Beside him, the mayor suddenly takes a breath and fixes a stern look on the Premier. “Constantine,” she says in a calm voice.

I’ve never heard anyone call him his name to his face. But somehow, Constantine pauses for a moment, his eyes swiveling to the mayor as if he’d once listened to her before.

The woman glares at him. “Remember your own mother, Constantine,” she says softly. “And what she would say, were she here.”

The words are like an arrow to his chest. I feel his sharp recoil through our link, can see the paling on his gaunt face. For a brief moment, Constantine looks at Mayor Elland not like she’s the mayor of his capital, but as if she’s his elder, a woman he must once have listened to in the same way he’d listened to his own mother. I look back and forth between them, the world blurred through my tears, hoping desperately that her words were enough.

And for an instant, they seem like they might be. Constantine seems to waver, a rare hesitation on his face. I wonder if he’s imagining his mother here. I wonder if he knows that Mayor Elland had loved her.

But then the darkness in his heart clouds his face again, and any softness that might have been there disappears. He looks away from her in disgust.

“But she isn’t, is she?” he says. “She’s dead. And the dead are useless.”

He gives the soldier a nod. The soldier lifts the prisoner’s hand right as I take a step forward. For a moment, the woman meets my gaze. She is silently begging me for help, and even as I see nothing but my mother in her, I remember that this prisoner is also her own person, being tortured for no reason other than her mild resemblance to my mother.

The soldier tightens his grip on the knife. Then he brings it to the woman’s longest finger and cuts it off.

The woman lets out a piercing wail. Blood runs down her hand.

I turn my face to the ground, unable to bear the sight. I’m trembling violently now.

Constantine’s soldiers have observed me every time I’ve visited my mother. He knows how important it is for us to communicate with our hands. He knows what this cruelty means for us.

Tears are streaming down my face now. My hands have been clawing so hard against the bridge that my fingers are bloody, streaking scarlet against the ground.

Please stop, I beg Constantine. I press my face closer to the ground before him, not caring that all his soldiers see me prostrating like this. It’s what he wanted, after all. Please stop. I’m begging you.

I hear the sound of Constantine bending down to me, the hush of his robes against the ground. A cool hand touches my chin and brings my face up. I find myself looking straight into his eyes. In them, and through the emotions in our link, I see the truth of my punishment.