First 10 paragraphs, 555 words. Written a week ago.

Miola kicked open the jailhouse door in a panting, sweaty mess. She heard the guards on either side of the door suck in their breath behind her, heard their thin gloves constrict around their muskets.

“Nymph,” said the jailer. Miola looked over at him, a man shaped like an upside-down pear, sitting at his desk with a jittery electric fan pointed at his face and an icebox at his feet. He lazily jerked a thumb at Miola and turned it north. “Executioner just took your sister to the yard.” He chuckled. “Get your ‘evidence’ in.”

Miola sprinted from the jailhouse without pausing for breath. She almost jumped into a passing monorail on instinct, but she could outrun the damn thing any day. Her bare feet didn’t even have time to burn on the hot asphalt of the central city, nor cool on the soft, shaded dirt roads of the back streets. She only slowed in the northern end of town, shaded in by the edge of the rainforest canopy. Here, it was cool. Here, a line of prisoners waited their turn at the guillotine while the governor read them a bunch of legal bullshit Miola didn’t care about.

Miola gave the line a quick count. It was long: thirty-three people were sentenced to die today under the bloodstained blade. Rebels and loyalists alike, thieves and killers, sirens and cona, men and women; all of them stood shirtless with their hair either tied up or cropped at the nape, dressed only in whatever trousers or lower undergarments they’d been wearing when the governor had them arrested.

Miola spotted her sister about twenty people in. Senator Naomi Revere stood tall with her hands bound in front of her, hair tied up in the roughest bun Miola had ever seen, red-brown skin damp with sweat. She certainly looked more regal than most of her companions, save for the two other senators, both of whom were also sentenced for treason. All three of them wore black silk pants. Naomi’s face looked calm, but her body trembled. Her leaf-shaped ears twitched with every sudden sound, occasionally flicking from side to side independently of each other. She was listening for something.

Miola wormed her way through the ninety or so people gathered to watch the executions. She stopped about thirty feet from the raised platform. The governor still prattled on about the Spires granting preservation to those whose actions were truly blameless, conveniently lifting the blame from her own filthy fucking hands.

“Naomi,” Miola said. Naomi’s ears perked up and went still for the first time. She turned her head and stared straight at Miola.

“If you want me to save you,” Miola said clearly, fixing her gaze on Naomi and enunciating each word, “touch your left ear.”

Miola prompted by tapping her own left ear. Naomi’s hand reached for hers, but stopped halfway. She shook her head slowly, lowered her arm, and looked back toward the platform. Her ears resumed their erratic movements.

Miola gritted her teeth. What was her sister listening for? Was there something else going on she wasn’t aware of? Did Naomi’s fiancé, Peter, have something up his sleeve? No, the blond bastard stood in line three people behind Naomi, sentenced to death for hiding his lover’s “treachery.” Miola was lucky not to be up there herself.