what followed is unforgivable. After he had confessed his delusions to Lord Roland and sent him here to bring me the story, he took advantage of the fact that he had been left to guard the hatchlings, abducted one of them and fled the hatchery, obviously intending to leave the city and find a place to hide with it. Fortunately, by coincidence, his house had caught fire because of an unattended candle—an investigation of the ruins has confirmed this—and he was caught by the adult griffins from the hatchery, who had noticed the missing chick and had gone looking for it. There is no doubt whatsoever that he committed this crime. More than thirty people have already testified to having seen him attempting to escape, and the hatchery griffins confirmed that he was the only person in the hatchery when the chick went missing and that they saw him holding it captive. Therefore, I have no choice but to hand down the sentence of death.”
The crowd roared. It was not a shout, not a scream—it was a deep collective bellow, full of rage and hatred and pure, unrestrained bloodlust. Many of the griffins in the gallery rose up, wings spread, and began to snap their beaks, stretching their heads out toward him as if they wanted to tear him limb from limb.
Arren started to struggle, trying to pull away from the hand covering his mouth. The guards restrained him again, but then Rannagon turned toward him and said, “Arenadd Taranisäii, have you anything more to say before you are removed?”
The hand was taken away. “Liar!” Arren screamed. “You godsdamned liar!”
Once again the rage rose up inside him, filling him with terrible strength. He shrugged off the guards as if they were nothing and lunged forward, trying to climb over the wall between him and Rannagon. Shoa darted forward to defend her partner, but Arren managed to hook a leg over the edge of the dock and started to pull himself over. The guards hauled him back, but he slammed into them, heedless of any pain, and began to shout, “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!”
More guards came running. They dragged him bodily away, and he fought every moment of it, lashing out wildly at their faces and screaming. “I am not insane! Liar! You can’t do this to me! Liar! Murderer!”
But there was nothing he could do. The guards took him out of the chamber, to the jeers and screeches of the crowd, and he kept his eyes on Rannagon until the doors slammed on him. Once they had him out of sight of the crowd, the guards beat him into submission. Not laughing or jeering or taking any pleasure in it, but simply hitting him in places calculated to hurt, in a methodical, almost bored way, until he finally stopped fighting back. Once he had fallen silent and gone limp and passive, they hauled him upright and led him away. They left the Eyrie by a back door and travelled a short distance through the city, accompanied by other guards who had been waiting for just that purpose. Arren already knew where they would be going. The prison district. It was very large. Once it had housed nearly a hundred slaves. Now, though, it was virtually empty. Now that the slaves had gone, the only people kept there were criminals waiting to be punished then freed or to be put to death, either by execution or in the Arena, at the claws of wild griffins.
Arren was taken to a large wooden building and there handed over to the prison guards. They checked him for weapons and then took him to a room where there was a row of huge wooden cages resting on sealed trapdoors. The cages were attached to the ceiling by thick ropes threaded through pulleys and wrapped around a series of large windlasses. His new guards removed the manacles and bundled him into one of the cages, tying the door shut behind him. Then they opened the pair of latches that held the trapdoor beneath it shut. It swung open with a loud bang, revealing nothing but empty air underneath. The floor of the cage was made of wooden slats, the gaps between them almost as wide as Arren’s hand. He yelled and hurled himself at the cage door, trying to force it open, but it would not move. The guards ignored him. They went to the windlass and began to turn the handles, and the