The Executioness (2 page)

“When you face Borzai in the Hall of Judgment, he will banish you to Zakia’s torture cells for eternity,” I told him. “When I hear your spirit groan in the night, tortured by dark gods, I will laugh and pretend I didn’t hear it.”

He flinched at that. “Do you hate me so?”

I trembled with outrage. “You bring me nothing but pain and drudgery and burden.”

He thought on that for a long while. Longer than I’d seen him consider anything. “You must go just this once, then. After this, you can turn the bell in. I’ll be dead soon, I can’t stop you, yet you must at least cover the expense of my funeral. I’ll not have my appearance in Borzai’s Hall of Judgment delayed because the rites were not pleasing to him. And after that if you wish it, it could be your trade. It is a good living, daughter. And with me gone, there will be one less body to care for, one less mouth to feed. You have no field, and butchering people will give you more than butchering pigs.”

Then he sighed and crawled toward his bed. I said nothing. I helped him back to it, his body surprisingly light as I slung his arm over my neck.

“How can I kill someone who has done nothing to me?” I asked.

Anto grunted. “Don’t look into their eyes. Consider that the Mayor has a reason for their death. Remember that if they have led a proper life, they will be sent to the right hall for eternity.”

“Won’t the Mayor’s guards be able to tell I’m not you?”

“No,” Anto murmured. “I’ve been wasting away long enough. I’m a small figure, so are you. Wear my hood, carry my axe, none will be able to tell the difference. It is no different than chopping wood. Raise the axe, let it fall, don’t swing it, and aim the edge for the neck. You’ve killed enough pigs, you can do this.”

And with that, he slipped away to his sleep, exhausted by all his recent efforts.

I understood he’d always wanted a son. That he’d wanted the farm to produce the crops it had when he was little, before the bramble grew to choke it. I understood that he never wanted me to marry Jorda.

I understood that maybe, he’d wanted to give me the bell a long time ago, but had been too scared to do it. Why else would he have begged and called in so many favors from old friends to make sure I worked as a butcher?

I walked through Lesser Khaim dressed as an executioner.

Inside I was still me, Tana, weary and tired, struggling to see through the small slits in the leather hood over my face.

I’d called Duram down, and kissed him on his forehead before I had left.

“What was that for?” he’d asked, puzzled.

“Just know that I love you and your brother. I have to leave for an errand. But I will be back home soon.”

After I sent him back upstairs, I’d opened the cedar chest in Anto’s room and pulled out both his hood and heavy cape. They fit me well as I pulled them on, as Anto said they would. His canvas leggings slid off my waist, but a length of rope fixed that.

The axe lay in the bottom of the chest, the edged curve of the blade gleaming in the light.

It weighed less than it looked, and was well balanced in my hand. Heavier than the axe I used to chop wood with, but not anywhere as heavy as I had somehow imagined.

Now I rested the axe on my shoulder and walked down the banks of the Sulong.

I followed a fire crew down the stone steps. They wore masks and thick, double-canvas clothing. As they walked they pumped the primers on the back of their tanks, then lit the fires on the brass-tipped ends of their hoses.

When they flicked the levers, fresh flame licked out across the bramble threatening to creep over the stairs. Clumps of the thorny, thick creep withered under the assault.

Clearers followed close behind, chopping at the bramble, careful not to touch any of it lest they get pricked. Children scampered around with burlap sacks to pick up bramble seeds.

They stopped the burn when they saw me and stepped aside to let me down the path.

“If it’s Alacan magic users you’re sending to Borzai’s judgment today,” one of them called out from behind a mask as fearsome as mine, “then I salute you.”

Others agreed in wordless grunts as they hacked at bramble with axes.

The ferry across the river dipped low to the water when I stepped aboard. The ferryman dug his pole deep into the muck and shoved us along the guide ropes that kept the raft from drifting downstream.

“Ain’t the Alacan refugees causing the bramble creep,” he muttered, and jutted his chin upriver.

I knew that. I could both see and smell the problem as the raft cleared a tall thicket of ossified bramble. When it wasn’t cleared, the roots thickened, and hardened to become a singular and impenetrable mass.

And appearing behind that mass, far over the river Sulong, a half completed bridge soared from Khaim’s side of the riverbanks. The unfinished structure hung in the air with no visible means of support, floating over the river as men worked on extending it toward Lesser Khaim day
and night.

The stench of the magic holding the half-completed structure in the air wafted down over the river’s surface: strong, tangy, and dangerous.

All that magic caused bramble to spring up all throughout Khaim and Lesser Khaim. People scraped it from their windowsills and fought it throughout their fields.

“Mark me,” the man said with a final push to get us to the other side. “We’ll end up like Alacan: choked with bramble and fleeing our city if we keep building that unholy thing.”

I paid the ferryman his copper and stepped off onto the pier. He said those things only because he was bitter about losing his livelihood. There would be no place for him when people could simply walk the bridge.

I walked through Khaim, enjoying the taller marble and stone buildings and fluted columns. Lesser Khaim 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.