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"You say she's beautiful Perhaps people think she's innocent Perhaps they took pity on her"

I picked up Terminus Est, drew her, and let the soft sheath fall away "The innocent have eneether

When I had entered the inn, I had to push h the mob of drinkers Now it opened before me I wore my mask and carried Terminus Est unsheathed across my shoulder Outside, the sounds of the fair stilled as ent forward until nothing reh a wilderness of leaves

The executions were to take place at the very center of the festivities, and a dense crowd had already gathered there A caloyer in red stood beside the scaffold clutching his little formulary; he was an old man, as most of them are

The two prisoners waited beside him, surrounded by the own of office and his gold chain By ancient custoh I have seen Master Gurloes assist his vault to the scaffold with his sword, in the court before the Bell Tower) I was, very possibly, the only person present who knew of the tradition; but I did not break it, and a great roar, like the voice of some beast, escaped the crowd as I leaped up withabout me

"Increate," read the caloyer, "it is known to us that those ill perish here are no ht than we Their hands run with blood Ours also"

I examined the block Those used outside the iuild are notoriously bad: "Wide as a stool, dense as a fool, and dished, as a rule" This one fulfilled the first two specifications in the proverbial description only too well, but by the htly convex, and though the idiotically hard ould be sure to dull the male side ofbefore e on each

"by thy will they ain thy favor We who h we spill their blood today"

I posed, legs wide as I leaned upon my sword as if I were in coh the truth was that I did not knohich of them had drawn the short ribbon

"You, the hero ill destroy the black worm that devours the sun; you for whom the sky parts as a curtain; you whose breath shall wither vast Erebus, Abaia, and Scyllabeneath the wave; you that equally live in the shell of the smallest seed in the farthest forest, the seed that hath rolled into the dark where noup the steps, preceded by the alcalde and followed by a man with an iron spit who used it to prod her Soestion

"have mercy on those who had no mercy Have mercy on us, who shall have none now"

The caloyer was finished, and the alcalde began "Most hatefully and unnaturally"

His voice was high, quite different both fro voice and the rhetorical tone he had adopted for the speech outside Barnoch's house After listening absently for a few ia in the crowd), it struckthat was done to both prisoners at close range I sh my mask concealed it

"of respect for your sex But you shall be branded on the right cheek and the left, your legs broken, and your head struck froh to remember that a brazier of coals would be required)

"Through the power of the high justice laid upon my unworthy arhts are the music of his subjects - I do now declareI do now declare"

He had forgotten it I whispered the words: "That your moment has come upon you"

"I do now declare that your moment has come on you, Morwenna"

"If you have pleas for the Conciliator, speak them in your heart"

"If you have pleas for the Conciliator, speak them"

"If you have counsels for the children of women, there will be no voice for them after this"

The alcalde's self-possession was returning, and he got it all: "If you have counsels for the children of women, there will be no voice for them after this"

Clearly but not loudly, Morwenna said, "I know that uilty I as you have accused me of" The crowd drew closer to hear her

"Many of you are ave htsunshine It was such a bouquet of threnodic roses as a ht carry at a funeral The woman who held them was Eusebia, whom I had met when she tormented Morwenna at the riverside As I watched her, she inhaled their perfume rapturously, then eh the crowd, so that she stood just at the base of the scaffold "These are for you, Morwenna Die before they fade"

I hammered the planks with the blunt tip of ood man who read the prayers for ht here, prayed that I would forgive you if I achieved bliss before you I have never until now had it in ive you now"

Eusebia was about to speak again, but I silenced her with a look The gap-toothed, grinning nized Hethor

"Are you ready?" Morwenna asked me

"I a charcoal on the scaffold From it thrust as presumably the handle of a suitable inscribed iron; but there was no chair I gave the alcalde a glance I intended to be significant Iat a post At last I said, "Have we a chair, Your Worship?"

"I sent two men to fetch one And so to stir and o"

The evening before he had assuredwould be in readiness, but there was no point in re him of that now There is no one, as I have since found, so liable to fluster on the scaffold as the average rural official He is torn between an ardent desire to be the center of attention (a position closed to him at an execution) and the quite justified fear that he lacks the ability and training that ht enable hi the steps in the full knowledge that his eyes are to be plucked out, will in nineteen cases from a score conduct himself better Even a shy cenobite, unused to the sounds of men and diffident to the point of tears, can be better relied on

Someone called, "Get it over with!"