Chapter 5: The Assize

The Plaza of Justice was packed to the fountain.

I had read the book. I knew what it would be.

A scaffold of pale boards stood under the clock tower, with a stool in the middle of it.

A clerk waited beside it with a pair of shears on a velvet cushion.

Ten thousand people, and every one had come to watch a fat woman be taken apart.

I stood on the scaffold in the green silk, because it was the only gown I owned that nobody had burned.

My hair was loose to my waist.

I had braided it myself at dawn, to give my hands something to do.

[Next scripted event: The Assize.]

[Survival odds: 3 percent.]

"Ximena Ardaval," Bastian said, from the lectern.

He wore the full black and the chain.

His voice carried across the whole plaza without being raised.

"Daughter of Aurelio, Count Ardaval. You are charged on six counts."

He read them.

When he came to the gown, the crowd roared.

When he came to the stair, a woman near the front spat.

I looked for Inés.

She was beside the Prince, on the Queen's dais, in a pale blue gown, with a face as white as paper.

The Queen sat beside her in lilac, with her pearls, smiling kindly.

"The accused admits to two counts, the gown and the stair," Bastian said. "The others are not proven, and are struck."

A roar went up.

"Struck," he repeated, and waited, until it died.

My father stood on the lower step in his best coat.

He had been called to speak as head of the house.

"My lord," he said, in a huge voice. "I stand before this city to say that I no longer know this woman."

My stomach dropped.

"She was my daughter," he said. "She has been a disgrace for years, gluttonous and spiteful."

"She is a stain on a name that was old when the Queen's was new."

"I disown her. I give her to the Crown. She has no house, no name, and no claim on mine."

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