Eventually, the chief engineer came to the Color Prince. “We’re ready, sir, should we load the cargo?”
Cargo. Oddly impersonal verbiage, wasn’t it? The prince nodded.
An older woman was led forward. There were tears on her cheeks, but she wasn’t crying now. Her clothes had been rich, Liv could tell, and she had the pale skin of a woman who’d never worked outdoors in her life. Wavy, silvered hair, brown eyes. Out of all the people staring at her, she saw Liv, and met her gaze.
“It’s a bluff, isn’t it?” the old woman asked. “Or am I fooling myself?”
Liv looked away. Trust me, her father had said. Was that just another way of saying, submit?
The woman let herself be folded into the net, meek, powerless. “Keep your head resting on the ropes,” the chief engineer said. “Relax.”
Relax, we’re trying to win our chits, lady.
“Ready,” the chief engineer said quietly to the Color Prince.
The prince beckoned Liv forward. His eyes were swirling red, and then blue, and then red. “Tell me, Liv. Should I wait until noon, or show them what it means to cross me?”
It was less than a minute until noon. Liv saw at once that part of him wanted to punish the city for standing against him, wanted to make them pay, was afraid that they would surrender too soon. Liv hadn’t finished her letter. She hesitated, somehow thinking it was important. “You might stiffen their resolve if they think you haven’t been fair. You’ve set up a deadline and a consequence, let it be their fault if this woman dies.” For some reason, she had to finish the letter before that woman died.
The Color Prince relaxed. “Yes, yes of course. It would be wrong to blink first.” Then orange flooded his eyes, and suddenly he seemed to be enjoying the tension he’d created.
She’d been right, she realized. He had asked her opinion because her opinion was valuable. She- she — was smart enough, strong enough to be trusted. She was no child.
She read: “Livi, I don’t know what lies they’ve told you, but you’ve joined monsters. If you stay with them, you’ll become monstrous yourself. Our home is gone, but come home, Livi. No matter what’s happened. No matter what you’ve done. I love you. Papa.”
Come home, and admit you were wrong. I’ll enfold you in all the old rules you understand. I’ll embrace you into childhood again. And it will be warm and safe.
“It is monstrous, isn’t it?” the Color Prince said quietly to Liv. He didn’t turn from looking at the gate.
“I suppose it-”
“Monstrous how they keep a place like Laurion, and call us the beasts, because we’re willing to punish one slave owner, this woman. How many slaves do you suppose she kept? How many did she beat, or send to the mines, or the brothels? Or allow her husband to dishonor? Monstrous, how they turn our very hearts against our own interests. They’ve trapped us in this, Aliviana. They made this system. They made it so that we can’t change it from within. They made it so we must kill to break it. If we be monsters, we’re monsters made in their image.”
Every eye was turned to the city’s great gates. The top of the city’s walls was crowded with spectators as well.
“Regardless of whether they fight or surrender, Aliviana, fewer will die here than died in one year in Laurion. And we ended Laurion forever. Sacrifices, Liv. Sacrifices must be made.”
Though she knew better, Liv hoped that the gates would open at the last second, that a fluttering flag would appear. It didn’t.
“Noon,” an engineer intoned.
“Proceed,” the Color Prince said loudly.
The old woman screamed, “No, please! I haven’t done any-”
The release pin was pulled. The great counterweight came barreling down, swinging beneath the great groaning struts, and the longer arm whipped forward, the ropes pulling the basket skyward at incredible speed. The sound of the ropes whipping the air layered below the woman’s shriek.
She flew through the three hundred paces between the trebuchet and the wall so fast it was hard to follow, but Liv could see the woman clearly flail for one moment before crashing headfirst into the wall, halfway up.
Gasps rose from the entire crowd simultaneously, and then cheers and laughing and cheerful insults for the engineers. To Liv, it was all distant and horrifying. There was a splotch on the great tan walls, like a giant had swatted a mosquito on its arm.
Liv drafted superviolet and felt the paradoxical relief of not feeling. There was logic here, logic to this horror. If they attacked the city, how many men and women would die in the first charge alone? Better for one woman to die noisily and horribly-but quickly for all that and without much bodily pain-than for thousands to die in taking the city. And tens of thousands to die when they took the city itself. Once the Idossians had spilled the blood of thousands of the Free Men, there would be nothing the Color Prince could do to keep those men from exacting a terrible vengeance. This wouldn’t be like retaking Garriston, which had been the army’s own city, a place they wanted to preserve as much as possible so they could live in it themselves. This would be annihilation.
Though slaves no more, the slaves of Laurion weren’t blank slates, weren’t merely innocent farm boys who’d been made slaves and now might revert to a peaceful life. Many had been brutes before being forced into the brutish life of a mine slave. Outlaws, pirates, rapists, rebels, and those who’d fomented revolt among slaves went to Laurion. What proportion those men made up of the total, Liv had no idea, but even in her drafter’s robes there were times walking the camp late at night she felt nervous. Those men, cut loose in a city that had killed their friends?
This was better, for everyone except a few unfortunate women. Sacrifices. The city must be taken, and this was the best way to do it. It was better that a few should die than many, wasn’t it? Averting those greater horrors demanded this of them. Given war, this was the most moral way to wage it, horrible though it still was.
With no return fire from the city walls, the atmosphere quickly relaxed. Men began taking bets, serving food, spreading blankets on the grass, making a picnic of the day.
The Color Prince turned to Liv. She was struck again by his visage, but now her shock lasted only half a second. He did look a monster at first glance. And yet he’d been nothing but honest with her, even when the truths were hard. Especially when they were hard. He’d seen her for what she was, for who she was. And though she was a young Tyrean girl, he’d treated her as she deserved. He said, “I’ll give you a horse, two sticks of tin danars, and letters of passage.”
“That’s not-” Liv started.
“I’m not finished. If you go, you never come back. You’ll be my enemy and I’ll never trust you. And if you don’t go now, you never go. You choose, one way or the other, today. I’ve been patient with you, but I need to know if I can count on you. So this is it. Look at us at our worst, and decide. You have until the city falls. Then march in with us, or go your own way.”
The second woman screamed the whole time they brought her forward, shrieking loudly enough that Liv had no doubt she could be heard on the walls. The Color Prince told the men not to silence her. When she tangled her limbs into the ropes of the basket, the engineers were stumped for a moment. With the incredible forces applied, the woman would still fly out of the basket, but she could seriously hamper the distance and trajectory, making them fail again.
They solved the problem by pulling her out of the basket and crushing her hands with a rock. Then they broke her elbows for good measure. She shrieked and shrieked, and Liv found herself wishing the woman would shut her mouth and just die.
But the Color Prince waited until the fifteen minutes had passed. On the grain, he said, “Proceed.”