Will you be stronger, Cyrus Lythan? had asked the island’s Lion god. Will you carry their legacy?

He would. For Thanet. For her people. For her gods. His swords were not with him, but he imagined drawing them anyway. He lifted his arms, wrists crossed, and gave his vow to the city his family had ruled for generations. He offered it to the forty people imprisoned, who had refused to name the Vagrant, and were willing to die to protect his secret.

“Tomorrow, I prove myself worthy of your hope,” he whispered. “Tomorrow, I prove your faith in me is not a death sentence.”

CHAPTER 42

CYRUS

The entire square was heavily patrolled, but those patrols meant nothing to Cyrus when the bell tower had few windows and lots of shadows. A flicker of the spinel in his ring, a step into an unlit corner, and he emerged on a familiar set of stairs. Cyrus climbed to the belfry, remembering the first time he had come to this tower. It was on the night of his return to Vallessau, when he had feared his need for vengeance would make him a poor hero for the city. Mari had come to him and, with her kindness and her dedication, given him the hope he needed.

Looking down on the hanging platform, he prayed he would be the hope they needed, if they were to survive.

“The church and the Imperator will both want to revel in the murderous excess,” Thorda had reminded Cyrus prior to donning his mask and leaving for the tower. “They’ll want speeches and posturing, and we will deny them all of it. Before the pomp and circumstance, but after the prisoners arrive, I shall sound my whistle. So begins the battle. So begins your final step in becoming Thanet’s hero.”

Cyrus clung to his teacher’s confidence as the first of the prisoners arrived, escorted by soldiers toward the hanging platform. Skilled woodworkers had built it over the past two days, and if its purpose wasn’t so ghastly, it might have been impressive. Multiple beams were nailed overhead, crisscrossed so that they formed four rows deep and ten across. Forty ropes hung from the beams, awaiting their victims to climb the five steps to their doom.

The base was made up of six wide, flat pieces of wood, each held up by dozens of unseen gears and braces underneath the hollow platform. With a single pull of a lever, the bottom would drop out, and all forty would simultaneously plummet to their deaths.

If only such engineering could be used for a better purpose, Cyrus thought dryly.