Another man in what was left of the next house over straightened and looked warningly at him. “I’d be careful about what I say, Atef-ka,” the neighbor said. “I’m not saying you aren’t right—but if you are, well—you saw their answer.”

Atef-ka looked bleakly at his neighbor. “Too right,” was all he replied, but both of them looked sick.

Well, for all that he had predicted just this action, Kiron felt sick, too. Sick, and angry.

He had to return to the compound to feed and exercise Avatre, and to do so, because once again bridges were closed except for certain “privileged” folk, he had to go to the Second Ring to get to the Third, and pass right by the site where the Eye had touched.

There was nothing there but a slab of glasslike, fused earth, still hot. Fires smoldered around the perimeter. And the silent, white faces of those whose duties kept them here said it all.

But when he got back to the compound, there was someone waiting for him, in his chamber, along with Aket-ten. Someone he had not expected to see there.

“Healer Heklatis!” he said in surprise. “But what—”

“The Temple of All Gods is no longer a safe haven for me,” the Akkadian said grimly. There was no smile in his eyes at all. “Or at least for my magic. I suspect a spy has been planted in the Temple of All Gods, and since the Magi are looking very, very hard for a mythical Tian Priest-Mage on the Second Ring, I deemed it wise to come assign myself to the military on Third Ring.”

“That is an ugly thought, Healer,” Kiron replied. “Though—maybe a wise one.”

“There is an uglier scar on the Second Ring, provoked by no more than a demand for truth, Jouster,” said Heklatis grimly. “And truth and trust are the means by which civilization holds off barbarism. When those in power intend to abuse that power, they look to an outside enemy in order to trick their people into pressing the means to their own abuse into the hands of the abusers. If an enemy does not exist, it will be manufactured, and all manner of horrors attributed to it, so that anyone who demands truth and accountability is set upon as being unpatriotic. And so that, when someone said to be an enemy is found, there will be few questions asked about guilt or innocence, and many faces averted when he is taken away.”

Kiron thought about his own experience in the Fourth Ring, and nodded.