This was a very bad sign, but Raed couldn’t help himself. “Fond of murderers, are you?”
The jailor’s face grew crafty. “You might be singing a different tune by the end of the day.” He left Raed alone with that prophecy hanging in the air.
Raed turned once more to the window to see how the Order took care of its own. He had to see how it would all end, despite everything. The crowd was filling every cranny of the street, hanging out of every window and clinging to any other vantage point they could find. The whispering was louder too, and there were plenty of angry faces among the grieving. Raed did not imagine it; one or two were turned in the direction of the jail.
The cortege was announced by the low drone of pipes, a fresh wave of weeping and the rattle of carriage wheels. Clenching his hands around the bars, Raed was able to pull himself up a little and see farther down the street. Four ebony Breed horses pulled a shining wagon on which was placed an elaborate brass and oak chair, surmounted by the emblem of the Order, the Eye and the Fist. It had to be Hastler’s chair of office. Another carriage followed up the rear, and this one had a plain coffin on it.
Raed’s dread now filled his stomach and bubbled behind his eyes. The ranks of Deacons followed, made all dark and somber by the fact their cloaks were turned about so that the black lining showed. Only a flutter of occasional emerald or blue indicated who was Sensitive and who was Active. It could have been only his imagination, but he thought he caught a glimpse of copper hair among the ranks. His eyes closed briefly as the Deacons gave way to files of aristocracy and Imperial Guard making up the rear of the cortege.
He’d been betrayed. He’d been stupid. Naturally, the Order would never reveal what their Arch Abbot had been! It didn’t matter that he’d saved the Grand Duchess—such trivial details were of little account.
As the dirge receded into the distance, the Pretender’s hands grew white, clenching harder around the bars. He was so consumed with his own rage that for a minute he took no notice of the change in the crowd. He didn’t drop back when the first of the angry fingers were pointed in his direction—and by then it was too late.
A wave of outraged screams swelled up in the crowd. A deep bellow sounded from many throats, and then came the wave of missiles. Raed jerked back from the window, but the damage was already done. They had seen the object of their anger.
The rattle of objects thrown against the jail was far too loud to be merely soft fruit. It sounded instead as if the crowd, now turning itself into a mob, had pried loose some of the paving stones as well. The impact of these only grew, and now he could make out individual words.
Raed glanced over his shoulder. There were thumps in the depths of the building, the rattle of angry fists on the doors of the prison. He strode to the cell door and, grasping it, made to call out to his jailor. The door swung in his grip. While he’d been occupied with the scene outside, his newly unfriendly captor had unlocked it.
So, his guardians were of the same opinion as the mob. The smell of smoke wafted up from outside just as the screaming reached a level to make his ears ring. Even if there was one jailor that didn’t like the taste of a lynch mob, there was no way that man would risk his life for the Pretender. Raed slipped through the door and into the corridor, but after that his plan got very blurry.
“Not staying for the show?” The woman’s voice was behind him, and it was the sweetest sound he had ever heard.
Spinning around, he caught Sorcha’s grim smile—and she was not alone. Merrick, despite the fact that Hastler had tricked him into partnership with the older Deacon, remained true to his vows.
“It doesn’t sound like my sort of party,” Raed admitted, before kissing her. In his mind, there was always time for that.
“Quickly.” Merrick grabbed them both and tugged them down the corridor in the opposite direction from the screaming of the mob. The alarming smashing now sounded very much like a door giving up its hold on its hinges.
Together the three of them ran past the row of cells full of cheering, howling prisoners. Down a spiraling staircase, they found the back door. It was smoking and lying on the ground. Raed shot Sorcha a surprised look, but she smiled back. “We were a little short of time.”
He was not going to question her methods, because behind them they could now hear the sound of pounding feet. Dashing out into the alleyway, however, he found the rescue more than a little lacking. “I hate to be picky—but shouldn’t we have some method of escape?”
Silk Road, to their right, was still packed with angry people; angry because they were unable to get to the front of the lynch mob pouring into the Imperial Jail.
“We had horses!” Merrick’s face was pale.
“You can’t leave anything lying about in this town.” Raed shrugged, feeling that knot of dread tightening up once again.
There was nowhere to hide in this narrow alley, and several of the mob had become aware of the three of them. People had been swallowed by shared anger, losing all inhibition and control. It was now turning toward them like a great beast with many heads. Raed wondered how painful getting torn apart would be. He would have at least liked to have had a sword.
Sorcha tossed him hers without him having to ask, but her next action startled him. She shoved her Gauntlets on her hands and turned toward the onrushing mob. He recalled suddenly her outrage at Aulis when she threatened to use the runes on the public. And along the Bond he could feel her—it was not fear of death that she was feeling; it was something colder. She had lost her faith in the Order and what it stood for. Her concern now was purely about defending those who mattered to her.
Green fire sprang along the length of her spread fingers, and the stony look on her face was one he had never seen before—even when they had faced the Murashev.
The mob bore down on them and the air tasted like sweat and electricity, as Sorcha raised her Gauntlets and prepared to break every tenet of the Order she’d been a part of since childhood.
“Sorcha, don’t!” Merrick was usually the calmer, tempered one, but his voice cracked with such power that for a moment she did indeed pause. Or maybe it was the world itself—for it dipped into that misty moment that Raed had experienced before; the time before decision and death.
What happened in the next heartbeat, the Pretender could not quite identify. The walls of the alleyway distorted, bending in an optical illusion that stopped everyone short. And then the tide of emotion swept over them. Suddenly Raed was thrown back to that moment when he had awoken with his mother’s blood all over him, her broken and torn body at his feet. The grief washed over him, as fresh and terrible as it had been in the moment when it had dawned on him what the Rossin had done.
At his side, Sorcha was curled in on herself, a strangled sound of utmost despair clawing its way out of her throat. Through his tears, Raed was able to see that the crowd—descending on them angrily only a second before—was also wracked with despair. They huddled on the street, sobbing and clutching at one another, in the throes of the emotional storm; a wash of misery that had been leveled upon them far more easily than anything Sorcha could have done.
Raed was only just able to nail that observation down before the waves of his own emotions crashed over him once more. The rawness of despair ran through his body, the depth of melancholy impossible to resist. That was, until Merrick’s hand touched his shoulder. “Raed.” His voice cut through the grief and pain, removing it as swiftly as it had come.
The Pretender climbed to his feet, noticing that Sorcha had also been pulled free of whatever had happened to them. She was brusquely wiping away her tears, turned slightly away; embarrassment burned along the Bond.
Merrick’s Strop dangled from his fingertips, tucked behind his back as if he were ashamed of it. A flicker of rainbow light played across its surface and was gone. Raed had studied the ways of the Order, and he had never heard of any Sensitive doing any such thing. Yet there it was; Merrick had leveled a lynch mob by reaching in and twisting their emotions—hard.
The three of them stared at one another, and then Deacon Chambers folded his Strop and tucked it inside his shirt. His expression was as flinty as his partner’s had been when she had faced the mob. “It won’t last long.” He flicked his reversed cloak around his shoulders and began picking his way through the still-weeping crowd.
Sorcha and Raed followed after. They had to be careful; people were rolling around sobbing, crying the names of dead relatives, and merely howling incoherently. No one paid the three of them any mind.
