They rode in tree-shadowed silence for several leagues: Kris was minded to let her answer in her own time. The soft chime of bridle bells and their Companions’ hooves on the hard surface of the Trade Road made a kind of music that was most soothing to listen to.

“Ethics,” she said at last.

“Whoof—that’s dry thinking!”

“I suppose it is—” She plainly let her thoughts turn inward again; her eyes grew vague, and he coughed to recapture her attention.

“You went elsewhere,” he chided gently, when she jumped a little. “Now, you were saying—ethics. Ethics of what?”

“My Gift. Specifically, using it—”

“I thought you’d come to terms with that.”

“In a situation of threat, yes. In a situation where there was no appropriate and just punishment under normal procedures.”

“That—child-raper.”

“Exactly.” She shivered a little. “I thought I’d never feel clean again after touching his mind. But—what could I have done with him? Ordered his execution? That wouldn’t be enough of a punishment for what he did. Imprison him? Not appropriate at all. And much as I would have liked to pull him to bits slowly, Heralds don’t go in for torture.”

“What did you do to him? In detail, I mean. You didn’t want to talk about it before.”

“It was a—kind of twist on a mind-Healing technique; it depended on the fact that I’m a projective Empath. I can’t remember what Devan called it, but you tie a specific thought to another thought or set of feelings that you construct. Then, every time the person thinks that thought, they also get what you want them to know. Like with Vostel—every time he would decide that he was to blame, he’d get what I put in there.”

“Which was?”

She grinned. “‘So next time I won’t be so stupid!’ And when he’d be ready to give up from pain, he’d get, ‘But it isn’t as bad as yesterday, and it’ll be better tomorrow.’ Not words, actually; it was all feelings.”

“Better, in that case, than words would have been,” Kris mused, shooing a fly away absently.

“So Devan said. Well, I did something like that with—that thing. I took one of the worst sets of his stepdaughter’s memories, and tied that in to all of his own feelings about women. And I kept point-of-view, so that it would appear to him as if he were the victim. You saw what happened.”

Kris shuddered. “He went mad; he just collapsed, foaming at the mouth.”