Free The Universal Mirror by Gwen Perkins Page B

they were sitting in a parlor.
    Her light tone took effort—that, Quentin could see by the tightening of her smile.  He admired her for it even as he silently cursed himself for being so careless with his nights.
    “Exactly,” he said, careful to maintain their pretense of friendship.  Even if Catharine was reserving her kindness for public appearances, it was still kindness that he longed for.  “So, why settle for a chicken?”
    “I always wanted a chicken growing up,” she flashed him a smile that bore no rancor, lost as she was in a fond memory of childhood.  “Father would never have stood for it, of course.  So I used to—”
    What Catharine had done was drowned out suddenly as the clarion call of trumpets announced the coming of the Council.  She slipped off the barrel and stood next to Quentin, both of them hushed with the crowd.
    The Council of Magicians numbered five men, all of them masked.  Their identities were the subject of constant rumor at every dance and gathering.  Who the men truly were, no one could be sure although all had their theories.  Old and young alike, as the Council mounted the platform, it was impossible to distinguish one from one another.  Each man was cloaked in black, his face and head hidden by a raven’s head mask.  Quentin wondered as he stared at the dark figures whether the men even knew the identities of one another.
    The magicians stood in a line, creating a billowing black wall as their cloaks fluttered in the wind.  The sky above them was stark, no clouds remaining to filter the harsh gray light from the face of the man that the executioner led in front of them. 
    The prisoner was the only man who wore no mask or hood.  He was not much older than Quentin who heard Catharine’s breath hiss next to his neck as she leaned forward.
    “It’s one of the Nestors,” she whispered.
    “The Nestors?”  He craned his head forward, blurting out, “But I went to university with one of them…”  The same reaction was racing through the crowd as hushed voices all lifted, whispering of their own connections to the family.  Cercia was a small island and the Nestors not an insignificant part of it.
    “Tammas Nestor,” the executioner bellowed and Quentin heard nothing more as his eyes fixed on the man who was walking the stage a second time.
    “It is him,” he whispered.  “I know him.”
    Quentin couldn’t stop gawking at Tammas, his mouth wide open in horror as what little he remembered of the man came to mind.  His curiosity… the fact that he liked cats and the color orange… these and a hundred other simple facts were what ran through his mind as the executioner began to read the charges against the man.  Tammas’ face was bone-white as Quentin stared at it, his black hair matted to his scalp with sweat.  In unison, the Council turned their backs and walked off the platform, moving as one into the building behind.  They had passed their judgment already, it seemed.  By turning their backs, they signaled that the punishment was to be carried out to its end.
    “What did he do?”  Quent found himself asking though it was apparent from the faces around him that the audience had just been told.
    “He tried to leave the island,” Catharine whispered and her hand slid down to take his, her grip stronger than his own.
    He couldn’t see Tammas as the man made his way to the block.  Quentin’s eyes were too blurred with tears, knowing what they all did.  No magician was allowed to leave Cercia.  To leave was Heresy and heresy was just another name for treason in the end.
    He would give up either his life or his magic.  To Quentin, it was one and the same.
    “Quentin, you don’t have to watch this.”  Catharine’s low voice insisted, her hand pulling at his.  He felt her fingernails dig into his skin but he didn’t turn, unable to look away.
    Others around them were pushing forward.People shoved their way towards the platform, to join the