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Petra lifts her chin, the anger in her expression clear even across this distance. “My father was murdered. One of his magic advisors, Lothar Riosemek, stabbed him with a knife and let him bleed out on the floor of his palace in Regica. He would have killed me and my younger sister and brother as well if we hadn’t managed to escape. Now this same man is trying to tell you this death was the will of the gods. It was not. It was Lothar’s will, so he can impose his ideas on this city and the rest of the country.”
“All lies!” a man near the illusion calls out. “She’s not even real.” He scoops a discarded piece of food off the ground and hurls it through the image.
Another voice rises up from off to his left. “That’s right! A real ruler would show herself, let us see this proof. What’s she so afraid of, huh? That we’ll see right through her? We already can!”
I tense in my crouched position. The hostility in those voices makes my riven power writhe in my chest.
Rheave notches his bow next to me. “Neither of the ones talking are daimon, but I can see a couple moving through the crowd. Should I shoot them now?”
I shake my head. “Not until they start pushing people around or Petra mentions the scourge sorcery.”
Whatever’s happening in the square nearest her, she must be aware of the sorts of protests people are raising. She holds up her hands in appeal. “I wish I could be with all of you in the flesh, but I wanted to speak to as many of you as possible at once. And I know that as soon as Lothar learns where I am, he’ll continue his quest to murder me and all of my family.”
“Easy excuses,” someone in the crowd sneers, and flings what looks like a battered shoe at her projected form.
I can’t tell if the rest of the restless voices below us agree with the skeptical comments or are questioning what Lothar’s told them.
Petra keeps going, though the tensing of her lips suggests she’s not pleased with whatever she’s witnessing from her own vantage point. “Think about what’s happened in this city since Lothar and his Order of the Wild marched in. How many murders have been carried out before your eyes? How have they desecrated our most sacred buildings? I can’t believe that this is the kind of world you’d want to live in—one full of violence and cruelty.
“And it isn’t just simple cruelty. Lothar and his followers are practicing scourge sorcery—the same magic that nearly ended our civilization and drove away the All-Giver all those centuries ago. That’s how they wield so much power. They’re helped by those they convinced as children to sacrifice every part of their body they could spare while remaining alive, leaving them mere shells of human beings. And by daimon, whose spirits they’ve trapped in bodies made of clay, upsetting the proper balance of life itself.”
Rheave doesn’t wait for me to give him the go-ahead. The moment the last statement has left Petra’s lips, he releases my arm.
Since I still know he’s there, I glimpse a wavery image of him pulling back his bowstring. One arrow and then another launch into the air from our rooftop, sped onward by crackles of his daimon magic.
They hit their marks in quick succession. Spurts of black smoke shoot up as the bodies collapse.
I lose sight of the toppling forms amid the now milling crowd, but the yelps of shock tell me they’ve transformed back into clay.
I duck low behind the jut of a dormer window so my voice won’t allow any eyes to seek me out and raise my voice to carry as far as it can. “She’s telling the truth! There are fake people walking around with us.”
The murmurs swell across the square. Some sound panicked, others angry. They’re starting to drown out Petra’s voice despite the amplification.
“It’s a trick!” someone yells—probably one of the Order members. “This false princess is using her lies to try to undo the progress we’ve made! She doesn’t care about you. She can’t even be bothered to come to actually listen to you. Just like all the Melchioreks!”
Not far from my rooftop, several pedestrians jostle against each other. I can’t tell what they’re squabbling about, but they knock over a cart full of apples.
As the fruit roll past people’s feet, several onlookers snatch one up and whip it toward the illusion of Petra.
“Come and really talk to us!” a woman cries out.
A male voice joins her. “Let’s see that proof!”
More and more shouts fill the air.
“Who are you really?”
“Why didn’t the Great God come back for King Konram?”
“Everything’s gone wrong!”
So many of the bodies are jostling together now. The illusion of Petra wavers. “Please, listen,” I think she says, and then I lose track of her words completely amid the chaos.
I can’t even tell how many of the unsettled civilians want to believe her and how many are upset with her—but there are definitely too many of the latter. The crowd surges toward the crates below her illusion, more objects hurtling through the air toward her image.
I don’t know how to stop them or make them see reason. My magic is flailing around in my chest now, desperate to yank all the people below me into order, but I can only imagine how disastrous that effort would turn out.
As I wrap my unpredictable power tight within me, my gaze sweeps over the churning figures. It catches on a boy of maybe seven or eight stumbling where one of the more aggressive onlookers has shouldered past him.
