“It is time, Radas,” said the cloak of night, “to grant our companions their full power. We are forced to pass judgment on one of our own, because of her deeds.”

“Folk who are accused are allowed a hearing at an assizes,” said Marit.

“We stand in an assizes court. We do not act out of haste. We will pass considered judgment, not like it happened the other time, long years ago, when those who had the majority acted out of spite and jealousy to condemn one who had done nothing wrong.”

“How long ago was that? Who did they judge, and what had that person done wrong?”

“I had done nothing to warrant obliteration! But the majority passed judgment out of fear and anger. So in their actions, I saw the truth of what they had become.”

“I can’t argue with you,” said Marit, stepping over Miken’s corpse. “Words mean nothing when acts tell the true tale.”

“You know nothing,” she said. “You only think you do. You think you are dead, but you are living. It is others who tell you you are dead, and you believe them, and by believing them you corrupt the strength the gods pour into their chosen vessels.”

“Maybe so,” agreed Marit, fingers tangling in Warnin’s mane. “But if I know nothing, it’s only because no one ever told me what became of the Guardians. And what became of me.”

“Because you refused to come to us in the beginning! You never trusted us, and therefore we can never trust you. There must be trust between Guardians. There must be unanimity. All must agree. And when one does not agree, when one cannot be trusted, then for the good of all, that one must be destroyed.”

“Agree about what is truth? Or just agree with you? With whatever you want, and whatever you have already decided?”

“Yordenas.” The cloak of night tossed a knife, blade flashing. He caught the dagger easily, as if the hilt had twisted into his hand by sorcery.

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.