Everwinter: The Forerunner Archives (3 page)

His toes.

“What’s he up there for?” someone asks behind me, echoing my own confusion. Why indeed? I count his toes again.

“No one knows yet,” another person answers. “We’re waitin’ on the Thesis. It’s a helluva fall from grace though.”

It’s at these words that my heart flutters and I look up into the stockaded man’s face for the first time. If my jaw were not securely attached to my face, I could have expected to hear it clatter to the cobblestones in that moment. The man is Thomas Whiskeyjack, the Second Deacon, my Father’s understudy and closest friend. Thomas had kept his head hanging since I got here but, now, almost as if he feels my gaze upon him, he looks up, pushing his neck forward through the stocks to do so. He locks his eyes with mine, and I cringe at the bruised and purple state of his face. The Deacons had been to work on him; men whom this poor man had once commanded under my Father.

My heart pounds. Does my
Father know about this? The High Deacon has the final say in all Judgments…so he must! Did my Father
really
sentence his best friend to death? He has a reputation for being a hard man, earned after he passed Judgment on my Mother, but since then he’s been more lenient on those close to him. I think it’s ‘cause he feels guilty. Just look at how he coddles me! If I wasn’t his daughter, he would’ve had me flayed and sent to the stocks ages ago!

“The Thesis!” someone in the crowd bellows, breaking my train of thought. A man, dressed in a black hood and cowl, emerges from the Basilica at the base of the Clock Tower, carrying a thick scroll rolled up under one arm. My gaze is glued to the man as he approaches, unrolling the
scroll when he reaches Thomas. The man, whom we call an Abdicator, pulls out a hammer and a metal spike from his cloak, nailing the Thesis to the post of Thomas’s stock. The words written upon it, large and easy to read are:

For Aiding and Abetting a Mutant

My mind reels. 

Thomas is
not
the mutant (which I kinda figured out when I saw he only has five toes), but helped one break into the city! I want more than anything to talk to Thomas, to ask him about it, but I know the crowd won’t allow it; they’re getting riled up as the words of the Thesis are passed on to those who can’t read or are out of eyeshot.

There’s nothing I can do.

“Scum!” I hear a familiar and high pitched voice call as a rotten red tomato sails out of the crowd to explode on Thomas’ exposed head. My anger boils and I whip about to see Traylor, my obnoxious little brother, smiling devilishly and attempting to hide the rest of the rotten fruits and vegetables he has in his hands. My face melts into a snarl and I’m about to advance on the little bastard, but it’s too late.

The Judgment riot has begun.

2.

“I didn’t do it!” the voice of Thomas Whiskeyjack pleads over the enraged outcry of the mob. But his words are drowned in a rain of rotting food and excrement.

And stones.

The first one strikes Thomas in the stomach, his cries cut off in a grunt of pain. The second strikes him in the shoulder, his grunts becoming screams, mingled with the creaking of the stocks as he struggles against them. The rage in the crowd is escalating, and Thomas’s cries are joined by others as people are trampled, battered, or struck by thrown projectiles meant for Thomas Whiskeyjack himself. I start to panic. I’m trapped behind an advancing wall of furious people!

My claustrophobia kicks in.

It doesn’t happen often, as I’ve managed to get the fear mostly under control during my eighteen years but, every once in a while (and usually during a high stress situation), it gets the better of me.

As it is now.

Traylor sees the look on my face and comes toward me gingerly; he knows something is wrong. "It was just a joke, Juno!" he says, taking my hand as I begin to feel dizzy, bending prone at the waist. I feel something slimy and pull my hand from his, finding it coated in a disgusting blend of rotten vegetables. I grab Traylor and wipe it on the back of his black tunic. The rest of the vegetables he'd intended to throw are now a mushy pile beneath our feet, some of it leaking onto my sandaled feet.

"Did you even bother to find out who was up there?" I chastise him, grabbing him by the elbow and moving
him away from the bloody cries of the dying Thomas Whiskeyjack.

Traylor shrugs with a smirk. "Do I ever?" He's being cocky because he knows I will tell
Father, no matter how much he begs me not to. We've been through this countless times before.

"It was Thomas Whiskeyjack," I say, finding satisfaction when I see the blood drain from the little guy's face.

"What?" Traylor stops moving, turning around, standing on the ends of his toes to try and see over the crowd again. We're almost at the edge of Judgment Square, but we're both fairly short, and Traylor more so because he's only ten years old. But the crowd is breaking up already. Thomas Whiskeyjack must be dead. Just like that, the bloodlust is a memory and the throng begins to file out of the Square in all directions. My claustrophobia eases as Traylor begins to elbow his way back toward the stocks.

"Where you going?" I call after him.

He half turns his head and replies, "You're lying! It's not him!"

I sigh and follow my little brother.

I should have known this would be hard on him. Thomas had been like a second Father to Traylor. Not to me though. I'm old enough to still remember our Mother. Somewhat. I was eight years old when Father passed Judgment on her, shortly after Traylor was born. I still haven't forgiven him for it, High Deacon or no. She was born without a nail on the second toe of her left foot. No big deal, right? Wrong. Thou shalt not suffer a mutant to live, no matter how small or insignificant the change. As Father says: "If we let ourselves deviate from the True Body Plan, if we play god like the ancients did, we only invite another cataclysm upon ourselves. The ways of the Forerunners are the ways of death." 

I don't know whether my
Mother kept her mutation hidden from Father all those years, or if he knew about it and just never said anything. Either way, the truth became public, and my Father had little choice as High Deacon. Our whole family would have stood to be Judged otherwise. Instead, he did his duty and passed Judgment on her, in the very place Thomas Whiskeyjack's corpse now hangs limp and lifeless.

I still think he made the wrong choice.

Traylor stops at the base of the platform and stares upward, wide eyed, a few stragglers shaking their heads in disbelief that the High Deacon's second in command had just been Judged. I come up beside him, and the confused look I see on his face makes me realize that Traylor still retains most of the innocence of childhood.

"That's not him," Traylor says, denial coating every word. "I can't tell who it is." I look up and see that Traylor is right. Thomas' face is so smashed and bloodied now, there is little left to distinguish it.

"It's him," I say softly, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder.

Traylor shakes his head, staring not at the man now, but at the Thesis tacked to the post beneath him. "Thomas would
never
help a mutant!" he says between clenched teeth. I nod my whole hearted agreement. Thomas Whiskeyjack was the last person–other than my Father–that I would have
ever
expected to see at the center of Judgment Square. My thoughts keep drifting to the six toed footprints in the sand yesterday. And the strange metal box. Hopefully Jude is alright. He's supposed to be lying low after what happened.

"I bet this has to do with whatever you found on the beach," Traylor says, gesturing to Thomas.

I freeze, doing a double take. What did my little brother just say?

"Where did you hear that?" I ask, my hea
rt fluttering in my chest. How could
anybody
know? Had the Deacons been watching us? I look up at Thomas Whiskeyjack trepidatiously.

Traylor shrugs. "That's the rumor going around. People are saying that you and Jude found something from Everwinter on the beach, and that's why there was a mutant trying to get into the city last night. It wanted to get the thing back. What was it, Juno?"

If I'd had a reflecting glass in my hand at this moment, I know I'd see a pale, shocked face staring back at me. "Who's saying these things, Traylor?" I ask vehemently. "How many people have heard this rumor?"

Traylor shrugs again. "I dunno. I heard it from a few of my buddies near the docks. Well, one of them anyway. He told the rest of us."

I want to ask Traylor who his friend is, but I realize it doesn't matter. The docks are the center of commerce in the city, with people coming and going all the time. If the rumor spread from there, most of Krakelyn would have heard it by now.

"I have to go," I say abruptly, turning away from the stocks. "Go home, Traylor."

"Juno, what's going on? I–"

"Just go home, Traylor
. Go home and grieve for Thomas Whiskeyjack. I won’t tell Dad you were here." Traylor is forbidden from seeing Judgments, at our Father's discretion. He isn't mature enough yet.

"Really?" Traylor asks with a raised eyebrow. He looks at Thoma
s and a sob wracks his chest. But then he forces composure onto his face and smiles. "You don't have to tell me twice!" With that, Traylor bolts from Judgment Square.

I follow seconds later, but head in the opposite direction.

3.

I find Jude exactly where I would expect to on any normal day.

Except,
this is far from an ordinary day.

"What in the name of the gods are you doing here?" I elbow him, talking under my breath, muttering curses.

"Getting my morning coffee, what else?" he replies, as if the answer should have been obvious. He grins at me stupidly, lifting his head up so I can examine it more thoroughly, then leans down for a kiss. Aghast, I pull away from him, my eyes fixed firmly to his left cheek. I almost laugh at what I see. He's gotten into his Mother's face paint kit, using a shade far too pale for his darkly tanned skin. Everyone has darkish skin in Eversummer, but this leaves a blotchy mess that, despite the color difference, covers the blemishes on his face quite well.

There is
that at least.

"You look like a gods
forsaken jongler!" I elbow him harder. People in the coffee line at the Bridge Market, in front of us and behind, stop their conversations to eyeball us. I'd cut the line to join Jude, but these people aren't grumbling about that. We cut the lines all the time. Instead, they’re pointing to their own faces, giggling.

"Hey, I thought I did a pretty decent job!" Jude says indignantly, now angling his cheek away so I can't see it.

"You're insane!" I chastise. "If my Father's men see–"

"They won't," Jude cuts me off with a rude wave. "I can't afford to take the day off work, Juno. And who knows how long this rash will last?" He winces painfully.

"Rash? Ha!" I bark at him. Calling what Jude has on his cheek a rash is like calling a third degree sunburn a case of dry skin. I move around him to get a closer look at the ‘rash’ and see that it is indeed better than it was yesterday. But if a Deacon were to take a second glance, they would undoubtedly notice his skin pockmarked with bumps and holes. Sure, Jude could try and pass it off as an injury–call it roadrash–but with that rumor going around town now...

I pull him
in close. "Who did you tell?" I ask, thinking someone must have seen him sneaking home last night with those huge blisters on his face. I'd given him my hooded cloak to cover it once we’d got back to town, but it was too small and hadn't hidden his deformity completely.

But is it a deformity or a mutation?

"No one!" Jude bites back indignantly. "Why? Does somebody know?"

I roll my eyes. "Yeah," I say. "Most of Krakelyn."

Jude stares at me. "Tell me you're joking."

I pull him
even closer, feeling as if every eye in the city is upon me. I look around and a few actually are. Gods, I'm getting paranoid. "Traylor told me," I say. "He heard it at the docks. Somebody knows we found something. The Deacons must have been watching us."

Jude looks like he wants to cry. "I avoided talking to anyone this morning," he says. "I haven't heard any news. I just wanted to grab a coffee and get to the pit for my shift." He pauses briefly to collect himself.
 

"I don't suppose you heard about Thomas Whiskeyjack then?" I say, a little too loudly. Behind me, someone gasps at my mentioning the name. In Krakelyn, it's somewhat of a taboo to speak someone's name aloud after they've been Judged.

Jude shakes his head. "No. What happened?"

"He was Judged," I mutter, barely a whisper.

Jude's eyes go wide. "You don't think it has something to do with us?"

"I don't know. But if Thomas was the Deacon that was spying on us and saw what happened at the beach, my
Father is the
only
person he would tell about it."