Page 50 of City of Snakes
I stood and put my hands on my hips. “Then why are we not present?” He tilted his head, and I added, “I would like to see how things are accomplished around here.”
“He’s going to hate this,” Ryn warned.
I was counting on it.
Part of me was just curious to see how he appeared before his people.
When Ryn led me to the throne room, there were guards present at the doors. They stepped aside to allow us through, bowing their heads.
The throne room was simpler than I’d imagined, with drab brown curtains and white stucco walls. Krait was perched on a large wooden seat at the center of the room. Guards held the chains of a kneeling man. His hands were extended, claspedtogether in a ball, and his wrists were cuffed together with what I recognized as magic-binding cuffs.
“Please, my King—it was an accident!” The man leaked spittle onto the ground, unabashedly crying.
Krait’s gaze landed on me, and he frowned. He didn’t interrupt his dealings to greet us, and Ryn gently guided me toward the far-right wall, where we found a seat beside Elsedora. On the other wall, a row of unfamiliar faces, in neatly pressed and expensive-looking garb, sat—lords, I assumed.
“What did he do?” I whispered to Ryn. Elsedora glanced over at me and offered a quick smile that crinkled her eyes.
“He is a Source-wielder, of the Soil. But he Death-wielded. It resulted in the killing of his wife.”
My stomach sank.
“Your crime is grave enough to sentence you to death. But I’ll instead send you to the prisons of Sahlmkar for a minimum of one century.”
“Please, my King!”
I extended my mind to the kneeling man and found the thread that I thought might let me in undetected. The man didn’t react—either too distraught to notice or I’d succeeded.
His memories flooded mine—a woman lying in bed in a dark room. She was so pale, so thin, coughing, shaking. Her gray hair was plastered to the sweat on her forehead.
“Please, make the pain stop,” she asked him.
“I will, love. I will.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too, my sweet.”
A dead pig lay on the ground beside the bed. The man drew back his hands, and when he extended them, an amber smoke flowed from his fingertips. It filled his wife’s nostrils, ears and eye sockets. It worked so quickly, blackening skin and bone until there was nothing more than dust. His fingers lookedstained with coal. A sign of Death-wielding I recognized from the attack on Luz. It’d happened quickly; she had not suffered.
The chair screeched below me as I shot up, surfacing from the dreadful memory as guards began to drag the man away. “Stop!”
Krait leveled a look at me that raised the hair on the back of my neck. Ryn tugged on my elbow, urging me to sit.
I blurted, “It was not an accident. It was a mercy kill.”
The man’s eyes widened as they landed on me. I stepped closer to the bound man, drawing sideways glances and side conversations from the lords on the other side of the room. I could feel the sensation of their confusion.
“Wasn’t it?” I asked the man.
Tears leaked down the man’s cheeks, and he nodded. “It matters little—I knew the cost.”
“Your wife was mortal.” It wasn’t a question.
“This end offered her less suffering than any other option.”
The guards carried the man away, and I was left staring at an insufferable, unjust King.
Krait clenched the wooden armrests of his throne with white knuckles.
