outraged into the sky.
Once they’d started it went shockingly fast. Bang, and the second man was gone, rope trembling. Bang, and the third vanished. The young lecturer in governmental theory was next. He squeezed his face tight before he dropped, like a boy jumping into a cold millpond. By some freak chance, his eye-lenses must’ve bounced off at the bottom, spun back up through the trapdoor to rest on the platform. One of the executioners bent and slipped them into his pocket.
Leo’s life was measured in moments now. In breaths. In heartbeats. He didn’t want to look, couldn’t look away, winced as the executioner pulled Lady Wetterlant’s lever—
She didn’t drop.
He pulled the lever again, and again. The trapdoor refused to open.
“Damn it,” came muffled from behind his mask. Orso squirmed in his chair. Hoff rubbed at his temples.
Another executioner stepped forward to mutter with the first, pointing angrily at the trapdoor. Lady Wetterlant growled into her gag. Four ropes stretched taut. Seven prisoners still stood, waiting helplessly for the end.
One of the executioners started kicking at the trapdoor while another dragged pointlessly at the lever again. A third had ducked under the platform and could be heard scrabbling with the mechanism below.
Leo bared his teeth. An agony of waiting. Each moment a horror, but still a moment he was grateful for. The onlookers coughed and narrowed their eyes as a gust of wind swept grit across the ruined square. A few nooses down, one of the conspirators sobbed inside his hood.
“Fuck yourselves, you bastards!” Lady Wetterlant had worked free of her gag and now started screaming insults again. “Damn you all, you vultures! You worms!”
King Orso jumped up. “For pity’s sake, just—”
Her trapdoor sprang suddenly open. She had been turning, fell awkwardly, scream suddenly cut off as she caught her arm on the edge of the platform and slithered through. It soon became clear that the drop hadn’t killed her. The rope twitched wildly. A kind of spluttering groan came from below. Everyone stared as it became a spitty gurgle.
Leo saw piss run from the trouser leg of the man who’d been sobbing to pool on the platform around his boot.
“Proceed,” said Hoff, angrily.
The next man swooned, knees giving and dropping to the platform. One of the executioners dragged him up, slapped his hooded face, stood him straight on his trapdoor. Clatter and thud as he dropped.
As if making up for lost time, they rushed from one lever to the next. Thud, thud, thud, each sending a faint vibration through Leo’s own noose.
The canvas over Barezin’s face flapped faster and faster with his desperate breath. The executioner grasped his lever. “Wait!” came muffled from under the hood. “I—”
He dropped under the platform and with a snap his rope jerked tight. So it seemed great lords of the Open Council meet the long drop just like other men.
Leo looked up at Savine. She gave a desperate smile, tears in her eyes. Meant to give him strength, maybe. He’d never loved her like he did at that moment. Perhaps he’d never really loved her until that moment. He tried to smile back. To leave her with something good. Some glimpse of who he used to be.
He felt the executioner step up beside him. Heard him grip the lever that worked the trapdoor under his feet. Under his foot. Still wasn’t used to having just the one. He closed his eyes.
Time stretched. A breeze came up and kissed his sweaty face. He took a long breath out, and held it. His last breath, he realised. He waited for the end.
“Stop.”
He thought it was Orso’s voice.
He wasn’t sure.
He opened his eyes again. Had to squint, somehow, as if into a wind.
The king wasn’t looking at him. He was looking sideways. At Savine. And she was looking back. Everything was still, time chopped up into stretched-out moments by the thudding of Leo’s heart. Someone cleared their throat. One of the crows, gathered again on the naked beams, flapped its wings. Barezin’s taut rope still hummed faintly. The executioner’s hand shifted on the lever.
Then Orso slumped back in his chair and gave a sharp wave of his hand. “Leo dan Brock, I commute your sentence to life imprisonment.”
There was a collective gasp. Savine closed her eyes, tears running down her face.
“Your Majesty,” that curly headed man was saying, a warning note in his voice, “my master will not—”
“I have made my decision!” Orso nodded towards the scaffold. “Take the rope off him.”
And Leo felt the noose