The woman with the knives looked up from her dice and chuckled. Judge frowned over at her. “Do I fucking amuse you?”

She shook her head and went back to her dice.

“They treated me lower’n dirt, the Ghosts. Lower’n a slave. But on account of my being an outsider, they made me judge o’ the disputes between their clans. Wasn’t about justice, or innocence, or guilt. It was about what had to be done. Keeping the balance between the groups on the plain, so no one got too much power over the others.” She rubbed at the patchy stubble on the side of her head. “’Course, the settlers came more and more, in their fellowships, and they picked the Ghosts off one by one, and drove away the hunting and poisoned the water. One day they came to the village and killed everyone I knew and told me I was rescued. And they asked me what my name was, and do you know what I said?”

“Judge.”

She snapped her fingers. “You’re no fool. Maybe that’s why I play judge now. They gave me a passion for keeping the balance.”

“That sounds more like an excuse than a reason,” murmured Jurand.

Leo frowned sideways at him. “They’re the same thing seen from different sides.”

“Ha!” Judge jabbed at Leo with a finger. “I was going to say the very same thing! He’s not just a pretty face, eh, Broad?”

Broad stared at Leo, jaw muscles squirming, and took a sip from his bottle. Leo wondered whether he was so angry he couldn’t speak, or so drunk he’d forgotten how. Maybe both.

“You know the trouble with a pretty face?” Judge was saying. “People get used to its advantages, and when it’s took away, they lack the wherewithal to make a success of themselves. Nothing sadder’n a person who used to be beautiful. They have this desperate smile. Like me, it says. Like me, even though there’s nothing left to like.”

She sat forwards—putting her groin back in shadow, thank the dead—and slid a hatchet from the table. Glaward stirred nervously as she lifted it, but all she did was hack a leg from the chicken carcass with a couple of echoing bangs that caused a sleepy mew of upset from the room next door. She tossed the axe down, started gnawing hungrily at the bone then paused. “What were we talking about?”

“The leadership of the People’s Army,” said Leo, as though it was a matter of total indifference. He’d hardly spoken, but he felt as if her eyes were sizing him up and slitting him open and probing at his guts like a physician at a cadaver even so.

“Right!” She stabbed at him with the chicken bone and a piece of meat flew off and stuck to the floor behind him. “A lot’s changed this past year or two, but you’re still popular. That military business is in your bones and fighting men respect you. Beat Stour Nightfall in a circle of blood and all. I hear you used to be reckless, but I reckon you’ve been cured o’ that. Can’t say I trust you, but then I never trust anyone I trust, if you see what I mean? You’re a risk, but nothing’s safe these days, and nothing safe’s worthwhile anyway.”