With no one moving and she trapped in this pointless cycle of thoughts, she prodded the girl. “Get home.”

“We bring curfew-breakers to the captain on duty, to be cleansed, lord,” said the sergeant, trembling with the effort of staring at his hand so he would not forget and look at her.

“Take me to the captain in place of the girl. Who, if she knows what is good for her, will run off. Now.”

The girl bolted, and vanished down one of the lanes. Marit held her staff at the ready until she could no longer hear the patter of feet.

“No need to mention the incident to the captain,” she said. “I’ll know if you do.”

“That’s not how things work around here,” muttered the sergeant. She didn’t need a third eye and second heart to hear how disgruntled he was, having his authority undermined in front of his patrol by some cursed woman he’d never seen before in his life. She’d had a lot of experience as a reeve in unraveling the weave of conflicted human emotion, because it was rare indeed that any one person felt any one single pure feeling unadulterated by a dozen niggling other sentiments.

The sergeant lunged.

She sidestepped, and whacked him across the shoulders with the staff. He hit the ground face first. She turned on the others before they charged. Taken by surprise, they looked at her.

Aui! Humans are a monstrous roil of sensibilities, and by far the worst part of what she had now become was in being forced to know how true that was.

If I don’t go along, they’ll kill me. I wish I never left home.

I want Sergeant’s job, that snot-nosed ass doesn’t know what he’s doing, not like I do, I would like to see him strung up and kicking.

Glad they didn’t catch me cheating at dice hope my sister wasn’t one of the girls taken for the army the wine isn’t enough to drown this ache in my head I woulda kept lighting the houses on fire it was the hells grand to watch them burn and folk begging us to stop and anyway the commanders ordered us to make an example of them.

My tooth hurts.

The lords order us to kill, they like to kill, they like it when we kill, so she’s just one cursed female breaking curfew, we can take her down and kill her—

“Drop your weapons! Down on your knees! Hands up!”

She hated them as they turned craven, heads tucked, hands high with palms open. She was breathing hard with the rush, and she wanted to crack them over the heads for what they had done to the people of this town. What they had done to countless others. What they had done to themselves.

“You.” She thrust one tip of her staff hard into the chest of the man whose tooth hurt. He fell hard, tried to hide a groan as he righted himself, and she laughed, and was shocked at herself for finding amusement in his pain. “Unbuckle the sergeant’s sword belt and give me sword and sheath.”