Beyond the Shadows - Brent Weeks [123]
Kylar opened his eyes but could only see from his right. His first sight was of his bare foot, bleeding, ruined. It made him light-headed. He looked up, blinking, but blinking sent forks of lightning through his left eye. Blood was filling his mouth from his smashed lips. He didn’t know if he’d swallowed or spit out the teeth, but jagged edges were all that remained.
When Kylar could finally try to make out the details, he saw that the platform was filled with Logan’s retinue, including at least a hundred of Logan’s bodyguards. Numerous other soldiers were scattered throughout the crowd, including along all three bridges, keeping a lane clear. On the far side of the platform, facing the castle, was the wheel. To one side, Logan sat in a gilded chair.
They dragged Kylar before him and a herald read out the charges. Kylar paid no attention to them. He looked only at Logan. Logan’s eyes trailed over Kylar’s wounds and he swallowed, but he didn’t avert his gaze. His eyes met Kylar’s and Kylar saw suffering as great as his own, but no wavering.
The herald finished with the charges with a question. “Yes,” Kylar said loudly. “I killed Terah Graesin, and I’d do it again.”
Logan stood and the muttering that had begun ceased instantly. “Kagé, Shadowed One, whom I knew as Kylar Stern, I owe you my life. You are a hero and I call you my friend, but you have betrayed this country and murdered her queen. I will not be a king who gives different justice to his friends. Kylar, my friend, I sentence you to hang by the wheel until you are dead.”
Kylar said nothing. He merely bowed his head to Logan. Logan sat and made no attempt to quiet the crowd that now buzzed with the confirmation of the rumors they’d heard.
The soldiers dragged Kylar to the wheel. It was slightly taller than a man and open, with only four spokes radiating from the axle, which would be behind Kylar’s back so he could face the crowds. There were blocks for his feet which adjusted at the ankle so his feet wouldn’t slip free, a thick leather belt for his waist, and two sharply-ridged bars for handholds. The rest of the wheel bristled with iron spikes: all pointed inward.
The royal guards who’d brought him from the Maw began strapping him in place.
“Are you really the Night Angel?” Kaldrosa asked quietly, fitting the leather belt around his waist.
“Yes,” Kylar said.
Kaldrosa leaned close as she strapped his wrist to the wheel and whispered, “There are two hundred fifty women here who’d be dead if you hadn’t saved us from Hu Gibbet. It’ll kill us to betray Logan, but if you—”
“Do your duty,” Kylar said. He squeezed his eyes tight shut.
“Thank you,” Kaldrosa said.
Once he was strapped in, the guards adjusted the spikes. If Kylar held himself in place, none of them would touch his body. However, as the wheel turned, he would have to support his weight by his ankles and by his hands, gripping knife-edged bars that would cut his fingers and palms to mincemeat. Once he weakened, the spikes would stab his sides, his legs, and his arms, enough to spur him to redouble his efforts, but never so deeply that they would kill. He would eventually die of blood loss, or his heart would burst.
As they finished, he lifted his gaze once more and scanned the crowd. He saw Momma K, and Count Drake. He saw the Chantry’s ambassador faintly glowing in his sight, obviously hoping that this “Night Angel” would do something magical for her to report, and the Lae’knaught ambassador, dispassionate, more studying Logan’s reaction than Kylar’s suffering. He saw the women of the Order, horrified, one crying silently. He saw faces he had known from the Warrens, tavern keepers and whores and thieves and an herbalist. He saw nobles Kylar Stern had rubbed shoulders with and been ignored by.
Then Logan gave a signal, and the wheel rattled backward and settled down, water lapping over Kylar’s feet.
Oh, yes, now Kylar remembered, there were more than two ways to die on the wheel. The wheel itself was perpendicular to the flow of the Plith; it used the river’s current to turn