“Are you sure you recognize him? What makes you think it’s the same man?”

“It’s not just his size and hair—not even just the scar. He had a distinctive way of moving—especially when fighting, but even just walking or running. He gestured with his hand, something like this—” Stammel demonstrated. “—when he talked, especially when he joked about something. He had a way of sweeping his hair back with his left hand—” Stammel demonstrated again. “Aside from that, when we shaved him—for Captain Sejek had decreed he be tinisi turin, I remember a birthmark on his groin, left side I think. Small, dark. But what about whip scars—were they found?”

“Indeed,” the chief Councilor said. “But he claimed he always scarred dark, and we do not know what the dye you used would look like after so many years.”

“I gave him the last five lashes myself,” Stammel said. “And I know exactly where I placed them.”

Some of the Councilors shifted back in their chairs, Arcolin noticed. Stammel was not a large man, but every fingerbreadth a veteran soldier: hard-bodied, steady, with strength beyond the obvious muscles.

“Do you whip soldiers often in your company?” one of the Councilors asked.

“No, sir,” Stammel said, answering before Arcolin could. “Recruits we mostly clout if they need it. Soldiers get their pay cut, and maybe a few lashes if they do something really bad. But what this Korryn did—plotting to get another recruit in trouble, putting some kind of poison in a corporal’s drink, beating a fellow-recruit who’d refused to sleep with him and then lying about her—saying she’d attacked the corporal—that was bad enough for a whipping. Then he fought, tried to kill one of the village council. Bad enough to kill him outright, if he’d been a regular, but as he was a recruit he got off light.”

“Doesn’t sound like it,” murmured one of them.

“Don’t it, sir?” Stammel asked, head cocked a little. “He nearly ruined one of the best recruits we ever had—nearly got her condemned to the same punishment—and then Stephi, a corporal—got him in trouble, too. Stephi was so ashamed of what he’d done that he got careless, thinking of it, and was killed next campaign year. If it’d been my choice, I’d have killed him then and there. But Captain Sejek, he wanted an example made.”

Arcolin didn’t interrupt, but when Stammel finished, he said, “The recruit the sergeant speaks of is now a paladin of Gird. She fought three campaign seasons with us, including the last of Siniava’s War. If she had been killed, I myself would have died in the north, along with the Duke who is now king—she, as a paladin, saved us, and she is the reason Kieri is now a king.”

“That may be, but we must be certain.”

“Of course,” Arcolin said, with difficulty keeping the edge of scorn from his voice. He was convinced now, by Stammel’s explanations, but some people were never satisfied by facts they had not themselves discovered.