Chapter 212 The Deed
POV: Valentina | Parliament steps, execution chamber
The steps are old stone and they have the quality of all old stone in public places, which is the quality of surfaces that have absorbed a great deal of human and supernatural weight over centuries and which carry it in their grain without showing it, the way places that have witnessed too much simply become what they are and stop registering individual events as extraordinary.
I have been brought out at noon exactly, which is when the administrator's paperwork cleared, which means the two hours ran out at eleven fifty-eight and whatever Callum was doing in those two hours was not enough, or it was enough and something else stopped it, and I will not know which until this is over or I will never know which, and I am making my peace with both possibilities as I walk out onto the steps in the specific bright light of a London midday that has the quality of light that does not care what it is illuminating.
All of London's supernatural community is here. This is not a figure of speech. The summons went out last night and the attendance is mandatory under Parliamentary decree for executions of this classification, which means the crowd in front of the steps is several hundred people with the specific quality of a crowd that has been required to be somewhere, which is different from a crowd that chose to gather, and the difference shows in the faces, some of which are performing expressions they do not have and some of which are not performing anything at all.
I find Callum in the crowd immediately, which I knew I would, because the thing about Callum in a crowd is that he has a quality that locates him before you are consciously looking. He is in silver chains, which are Parliamentary enforcement restraints used specifically for werewolves and which work by interfering with the shift mechanism, and he is standing between two Parliamentary guards with the specific quality of someone managing a massive amount of contained force, and his face when he finds mine across the crowd is the face I am going to carry with me.
Dante is to the left. Standing free, which means they did not identify him as a threat, which means he did not do anything that would have identified him as a threat, which is the correct decision and which cost him something I can read in the set of his jaw.
The charges are read. The Parliamentary official reads them in the flat procedural voice of someone reading charges, murder of Parliamentary hunters, species treason, defiance of authority, the legal language that turns three years of survival into a list of crimes. I stand and I listen and I let it be the thing it is, which is a framing, and the framing does not change what the events were, which was me surviving a system that was trying to kill me, and I do not feel the need to revise my position on that.
They ask if I have a statement.
"I regret nothing," I say, and I say it to the crowd rather than to the official, to the several hundred faces that have been required to attend this, some of which are horrified and some of which are cheering from the back where the most committed Parliament supporters have gathered. "I regret nothing and I would do every part of it again. Every hunter I killed was coming for me. Every alliance I built was survival. Every choice I made was mine." I look at the crowd, at the horrified faces and the cheering ones and the blank ones and the ones that are something else, something that looks like recognition. "The system that called these things crimes is the system I fought. I would fight it again."
The official moves on quickly, which is the correct response to a statement that is landing better than Parliament wanted it to land.
The executioner is a Parliamentary vampire of the specific kind that institutions produce, someone whose function has become their identity, someone for whom the stake in their hand is simply the instrument of their role rather than a choice they are making. They position themselves with the professional precision of someone who has done this before.
Callum is screaming. I can hear him across the crowd, the specific quality of his voice when it is doing something it does not do, which is breaking, and the silver chains are doing what silver chains do but he is fighting them with everything he has and the guards are struggling to hold him and I understand that this is the thing he could not prevent and which he will carry for a very long time.
I look at him. I look at his face and I hold it the way you hold something you are not going to be able to hold for much longer, and I try to put into my expression everything I would say if there were time to say it, which there is not, so I do the next best thing, which is to shape the most important words clearly enough that they can be read across thirty feet of crowd noise.
Save our daughter.
The stake goes through my heart on the downstroke, which is the clean efficient motion of someone who has been told to make it quick, and it is quick, and the last thing I am aware of before the awareness stops is the sound of Callum's voice.