"Where love's ember fades, memory's flame burns, a bittersweet testament to the transience of mortal hearts, forever bound by the threads of eternity."

— "The Five Gods and the Fox", Chapter VII: "Beyond the Ashes of Dawn"

BRITIUS groaned terribly as he stirred to the aching at the back of his head. Its daggers unsheathed and stabbed at her temples.     

 He stirred to the aching on his arse and back. He stirred to the smell of cooking and numb limbs and fingers. His mind still half asleep played a jest on him. 

 He thought of a house in the Sealands. The windows opened, letting the smell of the sea and air in, like the grey sunlight that touched everything. But what he woke to was real, not the cruel trick his mind had played on him.

 He shifted uneasily, muscles clenched like rusted hinges. His mind was still foggy and heavy, a greyness in his eyes. He felt light-headed and empty and ... sick!      

His stomach boiled suddenly with hot bile filling her throat, he rolled off to one side and retched right then and there, on their rotten leaf and dirty strewn forest floor.    

 Oh, right, he realised as he emptied his stomach, he was in the Kurgwood, and what ... his mind was slow and sluggish to recover. It only did when the voice spoke to him.

  "You are aged, yet your prowess in battle remains unwavering." Britius looked up to the focus which turned out to be the thief.     

 Suddenly heat fueled Britius' muscles his eyes caught on the glint of his sword resting by his sword. He reached for it, grabbed the hilt, and jumped to his feet, but before he could swing the thief's sword rested on his neck.  

The steel kiss was cold on his throat. He swallowed.   

  "Seven Lords be damned, if I wanted to kill you I would have done so while you slept now lower your sword." His breath caught in his throat.   

 Shit, he cursed. He had been slow, Seven Lords he was slow. His grip tightened on his sword, his jaw set. The thief shook his head slowly. A cold warning hid behind his grey eyes.   

"Try and I'll cut your head." He said to Britius pressing the blade deep enough until Britius felt the hotness of the cut, the seductive dull ache which was beginning to fade, and felt his blood from his neck. He smelled it.     

He could not die yet, not at now.     

He had an oath to fulfill and he could do that at least. With a grunt and sigh he removed his hand from the sword and sat back up against the tree trunk. The thief smiled and lowered his sword.      

The sudden sizzling sound startled them both, drawing their attention to the burnt squirrel hanging over the fire. One side of its juicy tender flesh had burnt until black, meat juices dripped into the fire.       

 "Seven Lords!" The thief yelled dropping his sword and jumping to the fire instantly. Britius released a breath he did not realize he was holding. He touched the side of his neck where the sword's edge had bitten.    

 His finger came away wet and red.    

 "Arse," Britius swore under his breath, settling back against the tree. A soft breeze whistled through the Kurgwood oaks and birches, but no birds swung in the trees and no squirrels darted across the leaf-strewn forest floor. Beyond the sound of the crackling fire and hissing meat and horses digging on the ground with their hooves and nibbling on the patches of grass, was the gurgle of a stream nearby.     

 It sounded behind him and far to his left. The pain in his skull receded quickly and soon Britius' thoughts were calm and sound once more.    

Out of the corner of his eyes, he watched the thief's horse. The black destrier was too fine of a horse for a common thief, if not stolen. But his luggage was small, befitting a thief. Britius spotted a few water skins, a sack bag, and a longbow hanging from the saddle with the quiver hanging from the beast's neck. 

  "She's mine." The thief said, breaking the silence. "I didn't steal her." He told him.       

Britius shrugged. "I don't care, but I wonder how a thief came across such a fine horse and learned how to speak properly." He told the thief as he pulled himself toward the fire. Twigs snapping, he sat down on a rock across from the thief.   

 The thief shrugged as well, his smile coy. "Could be that I'm the bastard son of a lord."   

 "Bastards don't learn swordsman skills like you do."

  "Could be that my father loved me more than any other lord would love his son and taught me swordsmanship."

  Britius snorted at that. "Could be," he agreed but he doubted his own words. Bastards in Ustela had either two choices, be sent to the army in the Shadowed Hills like the other bastards and unwanted sons and Asemon, or be discarded like waste or sold to slavery to the Eshan. Seven Lords knew those pale pricks had a craving for Ustelian slaves like the Ufral wanted to drive their sword through them from belly to back.   

 "And what about you?" The thief asked him, turning the cooked side of the squirrel over so that the red flesh faced the hungry flames. "What could a man like you have done to the king to piss him off so much to have a bounty on your head?" The thief said in a wondering voice, eyeing Britius with his grey eyes. In the flame light, they glinted like steel, cutting through him and into his soul.   

To see the sins that plagued it.

He shivered turning away from the thief's eyes to stare at the fire.   

 "It is not something I did but what I didn't." He murmured drifting off to the memory he had not faced in a long time, he shook his head shying from the memory. I have too much guilt to hold already no need to add more to it.  

 "I see." The thief answered and silence fell. The thief turned removed the squirrel from the fire and cut it for both of them. He gave one side to Britius and the other he ate. After thanking the thief, Britius feasted himself on the meat. It was saltless and dull on his tongue, but it was a feast. His last meal was the unfinished food from the inn and he's had no other than that. After cleaning the bones of the meat they tossed them aside and used their clothing to wipe off the meat juices.    

 Britius began to stand and walked to his sword lying on the ground, he bent to pick it up and started for his horse when he did. He heard the approach of footfalls behind. His hand gripped his sword tightly, ready to draw.      

He turned to the thief slowly and saw him fixing his saddle then hoist himself up the stirrups and over the horse. Britius watched him under a cautiously raised brow, his hold on his sword tight.      

The thief seemed to sense his gaze and looked at him, smiling. "You're old, those king's men are four and you are one. They will fight to you kill you like you did one of their own."     

 "They'll kill me if they catch me first," Britius told the thief as he hoisted himself onto his saddle.      

The thief laughed, his voice raspy yet sweet. "They are not far back and I would not have you killed after I did not do so myself. Come along." He said stirring the horse out the way he came through.      

All logic advised him to kill the other man and take his horse, but it was a long road ahead. Harsh too, no doubt most of the towns and villages from here still want the price of his head; forty gold crowns, having a traveling companion would do. He had been lonely since he set out of Alderth Castle.     

With a resigning sigh, he turned to the sky. He couldn't see it clearly with the thick branches of the trees hanging over him, but it was starting to grey.    

 A groan left him, he looked back down to the path and spurred his horse forward.

It was murder.
    
That was what Aalina thought when she stepped down from her carriage, and the smell of burnt, rotting flesh told her to look upwards.
     
Thousands upon thousands of poles stretched on towards the outer wall that separated the capital from the wilderness, and on each pole, there was a rotting burnt body of a woman. The skin charred black and grotesques with the ribs protruding outward and the flesh burned away from the bones.  
     
Where the flesh still clung on to the bones, were smears of black blood, died and some of it a darker shade of crimson.
      
Strands of burnt hair clung everywhere from the bodies, the feet, the arms and legs, and the head, but they were the less horrifying part of it. Those whose eyes were not picked by the crows perched on the edge of the wall rising behind the poles looked to the sky in agony. Their last thought was visible in their eyes, crying to the unseen cruel powers of the world which watched in silent pleasure as the women burned there, screamed and screamed out to the skies, but their screams went unheard.
     
The whole land beneath the poles was black, and charred, and ashes rolled across and to the sky as soft wind caressed the city.
     
Old bones, broken and shattered were scattered across the blackened land like flower petals and among them crows pecked what little flesh still clung to the fallen bones, cawing in their delight.
       
Hot bile scorched Aalina's throat, and her stomach was in a rumble, churning like an inferno. Her mouth was dry and sour and her body was still as stone.
     
You should have stayed in the castle, she thought, taking a step back, you shouldn't have come. After she saw that knight drag away that girl and heard the servants whisper about the executions, Aalina wondered what that girl had done. And when they were called to the city, the Third District of Birk, she thought it had something to do with the execution, maybe by Ricardus' laws the offender was executed in the District of his birth.
    
But she was wrong. She had been very wrong. This was not to execute a crime but to instill fear and order. Ricardus knew that his hand on the Thorn Crown was waning and the people might rebel so to keep them on a leash he did this.
     
The sight before her was just how tight his leash was and how tight he kept it.
  
With a sudden start, Aalina whirled to the approaching wheelhouses on her ride. Their creak, thud, and rattle filled the morning air, silencing the cawing of the excited crows. The air began to mingle with other smells now. Like horseflesh and perfume and sweat along with the burnt flesh and hair.
     
Leading the procession was the wheelhouse of the king. Flanked by four horsemen with lances on each side and ten or more footmen marching ahead of the four geldings pulling the wheeled monstrosity. The wood was gilded and polished unlike it shone. Marked with patterns of diamonds and circles on the smooth wood. The roof of the wheelhouse rose into a small dome with a pole in its centre where the green and red banner of the House Eedlu danced in the wind.
    
Behind the king's wheelhouse was the others of the High Houses, they too, had their banners flying in the wind. The black and gold and coiled snake biting its tail of House Wyncoll. The blue and white stag head with tree-branch antlers of House Ainter. The red and gold of House Lainchatt with its laying lion asleep. The gold and white of House Vonslai with the gauntlet and sword clasped tightly in it. Then the brown and black of House Duherd with its charging triplet wild boars.
   
They were the High Houses of Ustela that made up the House of Peers. House Wyncoll was accompanied by more guards than the royal House, as always the rivalry between the two Houses.
     
Even before Ricardus' rule and her father's and their father's, House Wyncoll had always considered itself an equal to the royal House if not its greater. If it was not wealth it was power it was not the size of the men-at-arms that each House had a handover.
    
The small victory that House Wyncoll had over House Eedlu was that the domain of House Wyncoll was larger than House Eedlu's. But it was still a small victory.
    
The approaching wheelhouses, in their creaking and groaning and rattling, looked out of place in contrast to the District of the city.
     
All around them, they were surrounded by half-ruined houses, and some were ruined entirely. They rose around them in worn stones of grey or black, leaning against each other for support, and the wood between them long rotten away or still rotting. The roofs some of broken tile or washed tile and some of ruined thatch, looked as if they could use a thatcher looking over them, but a man of the house was nowhere to be seen.
      
Within the alleys, some, Aalina caught the shift of a shadow which soon dissolved into men or women or children.
      
They looked starved as the dogs that whined and wailed between the uneven streets, sniffing at the people who lay too still on the streets with their rags greasy with dirt and grime. The flesh was pulled over their bones so that it clasped tightly on them. Mapping sharp curves of their bones and faces.
    
They looked as fragile as the thin porcelain cups which the Eshan drank their tea from.
     
The look of hunger was set in their day-clear eyes, shining bright in their depths. But they could not hold her attention for long when the sudden creak of an axle caused her to jump with a start. She turned to face the wheelhouse, House Wyncoll's, which was stopped a hair length away from her.
  
  A hair length away from being trampled by the chestnut geldings. A servant girl in a black skirts and lined with gold hurried about and pulled the wheelhouse's door open. Aalina frowned, near sneering with disgust, when the lordling Ardenor stepped out of the wheelhouse. He wore a smile that morning. A smile!
    
Aalina blinked for a moment, thinking it might be her mind playing fancies on her. Why would any smile at that? But it was not her mind but Ardenor was truly smiling.
     
His golden hair like his father's, had been cut short and fell into short locks across his face. His deep green eyes scanned the houses of the District for a moment then as if sensing her stare on him he turned to her and his smile widened into a foolish grin.
     
How Aalina wanted to skewer his head and clean the skin from it to decorate her bedchambers with it. But she didn't say that, of course. No, that would be foolish.
    
"My Lord." She said, holding her skirts as she curtsied. Ardenor returned it with a deep —almost mocking— bow.
   
"My Lady," he murmured before taking her hand and kissed it. Seven Lords, he made her skin crawl. No sooner than his lips had left her skin she wanted to scrub it off, or at least it burned and turned red and swollen. "How are you on this fine day?" He asked casually as he hooked his arm through hers and began leading her away from the poles. The guards that had been given to her, standing by the wheelhouse near one of those crumbling houses, quickly marched to place behind them along with Ardenor's guards.
     
"Quite alright, I suppose." She offered what she hoped was a smile and not a grimace, "How are you? I hear that nearly drew blood yesterday." She had heard that from one of her handmaidens of course. The young lordling had spoken poorly about another man's strength in bed and almost had a sword run through him.
     
Aalina wished the man had. That would have solved one of her problems.
    
If the mentioning it had affected him, Ardenor did not show it. He simply shrugged and reassured her before changing the subject. "It was nothing, my Lady. Nothing worrisome at least, you need not worry yourself but I hear that the House has considered your claim." He beamed then, of course, he would. Sly cunt.
   
She snorted, "Consideration? Those pompous fools are trying to gamble with me to the highest bidder and if I don't work in their odds they'll send someone to slit my throat." Aalina grumbled.
   
Normally she would not have spoken so before the lordling knowing his tongue was as loose as a woman's before the day was done his lord father would know of her words and her ears would be ringing soon. For a moment silence fell and it gave Aalina enough time to compose herself. 'A lady will not be prickly as thorns when she's spoken to.' Calanthra used to quote and Aalina seemed to need it now.
    
It had not been long since she declared for the crown and joined this game of court, but she was already weary and tired of it. All she wanted now was the Thorn Crown on her head and to stop the war with the Ufral. If it could be stopped that is. The once paved now crumbling cobble street gave into a deep slope that was lined with tall and short houses at its sides. Flanked like guard dogs.
    
Aalina found it odd. Not the unevenness of the street, Seven Lords knew how many more uneven streets were in the city. But she found it odd that the Third District of the capital was almost empty, not counting them of course. But Ardenor did not seem to notice he continued to talk after the silence.
    
"There is to be a hunt," he said with much vigor expected from a young man who loved to do nothing more than carry lances and chase game for sport and talk about women. "And Father wants you to announce our betrothal to the court when the feast begins." He added, though —Aalina noticed— he looked suddenly grim.
      
"My Lord does seem happy about it," a small smirk formed on Aalina's lips. Ardenor's eyes snapped to hers instantly as if she had said something wrong. He opened his mouth to say something but then a sound of a horn blasted the air. Seeming to come from everywhere and one-way, towards the poles. Aalina's stomach quivered with sickness.
     
Ardenor came to a slow halt. He sighed heavily ran a hand through his hair grumbled and started back towards the execution site, muttering and mumbling about some things. As soon as Ardenor was forty paces away from her a prickling feeling roused the hairs at the back of her head.
    
She turned slowly and spotted a bundle of men, watching her, standing by the mouth of an alley four houses away from where she stood. She caught the blue sheen of steel, dully and cool like blue fire. A shudder passed through her. Quickly she turned around and hurried the way she came from passing occasional glances behind her.
       
When she came to the execution site. The stench wafted over her again and her stomach clenched into knots.
        
Wheelhouses had been parked, clogging the street with their girth, and the ladies and lords climbing down from them. It was all bustle and chatter, a mesh of silks and wools. Dresses of black and blue and pink, even white. Aalina recognised none of the ladies some of the lords. Some of them had been there in the Tower of Stars when she declared for the crown, but in that throng, she could only find two.
     
Lord Ansell Caskbend of the House Vonslai. He was a thin short man with a nose too big for his face and a face so flat and leathery he was a pillar of reality, some would say. And there was Lord Joppa Terrashadow of the House Newfield. A wide man with a wide head and flat nose and big eyes that of a young girl, but there was little they did not see and their dark depths spoke of a temper. Lord Joppa was a Low House and Aalina would not have had the pleasure of knowing him if he had not forced himself between the lords who had swarmed him like flies when the audience ended.
       
He spoke highly of his grandson who was the son of his second-born son. A good lad, he said, smiling and nodding at a joke he could only hear. He seemed to think Aalina a fool, maybe she was one for even listening to him past after he informed her this grandson was sixteen. By law and customs, he was a man but by Aalina's status, he was still a boy fresh from his mother's breasts and could use a little disciplining at times.
     
Seven Lords and their graces, she was eight years his senior and the man wanted her to consider a milk-suck her husband. Though Lord Ansell did not boast as much, his boasting was of his domain how much sway he has among the other nobles, and how he could even make the Servant of the Seven bow and kiss his feet. Ha! That she would have to see to believe.
    
She stepped forward, considering talking to the lords, but then thought better of it.
     
It might raise suspicion among the other lords and she had no notion of having a bolt or a knife through her heart. She sighed bitterly, why did I come here? She grumbled to herself as she looked down her skirts. The dark blue skirts were dirty as the hem which pooled around her and absorbed everything wet and muddy she had not taken care to move her skirts over.
    
Out of the corner of her left eye, a flash of deep purple eyes and a cafe caught her eye and she turned. Her chest twisted as did her stomach, set into a rumble.
      
Far at the back of the procession of the wheelhouse was a steel cage on wheels. The iron was wrought so finely that it gave the impression it would not melt under dragonfire. The iron was wrought into the caging pattern of crisscrossing each other and inside it was a group of four girls.
      
None older than sixteen and none younger than eight and all in dirty rags and torn even stained with blood. The bare skin over their arms held red welts where the whip had struck. Even looking at them made Aalina feel as if the whip was striking at her.
     
Then something clicked in her mind. She looked into the girl's eyes. All of them were Asemon. Eyes of darkest blue or green or even gold or silver or purple. At the shift of the wind bone-scrapping floor, she turned to the poles. All of them the dead there were women. Maybe it was because she had the notion that it was murder when she first looked at it.
     
She was a woman herself she could not bear to see another in pain. Maybe she could ignore it but this...this went far beyond simple beatings and lashing.
     
They were burning Asemon women, but for what?
     
Somehow Aalina thought that she should know. She had something in her belly that she should know why the women were being burned, but memory did not stir.
     
When the unoiled hinges of the wheeled cage swung open. Wailing took the morning air frightening the crows into the air. She saw one of the guards, donned in bright green chelsed armour and a blood-red cloak, pull the wailing girl roughly out of the cage and throw her down. She tried to crawl away, but the kick in her ribs sent her rolling towards them. She saw red.
   
Thick crimson blood coated the girl's mouth and nose. Her body shook with silent cries. Aalina looked to the ladies and lords in disbelief. They were not even paying attention, ignoring it as if it wasn't there. And she caught a few which she eyed with disgust, who were watching the knight kick the girl, over and over, and were chuckling and laughing in low voices.
    
At its slap of armour boot meeting ribs and flesh Aalina's felt jumped and she with it. It felt like she would jump out of it.
      
The guard kicked and kicked and kicked until another intervened, pushing him away roughly almost sending him down. Aalina could not see who it was. He had his back towards her and all she could see was that was tall and lean with long raven black hair tied to a tail upon her head.
     
The girl on the ground had stopped moving. With a tightness in her heart, Aalina thought she was dead, but then she noticed the slow rising and falling of the girl's body.
     
"She's alive." She whispered to herself with sighed relief. That was no way to treat a child, no matter her crime. Ricardus had left the knights of the kingdom to abuse their power and bully the people and that sickened her to no end. She could hardly wait for the day when his head would be mounted on a spike on the walls of Thorn Castle.
      
The guards were still...arguing it seems. Aalina guessed so over the gestures they made. Raises first, pushing and pointing. Picking her skirts, she wore her determined yet cold face and marched towards the knights and the girl.
     
If this was Ricardus' way of leashing the common folk into not rebelling then she would put an end to it there and then.
     
She crossed the distance between herself and the arguing armoured me and dank onto the blood-sleek cobble ground, just beside the girl.
    
Her breathing was slow and hollow as if fighting to keep it in her lungs. Aalina's heartbeat was in her throat, hands shaking. With fury or fear? She didn't know. She turned the girl over on her back and...stared. The girl had stopped breathing.
    
Aalina could only stare at her.
    
She looked small. No less than nine or eight years. Her sound face was ruined, her small nose broken and blood still oozed slowly from it. The eyes had sunk in and dark circles formed around them. Her lips were broken and slowly and they too seemed drawn back from the mouth showing the red teeth. Still fresh with blood.
    
She had choked on her blood. That was no way to die, better a deep killing stab in the heart or the throat instead of the slow struggling death she had.
    
He's murdering them. Aalina thought, tears swarming her eyes as memories of that night flooded her. She balled her fists hard and clenched tighter still. The picture of it was still fresh in her mind. It was not always the Great Hall filled with the dead or the corridors that haunted her dreams. But what she had witnessed in the nursery of Bellbroke Keep.
     
The scent of blood was heavy, she could still taste it. Methahaehr laid over the cradle, the low burning candles played on her corpse, and her arms were slung protectively over the child in the cradle. Ten arrows made their home in her body. Two at her neck and the rest at the back. The killing one had plunged so deep that it had pierced through the chest and blood still ran from its dark tip. Her eyes were filled with horror and pain, fear and so many emotions that were silenced in an instant.
     
They stared at her, standing behind the curtains of the nursery. Too frightened to move, to scream, to do anything and she had watched.
    
It's all your fault! The words sounded ghostly at the back of her mind but she knew them to be true. In the cradle laid the small body, bloodied and dead, of her baby brother. A week shy from marking his third week. His chest was red. Redder than anything she had ever seen, redder than wine. That's where that cruel twisted knife had been driven through. Over and over and over again, the sickening sound of a blade unsheathing from flesh only to kiss it again was music in her ears. A sound that kept her awake on some nights or most of them when they were at their worst.
      
"...I was just doing as commanded, my Lord." The voice said with so much arrogance that it pulled Aalina out of her trance. Her gaze snapped up to the arguing men a step away from her. She narrowed her eyes fists clenching tighter as she rose, her whole body shifting.
    
She unconsciously felt for the hilt of a sword she wasn't wearing. Her jaw was set and fury threatened to consume her.
     
"Were your commands to kick a child to her death?" Her voice sounded cold even to herself. She was surprised that she could even muster it, but all the same, she kept it so. Silence wakened and held as the men turned to her. Years ago when she used to be a girl she would have flinched under those hard stares but now they only fueled her with more fury.
     
The two men were not of the same age. Aalina didn't know how she could tell but she knew. The black-haired man with violet eyes, the man she had seen before in the corridor, looked the senior. Though there was naught that told her so. Not even a beard, there was only the shadow of it over his lips. A mustache. And the other seemed the youth. If he was older than sixteen she would have argued he was not. But his handsome face argued with that sentiment.
     
Most of his face was hidden by a helmet and all she could see were his hazel eyes, short nose, and small mouth. The other man was neither handsome nor beautiful but he was not ugly too. He was just well made with the dark long hair tied and falling on his shoulders. Purple eyes, a crooked nose that had been broken once, and white scars, three, marking his face.
    
One ran over his left eye the other ran over his nose and one, which looked like a deep wound, ran across his temple to his neck.
    
Aalina worked her mouth into a sneer and opened it to ask once more, but the younger lad spoke up first.
     
"King's orders, my Lady, and no one is greater than the king." His voice was still cold, but there was pride in his words and a glint of madness and...pleasure in his eyes.
      
The other man sniffed but said nothing. Aalina eyed them both barely keeping her anger on a leash.
      
"And were the king's orders to beat up girls and tie them to stakes to burn?"
        
"The king's orders," the purple-eyed man began in a low voice, "were to gather all Asemon women for execution. As a crime for attempted murder by another Asemon Ela Featherich against the king." He spoke the phrase bitterly as if it was poison to his tongue as well as they were in her ears. That must be one of the new laws that Ricardus had enforced two years after the Thorn Crown was his.
    
Aalina heard once, but it was a rumour, that Asemon women had Awakened in the Great Hall during a feast and almost killed the king. Aalina wished she had, but then she wanted to be the one who cut him up and let him bleed. The worst part of such an event enabled Ricardus to exact his hatred for Asemon women, he used the Awakening as a catalyst to ban Asemon women.
    
He thought that only Asemon men were fit to live as Asemon and women were only witches who deserved to burn. But it was all just a rumour, she thought.
    
"To try to stop the king's justice and order is to be a traitor to the realm and the crown." A man muttered from behind drawing all their attention. They turned to the man who stood three paces away from them.
    
" Lord Gobert," the men behind Aalina murmured and bowed while she did a stiff curtsey. Lord Gobert paid no heed to it if he noticed that it.
      
He was a short, stout man with a large oval head and face and small nose with thick lips and small eyes, but there was little they did not see. Or so she guessed.
     
He gave a slight nod to them all and turned to eye Aalina with those deep dark depths of his. His lips pressed into a line.
     
"It is a great offense to try and hinder the king's justice one paid for in hanging or beheading." Lord Gobert said in a flat tone. "It would be a shame to lose you...princess after we had just learned of your return." The man smiled then and a chill passed through Aalina, freezing her spine. The man seemed worse than Lord Conan. Maybe the other was a rattlesnake but Lord Gobert was a chameleon in the body of a snake.
     
"And what meaning do your words carry, my Lord" Aalina snarled, a look of surprise passed the small-nosed man then he smiled, another snake smile.
       
"They carry much meaning as they should." He told her curtly and turned to the men behind her. "Carry on...quickly if you would. The House is to gather soon." The man told them and turned to Aalina with a frown before turning away and strode to where the other noblemen were standing. Only after he left she realized she did not know his House. Damn! That was the second wrong step she had taken. If the man was of a High House then she would have to watch every shift of the shadows and sleep with a knife under her pillow but if he was a Low House....well there was still danger to it but not as much as the one of a High House.
      
"Well be best get on with it." The younger of the men behind her grumbled and the women in the iron cage started whimpering. Aalina whirled around with a glare when she stepped forward the other man with the purple eyes stood in her way. Towering over her by three meters, like a mountain.
     
"Move out of my way." Aalina hissed at him, her voice coming at the back of her throat like a growl.
      
The man frowned at her and shook his head slowly muttering, "Women are not but trouble," more to himself than her, but he did not move a breath from where he stood. Aalina tried to go around him but he stepped in her way still.
     
She caught a glimpse of the other knight and more pulling the reluctant girls out of the cage. They wailed loudly then from somewhere in the District a brat began to wail at the top of its lungs. At the sound of grumbling and groaning, she whipped around and caught on the knights beating people out of their houses with whips and wickers and a group of three was escorting a dirty, thin man in rags towards the platform of wood that had been placed before the poles.
      
Perched atop the roofs of the houses surrounding them, crows watched eagerly, waiting for the feast. The smell of rotten burnt flesh and hair and blood hung heavily in the air.
    
Aalina's heart picked up. She tried bolting towards the people being beaten out of their houses, but an iron grip held her in place.
    
Her gaze snapped to the man holding her, it was still the purple-eyed man.
     
"Unhand me!" She hissed more loudly than she had intended.
      
"You're trembling, my Lady." The nerve of the men! But he spoke truly. Her whole body was trembling her bones shaking, her teeth clattering and the back of her skull pounding came just like the beat of her heart. Tears filled her vision blurring it, her throat closed.
      
There was shrieking and wailing and groaning and screaming. Her eyes snapped to the poles. The dead carcasses were untied and they dropped to the ground into a heap of dust and the girls were pulled up and tied to where the others had been tied. The people of the District stood behind the nobles who were still chattering, carelessly, among themselves.
     
On the platform stood the man who had been escorted by the other group of knights. His hand fell in curls across his dirty face and was greasy like his clothes. He was weeping, Aalina realised when he tried to run the knights ran a sword through his knee and forced him onto the platform.
   
Another knight stepped forward carrying a torch in his hands and some black liquid. The knight sprayed it on the weeping girls, and Aalina's heart clenched.
    
The man was the town crier, she realised when he began in his high-pitched pained voice but Aalina could not hear it over the beat of her own heart and pulse.
     
She turned to the man holding her, trying to wrench her arm free from it but it dug into her skin.
      
"Please..." she heard herself plead as she continued to try, her burned with a furious heat. "Please!" She cried when the crier finished his speech and a bag of coins was thrown at his feet as he was hauled away. A heavy silence settled. Out of the corner of her eye, Aalina caught a glimpse of Ricardus watching her with an amused smile. His eyes twinkled with it. She shook her head slowly as he turned away from her and nodded to the knight holding the torch.
     
The knight raised it and like wildfire, the girls burst into hungry flames. Their screams filled the air, and crows cawed and cawed their song in delight. Aalina's stomach turned, and food rose to her throat. When the grip freed her she dropped to the ground, her knees grazed on the hard cobble. The noblemen and women watched with cold eyes some with amusement and others laughed. The knights stood stoical at the sides waiting for orders. The girl's screams filled the air. The crows cawed from their perches at the rooftops.
      
Bile filled her mouth and Aalina retched her entrail empty.