The Hawk hitched the horse at a vacant post, tying the blue satchel to her belt and leaving the rest. She led them on foot through Tideron’s midday crowd and out of the plaza, one hand clamped to Anji’s bicep. They weaved through a maze of shrub-lined streets, the white cobbles underfoot gleaming like snow in the sun. Stone façades of houses and shops lined the thoroughfares, their windows intact, lintels filled with potted flowers, shutters painted in even coats of varying colors. Eventually they came upon a broad street lined with market stalls, packed shoulder to shoulder with townsfolk clamoring for stacks of fruit, cheese, and linen billowing on the breeze. A white-and-gold wagon trundled past bearing a Sun Warden in hushed conversation with a white-jacketed woman with gleaming purple eyes. They were pulled by one of the enormous black birds that had driven Hectate’s own cart, its squawk jostling the crowd just enough to haul the cart through. Kit pulled Anji through the press, clicking her tongue at one stall in particular, manned by a woman wearing at least two dozen rings who claimed she knew what day Anji would die. Every person gave the Hawk and her charge a wide berth, averting their eyes but staring all the same when they thought the woman’s gaze had moved on. A girl with frizzy red hair pointed and mouthed “hawk” to her mother, who shushed her and dipped her head as they passed.

“This way,” said Kit, leading them out of the cluster of stalls and into another square, this one smaller than the one at the main gate. A bell tolled from some unseen structure, followed by raised voices at their backs. People pushed forward on all sides now, some of their faces excited and murmuring, but others mostly nervous or confused, their voices low, heads bent as they scuttled into the massing crowd.

“What’s going on?” said Anji.

“Keep your mouth shut and your head down,” said Kit. She grabbed Anji’s wrist and attempted to wade them through the oncoming throng, but the crowd was too thick now, and they were taken up into the stream. Anji twisted with the mass of writhing and whispering bodies, toward the focus of everyone’s attention. She stood up on her toes.

A structure of brilliant white stone dominated the square’s opposite end. It harbored one enormous door at its center, black oak bolted with black iron. Unlike the Order cathedrals, the structure had no nave, no buttresses, no spanning arcades. The windowless facade towered over Tideron’s rooftops, a symmetrical elongated pyramid shielded by a layer of scaffolding. Bent-backed workers lumbered up the ramps and ladders with wheelbarrows and sacks, hunched under the weight of brick hods. Hammers, chisels, and the calls of other workers competed with the murmuring press now focused on what stood in the space shadowed by the tower.

A wooden platform, raised to chest height.