roads. You may wonder, for it is not permitted to walk the roads without a token, but he carried a token so we gave him work repairing the palisade. Then he murdered old Hemar for a mere twenty vey to drink with, and so we come to discover he had stolen the token months ago. That's the holy truth, Holy One.' With her body hunched over in fear, she resembled a crabbed old crone rather than a stoutly healthy woman.
That he was guilty was evident. 'What of the others?'
The clerk trembled as she indicated each one in turn.
This woman had cheated in weighing rice-
'I did it, Holy One,' the woman gasped. 'Please forgive me. My children were hungry. Now they've been sold away as debt slaves to pay for my crime.'
This man had stolen two bolts of cloth from the town warehouse, claiming it rightfully belonged to him and had earlier been purloined by the town's militia captain at a checkpoint between Stragglewood and Yestal.
'It's a lie, what I said before. I was so fearful when they caught me, for fear they'd cleanse me right there, that I said anything that came to mind. I'll never steal again, I swear it.'
Two young women had gotten a visiting merchant drunk and robbed his purse.
'We never did any such thing, Holy One. We let him buy drinks for us, because we hadn't any coin, so maybe we was taking advantage. But he claimed we'd robbed him, and we never touched his purse! And when they brought us up in front of Master Forren, then he said he'd dismiss the charges if I had sex with him. Have you ever heard of such a thing?'
'And you refused?'
'Of course I refused! He's a gods-rotted pig, meaning no offense to pigs. But we're poor folk, our people, no one to speak for us in council. We've been locked in here a year or more and Stara is so ill, you see how she can't even stand any longer. Now
she's going to die, just because I wouldn't have sex with him! They won't let our kinfolk in to see us.' It was all true, and no one in town had done a cursed thing to stop it.
An old man, too weak to raise his head, was a beggar.
'Why is he here?' Marit demanded. 'Can't his clan take care of him?'
'He's got no clan.'
'No one can have no clan.'
'None who will claim him.'
A young woman in the far cage pushed up to sit as she looked over her shoulder. It was difficult to tell her age because her face was smeared with muck, but she met Marit's gaze with her own wide brown one. And that was all it was: a look passed between two women. Her heart and mind were veiled to Marit's third eye and second heart. After all these months, the blank wall of a gaze hit hard.
'She's a gods-cursed demon, Holy One,' said Osya.
'You put her in a cage?' Marit's hands tightened over the keys until the pain bit her and she remembered where she was.
The caged woman watched with the resigned calm of a person who has already given herself up for dead. Her stare was as even as sunlight on a clear day, almost brutal in its intensity.
'According to the statutes. We sent word to Wedrewe last month that we'd captured one, for we're required to alert the arkhons about any gods-cursed or outlanders.'
'What do the authorities in Wedrewe do with the gods-touched and outlanders?'
'I suppose they judge them at the assizes, Holy One. As required by the statutes.'
In the cage beside her, a burly man called, 'I'm not afraid to be judged! They're the ones who should fear, for they have condemned me to the cleansing just to get what is mine.'
'He's a liar,' said Osya in a shaking voice. 'He killed a man.'
But he wasn't a liar. He met Marit's gaze willingly. He was not pure of heart; he had a temper, easily roused, and he'd gotten into his share of fistfights after an evening of drinking, and he had slapped his wife and been slapped by her in turn, a turbulent pair who didn't like each other much. But he worked hard, and he'd discovered an unexpected vein of iron in a shallow drift up in the hills on which he'd placed a claim according to the law. Forren had set four men including his own nephew to ambush him on the
trail and it wasn't his cursed fault that he'd killed the nephew, who everyone knew was a clumsy foul- tempered lunk. He'd been defending his own life and his legal claim.
'He killed a man, it's true,' said Marit. 'But why aren't the men who ambushed him being held for assault and conspiracy?'
'He attacked them, unprovoked,' said Osya. 'It was pure spite on his part, him with his short temper.'
The man stared accusingly. He was ready to be ill-used. He would never get a fair hearing.
She handed the keys to Osya. 'Let him free. He's telling the truth.'
He grinned, baring teeth. 'Nay, I'll take the punishment, for otherwise the town council will take their revenge on my clan, and there'll be nothing I can do to spare my kinfolk. Knowing one Guardian heard and acknowledged the truth is enough for me. As for these poor lasses-' He indicated the sobbing young woman. 'You can be sure she never said one word to encourage that asstard Forren, but the piss-pot would have her just to prove he can have what he wants, and leave her and her cousin to rot to death when she had the belly to say no to him. Hear me, Holy One. Maybe it's true we have fewer small troubles than before, but why is there no justice when those who hold the reins in this town do as they wish and get legal rulings out of Wedrewe to support them? They enforce the statutes among the rest of us, but hold themselves above because they were appointed by the arkhons out of Wedrewe.'
Marit turned to Osya. 'Is the town council appointed, not elected? Do they enforce the law on others and ignore it themselves?'
She hid behind her hands. 'I just record the hearings and the deeds and the legal rulings set by the council according to the statutes of the holy one.'
'You're a clerk of Sapanasu?'
'The Lantern's temple is closed, Holy One. That happened the year after I served my apprenticeship, twelve years ago now.'
The words rasped out of Marit before she could bite them back. 'Temples are closed? What have you become?'
'We are at peace, Holy One,' whispered the clerk. 'We are a peaceful place.'
Marit sucked in a grunt as pain racked her torso. But the spasm passed, and she recognized not physical pain but the horror of knowing she had walked into a situation she had no power to
alter. Maybe she could execute Master Forren or his cronies on the town council for their crimes, but she had no clear idea how her Guardian's staff — the sword she carried — sealed justice if she could not actually stab a person with it. Anyhow, if she condemned Lord Radas's justice, done at his whim, how could she justify her own?
Because you can see the truth.
Yet truth is not so easy to discern. Emotion twists memory; folk convince themselves of what they want to be true. They hide behind layers of self-deceit, not all of which are easily penetrated even by one who possesses a second heart and a third eye.
She did not trust herself to so casually wield the power of life and death over others while remaining convinced she was right. She did not trust anyone who did.
'Osya. Bring road tokens, enough for all who are prisoner here to depart unmolested. Then release all the prisoners except for the one who murdered the old man. Do not try to pass off false tokens as true ones, for I'll know the difference. After the prisoners have walked free, ring the town's summoning bell.'
It was all she could do, and in the end the angry young man who had lost his claim chose to depart, helping the young woman carry her sick cousin. He alone thanked her; the rest fled without a word.
After they were gone, Marit led Warning into the main square, where she mounted and waited as the bell rang once, twice, and thrice. Folk approached in twos and threes in a stuttering stumble, fearful of her presence in a way that disturbed her so mightily she could not look at it squarely for it would make her consider what the Guardians had become in their eyes: not guardians of justice but 'holy ones' who demanded obeisance.
It was foul. Obscene.
It was easy to recognize the members of the town council, replete in fine clothing and shiny ornament. They
