The guards shook them. “Shut up. Attempt to weave a spell on us and we’ll cut out your-”
“Hush there!” called Sir Geoffrey. “You men, line the prisoners by the fountain. Bind them. Sir Magnin is coming back from the palace to witness this. We shall await his pleasure.”
The crowd shoved a priest forward. The man’s cassock was rumpled as though he had been manhandled. He clutched his rosary beads, and sweat shone upon his brow. His reluctance to approach Noel and Leon was obvious.
The guards did as Sir Geoffrey ordered. With his hands bound behind him, Noel hunched over to ease the torment in his shoulder.
“It’s your fault this is happening to us,” said Leon savagely beneath his breath. “You caused this. You stirred them up with your boasts and your challenges.”
Noel looked at him in distaste. “Why didn’t you let him kill me? You hypnotized Elena so she would shoot me, didn’t you? Why not let Sir Magnin finish the job?”
“Don’t you know?”
“No,” said Noel blankly.
Leon glared at him in plain hatred. “Because I feel your pain. Because if you die, I shall die. Try as I might, I cannot be rid of you.”
Noel blinked, and found himself with nothing to say. It made sense. They were more than twins. Leon, however repulsive and twisted he might be, was somehow a part of Noel. The reverse must also be true. It was a disquieting thought.
He frowned. “I was hurt before. If you’re telling the truth, you felt that.”
“Of course I did.”
“Then why program Elena like a little killer droid to get me?”
Leon shut his eyes a moment. “I thought if I had your LOC it would protect me. But it doesn’t. Nothing does. Why can’t I be free? That’s all I want, to be free of you.”
“You must return the bracelet,” said Noel. The expectant rustle of the crowd wore on his nerves. It was all he could do to keep his voice low and calm. The varlets still stacking wood on the bonfire were going at the job with an eagerness he could not admire.
The tournament was over. Were the people already so hungry for the next amusement they had to stage a public execution? He stifled his black thoughts about their lack of gratitude. The citizens of Mistra did not understand what he had tried to do for them, would never understand, even if he could explain.
“It’s almost the end of the time loop,” said Noel. He squinted at Mt. Taygetus, where the sun had already sunk, casting the craggy peak into dark silhouette against a golden blaze of coral and pink. “I am implanted with a command to keep the LOC on me at all times. It’s a feature that keeps a traveler from going rogue and staying in the past. That way history is protected-”
“I know what it is,” snapped Leon.
“Then you know that by nightfall, one of us will go back.” Noel stared into those silver-gray eyes so like his own, yet unlike them. “One of us has to.”
“Neither of us is going. It doesn’t work.”
“It does! Unless you’ve tampered with it-”
“I didn’t. But you failed today, remember? The LOC won’t send you back because there’s nothing to go back to.”
Noel felt sick. “And you’re proud of that, aren’t you? You fool!”
They glared hotly at each other while more townspeople crowded into the square and came out onto balconies on the buildings surrounding the space.
“He’s coming anon,” said someone eagerly. “Sir Magnin is coming.”
Trumpets sounded from the palace gates higher up the hill. Noel turned his head to watch as the procession rode down the narrow, winding road, glimpsed in flashes through the trees and bushes.
The priest lifted his hand and started a nervous drone, “ In nomine patris…”
“Give it back,” said Noel urgently. “You must give it back.”
Leon hunched his shoulders. “It will do you no good to have it now. We’re going to be cooked. It doesn’t matter who has it.”
“It does matter,” insisted Noel. “It-”
The blare of a horn, an insistent warning, cut across his sentence. A messenger galloped over the bridge and past the church, coming into the square just as Sir Magnin’s slow-moving party reached it. People scattered.
“Sir Magnin!” shouted the man breathlessly. “An armed party of horsemen approaches from the southeast.”
Noel held his breath, certain the Turkish invasion force had arrived at last. All his efforts had been for nothing. He could not stop the tragedy that would happen. Leon’s meddling with history was about to have disastrous results.
Sir Magnin-changed back into his resplendent cloth-of-gold tunic and feathered cap, his broken arm bound in a sling, and his handsome face drawn into a tight, pain-filled mask-spoke briefly to the messenger in a voice too low to be overheard.
Sir Geoffrey spurred his horse away and dispatched someone to summon the garrison force. “Man the walls! Close the city gates!” he shouted.
People scattered, screaming and shoving in a mad rush for safety. But the guards around Noel and Leon remained in place, and the priest, gathering his courage momentarily, called out, “Appease God, good people, and burn these sons of the devil.”
Sir Magnin nodded, his black eyes hooded and unreadable.
Noel shot Leon an exasperated look. “Can’t you hypnotize these guards and-”
“It’s not hypnosis,” said Leon angrily. “I push upon their minds with-”
“Telepathy, then. Whatever,” said Noel. “Don’t be so damned pedantic. Just do it.”
Leon closed his eyes a moment, then opened them with a gasp. “I can’t.” His voice was shrill with fear. “I can’t!”
“Concentrate. You can’t focus if you’re-”
“Shut up,” said a guard, shoving them forward. “Climb on the wood.”
They hadn’t even bothered to erect a pole for their victims to be tied to. Noel struggled up the shifting, unstable stack of wood and branches, wondering if they expected him to sit there tamely like a nineteenth-century widow in India and be burned on the pyre.
The priest darted forward and snatched the silver cross from around Leon’s neck. “Blasphemer.”
Leon said nothing. His face was chalky, and great drops of sweat rolled off his forehead.
Cleope appeared on the fringes of the remaining crowd. She was crying. She called out something, but Noel couldn’t hear her over the noise.
A roar went up in the distance. He heard the sounds of fighting, and hope lifted him.
“Light the wood,” said Sir Magnin.
Noel’s gaze whipped around. He met those implacable black eyes for a long moment, then Sir Magnin’s lips curved in a faint, cruel smile.
“I would have helped him achieve everything,” said Leon almost in a sob. “My knowledge could have handed him the known world. He could have carved out an empire with me at his side. Why wouldn’t he listen to me?”
“Prophets are never heeded,” said Noel. “Shut up about it.”
“At least you’ve lived for-”
“And that makes this better?” broke in Noel derisively.
“You might be grateful for my help.”
“Yeah, instead of my head cut off I get burned to death. Big difference,” said Noel. “You know this is going to be horrible. We’ll smell ourselves burning-”
“ Shut up,” said Leon.
A torch was thrown at the base of the bonfire. The dry sticks caught fire almost at once. Flames and smoke burst upward. Noel struggled to his knees in spite of his attempt to appear calm. His heart was thudding hard against his rib cage. He looked at the crossbows the guards held trained on them and wondered if an arrow wouldn’t be the quickest way to go. It had to be better than this.
