With that, he thrust the scroll into the hands of the scribe and promptly walked back the way he had come. With a nod from the sheriff, a soldier approached the first stock and ripped open the back of the young mother’s dress. From somewhere in the crowd, a child screamed, yet without pause the sheriff swung his whip, even as the poor woman cried for mercy. The knots bit into the pale skin of her back and she howled and danced in pain. Stroke after stroke fell with the scribe standing by, keeping careful track. By the time it was done, her back was red and slick with blood. The sheriff took a break and handed the whip to a soldier, who performed similar punishment on her husband as the sheriff sat by, leisurely drinking from a cup.

The crowd, already quiet, grew deadly still as they came to the woman from Kilnar, who began screaming as they approached. The sheriff and his deputies took turns whipping her, as the day’s heat made such work exhausting. The fatigue in their arms was evident by the wild swings that struck the woman high on her shoulders as well as low on her back, and even occasionally as low as her thighs. After the first thirty lashes, the woman stopped screaming and only whimpered softly. The whipping continued, and by the time the scribe counted sixty, the woman merely hung limp. A physician approached the post, lifted her head by her hair, and pronounced her dead. The scribe made a note of this. They did not remove her body.

The sheriff finally moved to Emery. The young man was not daunted after seeing the punishment carried out on the others, and made the bravest showing of all. He stood defiant as the soldier with the whip approached him.

“Killing me will not change the truth that Viceroy Androus is the real traitor and guilty of killing King Urith and the royal family!” he managed to shout before the first strokes of the whip silenced him. He did not cry out but gritted his teeth and only dully grunted as the knots turned his back into a mass of blood and pulpy flesh. By the last stroke, he also hung limp and silent, but everyone could see him breathing. The physician indicated such to the scribe, who dutifully jotted it down.

“Those people didn’t do anything,” Arista said as the crowd began to disperse. “They’re innocent.”

“You, of all people, know that isn’t the point,” Royce replied.

Arista whirled. She opened her mouth, hesitated, and then shut it.

“Alric had twelve people publicly flogged for inciting riots when the church was kicked out of Melengar,” he reminded her. “How many of them were actually guilty of anything?”

“I’m sure that was necessary to keep the peace.”

“The viceroy will tell you the same.”