A lad, his arms streaked with the jagged red of infection spreading down from his choked hands, was unconscious, spirit drifting deep. A man whimpered as he struggled to get enough purchase on the pole with his heels to ease the strangling pressure of the rope. She dismounted. His feet hung to about the level of her waist, making it impossible for her to reach the stake hammered into the top of the pole around which the chains looped.

Hari said, “They’re already condemned.”

“By what court?”

Beside the gate, the night watch gathered.

“By the only court that matters. Those who command the army hold the power.”

“ ‘The cloaks rule all, even death.’ Well, they don’t rule me after all, do they? Help me.”

“It serves no purpose to try to save one here and one there when they’re all condemned.”

“You disappoint me.” Warning flicked her ears. “And you disappoint my good horse, too.”

She walked to the barrier, a bulky fence set in front of debris piled to impede movement and with a gate set in place to allow wagons through in single file. “I need a ladder.”

The taste of their sergeant’s sullen anger at being ordered about so arbitrarily flavored the air even as he kept his gaze averted. A ladder was brought. She carried it over her shoulders to the pole where the hanging man scraped with a will, as if thinking to escape her efforts. As she braced the ladder behind the pole, Hari dismounted. He came up very close behind her, almost embracing her.

“I’ll help you,” he said in a low voice.

“Change of heart?”

“I’m not doing this for him. You catch him when he falls.”

Grasping the man around the thighs, she lifted. He grunted in pain. His trousers were fouled; she sucked in a fetid breath through her mouth and held on, hoping Hari would be quick. The chain released. The man’s body collapsed over her, and she staggered back to avoid falling under him as he began screaming. Then Hari had him, and together they eased him to the ground.

“Eiya!” She cut the ropes, then probed his shoulders as he writhed. “Nothing popped out, but he’ll have a cursed painful time getting the blood back into his hands. The muscles must be torn from the weight. He can’t have been up there long.”

“What do you mean to do with him?” Hari asked.

“Cursed if I know. Find him a place he can heal.”

“And thereby condemn whoever aids him as an accomplice, to be cleansed?”

“I can’t just stand aside and do nothing! Help me with the other one.”

“A waste of time. The lad’s near death.”

“How can you tell?”

“You’re young to this yet, aren’t you? It’s a sweetness they get, when they cross beyond where they can be brought back. If you want, I’ll kill him quickly.”