Chapter 102: Hakimi is dead! It’s us next!

The questions circulated among neighbors, over counters and market stalls throughout the entire day.

"I heard that Hakimi was going to confess today?"

"That’s what they say."

"Right in the square, according to them."

"Will you go? I don’t think so. This is definitely some joke."

Nobody could believe it, but everybody talked about it. People stated with all certainty that they wouldn’t attend, that it was nonsense and gossip that grew to proportions it didn’t deserve, but by the afternoon people gathered on their own despite all their protests.

"There is news," a baker, who stood at his counter near the square, looked through the flour on his hands and turned to see the crowd in front of the shop.

"We have heard about it since the morning," the neighbor crossed his arms and leaned to the entrance. "Half of my customers today were talking only about that."

"Do you really believe in that? Hakimi Morrow coming to confess to all of us?"

"The man does not confess, especially not without a sword in his throat."

They both laughed uncomfortably and stayed where they were, in the doorway, gazing at the crowd.

In the middle of the square stood a wooden platform which had been constructed against the wall of the nearest building. Despite being erected rather hastily, it looked solid enough to bear some weight, having no signs of weathering due to its relatively fresh color.

People were gathered around this platform in such numbers that many of them wore hoods and big-brimmed hats even on a sunny day, lowering their voices as if they tried to prevent something from coming into existence by speaking loudly. The city guards, who were supposed to control the situation, could give no answer to any questions except that the Duke had ordered them to be there.

"What would the Duke want with that platform in the square?"

"Maybe because he knows about what is going on there."

The temperature kept rising, making the sun move toward its highest point, burning through people’s heads, making beads of sweat to appear on their foreheads and necks and reducing their patience as they waited without any visible reason. Some young men who came there for some kind of amusement started to speak loudly and discontentedly among themselves.

"Told you. It’s all a joke."

"Wasted afternoon, staying here baking in the sun for nothing."

"I don’t want to stay here any longer. They’ll inform me if something happens."

People began moving away from the square to leave it.

Then a man near the front shouted, arm shooting up, finger pointed hard toward the stage. "Look! Someone’s climbing up there!"

Every head turned at once, the grumbling dying mid-sentence.

A figure in black climbed onto the stage from the side, hood pulled low enough to swallow the face completely, and crossed slow, deliberate steps to the very center, turning at last to face the crowd stretched out below.

The noise died instantly, swallowed whole by a silence thick enough to feel.

Somewhere near the middle of the crowd, a young woman with red hair went completely still, breath caught halfway in her chest, eyes locked on the stage without blinking.

The figure lifted its head, scanning the sea of faces slowly, one side of the crowd to the other, and a gloved hand rose to push the hood back at last.

"I am—"

The word barely left his mouth before another shape dropped down hard from the rooftop directly behind him, landing in a low crouch, a sword already gripped tight in one fist, blade catching the sun for half a second before it moved.

Boots slammed against the stage floor, and the new figure surged forward in one clean, brutal motion, driving the blade straight through the cloaked man’s back, the tip bursting clean out through his chest in a spray of red.

He dropped to his knees.

For one long, suspended moment, nobody in the crowd understood what they’d just watched happen right in front of them. Then the screaming started, first from somewhere near the stage, then spreading outward in every direction like fire catching dry grass.

The attacker released the hilt, letting the blade stay buried where it was, and stepped back, gaze dropping briefly to the kneeling figure now slumped forward, blood already pooling dark beneath him.

"I gave you exactly what you wanted," he muttered, voice low and bored. Then he turned, walking towards the edge of the stage, and less than a second later a box at the corner of the platform exploded in a cloud of dark smoke that obscured everything.

"Hakimi is dead! It’s us next!" the man in the front screamed as loud as he could, and the crowd scattered in fear and panic in every possible direction. Guards ran after the attacker, screaming at the top of their voices, brandishing their swords and giving orders but no one listened to them anymore. Other guards tried desperately to hold back the masses so that they wouldn’t step on each other but in vain – bodies crashed into each other, some fell on others and there was the sharp cry of a frightened child against the general noise.

Near the edge of the square, a carriage fell over with produce spilling all over the stones while a merchant’s stall fell because of the crowds that pushed against it, causing wood to crack, awning to fall down.

"Run! Run, make way!"

"Somebody, help her, she has fallen!"

"Where is the guard, what are they doing, where the hell have they gone—"

In all that chaos a red-haired girl tried to push against the current and walk towards the stage instead of escaping from there; her heart was beating so violently that it caused her pain, smoke burning her eyes and throat and making her cry even before she got to the stairs of the stage. Someone hit her in the shoulder so hard that she stumbled, losing her balance for just a second but recovered it at once.

She mounted the steps up to the stage, her throat parched, her legs opposing each of her strides, every cell in her body telling her to turn around and run in the opposite direction.

But she pushed herself forward regardless, coughing fiercely through the haze until she came to the man who was still kneeling on the spot where he had collapsed, slowly bleeding from beneath his knees.

She crouched down next to him, one hand shaking violently as it moved closer to his hood which partially covered his face.

She pulled the hood away from his face...

She gasped as her confusion shattered the sorrow which had already begun accumulating inside her heart. "You’re not Hakimi."

"But you’re Marin."