3
les along the gaslights of Melisande Avenue. Evening mists dripped from the sad, heavy leaves of the linden trees, while enameled carriages rattled by in the gathering dark. We were hungry, our pudgy bellies already growing tight from the short rations in the little flat where Mother had taken temporary rooms, so we stole roasted nuts from the brass-bound vending carts, the mealy warm food made all the more tasty by the seasonings of fear as we were chased away with shouts of "thief, thief!"
*
The bailiff that escorted Father up to the platform in Delator Square omitted the customary manacles -- a small courtesy, but important if only for my own dignity. The bailiff was a large man, filling his tweed tunic like a mountain fills the sky, and I thought I caught a glimmer of sympathy in his stolid expression. I stood in the middle ranks of the crowd, Bijaz's hand tight on my elbow, while Mother and my sisters waited in a rented carriage standing at the Short Street end of the square.
A clerk of the Debtor's Court read out the charges against Father, a numbing litany of legal regulation concerning usury and pledges of security and sacred honor. Father bent across the carpenter's horse nailed to the platform, the bailiff drew back a brass-bound oak stave, and in one blow, the sentence was carried out.
Even as Father's thigh bones cracked his green eyes met mine across the crowd. He flinched, blood running as he bit his lip, but Father did not cry out. Rather, he smiled through the blood. He opened his mouth to say something just as the bailiff dumped him off the platform, where the poor of the City Imperishable rushed forward, kicking and screaming, to have their way with one of the fallen wealthy.
Bijaz drew me toward Mother's carriage, working at his sutured lips with a small knife. The threads popped free, blood beading in his great, rough beard. "So ends my service," he said, "except for disposing of you."
"But Father..." I began, unsure of my words even as I said them. < previous next >