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Cassandra recognizes them as they come storming into the room. She remembers the warning Sylas had given the city.
—
She’d been at the hanging. It was the first time she’d been out of the castle in weeks.
The townspeople had gathered silently on one side of the square and Cassandra tried to avoid their eyes as she stood with Delilah. She tried to stand as still as possible so that no sound or movement would betray her.
There hadn’t been a mass execution in Whitestone since the last rebellion. People had disappeared, of course, but there had been no public deaths.
But a gallows is a gallows is a gallows and everyone in the square knew it.
It was coming together in front of them. Vedmire was tossing rope over the branches until he had eight nooses swinging from the Sun Tree. Underneath them a group of men and women and one small child shivered. They were all stripped to small clothes and Sylas was tossing bundles of clothing at them.
Cassandra was fairly certain that several of them were thralled. They were swaying in place eyes fixed on Sylas. Two of them, one of the men and one of the women, looked so alike they had to be siblings. Did they need them both, she thought, it seemed like a redundant kind of horror.
Once they were all clothed Sylas scooped up a handful of white paint and slopped it through the hair of one of the men. Cassandra thought it was the butcher’s boy grown up since the last time she’d seen him.
Sylas slapped a handful of red paint through the hair of one of the women. With what was left in his hand he smeared the face and arms of one of the men. He stepped back to assess his work and then rubbed some more paint over the man’s face.
That man wasn’t under any thrall. He was probably compelled by other means, perhaps his family, Cassandra thought. He trembled and flinched under Sylas’ hand.
Further down the line Vedmire was marking the face of a burly man with grey paint and Grebin was hoisting people onto barrels and looping nooses around their necks.
The assembled crowd watched in breathless silence.
Sir Kerrion and Vedmire arduously hauled the already limp corpse of a bear to hang beside the humans who were all breathing so rapidly Cassandra could see their stomachs fluttering.
Once Sylas saw that the animal was in place he made a quick impatient hand gesture and the lieutenants went into kicking over the barrels with glee.
The costumed figures jerked and fell.
Cassandra heard one or two small sobs in the crowd quickly muffled.
The small boy in the purple shirt was the first to stop moving.
Cassandra felt bile rise in her throat but Delilah must have sensed her horror because she had stroked her thumb against Cassandra’s wrist and the nausea was replaced by tingling magic and then numb calm.
Sylas waited for a long moment before he turned to face the townspeople. He gestured at the bodies some still kicking and spasming.
“These are our enemies. Anyone matching these descriptions should be reported immediately. Anyone aiding persons matching these descriptions will be…” he grinned and let his gaze rove over the people crowded in the square, “…punished.”
—
Anders drops her to the ground as someone with long dark hair and dark leather armor and elven features scrambles through the door throwing a dagger past her and into him.
The elf dumps a healing potion into her mouth. She fights not to choke and to just let herself go limp.
When she looks up there’s a huge man, gray like Vedmere, frothing at the mouth as he runs through the door.
Then like a ghost Julius is coming through the doorway all white hair and billowing smoke and it can’t be; she knows it can’t be.
Cassandra is dizzy even lying still on the ground.
A woman with red hair, elven again, peeks around the door and points at her. Cassandra feels the wash of healing magic over her.
Another dark haired elf identical to the first except with a bow she uses to send a hail of arrows towards Anders.
And then in came a gnome in purple singing out magic into the room.
Cassandra lays still, plays dead, what she’s best at.
The fighting comes to a close, Anders dead, finally dead, and the assembled rebels turn to face her.
Cassandra hears an echoing memory, “These are our enemies.”