The Multitude, стр. 79
“Bounce the ball back. Didn’t your parents ever teach you how to play a game?”
The thing had turned to crystal. Despite arms turned to jelly, he somehow managed to get it back in her hands.
“I have one condition,” she said.
He cringed.
“Don’t worry. I’m letting you off easy, although even considering suicide is a great sin. Do you remember how I gave dreams to two witnesses so they’d remember seeing a murder?”
“You did that?”
“Of course. Gabriella lost control of this game long before you were ever born. You can’t imagine how many dreams I’ve had to plant in her head to keep her on track.”
She tossed the ball to him. This time, it changed into a globe. The markings seemed like a child’s handiwork—crayoned outlines of green continents and blue oceans, with the coloring straying over the lines in places. Names had been scrawled beneath oddly shaped territories where the United States should have been. Sanctimonia and Virtus filled much of the area where Texas belonged.
“Brewster will confess to Carla’s murder and live in solitary confinement without appeal. A scribe needs peace to write a proper gospel. That’s my condition.”
Just as he feared, she’d pulled the rug out from beneath him.
He closed his eyes. Counted to five. Reopened them.
Dream or real, she remained on the bench across the path, waiting for an answer.
“How exactly does that get me closer to Carla and Maynya?”
“Because you’ll be Quintus. Sometimes you’ll dream about being a man in jail.”
“And during these dreams?”
“You’ll be a happy man, omniscient, fully aware of your life with Carla and Maynya. Think of it as walking the earth with heaven in your pocket. Carla and Maynya are heaven to you, aren’t they?”
“They’re everything.”
Asura leveled a steady gaze on him. “Do you agree to my condition?”
Yes or no? Up or down? Of course he’d agree. He nodded.
The globe transformed into Albus’s head, grinning up at him.
He bobbled it to the path.
“My angels will help when they can,” Asura said, “but don’t delude yourself into thinking you’re out of danger. The devil never sleeps.”
The king’s head reformed into a red trident, wriggling along the flagstone like a snake.
CHAPTER 35
An eye-blink later
Quintus grabbed one of the broken tent’s remaining posts to prevent a wave of dizziness from toppling him to his knees. A hole in his memory had swallowed whatever happened from the moment his brother exploded in a white puff. He must have blacked out. Perhaps the beam struck him a glancing blow before scattering the pillar of salt that had once been King Albus.
The swiftness and finality with which fate—or the heavens?—obliterated Albus set Quintus’s hands trembling. The world had changed in mysterious ways. Where had the bound woman on the altar gone? Why was he still breathing? He’d thrown away his life in a futile attempt to stab his own kin and perhaps spare the woman from certain death, knowing full well the soldiers would take him down.
Somehow, he’d survived, and the struggling redhead had disappeared.
A clamor rose off to the right, beneath a torn fold of tent where sunlight now flooded its golden rays onto the woman who’d stolen his heart. His tremble eased, giving way to tense muscles and a quickened pulse.
Orelea pressed a knife against Maynya’s throat.
“Cut the witch up!” someone shouted.
“Burn her at the stake!” cried another.
“No,” Orelea hissed. “The king should decide her fate! What say you, Quintus?”
Everyone turned to him for direction. With pinched faces and clenched fists, shouts of “Tell us the verdict,” and “We’ll put her down,” they left little doubt what answer they wanted to hear.
Distracted by emotions stoked to a bonfire, he couldn’t at first understand why a sister who had habitually treated him with disdain would now grant him the right to choose Maynya’s life or death. The vague realization he’d inherited power came slowly. “Release her!” Panic spurred his cry, not entitlement.
“No! She’s a witch!” Orelea held her knife so tight against Maynya’s throat a thin line of blood trickled down to stain the upper bodice of the widowed bride’s wedding dress. Always a woman who disregarded those wishes not to her liking, his sister had reverted to form at the worst possible time.
In contrast to Orelea’s crazed expression, Maynya maintained a singular focus on Quintus, gazing at him not with fear in her eyes but a pressed-lip purpose he couldn’t decipher.
He glanced around the tent, desperate to find an ally. The knife in his hand would do little good against an angry throng bent on vengeance. Whatever authority he now possessed hadn’t slowed Orelea from taking matters into her own hands. The others revealed similar disregard in their scowls. Having been away for several years, he’d lost whatever bond he might once have had with these people.
Did Acanthus remember the comradeship they’d shared during boar hunts back in happier times? The sandy-haired soldier averted his gaze.
Or Titus…surely, he—
No. This once fellow carouser scalded him with burning eyes. Whatever lingering friendliness he possessed had disappeared into the deepening furrows of his forehead.
Quintus flinched. If his friends offered no support, what help could he expect from an enemy? His fist-clenched rivals seemed ready to drag him next to Maynya and skin them together.
The dark-bearded brute, Phineas, moved a hand to the sword sheathed at his side. This furious man would no doubt rally the soldiers to—
Wait. Quintus came up with an idea. He squared himself and spoke in as regal a tone as possible under the heart-pounding circumstances. “Phineas, we’d like a word with you.”
Albus’s right-hand man marched over with head raised high, already campaigning in posture for the throne he coveted. “Who are you to make commands? Your brother held you in contempt.”
Quintus willed himself to stop shaking as he draped an arm over Phineas’s caped shoulders and led him around the altar, away from the others, where they could speak with some privacy. “At least half this kingdom will follow my command, friend. Tell me now. Wouldn’t you want them to