When Ganil left the house late in the morning, however, he carried something with him, a roll of papers hidden under his cloak, each sheet covered edge to edge with Mede Fairman’s clear writing: “Trajectories,” “Speed of Falling Bodies,” “The Nature of Motion . . .” Yin had left before daybreak, jogging calmly out of town on a grey donkey. “I’ll see you in Keling” had been his only parting with Ganil. Ganil had seen none of the other Learners. Only serfs, servants, beggars, truant schoolboys, and women with their nursemaids and whining children stood with him now in the dull light of noon on the great forecourt of the College. Only riffraff and the idle gathered to see a heretic die. A priest had ordered Ganil to stand at the very front of the crowd. Many people glanced curiously at him, standing there alone in his Master’s cloak.

On the other side of the square, in the front of the crowd, he saw a girl in a violet gown. He was not sure it was Lani. Why would she be here to see Mede die? She did not know what it was she hated; or what it was she loved. Love that wants only to get, to possess, is a monstrous thing, Ganil thought. She loved him, she stood separated from him only by the width of that square. She would never be willing to see that she was separated from him by her own act, by ignorance, by exile, by death.

They brought Mede out just before noon. Ganil glimpsed his face; it was very white, all his deformity exposed, the atavistic pallor of skin, hair, eyes. There was no drawing-out of the scene; a gold-robed priest raised his crossed arms in invocation to the Sun that stood, unseen, at noon behind the pall of clouds, and as he lowered his arms torches were set to the stacks of wood round the stake. Smoke curled up, the same grey-yellow as the clouds. Ganil stood with his injured hand in its sling pressed hard against the roll of papers under his cloak, repeating silently, “Let the smoke suffocate him first. . . .” But the wood was dry and caught quickly. He felt the heat on his face, on his fire-scarred temple. Beside him a young priest tried to draw back, could not because of the pressing, staring, sighing crowd, and stood still, swaying a little and breathing in gasps. The smoke was thick now, hiding the flames and the figure among them. But Ganil could hear his voice, not soft now, loud, very loud. He heard it, he forced himself to hear it, but at the same time he listened in his spirit to a steady voice, soft, continuing: “What is the Sun? Why does it cross the sky? . . . Do you see how I need your numbers? . . . For XII, write 12. . . . This is also a figure, the figure for Nothing.”

The screaming had stopped, but the soft voice had not.