The scent of lavender could not hide what Saint Dorothy was doing to the man at her feet.
From the cathedral roof, I watched her lay a hand against his ruined cheek. The beggar stopped trembling. Sores closed beneath her fingers, leaving smooth pink skin, and ten thousand people in the Royal Plaza began to cheer.
"Be healed. The Gods love you."
Wind magic carried her voice to the back of the square. A woman lifted her child above the crowd. Beside her, an old man struggled to his knees.
They saw a goddess giving a gift.
Through my burning left eye, I saw a parasite taking a meal.
The Lens of the Gardener stripped the gold from Dorothy's light. Oily black vapor poured out of the beggar's chest and into her hand. She was repairing his flesh. She was also taking roughly twenty years of his remaining life.
He touched his cheek, laughing now. Dorothy kept her hand on him a moment longer.
After losing that much, I doubted he would last the week. She might get another decade of youth from the exchange.
An Immortal, they called her. It was easy to live forever when someone else supplied the years.
I shifted my weight on the gargoyle. My right hand had stiffened around its stone ear. I opened the fingers one at a time beneath my glove.
Down in the plaza, an attendant was already bringing the next patient forward.
Enough.
I stood, pulling the hood of my black coat low over my face. Eighty feet below, sunlight flashed from the guards' halberds. Four around the dais. More at the steps. Too many people pressed against the barriers between them.
I waited until the next patient stopped short of the marble platform.
Then I stepped off the roof.
The wind tore at my coat. The dais rushed upward, much faster than it had any right to, and at ten feet I forced Shadow Step through the fall.
My momentum shifted. I struck the marble hard enough to crack it.
Pain shot through my knees.
I stayed crouched until I trusted them to hold me. Fortunately, a slow rise looked deliberate.
Dust rolled across the dais. The music had stopped. Dorothy stood with one hand still resting on the beggar's head, her smile fixed in place.
"Who are you?"
I said nothing.
She took her hand off him.
"Guards. Remove him."
Four men advanced with their halberds lowered. The nearest thrust at my chest.
I caught the steel point in my right hand.
"Rot."
Grey corrosion spread beneath my fingers. The blade crumbled into orange dust. Decay ran down the shaft, consuming wood, then crossed into the gauntlets gripping it.
The guard screamed and threw the weapon away. Too late for the armor. Metal flaked from his wrists, scattering across the marble.
I let the curse stop there.
He fell backward, hands bare and shaking. Alive.
The others checked their advance. One raised his halberd again, then looked at what was left of his companion's weapon.
Heat crept beneath my sleeve. I lowered my right arm before they could see the fingers twitch.
"Stay down," I told the fallen guard.
He did.
Dorothy backed toward the steps. The beggar crawled aside, trying not to touch either of us.
"You've frightened him," she said. Her voice still carried across the plaza. "Look what you've done."
She reached toward his shoulder.
I moved before she touched him again.
Light gathered in her raised palm. I caught her by the throat and drove her back a step. The spell sputtered against my coat and went out.
Up close, the lavender was almost sickening. Beneath it, I could smell the stolen time.
"Do you know who I am?" she demanded.
"I know what you are."
Her nails dug into my wrist. I could feel the pressure, but not the cuts. That should have worried me more than it did.
"I am the grace of Oakhaven. These people—"
"Are feeding you," I said, too low for the crowd.
For the first time, she stopped fighting my grip.
At the edge of the dais, the beggar stopped and stared at Dorothy's healing hand. He had heard me, but her palm showed nothing.
Dorothy noticed where I was looking.
"The people love me," she said. "They will tear you apart."
"Let them."
I brought my mouth close to her ear.
"You are a weed pretending to be a flower."
Then I activated the curse.
"Wither."
Her skin turned grey beneath my fingers. Wrinkles spread from her throat to her face. Golden hair bleached white and came loose against my sleeve. Three centuries seemed to catch up with her in as many seconds.
Her mouth opened. Nothing came out.
I held on.
Pain climbed my arm, a hot line forcing its way toward the elbow. My grip nearly failed. I tightened it, and Dorothy's knees folded beneath her robes.
By the time the white silk reached the ground, there was no body left inside it.
Ash slipped through my hand.
The beggar looked at the empty robes. Then he looked at me.
"Murderer."
He said it quietly at first, as though he had only just found the word.
"Murderer!"
A stone struck the dais beside my boot. Someone shouted for the guards. The woman holding her child turned away, shielding the child's face from me.
I could still explain. Tell them what I had seen. Point to the beggar and ask how much life a miracle ought to cost.
But he was standing now, touching his healed cheek. I had ash on my glove. There was no proof I could place in his hands.
And if they believed me?
I looked past the crowd to the soldiers at the palace gates. A few people in the plaza had sticks. The soldiers had spears, armor, and room to form a line.
If I turned this crowd against the crown, I could not get them all out again. There were children trapped between the adults and the barriers.
Better to give the palace one enemy it could name. Let the royals send their hunters after me instead of finding rebels in every street.
That was the hope. I had no guarantee they would oblige.
A brick hit my shoulder. I staggered half a step.
"Monster!"
The beggar had joined the shouting. Behind him, the guard I had spared was trying to fit his shaking hand around a borrowed sword.
They would not trust me now. I could still make them afraid to follow me.
I kicked through Dorothy's ashes and spread my arms.
"Weep, then."
I pushed my voice across the square. The next shout faltered. Even the guards at the steps hesitated.
"You think your prayers protect you? You think your love saved her?"
The words tasted foul. I kept going.
On a distant palace balcony, a figure stood motionless behind the rail. Too far away to make out a face. I pointed there anyway.
"I am the Gardener. Your Saints, your heroes, your Kings—dead branches waiting for my shears."
Another whistle sounded beyond the plaza. Reinforcements.
Good. Come for the coat. Come for the man who said it.
I turned my back on the guards before they could decide how much strength I had left.
"If you want to live," I said over my shoulder, "pray that I do not visit your garden tonight."
My right hand would not close properly. I hid it in the fold of my coat.
A slender girl stepped from the shadow beneath the king's statue. A half-mask of bone covered her face. She looked once at my lowered arm, then moved to my side.
"It is time."
I nodded.
Her shadows rose around us. The plaza narrowed to a strip of angry faces, the beggar still shouting among them.
Then the light vanished.
Hidden from the square at last, I let myself bend over my arm.
The First Pruning was complete.
I had not yet looked at what it had cost.