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it was meant to be a word, but like the first man he tumbled forward onto his face. Dead.
    Nekkar shut his eyes as the corpse was dragged away.
    “This man turned himself in to spare his clan,” the sergeant said. “He confessed to hoarding nai—”
    “Look at me,” said the cloak. “Sergeant, lift his chin—”
    Nekkar opened his eyes just as the sergeant wrenched the man’s chin up. The prisoner was young, hale, and with the thick arms and powerful legs of a laborer. He struggled, keeping his head down, but his eyes flicked up anyway, as though gauging his distance.
    She took a step back. “Kill him.”
    As soldiers drew their swords, the young man fought free and tugged a knife from his boot; he leaped toward the cloak, but spears pinned him before he reached her.
    “He concealed no nai.” Her tone remained even as she watched him thrashing, still fighting forward despite flesh pierced and his blood flowing. “He came to attack me. That is why he hid his gaze.”
    “No heart can be hidden from you, Holy One,” murmured the sergeant. “Cut his throat.”
    The young man screamed; his failure was worse than the pain, no doubt. At least this one had fought back instead of waiting passively, too fearful or too shamed to stand up.
    “Enough,” Nekkar said aloud.
    What a gods-rotted fool he was, knowing he was responsible for the temple and yet staggering to his feet because he could not bear to watch this perverse assizes any longer. He straightened, grimacing at the stabbing pains in his abused body.
    “Heya!” barked the sergeant. “Stop, or you’ll be cut down likewise.”
    Nekkar faced the woman in the cloak. “Enough! Why do you do this? Are you not a Guardian? For by your look, and your power, you seem to be one of those who wear Taru’s cloak andwield the second heart and the third eye to judge those who have broken the law. The orphaned girl prayed to the gods to bring peace to the land, not cleansing.”
    “Does cleansing not bring about peace?”
    “As well argue that fear and terror bring about peace. Guardians are meant to establish justice. Is that what you call this?
Justice?
”
    “Stay your hand,” said the cloaked woman before the soldiers could rain blows down upon him. She captured his gaze.
    Aui! There it all tumbled as she spun the threads out of his heart: the mistakes he had made, the harsh words he had spoken, his youthful temper and rashness and the fights he’d gotten into, breaking one man’s nose and another’s arm, the girl he’d impregnated the month before he had entered the temple for his apprenticeship year. He had afterward lied outright, saying it wasn’t his seed, to avoid marrying her, and afterward taken seven years of temple service to make sure they couldn’t force him, although many years later after being humbled and honed by the discipline of envoyship, he had made restitution to her clan. And what of his twenty years bedding Vassa? Yet what had he and Vassa to be ashamed of, he an ostiary forbidden to marry and she a young widow who had preferred her widowhood to a second marriage arranged by her clan? They did nothing wrong by sharing a pallet; he served the temple as he had done for thirty years and she cooked in her family’s neighboring compound as she had done her entire life.
    Enough! The cloak’s gaze pierced him, but it did not cripple him. He had made peace with his mistakes and his faults.
    She regarded him with a sharp frown. “The gods enjoined the Guardians to seek justice. People suffer or die through a recognition of their own crimes, in their own hearts.”
    “It looks to me like you kill them. Or hand them over to your lackeys to be cleansed. If you believe that to be justice, then you are no Guardian!”
    The sergeant snarled. The soldiers hissed with fear.
    “You are bold in your honesty, Ostiary Nekkar,” she said, having gleaned his name from his thoughts. “You provided a census of your temple to the authorities, I see. Know