The Ember Right
AMY
The executioner is still adjusting the rope around my neck when I decide that being eaten alive may have been unfairly maligned. Hanging sounds efficient until the knot is pressed beneath my left ear and half of Veyrhold is waiting to discover whether my neck breaks cleanly; a dragon, at least, would introduce uncertainty, and on the morning of November eleventh uncertainty feels preferable to knowing exactly which bell is supposed to kill me.
“Too tight?” the executioner asks, sliding two gloved fingers beneath the noose with the solemn concentration of a tailor checking a collar. He is perhaps thirty, clean-shaven and ordinary enough that I might pass him in a market without remembering his face, which seems unfair for the man preparing to execute Amy Halden for treason.
“Comfort feels ambitious at this stage.”
