Joshui, the royals had been deaf and blind! Lost in a fantasy of their own making, heedless to the danger they created for themselves with every tax hike.

Most would say they were getting what they deserved.

Yet, there would be innocents who would be hurt in this mess. The J’Edaeii, for example. Most of them were already victims, having been forcibly taken from their families at a young age. Brainwashed into thinking they weren’t prisoners. Used as a breeding pool to infuse the royal bloodline with the magick their pride had lost through inbreeding. Though they came from common peasant stock, they would be swept up in the bloodshed along with the guilty.

Magick would leave their world because of him. His words. His ideas.

Yet he couldn’t help but feel proud as well. After all, now the people would have a say in their lives. There could be a new order. Fairness for all. Democracy in governance. They would set up a new system of government, hold elections, have debate. The people would no longer starve as they had in the past. They would no longer be used as mules, whipped by their “betters” until they were bloody.

He had done that.
His words. His ideas.
But, yes, there would be a price to pay. Innocents would pay it. He would feel every one of their deaths to the center of him. Their shed blood would weigh him down forever.

That would be the price he paid.

 

 

“This cannot be.” Evangeline’s fingers gripped the iron bars in front of Belai and watched the pool of blood at the top of the steps grow larger. Beside her Anatol seemed bereft of words, even of breath.

Emotions pierced and prodded and tangled her gut. And they weren’t the removed, watered-down emotions of the crowd she felt, these were
her
emotions. If she allowed herself to taste the feelings of the people around her it wouldn’t be horror, revulsion, fear, and disbelief she would sense. It would be jubilance, victory, and pride. Their emotions would match the expressions and actions of those around her—the smiling faces and pumping fists. No, these were
her
emotions coursing through her in a flood right now, so hot and so hard that no wall she could build could stop them. Like a tidal wave of feeling, it crashed over her head, stole her breath, squeezed her heart. All the defenses she’d built up around her for so many years were just gone.

Gone.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so much. She was reminded of why she’d undertaken the task never to do so.
Feeling
. There was nothing but pain in emotion.

“Anatol,” she whispered.

“I see.”

But she was sure he wished he couldn’t. Just as she did. Deafness and blindness would be welcome right now. Heads were rolling on the steps of Belai, and they were heads she and Anatol both knew. Aleksander Edaeii had gone first. He’d hung low and precariously on the Edaeii family tree, but he’d been a royal.

They were killing the royals
. The idea of it was so alien to her, so unbelievable, that she kept thinking—hoping—this was a nightmare. However, the roar and jostling of the crowd assured her it was not. The happy cries of the observers grew louder as they saw the blood getting bluer.

Her hand flew to her mouth as they brought out the next people slated for the guillotine, and she turned her face into Anatol’s chest. Annabelle Bellama, a noble, and Sorcha J’ Edaeii, a magicked woman who was only a year older than Evangeline.

Anatol thrust her away. “Look amused or we die. They’re already suspicious of us.”

“Look amused?”
She glanced around the reveling crush around them. Indeed, a few were casting long looks their way. Anatol looked grim and resigned, and she was sure she appeared pale and shaken. “Let’s get out of here, then.”

He gave a pointed glance around him and raised his eyebrows. “Impossible.”

He was right. The crowd had them pinned against the gate. They had front row seats for the show and if they left now it would only make them look more suspicious. Her knees were weak, bile burned the back of her throat. Wooziness nearly overcame her for a moment and she wished it would—anything to escape this—but Anatol held her up and she remained horrifyingly conscious.

Her gaze fixed on the next victims being led out from the palace dungeons. Oh, Blessed Joshui,
no
.

Tadui walked down the stairs followed by Borco, both flanked by peasants turned executioners. Heads held high, the men stood with hands tied behind their backs and their toes just touching the large bloodstain on the pavement made from those who’d gone before them. A wagon filled with headless bodies was parked nearby, yet neither man batted an eyelash, or showed a moment of fear. Tadui stared out into the crowd, his proud, accusatory gaze settling on individuals of his choice. The Edaeii line had more courage than she’d presumed.

One of the big farmers muscled Borco up to the slab. Borco looked impassively over the heads of the crowd as if he were about to be served tea, not have his head severed from his neck. Evangeline was too afraid to probe with her magick and taste Borco’s emotions. She was too much of a coward. There was resignation in his eyes, however, and defeat.

The executioner forced Borco to kneel and place the side of his face down on the cold slab. Then, almost as if the executioner were bored, as if he worked in a factory and this were only his next-in-line, a simple job, he stood and pulled the mechanism that dropped the blade.

Evangeline jerked in Anatol’s arms at the juicy thumping sound that could be heard prior to the explosion of cheers from the crowd. She turned away at the last moment to avoid seeing the cut, then turned back.

Borco’s head rolled across the concrete at the base of the steps.

“Oh, Blessed Joshui,” she breathed.

Tadui had taken a step backward. Now she saw reaction in the royal’s eyes. Tadui, such a harmless,
nice
man. A man who had been as close to a friend as she’d ever had in Belai, save Annetka.
Oh, Tadui
.

The executioner grabbed him roughly by his bound arms and forced him down on his knees. Evangeline’s body tightened, grief clogging her throat and pricking at her eyes. And anger! Hot anger poured through her, made her want to scale the iron fence she was pressed up against and charge the stairs, free him from this fate.

But she could do nothing. Helplessly, she watched the executioner force Tadui’s head down to the chopping block. Tadui’s eyes searched the throng desperately—looking for a friendly face?—found her and locked his gaze with hers as his head came to a rest on the platform that was sticky with the majordomo’s blood. His gaze was vacant, confused—shocked—yet he recognized her. She read that clearly in his gaze.

Unable to stop herself, wanting to try and share his pain if she could—she tasted his emotion. Cold terror slammed into her. Fear of what would happen to him after his head rolled.
Was this it? Was this the end forever? What would happen after he died? How could this be happening?
Questions and confusion roiled through Tadui during these last moments of his life. Her face was a comfort to him, his only one.

Knowing she was taking a risk, she cast out into the crowd, swimming through the nausea-inducing elation and excitement, searching for . . . calm. Finding it in some faceless person at the back of the throng, she drew a thread and exchanged it for Tadui’s horror. Immediately, Tadui’s face slackened with peace.

The stained brown blade hoisted high, the small clean part gleaming in the bright sunshine. Evangeline drew a shaky breath, vowed not to turn away, but to hold Tadui’s gaze until it was over. She owed him that much.

The blade dropped. Wet chunking noise.

Tadui’s head rolled and then came to a stop. His gaze still held hers, but now it was dead.

Her gorge rose.

She turned, hand to her mouth and pushed her way violently through the crowd, forcing people to move. People made way for her, not wanting to wear her breakfast—little of it she’d had—on their persons. At the perimeter, she bent over and retched into the gutter. Someone touched her back. Anatol.

Closing her eyes against the sting in her throat, she wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and forced herself to stand. A distance away, some of the peasants were watching them a little too intently. “I’m sorry. I just couldn’t.”

He took her by the upper arm and guided her away, calling out behind him with a smile, “Too much celebrating last night. Girl can’t take all the excitement.” His accent was dead-on perfect to pass for a low-born.

They walked down the street, leaving the press of the crowd and their gruesome festivity behind them. The fragrance from a vendor selling smoked turkey legs made her stomach rumble and her gorge rise in quick succession, and Anatol turned, leading her down a narrow alley instead.

“You used magick, didn’t you?” His voice was a low, angry whisper. He shook her by her upper arm as they walked. “Didn’t you?”

Mute, overcome with heavy grief, she could only nod.

“Hey, hey you!”

Anatol squeezed her arm until pain shot up it. “Keep moving,” he growled.

“Hey, stop, you two!”

Footsteps running toward them. Men’s voices. This was the second time in twenty-four hours they were being pursued by a gang of men. They weren’t doing so well on the streets so far.

Anatol cursed loudly, dropped her arm, and turned. Evangeline stopped and turned as well.

There were three men in front of them, all of them working class. Two brunettes, one blond—all of them dressed in ratty clothes and hats with holes in them. She would give any amount of money to never see a working-class lout again in her life and here she was surrounded by them.

The blond smiled, revealing rotting teeth. “Where do you think you’re going with such a sweet little thing like that? Even with that black eye she’s pretty. How much does she cost?”

Evangeline opened her mouth in indignation. He thought she was a whore! She may have had sex with individuals to obtain something material in the past—all right, that was the only reason she’d ever had sex—but that didn’t mean she’d do some ill-mannered, ugly lout in an alley for a few crowns.

“She’s not a prostitute, she’s my sister.” Anatol used that same perfect accent, stepping forward. “And if you keep calling her one, I’ll have to take offense.”

The man held up his hands. “Sorry, my mistake.” He narrowed his eyes and leered at her. “You don’t look much alike, though.” He poked Anatol in the chest.

“Listen, you imbecile,” Evangeline said, stepping beyond Anatol. “You’re dreaming if you think I’d ever lay hands on you, not for all the money in the world.” She gave him a sneer and a once-over designed to find him lacking. She’d perfected that look at court. “I wouldn’t touch you for anything.”