Not while the king and the others were held in cells below my feet.
“Take me to Lady Apollonia,” I said to the sergeant standing guard over the desk.
“Has that been authorized by the governors? I mean to say, no offense, but I’ve orders not to allow the prisoners access to visitors. Except when authorized.”
“Would I be here if it wasn’t?”
“Suppose not.” The unclear balance of power worked to my advantage this time, but I would have to consider, in future, where I would require the permissions of an ordinary citizen, and where I would walk as an assumed leader. I almost laughed—a year ago I would never have presumed I would be considered an exception to any rule, law, or polite suggestion. “All right, Cortland, you take her down there.”
Lady Apollonia was held apart from the men; the Reformist army guards running the place kept up the tradition of male and female wards, despite only having the handful of prisoners. I was familiar with the cells, having spent an uncomfortable day in their damp, close confines a year before. I couldn’t sneak a blanket out of the communal storerooms without someone asking what I was doing, but I had a pocketful of brown bread and an apple.
Polly sat on the floor in the corner of her cell, posture as regal as when she had received us in the parlor at Westland Hall. She still wore the blue-and-gold suit; it was stained with mud along the hem, and her hat was missing.
The guard, Cortland, edged back but didn’t leave. “You needn’t wait,” I said. “I can find my own way out.”
“I should stay,” he replied. I shrugged. If he was going to stop me from giving Polly food, so be it. I reminded myself that she wouldn’t have done as much for me.
“I thought I wasn’t to be permitted visitors,” she said pertly, though she didn’t stand.
“I’m allowed a bit of leeway,” I said to Polly, ignoring the guard’s shadow behind me.
“Ah, and so power corrupts already,” Polly said, but without the bitterness I had expected. I offered her the food. She stood and crossed the cell in three graceful strides, accepting the bread and wrapping it in a corner of her blanket. “Forgive me, but I fear I may be hungrier before I am relieved of that concern.”
“So you believe you’re for the gallows, then?”
“Is there any doubt?” She watched me with clear eyes. “There is, then. I hadn’t held out much hope. Despite you keeping your head.”
“It’s hardly a matter of tit for tat,” I said. “My head wasn’t payment for yours.”
“No, I hadn’t expected that.”
I waited, but Polly didn’t offer what she had expected, if anything. “They’re going to try you all individually.”
“So we drag out this torture longer, very clever.”
“I thought you’d be pleased to learn you’re likely to keep your head.”
“Am I?”
“If they’d wanted it that badly they could have voted for it already.” I paused, not sure what I had expected. Gratitude? That would have been foolish, and Polly didn’t know—might never know—I had spoken for her. “Tell me,” I finally said, “if you were freed, where would you go? What would you do? You, your father, the others.”
“I can’t speak for them,” Polly said with a shrug.
“You must understand,” I said, frustration building, “that you do speak for them. At least… would they foment insurrection again, do you think?”
“I couldn’t say.” She cut off my impending retort with a flick of her wrist. “But I doubt it. Your new system will doubtless deprive us of our ability to do so. As for me? I suppose I actually would go to West Serafe this time, live in exile. I certainly wouldn’t want to live here any longer.”
I sighed. I wanted something, some inkling of remorse from her, a hint that she saw the errors she had made, but I had to accept that, as she stood before me in a stained, resplendent Royalist blue suit, she had in her estimation made no errors. Lady Apollonia was not going to apologize. She had nothing to apologize for.
I turned to leave.
“Thank you.” Her voice was clipped, polite but terse, but I detected a glint of honest gratitude.
I turned back. “You’re welcome,” I said. “I—I have no reason to want you to suffer,” I added.
“I know,” Polly replied. “Despite everything else, I do know that.” She gave me a long, strange look. “I assume you did something. That you had some hand in this small bit of clemency.”
“I did,” I replied simply.
“I thought you would.” She shrugged, and sat down again, rolling her apple from one hand to the other. “That, if nothing else, you would be useful.”
“Useful?”
“Far more useful alive.” She tossed her apple in the air and caught it. “I find I’m hungry after all. Please do leave me to my luncheon?”
I swallowed, hard, and beckoned Cortland to lead me out of the cells. Of course—Polly speaking on my behalf, saving me from the noose, hadn’t been in kindness. She had read me well enough to know I was a better chance at leniency for her than even her brother was. I wanted to be angry, but strangely, I wasn’t. We both played our hands and we were both still alive. What was there to begrudge any longer?
58
THE TRIALS COMMENCED IMMEDIATELY, UNDER A COURT SYSTEM enacted to imitate the old Galatine judiciary but newly staffed with elected, not noble, judges and fitted out with juries levied from the common people of Galitha City. I had no part to play on that stage any longer, unless someone called me as a witness, which I very much hoped no one would. I was tired. I didn’t want to see anyone else dead, even if it was lawful and right, and I most certainly didn’t want to be a part of condemning anyone. Even by telling the truth. I preferred to remain silent.
Instead, I began to search the city for my friends. Alice, Emmi, and Lieta had all worked for the Reformists in the main compound when I had last been there, but the city was turned inside out as the bulk of the Reformist army set up encampments around and in it. Wounded poured into the hospital within the city, the storehouses were overwhelmed with requests, and already tensions strained between the city’s Red Cap main force and the mixed group of Reformists who arrived with our army. A brawl broke out within a day of victory, several of Niko’s officers picking a fight with noble officers from the Sixth Regiment.
After a few rabbit trails leading me to defunct addresses and a burned-out block of the quarter our shop had been in, I finally found Alice. She was still sewing shirts, set up with a small company of seamstresses and tailors to serve the army in what had been an upscale haberdashery. I saw her before I entered the building; she sat cross-legged on a table pulled next to a large window that had somehow survived all the fighting intact. In the wide swath of sunlight, she rapidly stitched a hem into a shirttail.
“I don’t suppose you have any of your cousin’s burned scones with you?” I asked as I walked inside.
Alice started, dropping the shirt and jumping off the table with a heavy thud. “Sophie!” She gathered me into an uncharacteristically enthusiastic embrace. “I heard you were captured, but then I heard you were all right, and then my sister said she saw you in Fountain Square, and—oh, this is a relief.”