The Guillotine Plaza opened around Silas in bare stone and white glare.
White noon glare fell in rectangles between the surrounding buildings, leaving the execution scaffold itself in a harsh, even wash. The bell tower rose over it all, its bronze mouth dark for the moment, the ropes coiled like sleeping snakes at its base. Below, the guillotine squatted on its stained platform, the block dark with old use, gutters cut into the stone floor to carry whatever spilled away from the crowd's boots.
At his side, Kessa walked like she owned the square.
Her Crown ring caught torchlight as she lifted it, and the press of bodies peeled back by instinct. Murmurs rippled around them, then died as people recognized her face and the uniform at her shoulders. Silas stayed half a pace behind, matching his breaths to her stride, his borrowed clerk's coat plastered damp against his spine.
A faint overlay appeared at the edge of his vision as they moved into the open.
[Mission timer: 5 days, 13 hours, 22 minutes]
Six, he told himself. Call it six. People count the day they're in. Makes it sound less like a noose and more like a schedule.
Kessa cut across the last terrace aisle toward the inner rail reserved for Calder's officials and their guards. An iron bar, waist high and polished by generations of nervous hands, ran around the front of the square. She stepped up to it and hooked her thumbs into her belt like she'd done this a hundred times.
"On the rail," she said quietly, not looking at him. "Stand where they can see you're with me."
Silas took the spot she left, palms resting lightly on the cold iron. From here, he could see everything.
The scaffold. The guillotine's heavy blade waiting at the top of its runners. The lectern just off to the side, where a Crown greycoat unfurled a sheet of charges. Lines of guards flanked the stairs, shields slung, batons at their hips. Up on the stone balconies, a few archers leaned on their bows, silhouettes against the sky.
He let his gaze slide across the bell tower, the ropes, the angles of the terraces and the choke points between. He did it slowly, like a bored functionary letting his eyes wander.
Count exits. Count steel. Count where everything spills if it all goes wrong.
The spokesperson cleared his throat. The low rumble of the plaza thinned.
"By order of Regent Varis Calder," he called, voice carrying cleanly in the noon air, "this session of public reckoning is convened."
No one cheered, but the front ranks shifted forward as if pulled on a string.
The first prisoner came up the steps between two guards.
She was small for the shackles they'd given her, wrists bound in iron, pit-stained overalls hanging off sharp shoulders. Gray dust streaked the fabric and had worked into the lines of her face like another layer of age. Her eyes were open and unfocused, as if she'd walked too long in the dark to be surprised by the light.
The spokesperson unrolled the first sheet.
"Lira Daven," he called. "Registered stillstone pit-worker. Convicted of desertion, refusal of assigned shifts, and attempted escape beyond the city wall."
A beat of silence, then the crowd did what it had been trained to do. Shouts rolled up from the lower terraces, scattered words of condemnation collecting into a dull roar.
"Coward."
"Pit-rat."
"Let the blade have her."
Silas watched from the corner of his eye as the guards forced Lira to her knees. The executioner came forward, one hand on the back of her neck, pressing her down until her chin touched wood. The guillotine's runner creaked as someone above released the catch.
Lira didn't fight. Her fingers only tightened once on the edge of the block, then went slack as she let them push her down.
The bell tolled once.
The sound rolled through his chest a half-second before the blade fell. Impact cracked like a butcher's cleaver through bone; then came the thud of weight on wood, the wet slap of something rolling into the gutter. Attendants moved in with the bored efficiency of men who did this too often, dragging body and head by the ankles and hair toward the channels cut into the stone.
The smell hit him after.
Hot iron. Wet cloth. The sharp, sour note of someone losing control of their bowels.
His throat tightened without asking for permission. He swallowed twice, jaw clamped, eyes fixed on the far balcony so he wouldn't watch the attendants Work.
I've killed men in alleys and ships. I've never watched a head drop for an audience.
Beside him, Kessa didn't move. She might as well have been carved into the rail.
"Eyes open, Arlen," she murmured. "You count stillstone for the Crown. This is what it costs."
He gave the smallest nod he could manage.
If I flinch, I'm weak. If I smile, I'm theirs. Keep the poker face. Remember the rest.
The second prisoner came hard on the first's heels.
He was broad-shouldered, in a storehouse tabard that didn't sit right on his frame. One eye had swollen half-shut, and dried blood crusted at the corner of his mouth. He walked under his own power, but only because the guards dragged him forward faster than he could plant his feet.
"Brann Cole," the spokesperson announced. "Theft of Crown stillstone gear and unauthorized removal of tools from secured storage."
Some of the crowd laughed at that, the short, mean sound of people happy to see someone else get caught. A few merchants near the mid-terraces shouted louder than they needed to. Loyalty never hurt, not in public.
"Steal from the Crown, lose your head!" one of them called.
The bell tolled again.
The blade hissed down—crack, then thud.
This time Silas forced himself to watch the whole motion: the way Brann's shoulders bunched, the way his fingers clenched on the wood, the way the body kicked once after the blade hit. He logged every detail and tried not to think about how easily his own name could be read out with the wrong sheet in the greycoat's hands.
Guards moved along the front ranks of the crowd, batons tapping ribs when the chant faltered.
"Louder," one barked. "His Lordship doesn't like a quiet reckoning."
Some people jeered on cue. Others flinched and turned away. A strip of citizens in the middle just stared at their own boots, shoulders hunched, as if hoping the stone might open and swallow them.
"Up there," Kessa said under her breath.
Silas followed her glance.
On an upper terrace, behind a line of guards and a hanging Calder banner, a man sat beneath a small canopy. Dark cloth, heavier than the weather called for, shoulders relaxed in one of those studied poses that said the person had never had to give way in a crowded street. Too far to read his face. Close enough that the hair at the back of Silas's neck lifted.
"His Lordship likes to see the books balanced," Kessa said. "Consider this his welcome."
Silas looked away before the man under the canopy could decide to look back.
Two heads down. Crowd trained when to shout. Calder doesn't need to lift a knife to own this place.
Sweat beaded under his collar despite the cool air. Every instinct told him to drop his eyes, to become smaller, quieter. He forced himself to stay exactly where he was.
You're here on Crown business. Stand like it.
Attendants hauled Brann's body off the block. Workers with buckets and stiff-bristled brushes moved in, sluicing water over stained wood until it ran pink into the stone channels. The sound was almost worse than the blade—the steady scrape and splash, like someone washing dishes after a feast.
The spokesperson shuffled his papers, fingers leaving faint smears where blood had sprayed across the top sheet. He cleared his throat and reached for the next name.
The plaza noise shifted around Silas. Someone coughed. Someone else muttered a curse under their breath. A baby started crying on one of the upper terraces and was quickly shushed.
Then, a new thread slipped into the mix: the sharp, oily scent of peppered eel.
An eel vendor pushed along the aisle behind the Crown rail, tray braced on one hip. The skewers glistened with oil and spice, dripping onto the stone as she walked. Her sing-song call for buyers was half-hearted at best, the kind of noise someone made just to prove they were doing their job.
Silas let his gaze slide past her. A Crown clerk with his hands on the rail had no business staring at food when people were losing their heads in front of him.
She moved along behind the rail, boots scuffing on wet stone, then angled closer to the scaffold stairs.
The third prisoner waited there, guarded at either elbow. Younger than the others. Dust stiffening his shirt. Hands thickened by stonecutters' work. His face had that hollow, stretched look Silas had started to recognize in men who Worked too close to stillstone for too long.
The vendor passed behind him.
One of her skewers slipped from the tray.
It hit the stone by his heels with a clatter and a skitter of meat and wood. The woman bent with a small, annoyed huff, the tray wobbling as she scooped the fallen skewer up.
The prisoner staggered as if he'd been jostled. One foot came down wrong, then planted again. When he straightened, one of his wrist shackles hung a little looser than before.
By the time Silas drew his next breath, the eel vendor was already walking away, tray back on her hip.
He only saw her back: loose dark hair under a kerchief, a slight sway to her stride that made balancing the tray look effortless. The peppered-eel smell clung in the air behind her like a fingerprint.
Too close. Too calm. Nobody brushes a condemned man unless they're desperate or paid.
He could have reached sideways and caught Kessa's sleeve.
He didn't.
If it's nothing, I look like a nervous idiot. If it's something, and I bark, I hand Calder free information and get nothing for it.
He shifted his weight and kept his eyes forward.
The third prisoner came up to the block.
He stumbled once on the last step, then caught himself. His knees hit stone as the guards forced him down. The shirt he wore might once have been white; now it was the color of dust and old sweat. Stonecutters' calluses stood out along his fingers where the shackles didn't quite hide them.
The spokesperson lifted their chin, voice ringing out again.
"Garran Holt. Son of licensed mason Orlen Holt. Convicted of seditious speech, incitement to crowd unrest, and willful defacement of Crown notices and banners."
A low sound went through the terraces. Not cheering. Something closer to a groan.
A woman near the front covered her mouth with both hands and started to cry, shoulders shaking. Someone further back swore under their breath. A few of the louder regulars tried to start the usual condemnation chant, but it came out thin and disjointed.
Three heads in one noon. Even for Stoneveil, that dragged on the nerves.
Silas felt the air in the plaza tighten, like a rope being pulled a notch too far.
The bell rope still hung untouched.
The executioner stepped in behind Garran, big hands settling on his shoulders to press him down toward the block.
The loose manacle flashed in the corner of Silas's eye.
Garran moved.
In one sharp twist, he ripped his wrist free, metal scraping skin. His elbow drove back into the executioner's gut with a meaty thump. The bigger man doubled over with a gust of breath, grip breaking.
For a heartbeat, everything slowed.
The spokesperson froze mid-sentence. The nearest guards grabbed for weapons they hadn't expected to need. The crowd sucked in one collective breath.
Garran snatched the axe.
Both hands closed on the haft. Wood ground against callused palms. The executioner tried to yank it back, but he was off-balance, and Garran had the leverage of desperation.
He tore it free and took one step forward, swinging in the same motion.
The blade took the spokesperson across the neck.
Blood and parchment went up together. The greycoat's head snapped sideways and then down, papers fluttering from their hands as the body collapsed in a spray that streaked the stand and the nearest posts. The square's amplified voice of Calder's justice hit the boards like any other meat.
The executioner lay on his side, gasping and clutching his stomach, weapon gone.
The plaza screamed.
Some people turned to run and couldn't, crushed against the bodies behind them. Others just stood and stared, mouths open.
Garran was already turning.
He dragged the axe around in both hands, shoulders heaving, eyes wide and white-rimmed. Red flecked his cheeks and shirt. He faced the terraces like a man staring down a landslide.
"You don't have to kneel for this!" he shouted.
His voice cracked halfway through "kneel" and came back louder.
"Your sons don't have to die in the pits so he can eat and drink on your blood. You don't have to—"
The words were ugly and unpractised, but they hit harder than any polished speech. People on the lower terraces flinched. A few hands lifted toward him without meaning to, half-reach, half warding-off.
Silas's chest burned.
There it is. The crack. Somebody paid in skin for this gap in the script.
Lira's empty eyes. Brann's limp hands. Garran, red-faced and shaking, shouting at a city that had just watched two people die like warnings.
If they remember even one heartbeat of this, the next time Calder squeezes them, it won't feel the same.
He was already running through the next steps in his head.
Curfews. Patrols doubled. Surprise inspections at the pits and cutting houses. Random checks of books and records. Calder pulling everything tighter until something else snapped.
And somewhere under all of that, whatever passed for organized resistance here—Sparkweave or some local version—would be watching this too, taking notes.
If I lean toward whoever lit this fuse now, the Crown drops me. If I cling to Calder when this blows, I go down with him.* Pick a monster, Silas. Just not yet.*
The guards responded.
Regular guards at the base of the scaffold surged inward, shields coming up in a wall between Garran and the nearest citizens. Some of them had drawn short spears; others simply planted their boots and braced, ready to take the hit if he charged.
Above and behind them, a handful of hawk-crest knights stepped forward from where they'd been standing like ornaments against the tower.
One of them moved.
To Silas, it looked like a jump cut in a poorly spliced reel.
One blink, the knight was at the edge of the guard line, sword still sheathed. Next blink, they were on the stage, metal boots thudding on the boards, steel already half out of the scabbard.
Garran dragged the axe up for another swing.
The knight's blade finished clearing the sheath.
The cut was a single, clean line through space.
There was a wet whistling sound. Garran's shout broke off mid-word. For a surreal half-second, his body stayed standing, axe raised. Then his head separated, lifted by the force of the strike.
It turned end over end in a red arc against the pale stone of the bell tower.
Silas watched it come down.
The severed head struck the flagstones near the Crown rail with a dull, spinning thud. It rolled once, twice, then stopped with its face turned toward him. Garran's eyes were still trying to focus, his mouth still shaping the word he'd never finished.
Light drained from his gaze as Silas stared back.
Over that image, the world grayed at the edges.
A faint overlay settled into place in front of his eyes, text hanging in the air just beyond the dead man's face.
[Branch event detected.]
[Alternate faction path available.]
[Projected resolution: ???]
[Current alignment: Crown]
The plaza roared around him. Someone slammed into his back as the crowd surged, driving him against the rail until iron bit into his palms.
Beside him, Kessa sucked in a sharp breath, then let out a short, brittle laugh.
"Fast, aren't they?" she said. "Good to know the birds still remember how to fly when it matters."
Silas forced his grip to relax. Forced his shoulders to stay loose.
If that sword had been one breath slower, this square would remember a different ending.
The branch notification sat over Garran's empty stare like a cold hand on his throat.
Alternate path, unknown resolution. Same noose if I pick wrong.
He imagined stepping forward. Saying something over the dead man's last, unfinished word. Anything.
He pictured Kessa's head turning toward him in slow-surprise. Pictured half the archers on the balconies recalculating their aim.
He did not move.
Six days to decide which monster to help when it's time to break the other. And the city just learned it can bleed both ways.
Down on the scaffold, the hawk-crest knight wiped their blade with deliberate care, then slid it back into its sheath. Attendants moved in again, as if this had been just another name to scrub off the stone.
Silas watched the eel vendor vanish into the crowd, remembered the smell of pepper and oil, and filed her shape alongside the hawk knight and Garran Holt in his mental record.
Three moving parts in a machine that had finally stopped pretending it was stable.