“Nothing but have a hand alight. I sent those knights to bring in the Marshal and yeoman-marshal, but … I am not sure what to do. Stop this killing, of course, but how? I was heading for the High Lord’s Hall to pray when I met you.”

“They must be tried. A tribunal of Marshals?”

Arianya nodded. “That would be best, to start with. But I fear there are others of the same mind.”

“May I tell the other paladins in residence?” Camwynya asked.

“Yes. Paladins may do better at convincing people this is wrong than a letter from the Marshal-General.”

Prayers, Arianya reflected on her way back from the High Lord’s Hall, were a necessary duty but did not accomplish the work of changing minds. She finished the letter—brief and firm—and sent it down to the scribes to copy and distribute to all the granges. She met with Camwynya and the other two paladins in residence, and then walked down the hill to the nearest grange to talk to Marshal Cedlin.

“Killed a child? For magery?” He looked as appalled as she felt.

“Yes, Cedlin. And they’re apparently quite pleased with themselves for enforcing the Code of Gird.”

He scowled, chewing his lower lip. “I won’t say I don’t have a few yeomen who might do the same, if they thought their Marshal approved,” he said. “Most of ’em born and bred in little vills like that. There’s pockets of meanness, Marshal-General. You know that.”

“Yes, but I don’t have to tolerate it.”

“No more you do. There’s not a grange here in Fin Panir will back killing a child even if the child does wrong. And making a light—that’s not evil in itself.”

“So, Cedlin—I want you as one of the Marshals in a court I’m convening and on a council later. If one child can show magery after so many generations, so could another. I can’t count Duke Verrakai over in Tsaia, but there’s that boy Beclan, a duke’s son, but of a family thought to have no magery. If the gods are bringing magery back into the world—”

“Then there’s a reason, and we’ve no call to be killing people that do no harm with it.” Cedlin ran a hand over his head. “Though defining what is harm and what isn’t—that’s going to take some thinking.”

“You’ve heard nothing about children showing magery lately?”

“No … but there has been more talk about the evils of magery. I blamed that on what’s been said about Duke Verrakai—evil or not, her killing her father did not go over well here, as you know—and her squire showing magery, as well as the deaths of those knights cased in rock last year. We Marshals agreed it was rockfolk magic, but to many folk magery is magery whoever does it, and it’s all bad.”