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Thrax is called the City of Windowless Rooht, is a preparation for Thrax Thrax will be like this Or perhaps Dorcas and I are already there, it was not so far north as I thought, so far north as I was led to believe

Dorcas got up to go out, and I ith her, knowing it would not be safe for her to go alone at night in a place where there were soan outer wall pierced with eh each in a fine spray I wanted to keep Tere a sword is slow to draw When ere back in our rooainst the door, I took out the whetstone and sharpened the e until the endmost third, the part I would use, would divide a thread tossed into the air Then I wiped and oiled the whole blade and stood the sword against the wall near my head

Tomorroould be my first appearance on the scaffold, unless the chiliarch decided at the last moment to exercise clemency That was always a possibility, always a risk History shows that every age has sohtthat one less one is , that since human law need not be self-consistent, justice need not be so either There is a dialogue in the brown book soues that culture was an outgrowth of the vision of the Increate as logical and just, bound by interior consistency to fulfill his proht, surely ill perish now, and the invasion from the north, that so many have died to resist, is no more than the wind that topples a tree already rotten Justice is a high thing, and that night, when I lay beside Dorcas listening to the rain, I was young, so that I desired high things only That, I think, hy I so desired that our guild regain the position and regard it had once possessed (And I still desired that, even then, when I had been cast out of it) Perhaps it was for the sas, which I had felt so strongly as a child, had declined until it was hardlyoutside the Bear Tower Life, after all, is not a high thing, and in many ways is the reverse of purity I am wise now, if not h and low, than to have the high only

Unless the chiliarch decided, then, to grant cleilus's life No one can say what that means The body is a colony of cells (I used to think of our oubliette when Master Palaemon said that) Divided into two major parts, it perishes But there is no reason to mourn the destruction of a colony of cells: such a colony dies each tioes into the oven If a ; but we know instinctively that a man is more What happens, then, to that part that is h s, tunnels, and bridges; yet I have heard that in those cases in which the spirit is that of a hurow less and less frequent and at last cease Historiographers say that in the remote past men knew only this one world of Urth, and had no fear of such beasts as were on it then, and traveled freely from this continent to the north; but no one has ever seen even the ghosts of such men

Itthe constellations This Urth, surely, is less than a village in the ie and his neighbors burn his house, he leaves the place if he does not die in it But then we must ask how he careat many executions, used to say that only a fool worried aboutin the blood, or failing to perceive that the client wore a wig and atteers were a loss of nerve that wouldof vindictiveness that would transforain, I tried to steel ainst both

Chapter 31

THE SHADOW OF THE TORTURER

It is a part of our office to stand uncloaked,tiht out So oive the crowd a focus, and the feeling that so is about to take place

A crowd is not the sum of the individuals who coe or real consciousness, born when they gather, dying when they depart Before the Hall of Justice, a ring of dimarchi surrounded the scaffold with their lances, and the pistol their officer carried could, I suppose, have killed fifty or sixty before someone could snatch it from him and knock him to the cobblestones to die Still it is better to have a focus, and some open symbol of power

The people who had come to see the execution were by no uinary Field is near one of the better quarters of the city, and I saw plenty of red and yellow silk, and faces that had been washed with scented soap that(Dorcas and I had splashed ourselves at the well in the courtyard) Such people are much slower to violence than the poor, but once roused are faroverawed by force, and despite the dee And so I stood withon the quillions of Terminus Est, and turned this way and that, and adjusted the block so that my shadoould fall across it The chiliarch was not visible, though I discovered later that he atching froia in the crowd but could not find her; Dorcas was on the steps of the Hall of Justice, a position reserved for her at my request by the portreeve

The fat man who had waylaid et, with a lance-fire threatening his bulging coat The woray-haired woman on his left; I had her handkerchief in iven me an asiely were nowhere to be seen I looked for theood view despite their sh I did not find theh dress hel for therin's boat before I could see them at all Then cailus's brown hair and his wide, boyish face held uptilted because the chains that bound his arant he had looked in the arolden chiic that he could not be accompanied now by men of the unit that had in soulars in laboriously polished steel He had been stripped of all his finery now, and I waited to receive hiht him Silly old women believe the Panjudicator punishes us with defeats and rewards us with victory: I felt I had been given more reward than I desired

A few moan When it was over, the soldiers forced hi out the sun

When the blade is as sharp as it should be, and the stroke is given correctly, one feels only a slight hesitation as the spinal colue into the block I would take an oath that I silus's blood on the rain-washed air before his head banged into the basket The crowd drew back, then surged forward against the leveled lances I heard the fat ht have made at climax when he sweated over soia's voice as un in its ti at all, but had known nevertheless when her twin died

The aftermath is often more troublesome than the act itself As soon as the head has been exhibited to the crowd, it can be dropped back into the basket But the headless body (which re time after the action of the heart has ceased) nified yet dishonorable Furthermore, it must be not just taken "away," but taken to some specific spot where it will be safe from molestation An exultant can, by custom, be laid across the saddle of his own destrier, and his remains are surrendered to his family at once Persons of lesser rank, however,place secure from the eaters of the dead; and at least until they are safely out of sight, they ed The executioner cannot perform this task because he is already burdened with the head and with his weapon, and it is rare for anyone else involved - soldiers, officers of the court, and so on - to be willing to do so (At the Citadel it was done by two journeymen and thus presented no difficulty)

The chiliarch, a cavalry and no doubt by inclination, had solved the problee su ht at the blood and tried to bolt We had an interesting tiilus into a quadrangle fro off my boots when the portreeve ive me my fee, but he indicated that the chiliarch wished to pay me himself As I told him, it was an unexpected honor

"He watched everything," the portreeve said "And he was quite pleased He instructed me to tell you that you and the woht here, if you wish"

"We'll leave at twilight," I told hiht for a ence than I would have anticipated

"The h no doubt you know no more of them than I Still, it's a difficulty you must face frequently"

"I have been warned by uild," I said