Twelve-year-old Carmen has a secret: she can talk to her cat Grim. But the powerful Brotherhood has banned pets, and the penalty is death.
Ward is the most wanted boy in the world. The only thing standing between him and the hangman's noose is maste...
Suddenly, almost as fast as it had begun, it was over. That strange electric charge seemed to leave the air, and with it all the tension went out of the crowd. Ward's feet returned to the ground, and he found he was able to breathe again.
The people looked at each other with a strange mixture of confusion and embarrassment, as if they had for a moment been naked before each other, and were now unaccountably clothed again. Most of the birds took off from the gibbet, the eyr rising slowly with audible beats of its wings, until only a few archons remained. Ward wondered vaguely if Ludwig was among them. It was impossible to tell. He looked over the heads of the crowd but could see neither Mildew nor any of the Scowerers. The Reds, their uniforms covered in guano, had returned to Vernon Dervish, who seemed not to require their services any longer, and with a wrinkled face was directing them back to the coach out of which they had earlier poured.
In under a minute the crowd had quieted and were taking their seats in the stalls again in shell-shocked, embarrassed silence. The general feeling was that, whatever had just happened, it was too strange and embarrassing to acknowledge, and was best forgotten immediately. The snokeys and fels and nines and sloughs had evaporated away back into the city and wharflands and riverside from whence they had come. Order was being restored.
It was the Oliphant, Ward thought. The Oliphant did that.
But he didn't understand what had happened. What had it achieved anyway? The Carmichaels still stood bound before the platform. The nooses still hung from the scaffold. The execution would go ahead regardless.
As if in response to this thought, Tamerlane's voice floated across the square. "Proceed."
Two Reds shepherded Mr and Mrs Carmichael up the stairs to the scaffold, and pushed them in front of the dangling nooses.
One of the Brothers stood up.
"Joseph Carmichael, you are convicted of two counts of High Treason, for conspiring against the State by means of sorcery, one count of Possession of Heretical Artifacts, one count of..."
It went on like this for some time. Ward wondered if there was any crime of which Mr. Carmichael was not guilty. They can't convict him of murder, he thought, they don't have a body. A hysterical bark of laughter almost escaped his throat and he clapped a hand over his mouth. A nearby woman gave him a concerned look.
"Do you have any last words?" the Brother said finally.
The crowd was silent. Necks craned forward.
Mr. Carmichael didn't look at the Brother, but at a row of seats halfway up the stalls, where a family of four sat. Mr. Blanket and his two children sat upright, their chins raised and their hands clasped together before them, prim and austere.
But it wasn't Mr. Blanket Joe spoke to.
"Jan."
Carmen's aunt sat white-faced beside her husband, studiously avoiding the eyes of her brother in the gallows. She glanced up at Mr. Blanket once, then her eyes darted back down to her hands. She looked as if she had not slept in days. Perhaps she hadn't.
The Brother read out Mrs. Carmichael's convictions. They were similarly comprehensive.
"Do you have any last words?"
Mrs Carmichael reached for her husband's hand, and said something to him that nobody in the stands could have heard. They looked into each others' eyes for a moment. Then the Reds were pulling them apart.
The Brother continued. "I hereby release you from the custody of the Brotherhood of Hatto and pass you over to the State for the execution of your sentences."
The nooses were dropped over the Carmichaels' heads, and tightened around their necks. The crowd cheered. There was a kind of desperation in the sound. Several people started heckling. Someone threw an egg; it hit the gibbet with a trff sound and oozed languorously to the ground. An archon peered curiously down at it, but didn't leave its perch.
There was another clap of thunder, and a sudden wind boiled up from the river, worrying at the feathers of the birds on the gibbet, and flapping the Reds' cloaks. Two hats flew into the air and whirled away down the street. Their owners didn't pursue them. The heady smell of the river and the cages and the sea seemed to make the crowd wilder. A woman near Ward let out a strange ecstatic mewl halfway between a laugh and a cry.
He looked away at the last instant. The trapdoors crashed down and the ropes snapped tight. Guilt like a ball of molten lead settled in his stomach.
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It would be both insensitive and inappropriate to crack a joke at this point.
