Unaware of my dark thoughts, Elkar went on, ‘Sabatien has work details of Hedra preparing a building alongside the new library that will serve as a great teaching centre. Both buildings are being constructed where the Hedra armoury once stood, and the training ground is being transformed into a garden. With the wall down all along that side of the city, both the library and teaching centre will have magnificent views of the Girdle Road. That is what we are calling the road that has been built over the fallen rubble that now links the main part of Herder Isle and the green wilderness of Fallo. Sabatien has the Hedra workers building a footpath that will run up from the end of the Girdle Road between the library and the teaching centre into the newly made gardens in that part of the city. He wants to call that entrance the Gate of Knowledge.’

‘A good name,’ I murmured, impressed with the older man’s vision. ‘I assume the Hedra workers are closely watched?’

‘There are Norse overseers watching them work, and they sleep and eat in their old barracks and are locked in each night,’ Elkar said. ‘Harwood also randomly checks their minds to be sure they are not plotting and he is training those Norselanders who have shown coercive or empathic Talents to help him. But since all of the Hedra and the ordinary Faction priests were given the choice of being transported to the mainland to work off shorter sentences on Councilfarms or of staying to work as labourers in the Norselands, I think it unlikely those who chose to stay would plot against us.’

‘Some may well dream that the Herder Faction will rise again.’

‘They can dream as they like so long as they do not plot insurrection or sedition, for Harwood would see it, and having chosen to stay, they are now subject to Norse laws in these matters. The penalty for plotting against the king is transportation and exile to the black coasts.’

‘A death sentence.’

‘Exactly. And they would be fools to break faith with us, since they have only to serve out their sentences then they will be permitted to build a cottage and live as free men.’

‘It is better than they deserve,’ I said, and heard the coldness in my voice.