Prologue

The prince corrected the executioner’s grip.

“Hold it properly.”

The Youngest Executioner stared at him. Rain slid from the end of the blade and darkened the earth between them.

Ekaladerhan was on his knees, barefoot, his wrists tied behind him. They had removed everything that could make obedience look natural on another man’s face. No agate. No staff. No court cloth heavy enough to announce who stood inside it. Only the formal garment remained, muddied at the hem and torn where the Senior Executioner had dragged him from the road.

Even stripped of every object of rank, he still sounded like a prince.

That was what frightened the young man most.

The Senior Executioner stood behind Ekaladerhan with one end of the rope wrapped around his fist. The Third waited near the edge of the clearing, listening to the forest as though the forest might object.

It had not objected yet.

Insects pulsed beyond the reach of sight. Water gathered on broad leaves and fell in heavy drops. Somewhere deeper among the trees, a night animal made one short cry and did not repeat it.

There was no altar in the clearing. No grave. No priest. No titleholder prepared to remember the correct words. The Youngest Executioner had attended public punishments before. A public death came dressed as law. Witnesses stood in their appointed places. Charges were spoken. The condemned was allowed to hear what meaning would be given to his body.

Here there were four men, a short blade, and an order nobody had been willing to complete with a verb.

He must not return.

The sentence had followed them from the palace. On the road it had sounded almost merciful. It did not say kill. It did not say sacrifice. It did not say take off his head and bring back what remained.

The farther they walked, the less mercy the words contained.

Ekaladerhan looked down at the young man’s hands.

“Both of them,” he said.

The Youngest Executioner realized he was holding the blade in one hand. He brought the second hand to the grip.

His right thumb would not stop trembling.

“If you miss,” Ekaladerhan said, “they will make you do it again.”

The words struck with more force than mockery would have. The prince was trying to spare him the second blow.

Or perhaps he was sparing himself.

The Youngest Executioner could not decide which possibility was worse.

He had seen Ekaladerhan before this night, though there was no reason the prince should remember him. Two rains earlier, a wall had fallen near the eastern store. Labourers blamed the drainage keepers. The drainage keepers blamed a household that had planted too close to the channel. By midday, every man with clean hands had acquired an explanation for the mud.

Ekaladerhan had arrived without ceremony. He stepped into the broken channel, lifted one collapsed length of timber with the workers and asked who had last cleared the water path. The Youngest Executioner—then only a gate assistant hoping to enter palace service—had watched a royal body become dirty before offering judgment.

He had admired him for that.

Admiration did not weaken an order. It only made obedience intimate.

“Did my father say how?” Ekaladerhan asked.

The Senior Executioner tightened the rope.

“He said you must not return.”

For the first time since they left the palace, something in Ekaladerhan’s face lost command of itself.

It lasted no longer than a breath.

The Youngest Executioner saw it because he was close enough to kill him.

Not die, the prince must have heard. Not kill my son. Not even remove him from the world.

Must not return.

A king could live inside that distance. A father could claim he had never crossed it.

Ekaladerhan looked toward the direction they had come from. The path was invisible now, swallowed by wet leaves and darkness, but the palace existed behind it. His mother existed behind it. His sleeping place, his unfinished work, the people waiting for tomorrow’s rulings—all of it remained near enough to imagine and too far to touch.

The Senior Executioner pulled once on the rope.

“Kneel.”

Ekaladerhan was already kneeling.

None of them corrected the Senior.

The Youngest Executioner raised the blade.

His shoulders resisted him. He had killed before, but never like this. A man coming at him with a spear created his own terrible permission. A condemned thief in a public court had the charges read aloud until the crowd could pretend the blade answered words.

Ekaladerhan had no weapon. The words had remained at home.

The Youngest Executioner tried to remember the instructions given before they left.

Take the western service road. Avoid the record gate. Do not stop where settlements can count you. Return before the second watch.

Nobody had told him what to do with the prince’s eyes.

Ekaladerhan lifted his face.

There was dried blood beneath one nostril. The rain had cleaned a narrow path through it. He did not beg. The young man wished he would. Begging might have made him smaller. Anger might have made him an enemy. A curse might have given the executioners something to defend themselves against.

Instead, the prince looked at the shaking blade and seemed almost sorry for the hands beneath it.

The Youngest Executioner hated him for that kindness.

He hated the Senior for standing behind the rope. He hated the Third for listening to the trees. He hated Owodo most of all for sending three men so that guilt would have nowhere singular to live.

“Why are there three of you?” Ekaladerhan asked.

No one answered.

The prince understood anyway.

One man could refuse and call the refusal conscience. Two could agree and call it conspiracy. Three made a record. Three made each man’s memory answerable to the others.

Three made escape impossible.

The Youngest Executioner raised the blade higher.

The Senior shifted behind the prince.

The movement was small. A foot finding better ground. A hand changing tension on the rope.

The young man almost lowered the weapon.

“Now,” the Senior said.

The blade came down.

At the same instant, the Third’s wooden club struck bone behind Ekaladerhan’s ear.

Ekaladerhan pitched forward.

The Youngest Executioner heard a body meet the earth. He heard his own breath tear out of him. Warm blood crossed his fingers, ran along the blade and fell in quick dark ropes beside the prince’s bound hands.

For one senseless instant, he thought the whole forest had begun bleeding.

More blood spread beneath Ekaladerhan’s head. Too much. Rain widened it, carrying red into the impressions left by knees, heels and the dragged edge of royal cloth.

The Youngest Executioner could no longer feel his thumb shaking.

He could no longer feel the blade.

Behind the fallen prince, the Third moved. Cloth tore near the Senior’s hands. The Senior said something low and urgent, but the young man’s hearing had filled with the sound of rain touching blood.

He looked at the prince.

Ekaladerhan did not move.

The order had never said death.

The earth appeared to have understood it anyway.