1.5. What This Sword Does

Out they were trotted from the jailhouse, by a throng of patchwork irregulars. Six men and women, shivering and thinned by their internment. They assembled atop the scaffold in heavy shackles, forced to their knees, heads bowed in anticipation of the sword.

(Passkey Standards on those wrists, Seth noted. So it wasn’t all bad.)

Krisova was the first prisoner in the line. A ginger-haired slip of a girl. She watched, numb and tearful, as her death approached, crouched, and cocked its head like a massive corvid.

“They’re looking ill-fed, Carter,” Annalise said.

“My apologies, Madame Verdugo. We, uh—we’ll have to look at that.”

“Who’s this, then?” Annalise asked.

“Krisova il Maikova,” Carter said. “Stole and butchered her neighbor’s goat. No dynamo was nearby; the beast’s hexis was lost.”

“Uhhh huh.” Annalise straighened out and whistled. “Ofelia. Come on up here, if you please.”

Seth, having relocated as far back into the crowd as he could realistically manage, was close enough to the girl to hear the soft click of her tongue she made at being summoned. She trudged through the parting people and up the scaffold. Annalise stepped aside to make room for her.

“What’d you steal that goat for, then, Krisova?” Annalise asked.

Krisova looked up in confusion. “Mistress?”

Annalise raised a brow in invitation. “Go on.”

“I—I, er.” Krisova was clearly ill-prepared to speak on this. “I have three sisters, four brothers. A mother who can’t get out of bed. A father who passed two years ago, up north. And I—we, uh—we were hungry, mistress. We were so hungry. And the money hasn’t spent this year like it did last year, and I know I shouldn’t have. I know. But there wasn’t—I didn’t want to hear them crying from the hunger as they tried to go to bed anymore.”

Ofelia listened as Krisova unspooled, marsh fire eyes searching the woman’s face. Then she glanced to Annalise, and nodded.

“All right, up you get.” Annalise helped the girl to her feet. “Getting dirt on your pinafore. What’s her sentence?”

Carter ahem’d. “Five years’ detainment, Madame Verdugo.”

“Five?” Annalise snorted with ill belief. “This goat do algebra or something? One year detained and the cost of the beast at market. And let her out on weekly supervision to earn for the family. Sounds as though they need it, yeah?”

“She’s a scullery girl, Madame Verdugo,” Carter said. “She can’t afford the penalty.”

“She’ll pay what she can,” Annalise said, “and the legion will take care of the difference.”

“What about the lost hexis, Madam Verdugo?”

“Sure look, Carter. It’s just a bleeding goat.” Annalise pointed the pommel of her blade toward Rohan’s manor. “I bet whoever lives in that fancy house up thataways uses more hexis on their motors and light fixtures in a week.” She ignored the petrified silence this utterance had cast the crowd into, and stepped past Krisova, whose face was a portrait of confused awe. “Who’s next?”

Over the next handful of minutes she listened to each case, meting out punishments:

“Eighteen months of garnished wages, the remains to be donated to the victim. And I’ll be back next year to hear whether your brother’s forgiven you yet. We’ll go from there.”

“Exile from Prossimo for five years. The charter town I just came from was looking for ranch hands. Reckon the road south’ll be fine and clear for solo traveling, if you get a move on.”

“Fifteen lashes and seventy braces to the victim.”

The crowd’s consternation increased with every criminal she stepped past and left breathing. The murmurs and jostling. This was not how Verdugos do their jobs. Every Verdugo had a quota. Every Verdugo’s sword had to be filled by winter to fuel the deathspell. Why wasn’t she executing anyone?

She reached the end of the line. The ragged, bearded man who’d been shaking the whole time. Now he shook harder.

“Alfie Orteán,” reported Chief Hermandat Carter. “Mite breeder. Killed his business partner in a drunken dispute.”

“Ah.” Annalise sucked air in between her teeth. “Well, now.”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

She crouched in front of him. Her thick-gloved hand reached out and brushed his chin, directing his red-ringed eyes upward. “You can stand up, Alfie. Make this conversation easier.”

Alfie Orteán rose with calved-deer shakiness to his feet.

“Alfie,” she said. That’s short for Alfonse?”

“Yes, mistress,” he said, stripped and scratchy.

“That’s a lovely name. Who gave it to you?”

“What?”

“Mom or dad?”

“My mother. It, uh—it was my granddad.”

“He still around?”

“No, mistress.”

“Right, Alfie.” Annalise drummed her fingers on her sword’s crossguard. “Here’s the deal. You’ve taken your grandfather’s name, and you’ve cracked it. Alfonse Orteán the killer. That’s how they’ll remember you. I reckon you regret that.”