Everwinter: The Forerunner Archives Read Free Page B

because no one is stupid enough to do it! And yet, I’m stupid enough not to tell my Father what I know! The Deacons would consider that treason too.
    “Well, I don’t know about that,” I say to Mrs. Cromarty, then pretend to have my attention caught elsewhere. “Oh, sorry, I have to go!” I slip back into the throng on Mainstreet, ignoring Cromarty’s protests that I haven’t actually told her anything.
    I’m still planning on getting my coffee, but I have to make a detour first. I slip down a nearby alley, disrupting a group of boys playing Fox Eyes, and work my way toward the center of town. Judgment Square. If there was a mutant caught in the city last night, Judgment Square is where it will end up. I quickly look up at the Clock Tower–the center of Judgment Square and so tall as to be visible from anywhere in town–and am dismayed to see that it is already quarter past five. I only have forty-five minutes to get my coffee and go to work. I’ve been late twice this week already, and unfortunately being the High Deacon’s daughter doesn’t afford me immunity from that offence.
    I push through the crowd faster.
    Five minutes later, I emerge from a narrow brick alley–I have to move sideways to slip through it–and into Judgment Square proper. To my surprise, there is already a crowd gathered in the shadow of the Tower. A large one. Judgments are not generally advertised. In most cases, nobody knows one is happening until they hear about it through the rumor mill.
    My view of the stocks at the center of the Square is impeded by the throng, and so again I push my way through the people of Krakelyn, something I’ve learned to do well in my eighteen years. I finally emerge from the pack like a lost explorer in a dense forest of sentinel pines. When I look up, I see a man fastened to the center of the trio of stocks here, all standing upon a raised stone platform. He is entirely naked, his enormous and hairy gut thankfully covering that part of his body to which my eyes want to automatically drift. Without thinking about it, I continue to let my gaze fall until it comes to the man’s feet.
    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