“But for now, get yourself out of sight. I don’t need our visiting dignitaries to see you or hear you, and I certainly don’t need the females of Gettys stirred to wrath by your presence at this time. Off you go now. Dismissed.

Good-bye.” With his final words, he had lost interest in me. He had risen, walked to a mirror on the wall, and was carefully smoothing his mustache with one hand as he shooed me out of the room with the other. I made one last effort. “Sir, I think,” I began.

He cut off my words. “No. You don’t. I think. You obey orders. Dismissed, trooper.”

I went. I didn’t speak to the lieutenant as I left. I didn’t trust myself to say anything. The colonel had known. They’d all known. I’d thought I’d been so clever piecing it together. But they’d known of the significance of the trees and they didn’t care, because keeping Gettys on the road east was far more important to them. More important than what it did to the men to be kept on such a discouraging task. More important than felling trees that held the ancestral wisdom of a people.

I found I was nearly shaking with rage. My heart pumped magic like a poison through me. It took every bit of control I had to refuse to let my anger focus on those I wished to punish. It would solve nothing, I knew. If Colonel Haren dropped in his tracks tomorrow, there would be another man just like him right behind him. As I approached my cart, I noted with displeasure that Sergeant Hoster was standing near Clove, apparently inspecting my horse’s harness. I wanted a fight so badly. It would have been such a relief to put my fist in his perpetually sneering face. By a vast effort of will, I walked around the wagon to approach the seat from the other side rather than jostling Sergeant Hoster out of the way. “Good day,”

I greeted him coldly, climbing up on the cart seat. “In a hurry, soldier?”

he asked me. His eyes glinted bright, as if he were seeing something that delighted him.

“Colonel Haren’s orders. He wants me to go immediately to the cemetery.”

I gathered up Clove’s reins.

Hoster sneered at me. “He’s not the only one who thinks you should go straight to the cemetery.” He gave a “haw” at his own joke and then added cleverly. “Nice harness on your horse, soldier.”

I tried to find the insult in his words. “It’s just a harness.”

“That it is. That it is.” He stepped away from Clove.

I shook my head and drove away.

It took me longer to get out of town than I expected. The streets were thronged with people converging on the dais. Half of them walked in a Gettys tonic daze; the others glared at me as if they could not believe my stupidity in trying to get a horse and cart through such a crowded street.