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uncaring relatives on the auction block. “I’ve been diligent. I am interviewing compound by compound throughout this quarter, just as I was ordered. Anyone unlawfully on the streets is brought before me. These folk I had dragged out here all need further examination, Holy One.”
    “Look at me!”
    The sergeant whimpered.
    Nekkar opened the eye that wasn’t jammed up against the ground. At first he thought his vision was ruined; his open eye scratched as if scoured by sand, and when he blinked, it hurt to open and close. Then he realized that actually it was dusk, and also that a few paces from his head floated a cloak of rippling fabric like the night sky speckled by stars.
    A person in travel-worn sandals wrapped over dusty feet was standing not three steps from his nose; it was this person who wore the cloak.
    “You’ve spoken the truth about the outlanders,” said the cloak.
    The sergeant sobbed with a gasp of relief. “Yes, Holy One.”
    “You’ve done as well as anyone could.”
    “My thanks, Holy One.”
    “Bring the prisoners before me one at a time.” She moved away to a trellis.
    Nekkar eased up onto his side. He was lying in the inner courtyard of the Thirsty Saw, where he and other folk in Stone Quarter often drank under the shade of an awning green with vines. Soldiers lined the compound wall, staring at their boots. Prisoners were tied to the posts that supported the massive trellis, and more were stuffed doubled over and in evident pain into livestock cages. Many had soiled themselves from being confined for so long, their reek mixing with the sour stench of spilled wine.
    The sergeant designated a pair of reluctant soldiers to haul the prisoners forward one at a time. The first man had been beaten so badly he could barely walk, and his head swayed on his neck as if he were not quite conscious.
    The woman held a writing brush and a neatly trimmed sheet of mulberry paper. Her cloak’s hood was thrown back to reveal a nondescript face, pleasant enough in its lineaments and near in age to Nekkar, who had at the turn of the year made forty-seven and counted his thirtieth year in service to Ilu, the Herald. The prisoner’s gaze was forced to meet hers.
    She marked on the paper like a clerk. “Veron, son of the Ten Chains clan of Toskala. You have committed a terrible crime.”
    The man collapsed. After a moment, it became apparent he was dead. Just like that. His spirit had fled through the Gate, leaving its husk.
    A soldier retched. Two others grabbed the dead man’s ankles and dragged him out of sight as another prisoner was shoved forward. This one, a woman Nekkar knew by sight from the market square, sobbed noisily as she confessed that her clan had hidden its gold beneath the planks of their weaving house.
    “Were you not commanded to reveal all coin and stores in your household’s possession, as well as provide a full census of household members including any outlanders or gods-touched residing there?” asked the cloak, her tone calm. “Why do you not obey when you know there will be a punishment?”
    “We cleanse them who disobey our orders so flagrantly, Holy One,” said Sergeant Tomash. “As an example.”
    The woman began to scream, pleas for mercy, anything but to be hung by her arms from a post until she died of exposure and thirst, but the cloak gestured and she was dragged away. Another was hauled forward in her place.
    So went the weary round. The sergeant was a cunning man in his own way; every person here had triggered his suspicion, and every one now confessed either to some petty crime or to concealing valuables or in one case an outlander slave. A merchant babbled about how he cheated on his rice measures. All were condemned to the post.
    One frail old fellow fell to his knees as he begged her pardon for having killed another laborer back in his youth.
    “You killed him? You confess it?” She lifted her brush, touched it to the rice paper.
    He croaked a gasp, or perhaps