grew too quick: its buildings were cramped and close together, made of any materials that could be found. It was chaotic, and the Alacaner slums added the stench of cooking fires and sewage to what had once been lemon trees and pomegranates in bloom.
But my relaxation faded as I realized people scuttled away before me in nervousness. And it fled when I turned to the public square and the raised platform at the center where the executions were held.
Early crowds had already gathered. Vendors walked around selling flatbreads and fruits, and city guards waited by the steps.
They waved me on impatiently, and I saw the figure in chains between them. He turned, saw me, and his knees buckled. The guards held him up under his arms and laughed.
The Jolly Mayor himself came to the square and puffed his way up the stairs. His beady eyes regarded me for only the briefest of seconds, then fixed on the blade.
He smiled and moved closer. “Make this a good one, eh, Executioner?” He chuckled before I could even think to ask what he meant. Which was a good thing, as I wasn’t sure I could reach for a deeper voice. I was far too nervous.
The guards dragged the prisoner up the stairs, sobbing and retching. They shackled him to the four iron rings on the floor of the platform, half bowed to the Mayor, and then retreated.
Chains tinkled as the prisoner moved, trying to look over his shoulder. “Please, please, have you no mercy? My sheep were dying of mouth rot, my family would have starved…”
The Mayor did not look at the man, but instead at the crowd. He cried out, for all to hear, “Khaim will not fall to the bramble, like the cities of the Empire of Jhandpara. Their failures guide us, and we call for the gods to forgive us for what we must do: which is to punish those who use forbidden magic, for they threaten every last one of us.”
Then the Mayor turned to me and waved his hand.
A sound like a babbling brook came from the crowd. The murmur of a hundred or so voices at once. Behind that I heard the shifting of chains, and the sobbing of a doomed man.
I imagined either of my two sons laid out like this, begging for forgiveness. I imagined my Jorda’s scrawny body there, his burn-marked fire crew arms pulled to either side by the chains.
I had to steady myself to banish these thoughts, so I wobbled a step forward.
I raised the axe high, so that I would only need to let it fall to do its work, and as I did, the crowd quieted in anticipation.
I let the axe fall.
It swung toward the vulnerable nape of the man’s neck as if the blade knew what it was doing.
And then the man shifted, ever so slightly.
I twisted the handle to compensate, just a twitch to guide the blade, and the curving edge of the axe buried itself in the man’s back at an angle on the right. It sank into shoulder meat and fetched up against bone with a sickening crunch.
It had all gone wrong.
Blood flew back up the handle, across my hands, and splattered against my leather apron.
The man screamed. He thrashed in the chains, a tortured animal, almost jerking the axe out of my blood- slippery hands.
“Gods, gods, gods,” I said, terrified and sick. I yanked the axe free. Blood gushed down the man’s back and he screamed even louder.
The crowd stared. Anonymous oval faces, hardly blinking.
I raised the axe quickly, and brought it right back down on him. It bit deep into his upper left arm, and I had to push against his body with my foot to lever it free. He screamed like a dying animal, and I was crying as I raised the axe yet again.
“Borzai will surely consider this before he sends you to your hall,” I said, my voice scratchy and loud inside the hood. I took a deep breath and counted to three.
I would not miss again. I would not torture this dying man any more.
I must imagine I am only chopping wood, I thought.
I let the axe fall once again. I let it guide itself, looking at where it needed to be at the end of the stroke.
The blade struck the man’s neck, cleaved right through it, and buried itself in the wooden platform below.
The screaming stopped.
My breath tasted of sick. I was panting, and terrified as the Mayor approached me. He leaned close, and I braced for some form of punishment for doing such a horrible thing.
“Well done!” the Mayor said. “Well done indeed. What a show, what a piece of butchery! The point has well been made!”
He shoved several hard-edged coins into my hand, and then walked over to the edge of the platform. The crowd cheered, and I yanked my axe free and escaped.
But everywhere I turned the crowd shoved coppers into the pockets of my cape, and the guards smacked me on the back and smiled.
When I turned the corner from the square I leaned over a gutter, pulled the hood up as far as I dared, and threw up until my stomach hurt.
Afterwards, I looked down and opened the clenched fist without the axe in it. Four pieces of silver gleamed back at me from the blood-soaked hand.
I wanted to toss them into the stinking gutter. But then, where would that leave my family?
Guards ran past me, shouting orders. I didn’t pay attention to whatever it was that had stirred them. But whatever they had shouted was repeated through the crowd, which began to fade away, their interest in executions lost in favor of something else.
I folded my fingers back over my payment, even though they shook, and began to walk back toward Lesser Khaim.
The ferryman looked nervous and intent on his work as he poled me across the river. He had unloaded a full raft, and people had shoved past me with determination.
He blanched when I offered him a bloody copper. “You keep it,” he murmured. Then he looked at me again. “Are you sure you want to cross over right now, Executioner?”
I broke free of my daze. “What do you mean?”
The ferryman pointed a callused finger at the air over Lesser Khaim. “Raiders have attacked. Haven’t you heard?”
A tendril of smoke snaked up over the jagged roofs and clustered wooden buildings.
“No. Whoever told you that must be mistaken,” I told him. I’d lived my entire life on the edge of Lesser Khaim. The raiders would never strike this far north. There was nothing here for them, on the edge of the bramblelands that were once Jhandpara’s great empire.
“Believe what you will,” he said, as the raft struck the other side. A crowd rushed to the raft as I left it. I walked up the bank to Lesser Khaim, stepping around black tendrils of bramble scattered on the carved steps.
A screaming man smacked into me at the top. His left arm dangled uselessly, crushed. We both fell to the ground, and he scrabbled up.
“Damn you,” I grunted, “what are you doing…”
“Raiders!” He shouted at me. “Raiders.”
I sat up, pulling the axe close to me, and looked down the street. More smoke seeped into the tight alleyways between buildings.
And I could hear screams in the distance.
The streets were filling with people moving quickly for the river, their eyes darting about, expecting attackers in every shadow and around every alley.
“They’re here to burn us to the ground,” the man said. He was originally from Turis, I could hear it in his accent. His eyes seemed to be looking far away, as if he were reliving the horrors of the raider attacks that forced him to walk barefoot all the way to Lesser Khaim.
People jostled past us, a moving river of humanity headed for the riverbanks. “Where are they going?” I
