The Virtues ignored them, pulling Mariel along before throwing her up onto the back of a horse to share a saddle with a masked rider. Her face was swollen and purpled, her nose and mouth bloodied, her head loose on her neck like she was stunned.

“They beat her.” Zeke sounded dismayed, as if he hadn’t quite believed it before he saw it, but Hypatia only snorted, experience telling her full well what kind of monsters they were.

The crowd was with Zeke, though, and their voices rose in indignation.

Celeste was shaking, and somehow her dagger was in her hand. What good it would do against a dozen armed men wearing masks, she had no idea. But she had to try something, didn’t she?

“Steady, Celeste,” Hypatia whispered in her ear. “And put that pigsticker away. You won’t do her any good if they take you away, too. Let’s see how this plays out.”

Reluctantly, Celeste drew the blade back into its sheath.

Someone threw a bottle that shattered near the horses’ feet. The riders struggled to control their suddenly skittish mounts. Sheriff Ybarra looked like he’d rather be anywhere else, but he came to the edge of the Virtues’ circle, putting himself between them and the crowd.

“They’re here at my request,” he said, hands raised for calm. “There’s a crime been committed, and they’re the proper arresting body.”

“What’s she done?” Celeste cried. Hypatia may have wanted her to stay quiet, but she couldn’t, not when they were about to take her sister away to who knew where. She was scared that if they rode away with Mariel now, she might never see her again. Her fear was not unfounded. Fallen had been known to disappear in Elect hands, only to show up headless in a ditch days later.

Ybarra scanned the crowd, pausing when he saw her. Goetia’s permanent residents were small in number, especially those who were female and spent time dealing at the card tables. He recognized Celeste well enough.

“I’m not at liberty to share the details, but know that an innocent man is dead.”

Disbelief rippled through the crowd. Goetia was as rough as any mining town, but murders were confined to the hard men who worked the mines or the darker haunts of Perdition. The Eden saw its share of brawls, but murder was still uncommon, and a murder that brought out the Virtues ten times as much.

“Who’s dead?” Zeke shouted.

As if on cue, four Virtues came out bearing a body. It was wrapped in one of Hypatia’s fine brocade curtains, but deep rust-colored stains had seeped through the silk, evidence of violence. They lifted the body up to another rider, who held it across his lap. Their expressions were lost behind their masks, but their straight backs and stiff movements betrayed their outrage.