Reva looked up, feeling the wagon begin to slow, her gaze drawn to the driver staring at something ahead. It took a moment for the object of his interest to come into view, a tall pole set alongside the road, topped with a protruding beam in the manner of a gallows. Suspended from the beam was something so mangled it took a moment for Reva to recognise it as a corpse. The legs were blackened and charred to stumps, the stomach cavity open and empty, and the head . . . The face was probably male, rendered into an ageless cracked leather mask by decomposition, but the teeth bared in a wide, frozen scream, testifying to the agony with which this man had met his end.
The driver murmured something to himself, looking away from the sight and snapping the reins to urge the oxen to a faster pace.
“The three deaths,” the Shield translated. “An agonising poison first, then burning, then disembowelment. Traditional Volarian punishment for treason, though it hasn’t been used for many years.”
Reva glanced up as another pole came into view, the corpse that dangled from it similarly abused, though this one’s eyes had been put out. She asked Ell-Nestra if this held any significance but he shrugged. “Only that someone enjoys his work, I suspect.”
By the time night fell they had counted over a hundred poles, ten for every mile they covered.
• • •
Volar came into view the following morning. Reva raised herself into a back-straining crouch to get a better view as they crested a hill a mile or so west of the Imperial capital. The road, flanked on both sides with more corpse-bearing poles, became an unerring straight line at the foot of the hill, drawing the eye to the western suburbs, consisting of tree-lined rows of one- or two-storey houses. Volar appeared to have no walls or defensive fortifications, the Shield explaining they had been swallowed up by the city’s growth centuries before.
“The largest city in the world, or so it’s said,” he told her. “Though I’ve heard there are a few in the Far West that might also claim the title.”
The height of the buildings grew as they moved deeper into Volar, plush individual dwellings giving way to close-packed streets and tenements. Mazelike avenues stretched away from the road, reminding her of Varinshold’s less salubrious districts, now of course razed to the ground.
“She wanted to burn all of this,” the Shield said softly, frowning as he gazed at the passing streets. “And we would have helped her wield the torch.”
Reva’s thoughts flashed to Lehra, as they often had during this dreadful journey. She had been one of the free fighters to emerge from the forest country south of Alltor, leading a group of a dozen other girls, all freed from the slavers’ clutches by their own agency, steeped in blood and hungry for more. Reva recalled how they had gathered around her, sinking to their knees in unbidden respect; the tale of the Blessed Lady had already flown far and seeing her in the flesh seemed a confirmation of a cherished legend, a sign that their sufferings had not been in vain. The awe in Lehra’s eyes that day had been no less bright than the moment she died.
“The barest chance is all I need,” she muttered to the Shield. “Just one chance at freedom and I’ll burn this place to the ground.”
He slumped back down, voice faint and bitter, “It was all a madwoman’s dream, my lady. And she made us mad with the sharing of it. Look at this place. How could we have thought to bring down an empire capable of crafting a city like this?”
“We crushed an army that should have crushed us,” Reva pointed out. “Their cities may be strong but they are weak, their souls blackened and sickened by ages of cruelty.”
He lifted his wrists, jangling the chains. “And yet, here we are. Brought here to die for their amusement.”
“‘Despair is a sin against the Father’s love, for it is but indulgence, whilst hope is a virtue of the stronger soul.’”
“Which one is that?”
“The Third Book, The Book of Struggle, Verse three, Trials of the Prophets.” She realised the Book of Reason had been absent from her thoughts since her capture.
• • •
