Nights of Villjamur - Mark Charan Newton [5]
He merely said, “Is there any use?”
A girl screamed from the crowds gathered below, but no one bothered to look down at her except the officer, who said, “A crime of the heart, this one, eh?”
“Aren’t they all?” the prisoner replied. “That is, of the heart and not the mind?”
A harsh rain, the occasional gust of something colder, and the mood turned bellicose.
“You tell me,” the soldier growled, apparently irritated with this immediate change in weather.
Some sharp, rapid commands.
As the girl continued her wails and pleas from the base of the wall, the two archers nocked their arrows, brought their bows to docking point, then fired.
The prisoner’s skull cracked under the impact, blood spat onto the throng underneath, and he buckled forward, tumbling over the city wall, two arrows in his head. Two lengths of rope caught him halfway down.
A primitive display, a warning to everyone: Don’t mess with the Empire. State rule is absolute.
It was followed by a scream that seemed to shatter the blanket of rain.
The banshee had now announced the death.
With the execution over, the garuda extended his wings, reaching several armspans to either side, cracked his spine to stretch himself, crouched. With an immense thrust, he pushed himself high into the air, flicking rain off his quills.
He banked skyward.
Villjamur was a granite fortress. Its main access was through three consecutive gates, and there the garuda retained the advantage over any invading armies. In the center of the city, high up and pressed against the rockface, beyond a latticework of bridges and spires, was Balmacara, the vast Imperial residence, a cathedrallike construct of dark basalt and slick-glistening mica. In this weather the city seemed unreal.
The refugee encampments pitched off the Sanctuary Road were largely quiet, a few dogs roaming between makeshift tents. The Sanctuary Road was a dark scar finishing at Villjamur itself. Further out to one side, the terrain changed to vague grassland, but well-trodden verges along the road suggested how the refugees never stopped hassling passing travelers as they sought to break away from their penurious existence. Heather died back in places, extending in a dark pastel smear to the other, before fading into the distance. There was beauty there if you knew where to look.
The garuda noticed few people about at this time. No traders yet, and only one traveler, wrapped in fur, on the road leading into the city.
Back across the city.
Lanterns were being lit by citizens who perhaps had expected a brighter day. Glows of orange crept through the dreary morning, defining the shapes of elaborate windows, wide octagons, narrow arches. It had been a winter of bistros with steamed-up windows, of tundra flowers trailing down from hanging baskets, of constant plumes of smoke from chimneys, one where concealed gardens were dying, starved of sunlight, and where the statues adorning once-flamboyant balconies were now suffocating under lichen.
The guard-bird finally settled on a high wall by a disused courtyard. The ambient sound of the water on stone forced an abstract disconnection from the place that made him wonder if he had flown back in time. He turned his attention to the man hunched in furs, the one he had noticed moments earlier. A stranger, trudging through the second gate leading into the city.
The garuda watched him, unmoving, his eyes perfectly still.
There were three things that Randur Estevu hoped would mark him as someone different here in Villjamur. He didn’t always necessarily get drunk when alcohol was at hand, not like those back home. Also he listened with great concentration, or gave the illusion at least, whenever a woman spoke to him. And finally he was one of the best—if not the best—dancers he knew of, and that meant something coming from the island of Folke. There everyone learned to dance as soon as they could walk—some before that, being expected to crawl with rhythm even as babies.
Provincial charm would only add to this