Free Promised by Caragh M. O'brien Page A

her torso and legs, making no effort to handle her with respect. He pulled the dagger out of her boot and tossed it to another guard.
    â€œShe’s good,” Jones said.
    The commander loosened his grip, and Gaia whipped around to face him.
    She was fierce in her controlled fury. “You filthy bastard,” she said. “I’m not some friendless girl from outside the wall anymore,” she said. “I’m the Matrarc of New Sylum, and you can’t treat me this way.”
    â€œMake no mistake. You’re a traitor and you deserve to hang,” Sgt. Burke said. “You can come nicely, or we’ll tie you and haul you along. Choose.
    Still recoiling from the sensation of Jones’s rough hands, Gaia searched tensely around the entrance to the Enclave for any allies. As before, the buildings were whitewashed and clean, and warmed now by the golden light of afternoon, she had to squint. She was surrounded by gracious order: neatly cobbled streets, window boxes brimming with flowers, and awnings that cast their deep rectangles of shade on the shopping pedestrians.
    A girl in a yellow dress, half hidden behind her mother’s white skirt, poked up her hat to watch Gaia, and then craned her neck as her mother hurried her into a shop. Others were likewise backing away, as cautious as ever. Gaia was on her own.
    â€œJust don’t touch me again,” Gaia said, detangling her hair from her necklace and straightening her blouse.
    â€œRight this way, then,” said Sgt. Burke, and her escort closed in around her.
    The broad street rose steadily between the rows of shops and eventually opened into the Square of the Bastion, where the obelisk rose high against the blue sky, and the tower of the Bastion, where her mother had been kept, rose on the right. A gallows was set up before the terraced steps of the stately Bastion, which implied that someone had been hanged lately, or was due to be.
    A vision of an executed pregnant criminal surfaced from the dregs of Gaia’s mind, along with her old outrage at the injustice. Yet now her dread of the gallows was overlaid with a strange guilt, a weird sympathy for those in power, because she, as Matrarc, had sentenced her share of criminals to the stocks back in Sylum. On which side of a gavel did she belong?
    A group of young women dressed in vivid red crossed the square diagonally. Other memories of people who had once helped her flooded back: the sloe-eyed, lively maid Rita, and the Jackson family who had owned a bakery around the corner.
    â€œHere we go,” Sgt. Burke said, and veered toward the prison.
    When she saw the arch that led to the heavy doors, she instinctively recoiled. She had too many memories of her bleak existence in Q cell, and her instincts told her that if she entered again, she would never come out.
    â€œI don’t belong in there,” she said. “I want to see the Protectorat. Take me to the Bastion.”
    â€œGrab her,” the sergeant said.
    â€œI’m not—!” Gaia screamed.
    Jones grabbed her unceremoniously from behind and clamped a heavy hand over her mouth. She lodged her heels in the cobblestones, struggling, and bit down on his hand.
    â€œLet me go!” she yelled. “Help!”
    Two guards lifted her off her feet, and she twisted, trying to get free, as they maneuvered her under the arch toward the prison.
    â€œI can’t go in there,” she said, her voice breaking. “Please!”
    â€œGaia Stone?” asked a loud, feminine voice.
    Gaia stopped struggling for a second. The guards caught her more securely between them, but Gaia craned around to see Leon’s sister Evelyn peering through the arch.
    â€œStop!” the girl called.
    Evelyn had grown taller, more slender, and her candid eyes appraised Gaia with genuine surprise. Gaia tried to escape from the guards, but they held her tightly and her right shoulder wrenched with pain.
    â€œEvelyn, help