“Highmage,” a guard said. “It is time to stand for your sentencing.”
When she re-entered Leon’s Hall, the great chamber was eerily quiet, despite being full to bursting with mages, politicians, press, and guards. Archmage Bringham had tears in his eyes. Archmage Justice Capernai stood to deliver the verdict without preamble:
“Highmage Sciona Freynan, by unanimous vote of the High Magistry, you are hereby sentenced to death.”
Unanimous.
Bringham wouldn’t meet her eyes. Neither would Gamwen. They had their own careers to think about, after all.
A desk stood before Sciona as it had the day she tested into the High Magistry. Only now, there was no spellograph, no paper, just a copy of the Leonid and a single vial of clear liquid. It was poison. Like Sabernyn, she would drink it and fall into a sleep from which she would not wake. She had never given much thought to how the tidy, bloodless method of execution served to protect the Magistry’s veneer of civility. Even when they unanimously willed a death, they refused to see it for the violent thing it was.
“Before you is a vial of sleeping death,” Archmage Justice Capernai said and notably skipped over the requisite explanation of the numbing effect the drug would have on Sciona’s body before she died. “Drink, Sciona Freynan.”
Four guards and a medical alchemist stood close around Sciona, ready to seize her and force the poison down her throat if she refused.
She grabbed the vial and knocked its contents back in a single gulp. At first, it didn’t leave any impression except a foul chemical taste on her tongue. But within a minute, she knew the numbness would set in, followed by unconsciousness and the gradual slowing of her heart.
She was supposed to pick up the Leonid now and read from it to show God her piety and repentance. She left the book where it was as she stepped back from the desk to glare up at the archmages.
“Knowing that these are your last moments alive, do you have any final words for your family or for the Council?” Orynhel asked.
Sciona closed her eyes and drew in a breath to speak. That was when she heard the rumbling above—faint but growing louder in the waiting silence. Her eyes snapped open.
Thomil.
God bless Thomil! He had hated—or loved—Sciona enough to finish her last spell. The laugh started low in Sciona’s stomach and slowly grew to shake her whole body.
“Something amuses you, Miss Freynan?” Orynhel demanded.
Sciona didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. All around, the shaking had intensified as a historically massive spell roared into action.
“What is that?” Archmage Duris asked.
“That is my final word, Archmage,” Sciona said as God’s Light ignited Leon’s Hall.
THOMIL HADN’T WANTED to activate Sciona’s last spell.
“I’d rather die,” had been his first reaction, at which Sciona had blinked her spring green eyes in surprise.
“That’s… not the response I was expecting.”
“Well, what were you expecting?” he demanded, then darted a glance to the widow’s sitting room doorway for a moment, not wanting Carra to overhear the conversation. It looked like she had already headed to bed in the spare room, but he lowered his voice anyway. “Do you understand what you’re asking me to do?”
“I think I do.” Sciona studied Thomil’s face in confusion. “I think I’m asking you to take your revenge.”
“Using the same magic that killed my people?”
“You helped me compose the spell! Honestly, how is hitting the activation key any different from writing the damn thing?”
“How is sharpening a stick different from ramming it through a man’s belly?”
“Alright, I understand what you’re saying, but—”
“I don’t think you do understand. If I do this, I’ll be a murderer. I’ll be just like…” Thomil swallowed the rest of the thought, realizing how it would sound. But Sciona had already caught the implication.
“Like me?” she raised her eyebrows. “A monster?”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Well, I should hope not!” She laughed dryly. “You have a long way to go yet before you’re half the monster I am.”
Thomil almost laughed, too. But he couldn’t, not under the weight of what she was asking him to do.
“I’m sorry.” Sciona’s smile faded. “I shouldn’t joke. But Thomil, you can’t possibly think that this plan is comparable to what the High Magistry has done to your people. What I’ve done. It’s not the same, or I wouldn’t be asking you to do it.”
“How is it not the same?”
“Because this is genuinely what the Magistry deserves. You’ll be an agent of justice.”
“I’ll be an affront to my ancestors.”
Sciona shook her head. “Thomil, you were a hunter. You killed game. As much as you needed to survive, right?”
“Yes?”
“And if another tribe attacked yours, you’d fight? You’d kill them if you had to?”
“Yes.”
“Killing for luxury is Tiranish. Killing to survive… isn’t that the Kwen thing to do?”
Thomil considered her words for a moment, frowning deeply. “Maybe,” he conceded. “Maybe I can logically say that this is the right thing to do.” Maybe logic and ethics weren’t Thomil’s real problem. Maybe it was all far more selfish than that. “It’s just that…”
Renthorn, Tanrel, and the archmages won’t be the only ones in the coil, he couldn’t bear to say, you’ll be there, too. Instead, he swallowed hard and skipped to the next concern gnawing at his conscience.
“This isn’t just about me. If I do this, I’ll be killed, and Carra will have no one. Worse, when this is traced back to me—Hell, even if it’s not properly traced back to me—the Kwen will be blamed. You know they will.”
He had the mage there. She hadn’t thought of that. Of course, she hadn’t.
“Well…” She shook her head. “And then what? What could be worse than what this city is already doing to your people?”
“I didn’t think you lacked imagination.”
Sciona didn’t. Her shoulders dropped. “Damn it.”
“What?”
“I hate how often you’re right, you know that?”
“Me too.” More than anything, Thomil hated watching that jewel-green gleam dim with his encroaching cynicism, a meadow slowly freezing over. Just once, he wished Sciona’s enthusiasm could win out. But Tiran’s eternal summers were bought with the blood of those who lived in the cold beyond. And Thomil and Sciona both understood that too well to retreat into the sunshine of denial.
“I really can’t ask you to do this, can I?” she whispered.
Thomil shook his head.
“I’m still going to leave the spellograph here in case you change your mind. But I want you to know that whatever you decide, it’s alright.”
“Alright?” Thomil repeated, sure he must have heard wrong. “But this… all this work you put in… You’re content with it all coming to nothing?” It didn’t seem like Sciona at all. Thomil had voiced his misgivings expecting a fight to the bloody finish, not agreement.