plank flooring.
Colin’s apprehension faded after that.
Until they woke him the next morning. Until they tied his hands and feet and led him out into the sunlight and he saw the newly erected gallows and the fear on his mother’s face.
The terror settled into his stomach like a living thing, small at first, as he squinted into the light and was shoved up onto the platform behind Shay and the others. The Proprietor was speaking, but Colin didn’t listen. He struggled with the growing nausea, with the increasing sensation of something writhing in his gut.
And then they hung Shay.
He almost puked, cold sweat breaking out all over his skin as Shay flailed, as he struggled, as his face turned purple and black and finally grew still. Colin’s knees grew weak.
And then the acrid scent of piss and shit hit him, and he stilled. The nausea didn’t fade, the writhing snake in his stomach didn’t halt, but he suddenly found the strength not to buckle and collapse to the platform. Because he remembered what Walter had done to him, remembered pissing his pants, remembered what that shame had felt like.
Colin glanced to where Walter stood behind his father, beside his brother and Patris Brindisi, who was muttering one of the litanies under his breath. The guards had removed Shay’s body, had strung up the second rioter, and as he watched, the trapdoor released.
Walter turned as the body jerked and spun, a thin smile turning the corners of his mouth. When he saw Colin, the smile deepened.
Colin frowned, straightened, fought the terror back as he stared out over the crowd. And for a brief moment he succeeded, the writhing in his gut abating.
But then the third man wept, and the man who’d stood beside him the entire time collapsed and screamed, had to be dragged to the noose.
The screams unnerved him. The sound of the man’s neck breaking sent a wave of tremors through his body, and he couldn’t make the trembling stop. Fresh sweat broke out, prickling across his back, in his armpits, rank with fear.
A guard prodded him forward, forced him to halt over the trapdoor itself. He saw his father step forward from the crowd, heard the Proprietor speaking, but he couldn’t make sense of the words. His breath came in ragged gasps, the sounds filling his ears, thudding with the panicked beat of his heart, with the pulse of his disbelief.
They couldn’t hang him. Not for something so stupid. They couldn’t.
But that wasn’t what he saw in his mother’s eyes.
He stopped breathing.
And in the sudden silence, in the stillness of his heart, the stillness of the crowd, he heard his father’s voice clearly.
“Yes. I’ll lead the expedition to the east.”
The stillness held for a moment longer, as if the crowd had expected a different answer, and then the Proprietor said, “I thought you might.”
Colin’s heart shuddered and started beating again. He choked on air.
The Proprietor turned toward him. “Colin Harten, for attacking Walter Carrente, a member of the Carrente Family and my son, I sentence you to a day in the penance locks.”
He waved a hand dismissively, and the guard at Colin’s back stepped forward, taking him by the shoulder and shoving him toward the edge of the platform, toward the locks that stood in the dirt to one side. He stumbled, numb with a dull sense of relief, then caught Walter’s expression.
The Proprietor’s son was pissed.
Colin grinned. He couldn’t help it.
The grin held until the guardsman sat him down hard on the stump behind the lock and untied his hands as another guard-the unshaven guard, Colin realized-unlocked the top bar and raised it. Taking hold of his hair, the first guardsman shoved Colin forward, bending him at the waist, and seated his neck in the half circle that had been cut into the lower part of the lock. Two other guardsmen grabbed his arms and placed his wrists in the smaller half circles on either side.
And then the top half of the penance lock settled down over the back of Colin’s neck and wrists, the lock snapping into place. It was mildly uncomfortable. The edges of the wood beneath his neck and wrists cut into his flesh slightly, and his back was bent at an awkward angle, but it didn’t seem that bad.
The guards stepped back, but they didn’t move far. The Proprietor had already left for the docks, and those from Portstown had begun to disperse. Some lingered, a few staring at the gallows, others staring at him with pity or contempt, but they didn’t stay long. The priest Brindisi stood to one side with a look of regret.
Nearly all of those from Lean-to remained behind. Straining his neck, Colin could just make out Karen and her father near the front of the crowd. She tried to come forward, but her father held her back, and she bit her lower lip in frustrated concern.
His mother knelt in the dirt before him, brushed the hair back from his face. “Colin.” He struggled to twist his head far enough to see her, felt tears burning in his eyes, brought on by the mixed relief and distress in her voice. And because somehow he knew he’d hurt her. Hurt her in a way he’d never hurt her before.
He’d disappointed her.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and was surprised when his voice cracked, surprised at how thick and dense it sounded.
“Hush. There’s nothing to be sorry about.” She kissed his forehead. “I’ll bring you something to eat.”
“No food,” one of the guards said gruffly. “And no water.”
His mother shot him a glare. Colin couldn’t see it, but he could feel it in the way her hand stilled against his face.
And then his father pulled her back, crouched down on his heels and took Colin’s chin in his rough hands, leaning far enough forward that Colin could meet his eyes. “You’ll be fine, Colin. It’s only a day. Remember that. It’s only a day.”
Colin couldn’t read what else he meant, what he sensed his father was trying to say, but he nodded anyway, blinking back the sudden inexplicable tears.
His father released him and stood. Without saying a word to the rest of those gathered, he put his arm around Colin’s mother and led her away, heading back toward Lean-to. The rest mumbled amongst themselves, shaking their heads or narrowing their eyes at the guards, before breaking away.
Karen was dragged away by her father.
Colin kept his head raised for the first hour, so that the wood didn’t cut off his breathing. But his neck and shoulders began to ache, until eventually he couldn’t hold his head up any longer, and he slumped forward, turning so his throat wouldn’t rest on the lock itself. His wrists began tingling, the lock cutting off the circulation to his fingers. He twisted them in place, the holes large enough he had room to wriggle, and that helped. But the armholes were raised slightly, not quite in line with his neck, and soon he could feel his upper arms tingling with numbness, the sensation gradually seeping down toward his elbows.
The afternoon heat began to settle in. He could feel the lock against the back of his neck, could feel the sweat gathering between his shoulder blades, sliding down the curve of his back, beneath his arms to his chest. It dripped from his forehead, from his nose, slid into his eyes where it stung and touched his lips with salt. Flies buzzed around his head, landed with tickling feet on his hands, on his face, and he couldn’t brush them away. A prickling sensation began in his shoulders, the sudden need to move, to shift position, to scratch or fidget, spreading from a tingling itch into an incessant urge.
He began to struggle.
A small movement at first. A shifting of the arms that sent sheets of pain up through his elbows and into his wrists. He’d left his arms hanging loose for too long. They’d gone completely numb. The sensation was maddening, and so he shifted his seat on the stump And almost screamed, white hot pain flaring in the small of his back. He jerked away from it, his shoulders hitting the lock, rattling the bar over his neck. He hissed as his muscles protested, screaming from his neck all the way down to the base of his spine. He tried to straighten, to relieve the tension there, but was brought up short by the lock.
He cried out, a short, sharp sound.
