The Executioner's Wife

Bonus Chapter: The Butcher's Son

On the day that his life changed forever, Alois had been trying to hide. Just seven years old, he was a mite of the large man he would become one day, but the strength of his future was not with him then. As he scampered away from the butcher's shop, blood staining his hands, a piglet squealing in his arms, his skinny legs pumped with all the effort he could manage. Behind him, his father, the town's butcher, gave bull-like chase. The butcher was a preview of what Alois had to look forward to, only with blond hair and blue eyes. But in those eyes was a red rage, as crimson as the blood on his apron and his cleaver, coming hard and hot after the boy who had suddenly decided he didn't want to sell his new friend's flanks after all. 

"Get back here!" the butcher roared. It was not the first time the young boy had lost his nerve against an animal. To the butcher, the blood meant payment. Alois could not see past the blood. Although he had been trained to slit an animal's throat, the moment of truth was always difficult for him. It was why they clashed so much, and why this time, the butcher would ensure it was the last time his son would cost them another pile of coins. "Boy!" 

Alois clutched the slippery piglet tighter against his small chest as the animal squirmed. It was not aware of its rescue- at least, not aware enough to appreciate it. Alois could practically feel the roaring breath of his father on the back of his neck. There was no time to convince the piglet to comply, and he scrambled to catch its back hooves before it could plop snout-first onto the cobblestones. 

Up ahead was a crowd assembling in town square. The immense luck leaped at Alois like a bright red sign. There was an execution, today. Some guard had cursed the king to his face, and now the king was there in person to watch his head roll. The king sat on a makeshift throne on the scaffold, and beside him was another for the queen, who rubbed her temples as the guard was asked by her husband, 

"Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

The guard, stripped of his armor and his dignity, stood in his white smock and looked out at the crowd, refusing to look at the king. "I regret nothing." 

"Aren't you going to look at your king when you speak to him?"

The guard didn't turn.

The king curled his lip at the disrespect shown by his former servant. Just beside him, the royal executioner at the time, glanced down for permission to proceed. He was tall, and burly, and carried an aura that exuded a dark, unnegotiable death. He bent down as the king lifted himself slightly to whisper into his ear, something that nobody in the crowd could hear. 

By then, Alois had wormed himself into the crowd, squeezing easily under the elbows and past the bony hips of the adults towering around him. He pushed himself as close to the front as possible, and at that same moment, the piglet broke free, clambering from his splayed hands like a lost cause. The movement threw him off balance, and he knocked into another boy standing attentively at the foot of the scaffold as though he were watching a game. 

"Watch it!" the other boy snarled. "What the hell is wrong with you?" 

Alois blinked and backed away. He'd never met this boy before. They were about the same age, but this kid already carried the cynical anger and vocabulary of an adult. His hair was a shock of red, his teeth bared in a snarl that shrunk into a grimace. But Alois lost his will to apologize as his name was called from behind the crowd- 

"Alois!"

The butcher was closing in at the rear. Alois turned forward, keeping his mouth shut, his heart racing as he tried to figure out what to do next. The angry boy turned away, figuring Alois wasn't worth it, and his expression relaxed into impressed, proud awe as the executioner stepped up to the guard.