Arbuckle walked across the threshold. He was bound at the wrists as she expected, but around his mouth they’d placed a scold’s bridle, which was not uncommon but alarming still. Lady Mae clenched her teeth together and made sure to hold his eyes as he went past. As he proceeded down the aisle, she followed him with her gaze and tried unsuccessfully to disregard the other residents whose own eyes were upon her. When he got to the stand, Deputy Iverson on his left unlocked his shackles and Deputy Parson, the bridle; Griffin and Worth swung open the small wooden door so that Arbuckle could take his seat. The metal of the shackles and bridle clanged and jingled in the nearly silent courtroom, and as Arbuckle stepped up onto the stand, he turned and looked over the heads of the other residents to Lady Mae. The furrow in his brow softened, his shoulders loosened. She smiled at him and bent her head in his direction as if to say it’s all ready and only a few hours still and ain’t nobody going to find us. He looked away again and sat, his body and the wood meeting with a creak.

Deputy Daniels appeared at the door of his chambers. While he was not the worst of the Deputies, he had a reputation of baiting the accused. He had a tell—the way his voice would lilt in question—and typically the accused played right into his open hand. Arbuckle would not know that, and Lady Mae worried that he’d be drawn in like he was in the square the day he arrived. She’d warned him as best she could that day, though there was much more she would’ve told him had she known he’d end up in court only four days after having returned. The Deputy Magistrate sat, picked up his gavel, and as he did the residents packed into the viewing area grew still.

“In session, in session,” he called and pounded his gavel on the bench three times. “Whereas from and after the publication of this law it shall not be lawful for any resident to willfully blaspheme the name of the Deputies or the law, by cursing or contumeliously reproaching one or more, and it is further enacted by the authority aforesaid that if any resident shall presume to reprove, they shall, for every such offense, upon due proof made thereof by the oath of the party before a magistrate, receive atonements in accordance with the law.”

Deep down in her breast, farther than she had ever felt or thought of, a flame caught. It grew slowly, flickering and bending and licking the underside of her skin. She could not breathe, could not move her eyes from Deputy Daniels who sat with the gavel in his hand. He had said the word—blaspheme—the weight of which tried to pull her under the earth. Blaspheme. She thought of the Deputy reading Arbuckle’s letter to her the day before—she’d heard it correctly and had wagered it all on what she knew: those who lied were charged with falsification. Atonements were given. But blasphemy, while still under atonement law, was what got residents up on the scaffold. And in the nine outcries Lady Mae had witnessed, no one—not a single resident that once stood on the scaffold—was still alive.