He crossed to the window, unlatched the shutters, and pushed them open. When he turned he saw her, crouched between the pallet and the wall, arms clutching her knees to her chest, eyes staring at nothing. Despite the bowl of water, she had made no effort to scrub the blood from her face or hands. It had dried and cracked, making it seem as though her skin was sloughing away. Her dress, too, was black and heavy with blood. She paid no attention to any of it, staring blankly at a section of wall a few paces distant.

“Triste?” he said again, crossing toward her hesitantly. “Are you all right?”

Her body convulsed, shaking with something that was part sob, part bitter laugh.

“My mother is a traitor,” she said without shifting her eyes or raising her voice. “She sold me to my father, who was a traitor and a leach. I am a leach and I just murdered I don’t know how many people.”

The bald statement of the facts brought Kaden up short. He wanted to offer some consolation, but had no idea what to say. As the silence stretched, she raised her eyes at last.

“When will I be executed?” The words held no fear. If anything, there was a note of hope in her voice.

Kaden shook his head slowly. “Triste . . . I . . . The council will decide, but I’m going to fight for you, fight to see you saved. Not all leaches are evil.”

Her mouth dropped open in disbelief. “I saw the bodies, Kaden! The people I killed! A child with her head torn halfway off . . . A man holding his intestines in his arms . . . I slaughtered them.”

Kaden hesitated, then nodded. “You killed them, but you didn’t mean to kill them. That’s important.”

“I didn’t?” she asked, staring at him bleakly. “How do you know?”

“Do you remember what happened?” Kaden asked. “In the tunnel, back on the island with the kenta?”

She shook her head, a tiny defeated motion. “Parts. Glimpses. I remember fury. And blood.” She paused, tears streaking her blood-soaked face. “And power. I’m a leach. A leach. Just like the Atmani.”

“Maybe you are,” Kaden said, “but there are worse things to be.”

His years with the monks had ground out most reflexive aversion, but there was still something deep inside him, some vicious muscle trained in his early childhood, that recoiled at the thought. All the old words, like dumb fish rising to the light, floated into his mind: foul, twisted, loathsome. He looked at Triste, at the delicate arc of her neck, the fall of her hair onto her shoulders. It seemed cruel of Bedisa to weave something so vile into a being so beautiful.