known where we was going, he wouldn’t a let you come with me.”
Vocho scrunched a glare onto his face, like he saw Da do whenever he did something wrong, which was all the time. Kacha never got the glare, so maybe that was why she ignored it.
“You’re only a baby, really, but we got to let Ma and Da work when they can, so I’m in charge. And if you cry, I’ll push you over the edge meself.”
Andoni laughed, a sticky sound because he’d been stuffing himself with sweets all the way here – his da had a steady job and no gimp knee that kept him out of work for days at a time. His da could afford to buy him sweets, and toys, proper good new ones with clockwork innards so the soldiers marched all on their own, which the priests said would make him burn in any one of the hells. Not like all the old toys, the boring ones the priests didn’t mind, which just stood there. Whenever they went to temple, that’s what Vocho prayed for – a little clockwork duellist with a waving sword and everything, which would cost his da three months’ wages. Maybe he was praying to the wrong one, or maybe he’d burn in hells for wanting clockwork. There were lots of gods and goddesses, one for every little thing, it seemed like, and Vocho could never get them all straight in his head. They all seemed to believe in his burning in hells for wanting a clockwork toy though.
“I bet,” Andoni said. “I bet you one of my toys that he doesn’t just cry, he widdles himself.”
“I bet you he won’t,” Kacha said hotly, and Vocho kind of loved her at that moment, even if she was annoying as hells most of the time. “Bet you anything you like.”
Andoni curled a lip. “You haven’t got anything I want.”
“I bet you…” Kacha screwed up her eyes. “I bet you half a bull.”
“You haven’t got half a bull. Your da doesn’t make half a bull in a month!”
“Half a bull,” Kacha repeated firmly. “You want a bet or not?”
Andoni laughed again. “Your money you’re throwing away. Bet.” With that he spat on his hand, Kacha spat on hers, and they shook on it.
Andoni went back to stuffing sweets in his mouth – too stingy to share, of course – and Vocho whispered to Kacha, “Half a bull? Where are you—”
“Just don’t widdle. All right?”
Vocho was about to answer when things started happening down in the square. On one side there was a squat grey building that gave Vocho the shivers. He didn’t know why, only that the windows were too small and barred and… hopeless. The windows looked dead. It sounded stupid in his head even as he thought it, but he couldn’t shake the feeling. He wasn’t sure, but he thought maybe this building was what they called the Shrive, where his da kept threatening to send him if he misbehaved, which was a lot. It was where they put all the bad men, Ma said, but plenty of good men too, and none ever came out again till they was dead. Just the mention of the place was enough to make all the grown-ups twitch. It looked like that sort of building, sure enough.
To one side and below the grand staircase a door opened and the crowd fell briefly silent. It was the first time Vocho had seen a crowd so together, so intense – he’d learned that word from one of the priests and liked it lots.
Five men and two women came up a smaller, meaner set of steps. One of the men had a hood over his face so you couldn’t see it, though it had eyeholes cut in it. The women and one man had their hands tied; the other three men carried pikes. Somewhere someone started banging a drum in a slow beat that made all the hairs stand up on the back of Vocho’s neck. The crowd fell silent, and all he could hear was the drum.
“Kass…”
“Shh!”
On the other side of the square a tall man, a fair-skinned southerner, broad shouldered and with a mane of blond hair that went every which way in the breeze, shoved his way through the crowd, his face all twisted. He shouted something Vocho couldn’t catch, but it stirred the crowd. Other people began shouting, anger swirling through them like ink in water.