The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. 'Off with his head!' she said, without even looking round. -- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Death could make herself appear to be almost anything she wished to be. And at present, she wished to scare the living daylights out of Aghar. So she considered what a mortal would find most frightening, and came up with something even more horrifying than a skeleton.

Skeletons -- especially walking, talking ones -- were alarming to mortals. Something that was only half-skeleton would be absolutely terrifying.

Aghar thought so too. He gaped at her, his eyes wide as dinner plates and his lower jaw apparently trying to reach the floor. He made a choking, wheezing sound. Then he collapsed in a dead faint.

Death looked at him in disgust. Where was the amusement in scaring him if he would pass out upon seeing her?

One of her lesser-used abilities was the power to manipulate objects in her throne room. She rarely used this ability because she rarely had any need to use it. But now... She looked at the silent, sluggishly-flowing river that wended its way across the floor.

Rise, she ordered it.

For the first time in centuries a wave rippled over the surface of the river. It rose higher and higher, until it resembled a miniature tidal wave. With a wave of her hand, Death sent the wave crashing down on Aghar.

~~~~

Aghar regained consciousness with a scream. It felt like someone had thrown acid over him. His skin reddened and blistered. Every cruel and evil deed he had ever done forced its way back into his memories. It was as if the wave that had crashed over him had burned away all his arrogance and the excuses he made to justify his sins, and he saw himself for how filthy and vile he truly was.

Aghar had never been a brave man. He had delighted in tormenting those weaker than him, and like all bullies he was a coward. The knowledge that somehow he had fallen into the power of something far stronger than he was, with the power and the will to torment him, reduced him to a whimpering wreck.

"Stop that noise," the skeleton-woman ordered. Aghar found himself unable to make a sound. "Now get up." The former guard found himself standing up without moving.

The skeleton-woman stepped down from her throne. In her right hand she held a scythe that was taller than she was. Its deadly sharp blade glittered in the light. Aghar trembled and tried to move away. He couldn't make his legs obey him, and he remained frozen in place.

"We are going to Carann," the skeleton-woman announced. "You have a public confession to make there."

~~~~

Kilan had no idea when Death was going to bring Qihadal's rapist to the palace, but he thought it would be near the end of the week. It was still a terrible shock to him when, one bright and sunny Chirin[1] morning, Death appeared in his office holding a weeping, trembling thing at arm's length.

Death let go of the bundle of cloth -- that couldn't possibly be a person, could it? -- with a disgusted look. The person fell to the floor and lay there, shaking all over and sobbing quietly.

"What on earth--?" Kilan began, hardly able to believe his eyes.

"This is your criminal," Death said, pointing her scythe at the figure curled up on the floor.

Kilan stared at him. He had half-expected Qihadal's rapist to be a hulking brute of man. It was impossible to see this man's face, because he had curled himself up into as small a ball as he could manage, but he did not at all fit Kilan's expectations. "...What did you do to him?"

Death grinned. "Scared him half to death. His reactions are hilarious. Except for the vomiting. My Reapers aren't happy about that at all."

Kilan thought about this for a minute. Then he decided that he truly didn't want to know. "Could you put him down in the dungeons until we need him?"

"Certainly." Death raised her hand, and the figure disappeared.

Has the world gone mad today? Kilan wondered, staring at the place where the man had been. Or is it just me?

He shook his head. However strange the situation was, it was still not the strangest thing he'd ever encountered.

~~~~

"What?"

For the first time since he'd met her, Nimetath looked utterly taken aback. She stared at Kilan, her eyes wide. She'd completely forgotten that she had been pouring him a cup of tea, and the tea was now spilling over the sides of the cup to make a puddle on the table.

"I said, Qihadal's rapist is locked up in the dungeons," Kilan repeated.

Nimetath spluttered. Yet more tea splashed onto the table. She finally remembered the teapot in her hand and set it down, grimacing when she saw the mess she'd made. "Your Majesty. I think you'd better explain."

He explained. It was a very edited explanation, that left out Death's involvement entirely and attributed it to some mythical friend of Qihadal's.

"Who was this friend?" Nimetath asked, interrupting him at this point. "What will it take to guarantee their silence?"

Damn, Kilan thought. "She's... one of Qihadal's sisters. She doesn't want her involvement to be widely known." And there were two more lies. "Her silence is already guaranteed, because if it wasn't then her life would be in danger."

Nimetath shook her head. "I wish you hadn't done all this without at least warning me. My spies could have helped."

Kilan said nothing. To say anything would mean revealing that he knew about the circumstances of his uncle's death, and that he no longer trusted his Chief Inquisitor.

~~~~

Aghar remained in prison for the rest of the day and all of the next one. Kilan and his parents spent that time writing to journalists, telling them to attend a very important meeting at the palace the next day.

"I can think of a hundred things that could go wrong," Kilan said as he put his seal on the last of the letters.

"Then don't think about it," Særnor said.

~~~~

Finally the stage was set for the reveal of the truth. Kilan had already sent a letter to the Iqui, politely demanding that he grant permission for Aghar to be executed or else certain facts would be made widely know. Qihadal had memorised everything she had to say.

"I should be the one to tell them," she had said upon hearing of her rapist's capture.

"Whatever you think best," Kilan had replied. "You're his victim, so you have a better right to condemn him."

And now the courtyard outside was crowded with journalists, Aghar was in the custody of the palace guards, and Qihadal was about to give her speech.

As he accompanied her outside, Kilan reflected bitterly that this was all the Iqui's fault. He was the one who allowed men like Aghar to go unpunished. If he had executed justice as a ruler should, Carann wouldn't have been dragged into this.

High above the crowds, on the roof of the palace, sat Death and some of her Reapers. Not one of the mortals assembled there, not even Kilan, guessed that they were there. But they saw and heard everything. And had anyone thought to look up, they might have seen the shadows of their wings blocking out the sun.

~~~~

What an uproar there was in the newspaper offices of the Empire! The stories that, an hour before, had been the scandals of the century were now relegated to short articles in the papers' final pages. Editors couldn't get tomorrow's papers printed fast enough.

And the chaos wasn't confined to the newspaper offices. News travels, bad news travels fast, and shocking news travels fastest of all. Within an hour all the nobility of Carann had heard some version of the day's revelations, and rumours were already filtering through to the people on the streets. Even the Iqui, in his marble palace far from Carann, heard whispers of it from his spies. He ground his teeth, knowing that this had the potential to spell disaster for Malish, and that Emperor Tinuviel, aided by his treacherous daughter, had effectively chained him.

"It's a tragedy," a baroness told her lady's maid. "Our poor Empress! Malishese or not, I must visit her and offer my sympathies."

"It's a scandal," an earl said over a game of cards. "It's all the fault of those barbarians. I say we should wipe them off the map!"

"This will throw the line of succession into doubt," a princess remarked upon hearing the news. "I know they say the child will never be considered part of the succession, but what if the child has other ideas?"

Everyone had a great deal to say about it, even when they had very few facts. There were only three things almost everyone agreed on. One, Qihadal needed all the help and sympathy she could get. Two, the more brutal the execution method Aghar faced, the better. Three, this was entirely the Iqui's fault, and he should be made to pay for it.

"He must have known," someone said -- no one could have told who it was. "He deliberately sent Qihadal here because he didn't want to mete out justice to the criminal."

And that comment moved further and further afield, being passed on from one person to the next, until it had travelled the length and breadth of the Empire.

~~~~

"Beheading," Kilan said grimly. "His crime's too serious for hanging."

"With a blunt axe?" Qihadal asked hopefully.

Kilan seriously considered this for a minute. "No, that would be too brutal. We don't want to stoop to the Iqui's level."

Qihadal looked as if she wouldn't mind stooping to the Iqui's level in this situation, but she said no more. That was a rather alarming tendency of hers, Kilan had noticed. Instead of arguing over something as people normally did, Qihadal stated her opinion then never mentioned it again if he disagreed with it. Perhaps it was just her way, he thought. But it made him wonder if she truly agreed with him or if she was just going along with his opinions.

~~~~

Aghar's execution took place on a cloudy, overcast Mengrai[2] afternoon. The entire royal family came to watch it. Kilan saw cousins, aunts and uncles he hadn't seen for years among the crowd. Every member of the nobility who could make it was there. Many journalists and photographers were gathered. Even large numbers of the ordinary people had taken time off work to attend.

Executions were common enough. The execution of such a vile criminal, who had committed such a crime against the Empress Consort, was something out of the ordinary.

There was so much excitement around the event that the execution itself seemed almost anti-climactic. The executioner swung his razor-sharp axe. It sliced through Aghar's neck as if the bones and muscle were made of paper. The crowd cheered. Cameras flashed. Journalists scribbled in their notebooks.

Just like that, it was all over. Blood pooled on the ground, and the headless body was dragged away. A shadow flitting across the ground and the faintest swish of a scythe being swung heralded the eternal departure of the body's soul. But Kilan was the only person there who could sense that, and he was no longer looking at the corpse.

~~~~

"Now what?" Kilan asked his parents that evening, when the body had been thrown in an incinerator and the crowds had dispersed.

Arásy smiled wryly. "Now we deal with more gossip."

~~~~

'More gossip' was an understatement. Kilan and Qihadal were inundated with invitations to dinner parties and balls, and letters expressing the senders' deepest sympathies.

At least the High Council had very little to say for themselves lately. But that might be because the year was drawing to an end, and they were making arrangements to go home and spend time with their families in the weeks before the Festival of the Year's Ending.

It was just as well they were making themselves scarce. Kilan found that the Emperor and Empress were expected to hold a Year's End Ball of their own. Last year he had been able to avoid this because everyone believed he was unmarried. But there was no getting out of it this year.

"So who will I invite?" Nadriet asked over breakfast one morning, several weeks after the execution.

Arásy answered before Kilan had a chance to speak. "You won't invite anyone, dear. That's the Empress's job."

Qihadal almost choked on her toast. "Me? But I know no one!"

"Just send out invitations to every royal, aristocrat and diplomat in the Empire," Arásy advised. "Only about half of them ever accept."

Qihadal pulled a face as soon as her mother-in-law wasn't looking. Kilan sympathised. He suspected far more than half of the invitees would accept this year.

Chapter Footnotes:

[1] Chirin = One of the days of the week, roughly equivalent to Saturday.

[2] Mengrai = Day of the week roughly equivalent to Tuesday.