“I decide what they deserve, and right now, each and every last native of Thanet deserves a coffin at the bottom of the ocean.”

A wave of Gordian’s hand, and the soldiers rushed about, dragging the corpse to a growing pile while preparing the next target. Sinshei purposefully refused to watch. She found this whole display shameful. Heretics and insurgents these people may be, but their punishments were given for a purpose. Lesser crimes meant chopped fingers, branding tattoos, or the loss of an eye. The worst were given the spectacle of a public hanging. All of it bore the hope that the suffering and loss of the few would lead to the conversion of the many. When it came to the end goal of eternal salvation, no tactic was too cruel. This, however, was nothing more than an elaborate tantrum.

“I heard what happened,” she said, hoping conversation would halt the arrows. “I come to offer my sympathies.”

“It wasn’t your soldiers and paragons that let an assassin slip into my castle.”

A point she was pleased to hear him verbalize, not that she’d so casually admit it. The regent pulled back the string as he sighted his current target, a teenaged girl with a darker shade of skin common to families along the northern reaches of the island.

“My son,” Gordian seethed. His entire body vibrated with his anger. “That shit-eating masked murderer threatened my son. If I hadn’t arrived when I did, if I hadn’t shown up to give him a better target, then he might… he might…”

His arrow sailed wide. It plinked off the wooden stake the girl was bound to, the arrow shaft splitting in half with an audible snap.

“Piss!” he screamed, and flung aside his bow. Sinshei stood perfectly still, her face as calm as a painting as the regent drew a knife strapped to his hip. He crossed the gap at a brisk pace, his teeth bared from his clenched jaw. The moment he reached his target, he rammed the dagger into her stomach. Blood poured across his hands, and the gag was meaningless against her shriek of pain. Again and again the regent tore into her, punctuating each thrust into her guts with a frustrated curse.

“Lucavi! Damn! Every! One!”

He spat on her when he’d finished, then flung the bloody knife into the dirt.

“Get rid of the rest,” he said to his soldiers guarding the waiting line of prisoners. “I’m done with my practice.”

Sinshei did not hide her disgust. The girl was still alive, and still screaming in pain.