Page 115 of The Sun King's Noon

The chant rose.

The soldiers had the man at the post now. They pulled his arms wide along the horizontal bar and lashed his wrists with rope. A soldier with a large jug stepped close and splashed a long stream of oil across the man’s head and face. It ran down his legs and pooled at his feet, where the stack of wood received the rest.

The chant turned into a cheer, and Richard followed the crowd’s stare, inclining his neck upward, towards the balcony of the fortress.

Gauze curtains had been drawn back, and at the rail, lounged two figures.

Hatred blazed through Richard, sheer and vicious. It filled his chest in a boiling rush, and he bit his tongue hard enough to taste blood.

Marius had not changed.

He stood as Richard remembered him from the dozens of state banquets and diplomatic summits—tall, lean, in a pale blue tunic, with white hair scraped back from a high forehead. A thin, wrinkled mouth and cunning, hawkish eyes.

This. This was the man who had paid Sylari trolls to kill Ardenia’s royals. This was the man who had once called Haldric ‘old friend’ before stabbing the knife into his back.

Beside him stood a woman no older than Richard. She was beautiful. Fine-boned, with a curtain of maroon hair falling to her waist. She nuzzled her cheek against Marius’s shoulder, and he smiled down at her.

Richard tasted bile.

“You smiled at my father like that, you wretch. Across the wine. Across the bread. You smiled at him exactly so and had him butchered?—”

The chant morphed into a hungry roar. Richard blanched as a soldier came forward with a flaming torch.

I cannot watch.

He pushed towards the rear of the crowd. A woman cursed him as he jostled her shoulder. The horde was packed so thickly that Richard felt their heat through his cloak, their breath on his cheeks, and smelt the reek of hundreds of people who had not bathed in days, andhe could not get through?—

The screaming began, and Richard knew the fire had been set alight.

Pedron Holm’s first sound was a high, thin keening. His second sound was worse—choked and shrill and desperate beyond measure—“Please! Please! I beg you!”The third sound was no word at all, just scream upon scream.

Nausea wracked Richard, and he staggered to a nearby pillar. Pressing his forehead against its stone, he gulped in deep breaths and willed himself not to vomit?—

You wanted to come here, Sister?

The thought would not leave him.

For the sake of a sweet smile, you were willing to leave me for this hell?

He turned his head to the dais. The fire really blazed now, climbing up to Pedron’s elbows—and how the man screamed. Richard saw, on the high balcony, that Marius was watching with an amused smile, as though this were a tourney. Octavia, beside him, had lifted her hand to her mouth. For an instant, Richard thought it was out of horror. Then her shoulders shook, and he realised she was laughing into her own knuckles.

Is this the house you wish to join, Sister? Is this what you wish to be wed into? You, who cannot bear to watch a soldier be flogged?—

The arrow came out of nowhere.

One moment, the mob was roaring, Pedron Holm was screaming, and then, something whistled through the air, fast—incredibly fast—and took Pedron Holm beneath the breastbone. The man’s scream cut off. His head jerked once, then his chin dropped, and his body sagged in its ropes. The dreadful writhing ceased.

The crowd’s cheers splintered into shouts of confusion. Soldiers brandished swords and jostled outward into the press, bellowing for order, demanding to know which direction the arrow came from.

Fools. The direction was clear from the angle at which the arrow was embedded in Pedron. Richard traced backwards and swept his eyes along the square’s eastern flank. Up the colonnade. Up past the rows of shops and counting houses. Up to the rooftops?—

And down. To the inn a few buildings from the archway Richard had entered through. On the sixth floor, in the third balcony from the left, a figure was lowering a bow.

He was hooded and shadowed by the slate eave. Already, he was shouldering his bow and turning.

Richard’s jaw dropped. He knew those broad shoulders, he knew that firm posture, he knew that blasted bow even?—

You fool, you utter fool.Richard gritted his teeth and shoved through the throng towards the eastern streets. With any luck, he’d be able to intercept Kaelen and get him to safety.