Page 50 of This Monster of Mine

The irony.She’d taken his abuse for long minutes, and it had taken four sentences to enrage him. Dodging his first punch, she watched the second approach, bracing herself and slowing her movements so it would land.One hit and we’ve an assault charge.He threw his body behind the blow, and every second of it was all too familiar. North or south, cruel men were cruel men.

A rustle of fabric. The slap of flesh and a violent thud. But no pain.

She opened her eyes, bewildered at the absence of impact. Her mouth fell open. Kadra stood in front of her, one hand on Red Tunic’s wrist, having slammed it into the table hard enough to embed it within. The man screamed at his shattered knuckles as Kadra turned to her, his hard face frozen in what looked oddly like shock. Reeling, she stared back, completely lost on why he’d stopped the blow. Silence spread between them and hung among the stunned crowd, before she found her tongue.

“Is the boy alive?” she stammered.

Kadra glanced at a still-screaming Red Tunic. Whatever the man saw in those eyes immediately loosened his lips.

“He’s alive, damn it.”

True. She nodded at Kadra, muttering a prayer of thanks to the Elsar.

“You’ll return him.” Kadra leaned against the table, ignoring Red Tunic’s attempts to dislodge his broken fingers. “Any others like him?”

A familiar throat cleared itself. Looking furious, Helvus stalked over to Kadra. “That’s irrelevant. This trial has only one plaintiff.”

Her heart sank.True. The Corpus only allowed for a victim or their families to petition for relief. If the other debt-slaves’ families didn’t know that they were being held prisoner, then there was no rescuing them. The law needed a plaintiff, a defendant, and a well-attested crimeto rouse itself from slumber. Feeling hollow, Sarai returned to her seat to transcribe.

“The boy shouldn’t have agreed to work if he wasn’t up to the rigor,” Helvus argued. “Or his father would have done well to pay his debts. Tetrarch Tulluswillhear about this if we’re punished for abiding by the laws of business.”

“Profit above all, yes.” Kadra looked bored. “Debt-slaves are still illegal, Guildmaster.”

“The boy agreed! And any harm is superficial.”

Glancing at the now-sobbing plaintiff, she tightened her fingers around her pen. But there wasn’t much more that even Kadra could do. The Corpus dictated that punishment for wrongful detention wasdamnatio ad metalla, time in Ur Dinyé’s notoriously harsh mines. That time would be whittled down by the mitigating factors here: the initial debt, the boy’s gender, that he’d come willingly, even that he hadn’t died. The plaintiff would be lucky if Red Tunic got six months.

At the end of Helvus’s tirade, Kadra nodded. “He’s going to the mines for a year.”

“The Metals Guild is the lifeblood of—”

“Without an arm.”

She dropped her pen as chaos exploded across the bazaar, cheers clashing with the Metals Guildspeople’s outraged yells. A primal shudder shot through her when Kadra smiled, pondering a terrified Red Tunic—who’d ripped his hand from the table—with terrible anticipation.

Helvus’s thick knuckles clenched. “This has gone on long enough.” He snapped his fingers at a Guildsman. “Inform Head Tetrarch Aelius that this man needs to be reined in. Your nonsense may fly in this Quarter, Kadra, but I will not have my men mutilated for—”

“Assault,” Kadra supplied mildly.

Assault?

“Whom did I assault?” Red Tunic yelled, above the Guildspeople’s furor. His gaze snagged on her, and he sneered. “Her? I didn’t strike her!”

“No,” Kadra agreed. “You struck me.”

The man went stock-still with an almost piteous gasp of horror. Sarai’s jaw dropped.

He’s brilliant.“Anyone who inflicts harm upon a Tetrarch loses the offending limb,” she recited from the Corpus, “be it hand, eye, or tongue.”

How many steps ahead had Kadra been plotting when she’d set her plan into action?

Red Tunic fell to his knees. “Forgive me, Tetrarch Kadra. I’ll pay in lieu of my arm. As much as you want! The Guild will assist!” He turned pleading eyes to Helvus, who huffed and turned on his heel, pushing through the crowd.

“Cold,” Gaius remarked, then rolled his eyes. “A moment, Petitor Sarai.”

He strode to where Red Tunic had managed to free his hand from the table. The Guildsman sprung toward the crowd, attempting to make a run for it, just as Gaius gripped his tunic and dragged him back to the table, right between her and Kadra.

Bile flooded her mouth at the song of metal being unsheathed. Kadra’s sword gleamed in the sunlight, as another vigile came to Red Tunic’s side to hold his arm widthways across the wood.

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