I step closer, but Sail moves to stop me. “We should wait here.”
“What…what is that?” I ask, trying to look past the soldiers, at the figures I can see just beyond the torches. I can’t make it out from this far away, but something tugs me forward, urges me to see.
Skirting close to the line of the horses, I make my way forward, Sail sticking by my side. And although I can tell he wants to insist I turn back, I can’t, not even when a sick feeling enters my stomach, like a premonition.
When I’m twenty feet away, the smell hits me. Hits Sail too, because his steps falter, a gagging noise crawling up his throat.
I bite down on my tongue and rush on, and as soon as I make it to the gathered soldiers, I’m finally able to see, my mind able to piece together what my eyes and nose are telling me.
There, in front of Highbell’s wall, hang a dozen bodies, strung up on a row of gnarly, weather-beaten branches.
The bodies are…wrong. Abhorrent.
They aren’t just corpses. They aren’t gilded heads on spikes, warning people of Midas’s wrath if one should break the law. No, these…these are…
“Rotted,” Sail says grimly beside me, as if he were hearing my thoughts. “That’s what the smell is. We’ve been getting these little gifts from King Rot all week.”
My mouth is dry, moisture wicked away with the sight of their spoiled skin. The bodies are molding in some places, like King Ravinger used his power to make them decay like a piece of fruit. Green, white, and black tufts of furry mold clusters over their mortal wounds like a macabre plumage.
Other parts of them are browned and shriveled, like a husk left out too long in the sun. And the rest of them…just gone. Like those parts of their bodies rotted away completely, disintegrating into the air as nothing more than peeled scraps of skin and powder of bones.
Bile curls in the pit of my stomach, and I cover my mouth and nose with my hand. I don’t need to ask Sail who they are. I can see the purple-plated emblems on their still-visible armor. They’re King Fulke’s soldiers.
“He’s sent them here and to Fifth Kingdom as well,” Sail explains morosely as Digby and the others still speak, several paces away from the putrid bodies.
“Why?”
Sail shrugs. “To send a message, I guess. So King Rot can show us that he’s pissed. And that Fulke’s men didn’t stand a chance.”
“But why send them here?” I ask. “It wasn’t King Midas’s army that attacked,” I point out, a betrayal of course, but the fact remains.
Sail shrugs. “He must know King Midas was Fulke’s ally, that he’s now sitting on Fifth’s throne. I don’t think King Rot is happy about it.”
Unease fills me. I don’t ever want to know what it would be like to meet King Ravinger’s wrath firsthand. If he’s angry enough to send these rotten corpses here when it wasn’t even Sixth’s army that attacked his border…I don’t want to know what he would do if he ever found out that it was Midas’s plotting and scheming that initiated it.
Ahead, Digby seems to issue an order, and then some of the soldiers break off, a group going to the bodies, while the watchmen return to their posts.
Sail and I stand together and watch as the guards cut down the rotten bodies, leather wraps tied around their faces to keep out the stench. A larger group begins to dig one large hole in the snow, and then one by one, the bodies are dragged in, until the last soldier is placed inside, like seeds being buried in a grisly garden.
The guards work together, piling the snow over the dead, until all that’s left is a shallow mound of snow to mark their grave.
Once it’s done, the last of the lingering scent of their demise clears from the air. I shiver and hunker down inside my coat, just as Digby turns to see me standing there.
He makes a beeline for me, and I tense. “Brace yourself,” I mutter to Sail.
Digby stops right in front of me, sweat on his brow despite the cold. He looks at me for a long time without saying anything, and I have to try not to fidget beneath his stare as I wait for the lecture.
I know I put myself and everyone else in danger back in the city. I know it was a stupid, reckless thing to do. I know that my impulsive decision to give out money could very well have set off a bad chain of events, but I wasn’t thinking of any of that at the time. I just wanted to help. I just wanted to make those kids’ lives not quite so bleak, even if for only a moment.
Digby’s eyes flick over my face, and then his glare slips away as he sighs. “Stay in the carriage next time.”