He yelped, as if its touch stung. “I could have cut them down! Murderers and traitors! I could have punished them, if you’d given me my staff before.”

“Bevard.” She gave the green-cloaked man a pointed green stick, like a poor farmer’s implement for digging out offending weeds. All were objects that pass judgment, that can sever spirit from flesh and that which is healthy from that which is diseased: a writing brush, a dagger, an arrow, a weeding stick. Even a mirror.

“A majority pass judgment on a renegade,” the woman said. “Five, to judge one, standing on an altar, which completes their judgment.” She touched her brush to paper.

Yordenas advanced cautiously toward Marit with dagger raised. Lord Radas stretched out his arrow. The green-cloaked man hesitated, but when the women gestured, he, too, approached.

All this the ghost girl watched, her pale figure overlooked, ignored, forgotten.

“Kirit,” said Lord Radas. “Remember what I told you. She’s not one of us. She must be killed, so we can remain safe. We need your strength added to ours.”

She turned the mirror to reveal her own white face and blue eyes.

“In their actions, we see the truth of what they have become,” said the girl. “You are not Guardians, seeking justice. You are demons. I will not be one of you.”

She reined her horse around.

Marit tugged on Warning’s mane, ducked as the mare opened a wing, and jumped up belly-down over the saddle. Yordenas grabbed at her, and she kicked hard, connecting with flesh, hearing him grunt and stumble backward. Lord Radas’s arrow jabbed her shoulder, but Warning, once she knew she was going to get her way, nipped and kicked to force a way to the entrance. Kirit crossed the threshold and clattered down the ramp. Marit cleared the door as the other horse took wing, bearing west-southwest over the Lesser Istri.

What if it had been Hari, instead of Kirit? Eiya! Would he have resisted, or joined the others and betrayed her? Killed her?

Spreading her wings, Warning leaped into the sky while below the hundreds gathered in Justice Square shouted and wept, their voices rising as if it was their cries that lifted her.

51

In the settlement, men and women ringed the council square, weaving a song to accompany the bridal couples who walked a circuit of the seven altars to present offerings to the gods.

A garland of flowers.

A handful of rice.

Nai, wrapped in se leaves.

Silk as your banner.

Build a house! Build a house!

Walk this path into the next day.

Flowers were hard to come by in the Barrens, even during the rainy season, but the reeves on training sweeps had discovered the lush valley hidden deep in the foothills mentioned by the envoy. With so many marriages waiting on a proper feast day, and every person in the settlement dreaming of a festival to interrupt the steady grind of labor, Mai had asked the reeves to fetch the appropriate offerings and assigned a propitious day after consultation with holy priests from the temples in Olossi.