The soldiers briskly pushed the boy to the ground. They strapped his arms to his cross. Then they laid one foot over the other, and to pin both feet to the cross upright, drove a long iron nail through them. The sound was extraordinary, like a skewer driven into a side of pork. The boy stayed silent; he panted hard, panicky. Brigonius had heard that there was comparatively little pain associated with the nailing, oddly. With a grunting effort the soldiers raised the cross, and pushed its base into a hole in the ground. As the cross was jolted into position, Brigonius thought he heard the flesh in the boy’s feet tear. Now the screaming began.

‘Oh, have mercy!’ Karus said, but it was a whisper, too quiet for the soldiers to hear.

Severa said bleakly, ‘Mercy? The suffering is necessary. Not for him and the crime he committed, but for us, so we will not transgress in future.’

‘But he didn’t commit a crime,’ Karus blustered. ‘That’s what’s so monstrously unfair about it!’

The boy’s guilt or otherwise didn’t matter, Brigonius knew. Severa was right about that. The rebellion had been broken up, its leaders punished. But for the soldiers at Banna one loose thread had remained. Nobody had been found who had supported Matto in his strike at the very heart of their camp, nobody who had ordered him to do it, nobody who had helped him. The soldiers couldn’t bear the idea that one individual acting alone could have penetrated so far into a base they thought of as secure. So somebody had to be blamed, a conspiracy concocted. And there, conveniently, was a Brigantian boy serving the prefect himself. Some whispered he had been seen at the gate when Matto arrived, or at the headquarters building before it was torched, or—

‘All lies,’ Karus moaned. An empathetic man for a lawyer, Brigonius thought; he felt the boy’s agony himself. ‘All rumours, misunderstandings - a will to see blame where none exists!’

Brigonius put a hand on his shoulder. ‘For once Severa is right. His suffering is necessary; it is closure. Let’s just be grateful it isn’t one of us.’

Karus spat on the ground, an uncharacteristically crude gesture. ‘Sometimes you are too pragmatic, Brigonius. This may be necessary but it isn’t for me.’ He stalked off, and Severa, her face unreadable, followed.

Blood dripped steadily from Similis’s feet. If he let himself hang from his arms, so sparing his torn feet, he couldn’t breathe. But if he tried to raise himself on his feet so he could get some air, the tearing got worse. So he jerked and struggled, shifting his weight from one source of pain to another, his movements minute but agonised.

As the boy fought to stay alive, one by one the crowd drifted away. Brigonius felt he ought to stay, though he wasn’t sure why.