Page 91
Damon nods. He says, “I thank you for your mercy and wisdom, Holy Enforcer.”
Lyr is unsure what will happen to him now. It turns out he is to be taken to the Punishment Square along with Damon. He is given a cloak of rough wool to wear. They are both led by their flanking enforcers out of the Rose Palace and placed in an open cart in the courtyard. They face each other. Damon wears chains too now. Thicker ones, binding his wrists in front of him.
When Damon sees Lyr opposite him, he swallows. He can hardly look at Lyr’s face.
“I’m going too?” Lyr says to one of the enforcers and gets a ringing slap for it.
“Quiet,” the enforcer says, stepping down from the cart.
“You have to watch,” says Damon, blankly. “Your punishment is to witness it.”
“You should not have done this,” Lyr says to Damon, as the cart starts to move through the gates of the Rose Palace into the streets of Attar. His voice is heavy. He can't keep the tears from it. “You’ll lose everything.”
“I know. There was no other way,” says Damon, eyes dry and gaze clear.
Lyr feels it heavy inside him. This method of justice is savagely effective. The punishment he will endure now seems every bit as brutal as being flogged himself. He looks at Damon angrily, “No other way to do what?”
“Save you. What they will do to me in your stead would have killed you.”
Lyr nods. Moving his head fast to stop from crying. “But if you survive you will face justice for sins of the body. What then?”
Damon’s voice is flat. Lyr has never seen him like this. “I will be exiled and have all my possessions confiscated.”
“And what of me? I am one of your possessions.”
Damon looks at Lyr with a level gaze. “No. I named you. As a slave, you will have no recourse against my claim. You are also guilty of sins of the body. The punishment will be the same.”
Lyr looks at Damon, unsure. “You mean I will also be exiled? You mean they will send me with you? We will be together.”
“Yes.” Damon finally looks Lyr in the eye. “But exile is little better than a death sentence. Especially for a man so injured as I will be. But there may be a way. I think I know what they will do, where they will send us.”
Lyr shivers, he thinks he sees a glimpse of Damon’s reckless plan. “But we will be together?” he says again.
Damon shakes his head slightly to mean Lyr should keep quiet. Then says, “Yes. If I survive this day.”
Damon does not say another word to Lyr and Lyr does not try to coax him. He cannot bear to hear Damon say more in that brutal, flat monotone. Nothing feels real.
They reach the large square near Gleamview Market with its cages and high flogging scaffold. Lyr is taken to a seat at the viewing dais. Most of the Rose Court from the Hall of Twelve are present. The Hare sits beside Lyr.
Damon is brought up onto the scaffold and chained to the whipping post. He has been undressed and put in a hip cloth for this punishment. A large crowd has gathered. Word of this event has clearly spread fast.
The crowd jeers as Damon’s body is displayed to them for punishment. Lyr feels his throat aching from the effort of not giving in to the waiting sobs he can feel building in his chest.
Softly the Hare says, “He will be lucky to survive this and if he does he will face the wrath of Zai for what he has confessed. I hope this was not a mistake.”
Lyr thinks this was not a mistake. This was a wild desperate gamble. Damon has bet his own strength, all his ambitions and everything he owns. For Lyr’s life.
Below Lyr on the dais sit a row of minor nobles. Lyr recognises, directly in front of him, the woman who spoke to Damon at the feast the day before. Next to her is a younger man with bright red hair.
The red-headed man says to the woman, “I love to watch a flogging when it's a handsome man.”
“Elric,” the woman hisses, sounding a little hysterical, “Gelen the Green would have you on the scaffold yourself for such a statement. You are not beyond reproach. You must be cautious about what you express.”
“No one cares if I delight in the sight of The One Man Army stripped and flogged, Mother,” the man says, sounding quite amused.
“Do you think so?” says the woman. “Expressing such lust is a sin in itself. If your One Man Army survives his hundred strokes then this afternoon, you will see how being found guilty of such crimes can destroy a man. Even the most noble. Or you would. But you will spend this afternoon doing a penance in the Temple of Sarelik.”
“Must I?” says the man, “when the Emperor himself already wants—”
