above it all. People ran and shouted. Buckets of water sloshed. Smoke rose into the billowing sky, unbelievably black.
The Sacrifice building was burning.
“This… this isn’t supposed to happen…” he breathed.
My breath came in gasps. What have I done? What have we done? What went wrong?
In the light of the flames, I could see black lumps on the ground. The guards lay, some unconscious, some bleeding. Mr. Jameson was rising from the dust, his head bloody but unbowed. I didn’t see any of the thieves. But… several ropes had been flung up over the nearest wall. A line of blood smear followed one rope, and through the smoke I could see a gaping, shimmering rip in Mother Morevna’s spell at the top of the wall. They had escaped. They had escaped, and the Sacrifice building was on fire.
Asa’s face was half-orange in the firelight. “I didn’t mean to!” he spluttered desperately, grabbing my shoulders. “I didn’t mean to, Sal, I swear it!”
But I couldn’t say anything. I could only stand and watch as townspeople ran to the Dowsing Well and back, trying to douse the fire. But the flames were all-consuming. There was a horrifying sound, a crackling roar. Then the Sacrifice building collapsed in on itself, the flames mushrooming into the sky. Forty feet high now and still climbing, fueled by homemade liquors and dried wheat and everything else we owed the Dust Soldiers.
The Dust Soldiers.
We would all be killed. Everyone. And all because of me.
I swayed on my feet. Bile rose in my throat.
“What do we do now, Sal?” Asa asked. “What do we do?”
I didn’t know. I didn’t know, and a crowd was assembling around us, dark and angry, familiar faces suddenly featureless with rage. I wanted Mama. I wanted Mother Morevna. Where were they?
“You!” a voice said, sharp and accusatory. I turned and recognized the man from the Blue Moon. And he was pointing at us.
“This is all y’all’s fault!” he shouted.
A murmur went up over the crowd. They did it. It’s their fault. The murmur became a rumble.
“Hang them!” someone in the crowd yelled. Then two more people joined in. “Hang them! Hang them!”
There was nowhere to go, nowhere to run. They had encircled us on all sides. Surely they would kill us. Where was Mother Morevna? Where was Jameson?
“No,” Asa was saying. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no… it’s not supposed to happen this way… I can’t… I can’t do this!”
Then, suddenly, he disappeared. Just vanished from behind me as though he had never been there at all, leaving me alone to face the crowd.
The people gasped, then seemed to grow even angrier. “Coward!” someone cried. “Come back and fight like a man!” But they didn’t look for him. They had me, and I couldn’t disappear.
The circle was closing. There were ropes in people’s hands, panic and anger in people’s eyes.
“Mother Morevna!” I shrieked. “Mother Morevna! Please help!”
Then I saw her: a lone, elegant shadow silhouetted against the flames. But she didn’t come to me. She didn’t turn and take my hand and tell me she had a plan for us, that it was going to be all right. Instead, when she spoke, her voice was as hard as obsidian.
“You have doomed us,” she said.
“But Asa—” I started.
“It doesn’t matter whose magic it was,” she said. “Someone must pay for this.”
An angry shout went up in the crowd, “Hang her! Hang her!” but Mother Morevna put her hand up and the crowd went silent.
“I will not see hangings in this city,” she said. “We have not grown so barbarous as that.” Her eyes flickered to mine. She reached behind her neck and took off her black pendant. She held it out over her hand in front of me.
“No…” I heard myself sob. “Please…”
But all I could do was wait for my judgment.
At first, the pendulum hung still in the air, its gold chain catching the light. The crowd was completely silent, and all I could hear was the sound of the timbers snapping in the fire.
Please stay still, I thought. Please…
But very slowly, very slowly, it had begun to swing. It gained momentum and speed, and everyone could see its direction: back and forth.
“A pity,” she said, stepping away from me. “You were becoming such a good witch.”
I choked back a sob.
“Sallie Wilkerson,” she said, her silhouette dark and jagged as she walked in front of the flames. “You are hereby banished from the City of Elysium, never to return. From this day forward,