I need to pee

If a person commits a crime that warrants a beating or an execution, take him outside to the village courtyard or town square at the sixth hour (noon). Let the people punish the criminal until the twelfth hour. At the twelfth hour, bury the dead but let the living go free. That is the will of the gods.

- The Sitabh, Section of Laws , Chapter. 11, Verse. 1: On The Punishment Of Criminals

Dawn brought Judgement Day. Allara had slept fitfully in her old room. She had heard Sylvia giggling, moaning, and whispering through the wall for most of the night. Allara assumed her friend would tell her of the secret lover when she was ready but she still hated not knowing.

Half Landshield was attending the trials. Baxtyrn Lamanbhurg was sitting in judgment in The Hall of Sky, Aembaur's giant glass temple in The Gods' Quarter. The trials were held in the temple's main sanctuary. A large table with five chairs sat on a raised platform at the front of the temple.

Skinny Baxtyrn looked like a painted stick in his flowing robes of white and blue, Aembaur's colors. His fellow temporary jurists for the day were similarly dressed.

Baxtyrn sat next to an old man with rheumy eyes, a completely hairless head, and a flowing white beard coming down to his chest. Allara wasn't good at judging old people's ages but she concluded he had to be around 65.

On the opposite end of the bench to the old man was a burly man with large square shoulders, a stout neck, and strong-looking hands terminating in palms big enough to squash the heads of his other four companions. Even sitting down, he was still a head taller than his fellow magistrates. His beard was clean-shaven and his hair was closely-cropped in the manner of a soldier. He sat completely still. Allara judged him to be around forty.

Next to the burly man was a pudgy man in his mid to late twenties, double-chinned with darting eyes, soft meaty arms, and greasy hair that still managed to look unkempt.

Sitting in the middle of this eclectic bunch was the lord magistrate, a trim impeccably groomed man of thirty something years. He was distinguishable from his temporary colleagues by the purple stripe around the neck of his blue and white robes.

"Welcome to this judgment session of the criminal tribunal for the 3rd District of Pharasandria. Held on this 28th day of Aevardy in the year 309 under the auspices Aembaur, son of Aephyr, The Guarantor of Justice, and Daegan, son of Aemlilon, The Lord of all Men," a herald proclaimed.

"Presiding over this session is His Honor Lord Aidan Aidanus Skanbhurg, a magistrate of the third district and an Elder of the Bha'andini," the herald continued. The lord magistrate nodded. The herald listed the other jurists.

"His Honor Harard Georghinus Khamsiner, late of the 17th Royal Cataphract Regiment." The burly ex-soldier smiled and nodded.

"His Honor Lucan Macrus Draper." The pudgy young man trembled, coughed, and nodded vigorously.

"His Honor Baxtyrn Parnyrlus Lamanbhurg." Baxtryrn nodded.

"His Honor Martyrn Warr." The old man nodded.

The proceedings started on a quick note. First on the docket were two men applying for death warrants on alleged murderers in the wind.

Then came the criminals. Offenders who had commited crimes against the public order were charged first. People caught littering, men whose horses and oxen were caught shitting on the streets, drunks who had been singing too loudly and shouting obscenities, brawlers, and a prostitute accused of giving two men crabs.

All pleaded guilty and were fined. Brawlers and loud drunks got five lashes of the whip and five days of forced labor on top of their fines. The prostitute's case was dismissed when Aidan Skanbhurg questioned her accusers and learned they were both thirty years old and unmarried.

"You wouldn't be catching crabs from whores if you married virtuous women and raised children. That's what your agemates are doing. Get out!'' The lord magistrate chased them away. They shuffled out with lowered heads. "And you," he told the prostitute. "If you're caught engaging in your… uh, profession… before presenting me with a letter from a physician saying you're healed, I will have you branded a disease-carrier."

"I won't, m'lord," the prostitute promised.

"Go," he dismissed her.

Then came the thieves. First-time thieves were branded on the right arm, sentenced to 20 lashes of the whip, and two years of forced labor with the penal gangs. Second-time thieves got a second brand on the left arm, 40 lashes of the whip, and five years with the penal gangs. Thieves caught for the third time were hanged. The only one charged as a third-time thief denied the charges and was set aside for a presentation of evidence later.

Allara watched justice at work. It was quick. By the time the hour glass was halfway through the second hour, 51 men and three women had been arraigned and charged with all manner of crimes, from calling a neighbor's toddler a twisted monkey, to public brawling, bribery, quackery, theft, raping a neighbor's wife, and six capital offenses: three counts of muder, one of child rape, one of treason, and one of blasphemy.

Punishments were handed out equally quickly to those who confessed to their crimes. Many were fined or sentenced to a public whipping, and periods of forced labor ranging anywhere from five days for brawlers and drunks to years for thieves and the rapist. The rapist was sentenced to castration in addition to public whipping and five years of forced labor.

Punishment was also more lenient for those who readily confessed. A blasphemer who had urinated on a temple wall while drunk forfeited his penis instead of being stoned. A man who had called King Daegan "Daegan The Degenerate" in a tavern received similar clemency, losing only his tongue instead of his entire head.

A sailor who had knifed and killed a colleague in a drunken brawl narrowly escaped a death sentence after his victim's family vouched for him. He had reached a private agreement with the deceased man's family, paying a substantial indemnity in lieu of execution.

When all was said and done, 51 men and three women had been arraigned before the tribunal in under two hours. 45 of the men and two of the women had readily admitted to their crimes and received their punishments. The remaining seven protested innocence and their trials started.

The first to be was a man accused of accepting a bribe while serving on a tribunal as a temporary magistrate in the previous year. He protested his innocence. The prosecution, the sons of a man exiled for fraud, brought up three witnesses. The accused's witnesses refused to testify, saying that he had bribed them. That led to an uproar.

The magistrates duly found him guilty. For lying under oath, he was stripped of his status as a warrior. The bribe taker would also pay double the bribe he took as a fine, half his remaining assets were forfeited to his victim, and he would endure the same punishment he had inflicted on the exiled man: 20 lashes of the whip and a lifetime exile from the 100 Realms. His victim's sons received an edict allowing their father to return home.

The next one up was a Metoshi doctor the Physician's Guild of Pharasandria accused of being a quack. The guild sought his expulsion from the city and all of the 100 Realms. The doctor denied all allegations and claimed the guild had refused to accept him as a member because he was a foreigner. He produced two dozen witnesses, including a lord's wife, all of whom testified to his unparalleled skill as a healer. The doctor was exonerated and the guild ordered to admit him into its ranks.

An accused embezzler was also exenorated as his prosecutors failed to convince anyone of his guilt.

An arsonist wasn't as lucky. He still forfeited everything he owned to the merchant whose warehouse he had burned, got sentenced to twenty lashes of the whip, and was exiled for five years, a fate only possible because he was a warrior.

Had he belonged to a lower class, he would be spending those five years as part of a penal gang. All men in the penal gangs were demoted to the status of slaves for the duration of their sentences. They spent spent their days doing heavy manual labor on public building projects, in penal colonies scattered across the realm, or as rented slaves in farms, quarries, lumber camps, galleys, and mines.

After the arsonist came a robber. The man had "M" brands for "Mwifwii (thief)" on both his arms, denoting two stints with the penal gangs. But there were no third stints. The Bhangel called for death. For his latest crime, he had been caught red-handed breaking open the collection box at a temple near the North West Harbor.

His defense was flimsy, "I wasn't stealing. I was only borrowing the money. I would have returned it. I swear." But he had knocked a priest unconscious to make his escape. He wasn't getting out of this. Everyone knew it. He didn't. He kept pleading and claiming the whole incident was a misunderstanding.

Aidan Skanbhurg and his fellow judges weren't buying it. The verdict came down in minutes. "Death. By stoning," the lord magistrate announced after a short consultation with his four colleagues.

The thief's tone went from pleading to angry. "Preening cunts!" he cursed. "Fuck you all. Fuck your lords, fuck your king, and fuck your fucking gods! Fuck them all!" he screamed. "Eat my shit Aembaur!" he yelled and let rip the loudest fart Allara had ever heard. It was endless. Then came the smell. Feces. He had deliberately soiled himself.

"Come lick the shit out of my pants, Aembaur!" he screamed at the glass roof. "Lick my shit-filled filled asshole. I command you. And you Aephyr. Oh. I forgot. You're fucking dead! Fuck you!" Then he started laughing maniacally.

Everyone was stunned to silence by such brazen blasphemy. They all looked around and up the roof, expecting to be incinerated at any moment. Allara was shaking. It was so quiet she could hear the breathing of everybody in the room. Then there was a loud buzzing sound. Allara lost control of her bladder. All she could do was shake.

A swarm of bees poured into the temple but everyone was too terrified to move. Allara just watched them with darting eyes and prayed. Hard. The bees flew over her head. They flew over everyone's head. They landed on the thief.

His laughter turned into screams. It was the most horrific sound Allara had ever heard. It was terror, shock, and pain all rolled into one. He rolled on the ground, his legs flailing as much as they could in their irons. He got up and hopped halfway down the sanctuary in his chains, falling and rising again, but the bees were unrelenting. They followed him, covering him like a blanket, buzzing angrily, and stinging. His screams were the only sound in the world. He finally collapsed and they faded but Allara could still hear them in her head.

The bees left as quickly as they had come. They didn't sting anybody else. But everybody sat still. No one said a word. The thief lay motionless on the floor, his body swollen to twice its original size. Streaks of brown excrement spattered the floor, marking his path. The overpowering stench had yet to break through Allara's mask of terror.

For a long while, nobody said a word. The two patrolmen who had brought them in finally worked up the courage to walk down the nave, sidestepping the droplets of feces on the floor to check on the man. "He's dead," one of them announced after feeling around for a pulse on the man's swollen neck.

No one was surprised by the announcement but the hall was soon filled with whispered prayers. The lord magistrate swallowed and nodded vigorously. He tried gesturing but his hands were still too shaky to make any discernible gestures.

"You shall feed his body to the dogs," a familiar female voice said from the back of the room. Everybody's head swiveled to the source of the voice. A woman in a simple wrinkled and faded green linen frock stood up. She looked tall and graceful even in her poor dress. A gray headscarf covered her head.

They all gasped when she removed the headscarf to expose silky black hair crowning a perfectly sculpted face dominated by a set of piercing purple eyes. Everyone immediately stood up. Allara did her best to maintain an upright position on her shaky legs.

"Your… Highness!" Aidan Skanbhurg sputtered.

"You shall slice his heart into 100 pieces. You shall send riders and ships to all corners of the earth and they shall dispose of those pieces there. He shall never be reborn. Not even as a worm. His spirit shall twist and turn and howl for eternity. The gods will not be mocked," Princess Aemilia declared in a steely tone.

"At once, Your Highness," Lord Aidan nodded vigorously again

Aemilia Daeganus Rhexbhurg dipped her head to him, "You can sit, my lord. I only wanted to watch the trial. It wasn't my intention to cause a distraction with my presence. I will leave." The king's daughter turned on a heel and left the temple with a graceful stride. There were no ladies-in-waiting or guards scrambling after her. She had come alone.

Everyone watched quietly as she walked away. Only after she had left did they dare to sit down. Patrolmen carried away the thief's swollen body, acolytes with wooden buckets and mops cleaned the excrement off the floor, and priests lit incense pots to dispatch the stench. Allara surreptitiously felt the pew under her. There was only a small wet spot. Her bladder hadn't been anywhere close to full. If she sat there long enough, it might dry.

Once the floor had been cleaned, the corpse carted away, and the stench banished, a priest led them all in prayer before the trials resumed. Only three cases were left. Everyone was in a somber mood.

The first of the remaining cases involved a freedman accused of poisoning his former master. The widow had presumed her husband died of natural causes until two days later. A female slave had drunk a cup of wine sitting on her husband's bedside table while packing up the room and died within minutes. She had mixed the wine with a dog's food but the dog died too. Her husband had been poisoned.

She accused the freedman of murdering him. The freedman accused the widow of poisoning her own husband and blaming it on him. Insults were lobbed back and forth. The widow told the tribunal that the freedman's brother had fled in the wake of the poisoning allegations.

"My brother and I were born in our master's household. 35 years we have been loyal to him. He was our father. His sons our brothers. His daughters our sisters. I tutored his grandchildren, handled all his affairs, and kept all his secrets. He gave me and my brother our freedom when we reached manhood. Why would we harm him?"

"Because you are treacherous little weasels. Both of you," the widow retorted.

"Why would we kill our father?" the freedman asked.

"He was not your father."

"He was and you and you know it," the freedman said bitterly. "He loved us more than your sons. And our mother more than you. That's why you hate us. Didn't you kill him because he left us more than he left your boys?"

"My husband didn't leave a will," the widow said.

"And we're just supposed to take your word for it? He kept a diary of his bowel movements but somehow forgot to write a will?" the freedman responded and was immediately met with cries of "Liar! Liar!" from his alleged stepmother and half siblings. The poop diary was nowhere to be seen either.

The mudslinging and airing of family secrets continued for a while. The freedman couldn't prove that the dead merchant had been his father. His mother had been dead for ten years and he couldn't produce a single witness to back his claim while the widow produced so many witnesses that others had to be sent away.

The freedman's missing brother didn't help his defense. "Why didn't your brother stay behind to clear his name?" Harard Khamsiner, the burly ex-soldier, asked. The freedman had no answer.

Then the the freedman admitted that his brother may have killed their alleged father but he had no knowledge of any murder plot. The widow smiled. Allara groaned. She had been rooting for him. He was sentenced to death. "Out of mercy, it will be the rope. Not stoning," Aidan Skanbhurg said.

Next up was a man accused of raping a girl of nine. His defense was so ridiculous that Lord Aidan didn't let him finish. "She came on to me–" the man claimed.

"You will be castrated, branded on the forehead and cheeks, subjected to forty lashes of the whip, and banished to the Raper's Wood," the lord magistrate interrupted.

"Rapers' Wood?" the wide eyed man gasped.

Allara had never known, seen, or even heard of anyone sent to the Rapers' Wood. This one was the first. The wood was reserved for men convicted of raping children, priestesses, and noblewomen. The elaborate punishment had been concocted by Aevard VII (The Vengeful) for a pair of visiting Maevite princes that he had caught in bed with his 16-year-old daughter.

The disgraced princess was banished to a tiny seven-acre island in the middle of the Khars Sea. Speaking her name was forbidden. She lived in complete solitude for 40 years, ignored by both her father and brother throughout the entirety of their reigns. She was pardoned and recalled to Pharasandria by her nephew, Pharas XII (The Fair), King Daegan's father, following his ascension. She lived for another 20 years without a hint of scandal and died in her sleep.

Her lovers suffered a far worse fate. Her father had them branded, castrated, and thrown in a wood he had specially walled for the purpose. He decreed that all convicted rapists in the 100 Realms were to be sent to the walled forest after their castration. "To keep the animals company," he said.

In the summer of the following year, the King of Kings issued a second proclamation concerning the Rapers' Wood: The animals have become far too numerous, it read. There isn't enough food for all of them. The herd needs to be thinned or all the animals will starve come winter. The Subrhex of Pharasandria will be auctioning 20 permits for a 10-day hunt in the Rapers' Wood. The auction will happen at noon on the 30th day of Daegany, the year 211. All animals, the four-legged ones and the branded two-legged ones, are fair game. Hunters will be allowed a maximum of four companions.

Aevard The Vengeful's proclamation launched an annual tradition. Every autumn, wealthy men from all over the known world flocked to Pharasandria and bid eye-watering sums of gold on the limited number of hunting permits.

"Next," Aidan Skanbhurg called.

The last trial of the day involved a woman accused of murdering her husband. She didn't deny killing him. She insisted that she had knifed him in the stomach in self defense. She claimed her husband was a mean drunk who beat her all the time.

Her in-laws told a different tale. The tale of a foreign woman with no understanding of Bha'andini customs who disrespected her husband all the time and deserved all the beatings she got. They claimed their son never went overboard with his beatings, always keeping them at an appropriate minimum. "If anything, he didn't beat her enough," Bridgitte's mother in-law concluded her testimony.

There was a lot of mudslinging and it was the first case in which the judges appeared evenly split. The woman, Bridgittte, came from the city of Paccadon across the Khars Sea. All her character witnesses were fellow Paccadanites. By law, their word carried less weight than that of a Bha'andini.

Allara felt a deep sympathy for Bridgitte but the decision wasn't hers to make. While generally frowned upon, wife-beating was still legal as long as it was kept at a "reasonable" level. The question of whether Bridgitte's late husband beat her reasonably or excessively was the crux of the matter. It was the longest trial of the day. Many of the others took mere minutes. The hourglass had to be flipped twice for this one.

With the testimonies over, the magistrates were no closer to a verdict. Allara could see they were split down the middle but she had no idea who was on which side. Lucan Draper appeared to be the deciding vote. His fellow magistrates were pestering him, pointing and cajoling. The pudgy young man just sank further into his seat and whimpered, trembling like a leaf and waving his arms about.

The bells rang to announce the seventh hour of the day and the end of all trials. Lucan Draper muttered something. The old man shrugged, the ex-soldier banged the table with a fist, Baxtyrn stormed out, and Aidan Skanbhurg sentenced Bridgitte of Paccadan to death by drowning.

By the time the trial ended and the lord magistrate dismissed them, Allara's pew was dry. Before she left, she pulled a priest aside and whispered her bladder incident to him.

"We were all terrified, child," the old priest told her. "My vestments are not as pristine either. I will have all the pews washed. You can go."

"What about penance, Mukhlun," she asked him.

"Aembaur will understand. It was His doing," the priest dismissed her. There was a small crowd angling for his attention.

"What was that about?" Corvinia asked when she rejoined them.

"Just confessing my sins," Allara answered vaguely.

"Where are you going?" Corvinia asked when Allara tried to return to Landshield. She needed a bath and a change of clothes.

"Home," Allara answered.

"Not yet," Corvinia took her hand. "Your sacred duty is not over until you dish out the punishment."

Allara knew that. "I'll do it next time," she said.

"And spend a month courting divine punishment for neglecting your duty? Didn't you see what happened in there?" Covinia asked. Allara followed her with a bowed head. What was she to say? 'Sorry Corvinia. I peed myself. Let me go wash and change first?'

Allara rode in Corvinia's carriage with Covinia's niece Corrina, Marissa, one of Lady Ermina's ladies-in-waiting, and Sylvia. "Sir Parnyrl isn't coming?" Sylvia asked.

"He is riding with Baxtyrn," Corvinia said.

Allara didn't contribute much to the conversation. She couldn't smell anything but constantly feared someone would make a comment about the smell of urine. No one said a word. She sniffed the air. All there was was lavender, pomade, and the faint cinnamon in Corvinia's expensive perfume.

They were near the front of the procession. Condemned men were mounted on carts and jeered by the crowds. Trials had taken place in temples all over the city and the criminals from those trials all joined the procession ahead of them. Allara felt rather important sitting in a carriage with curtains as they rolled past the walking masses. Everybody seemed to be heading towards the Siwanj Aesandrius. Shops were shuttered and streets had been cleared of all traffic not headed to the racetrack.

They kept a good pace and got to the racetrack before the bells tolled again. They disembarked and walked through one of the racetrack's 200 gates. There was no ticketing of any kind. Instead, they were handed scraps of paper with tallies on them. Allara's had six, as did Corvinia's. And Sylvia's. Marissa and Corrina both had eight.

"What are these for?" Allara asked.

"Hanging," Corvinia answered.

"Hanging?" Allara puzzled.

"You shall see," Corvinia and Marissa promised her.

The Siwanj Aesandrius was packed even more than it was during chariot races. People filled the stands and the racetrack itself.

"Did everyone come today?" Sylvia gasped.

Corvinia, Corrina, and Marissa laughed. Allara and Sylvia could only respond with puzzled looks.

"Everyone comes to Judgment Day. It's Pharasandria's most popular event. Nobody talks about it because it's supposed to be sacred. But everyone comes," Corvinia explained. You've never been?"

"No," Allara and Sylvia shook their heads.

"Then you're in for a treat," Corvinia said enigmatically.

A large raised wooden platform had been set up in the middle of the racetrack. Phasandria's permanent lord magistrates sat on the stage under a silk awning. There were 50 of them, one for each of the city's districts. Aidan Skanbhurg was one of the youngest ones. The temporary magistrates were nowhere to be seen.

A large wooden altar was constructed in front of the platform. Slight farther ahead were gallows. Men sentenced to death sat below these gallows, chained hand and foot. Allara spotted six or seven women. The men were twenty times the number of women.

Further ahead of the soon to be dead were the more numerous group of those sentenced to public whipping. This group was easily 3,000 strong. Patrolmen picked a few men from this category and took them to dig holes in the sand and set up stakes.

Patrolmen in striped red and gold cloaks also pushed the people off the racetrack but the stands were already full and there was nowhere to go. They pushed them as far back as they could and set up barricades.

Allara didn't even want to think about how many people were present. The Siwanj Aesandrius could hold 300,000 people in the stands according to the official seating plans. Add the number of people standing around the racetrack to that number and she concluded that there had to be at least 400,000 to half a million people in attendance.

The air was filled with a million conversations and vendors hawking foodstuffs and water. There was everything: water, wine, ale, apples, candies, plums, pies, candy, pastries, cakes, blood sausages,chicken livers and gizzards, sweetmeats, honeyed locusts, fried fish, roast pigeons, and more varieties of nuts than she could name.

The vendors also sold small items of jewelry, household utensils, soaps, perfumes, dried herbs, belts, clothes, banners, toys, sculptures of the gods and royals, even pets: tiny puppies, kittens, and parrots. Anything that could fit in a basket, under a cloak, or be carried on the back was sold. Some vendors even sold their bags and baskets once they had exhausted their stocks.

Allara bought a small wooden statue of The Thunderbolt that was just over half a foot tall. Corvinia thought the 50-stallion price tag was ridiculously high but Allara didn't care. It was a perfect copy of him, down to the piercing purple eyes. "A gift for Her Highness," Allara lied. Then she decided to buy a replica for Princess Xaena to cover the lie but couldn't do it there. She asked the sculptor for the location of his shop so she could visit him later without the prying eyes of her companions. Corvinia bought a much cheaper rocking horse for her son.

Other men went around looking at the scraps of paper. "Ten stallions for three. Eight stallions for 14, five stallions for 167," one of them announced loudly.

"How much for six?" Corvinia asked.

"You pay me 50 stallions, maybe I'll take it," the man responded with a lecherous smile. Corvinia crumpled up the scrap of paper, chewed it, and spat the contents on his boots.

"Come find after you pop that out," the man pointed at Corvinia's baby bump. "I have an excellent record. 14 sons, zero daughters. Symor of Wall's End. They call me The Boy Maker," the man said and left while Corvinia hissed and hurled insults at his retreating back.

"Why are they offering so much for these scraps of paper?" Allara asked the question that had been bothering her all along.

"They determine who gets to hang the criminals. But that won't be us."

"How do the men buying the papers know which numbers will be called?" Sylvia asked.

"They're bookmakers. Scraps of paper held by the fewest people are the ones that get called up. You look at enough of them and you can make a good guess about which ones. Bookies are better at that. They can look at a thousand scraps of paper and pick out three to five possible winning numbers nine times out of ten. But only one number gets called. So they have to buy papers with multiple numbers and hope to either get called up or resell them to some unsuspecting simpleton. Only sell, never buy," Corvinia advised.

A large force of patrolmen marching in neat columns entered through one of the reserved gates. Behind them came the priests of Aembaur and then Prince Pharas, flanked Archmuklun Myrar, the high priest of Aembaur and a purple shield. Behind the crown prince came his sister Aemilia, garbed as befit a princess this time, three more Purple Shields, a collection of the leading men of Pharasandria, and more patrolmen bringing up the rearguard.

Princess Aemilia elicited reverantial murmurs and an epidemic of pointing. "His Royal Highness Pharas Daeganus Aemlionus Rhexbhurg, Prince of Rhexia, has graced us with his presence today. As has his royal sister, Her Highness Princess Aemilia," a herald announced.

The herald continued to announce the distinguished guests in attendance, "His Honor Lord Lothar Longathus Vaechbhurg." The crown prince's grandfather waved at the crowd.

"... His Honor Lord Pavrl Parnyrlus Siibhunbhurg…"

The Crown Prince and his party made their way to their reserved seats on the dais. The herald called for silence. Anrchmuklun Myrar rose and led the crowd in prayer. Then he descended the dais with prince Pharas and close to a hundred priests in tow. A white bull was brought forward and sacrificed at the altar.

The high priest took the first taste of the roasting meat. "Aembaur is pleased," he announced to a cheering crowd. He offered the second bite of the roasting meat to the crown prince. Prince Pharas, chewed, swallowed, and mounted the dias. "Let the punishment begin," he announced with an upraised right arm.

"Pharas! Pharas! Pharas!" the crowd cheered its approval but nobody moved. First, waves of patrolmen poured onto the wide field, tying up those sentenced to be whipped onto stakes driven into the ground with plaques nailed to the poles listing the crimes and the punishments. These were spaced all around the length of the track.

Those sentenced to die were set up according to their execution method. Those to be hanged were first. Fourteen men were led to the gallows, with nooses around their necks. The free ends of the frayed ropes were tossed over the gallows. Among these fourteen was Nathyr, the freedman she had rooted for. Allara said a quick prayer for him.

"They should get new ropes," Corvinia said. Allara nodded her assent. Then she prayed again.

"Who will hang these sinners?" Prince Pharas asked the crowd. Half a million hands went up. Corvinia jabbed Allara in the ribs. "Put your hand up," she said in a harsh whisper. Allara complied.

A priest handed the crown prince a scrap of paper. "Fourteen!" he announced. Cheers went up in sections of the crowd. The would-be executioners made their way forward, presented their scraps of paper, and were sent to the ropes. There were ten people on every rope.

"Pull," the crown prince ordered. The men and women braced themselves like they were about to engage in the hardest game of tug of war of their lives. They dug their feet into the sand, leaned back, and started pulling. On the opposite end, the condemned were jerked back and within moments rose into the air as bodies twitched.

"Hold," the crown prince commanded as the heads of the condemned became level with the crossbars of the gallows while their feet dangled 10 feet off the ground. The pullers held. The condemned twitched and flailed as air was squeezed out of them.

"Whoa!" the crowd gasped with one voice when one of the ropes snapped and a condemned man plummeted to the ground. His rope pullers fell backward on to the sand and onto each other while while he jerked and twitched, trying and failing to get his bounds up to his neck.

"Hold!" Prince Pharas commanded the other rope pullers and gestured. The other rope pullers held their position but adjusted their postures, standing straighter instead of leaning backward. Two patrolmen ran to the man flailing on the ground and loosened the noose around his neck. They untied his hands and helped him to his feet. It was Nathyr.

"So he was innocent," Corvinia said. Allara nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She had prayed for the rope to snap. The crown prince gestured for the patrolmen to approach. They marched Nathyr up the dais. He fell to his knees before the future king.

"It appears the gods don't want you dead son," the crown prince placed a hand on Nathyr's head. The trembling freedman nodded vigorously. "You're pardoned," Pharas Daeganus Rhexhburg said.

Nathyr lay flat at Prince Pharas's feet and kissed them. "Thank you, Your Majesty… um Your Highness," the freedman sobbed.

"What's your name, son?"

"Nathyr, Your Highness. Nathyr Alyrns."

"You can dump your slave name and choose any name you like, Fortunate Nathyr. You can rise," Prince Pharas instructed. The shaky freedman stumbled to his feet. The crown prince unhooked the purple and gold cloak off his shoulders and draped the trembling Nathyr in it. "Come see me tomorrow," he added in parting.

"I will, Your Majesty. Your Highness," Nathyr promised.

Meanwhile at the gallows, the other 13 bodies had stopped twitching. "Release," Prince Pharas commanded. The rope pullers obeyed and 13 corpses came tumbling to the ground. The 140 executioners filed by the dais. Handed them something.

"What are they doing?" Sylvia asked Corvinia

"Getting paid," came Marissa's answer. "150 silver stallions per person."

"But punishing criminals is a sacred duty," Allara protested.

"And where does it say you can't get paid for performing it?" Corvivinia retorted. Allara had no counter.

"It's time for the rest of you to do your duty. To Aemabaur, to your king, to your city, and to your families. Criminals left unpunished make life difficult for virtuous law-abiding citizens such as yourselves," Prince Pharas proclaimed. "But you shall be orderly. There shall be no scrambling. Anyone seen running will be whipped. Go avenge yourselves!"

The patrolmen strictly enforced the orders of the crown prince, whipping anyone who dared break into a run. They all sauntered onto the sand of the racetrack. The first man they encountered was tied to a pole, stripped to his breechclout with his back exposed. A wooden plaque displayed his name, crime, and punishment in chalk. "OMUMESI W' KUYOKA," the plaque read. Unbearably loud drunk. He had been prescribed five lashes.

A patrolman stood by the man with a whip in hand. They couldn't see the man's face, only his back. He was tied with his face to the stake. The patrolman handed Corvinia the whip. She took it and struck him. The man grunted.

Sylvia took the whip next and elicited a louder grunt. Marissa did no better than Sylvia.Allara tried but almost stumbled as she swung. Her lash elicited no sound. "Noo, that's not how you do it," a short stocky man ripped the whip out of Allara's hand as she tried passing it to Corrina. "This is how," he swung the whip above his head and brought it down in a savage arc.

Allara could hear the whip whistling through the air. The drunk screamed so hard he startled Allara. The stocky man's lash left a trail of red from the drunk's shoulder blade to the middle of his back. The stocky man's friends cheered. The drunk screamed and tried to wiggle gainst his bonds. "Bhyolile! Bhyolile! Bibhoko bhyolile!" he kept screaming. Enough! Enough! I have received my prescribed number of lashes.

"Five," the patrolman shook his head at the stocky man's friend as he took the whip and tried to whip the drunk. "He's received his punishment." The patrolman untied the drunk, dismissed him and tied another drunk sitting on the ground to the stake. The whipped man ran away without looking back while the newly tied-up one trembled.

The stocky man and his three friends turned the whipping into a sport, passing the whip among themselves, eliciting blood-curdling screams, and a new strip of red on the drunk's back with every lash. Every scream was met with cheers and a promise by the next man to outdo the one before. A fifth man joined them and they whipped one drunk after another. Allara and her companions left them to it.

All kinds of crimes were punishable by whipping: failure to pay fines, disorderly conduct, lewd language and conduct around children, child neglect, gross demonstrations of disrespect towards parents, senior citizens, and priests, defamation of character, public brawling, assault, vandalism, burglary, theft, adulterating foods like milk with water and bread with sawdust, selling tainted or misrepresented meats, embezzlement, indecent exposure, dumping nightsoil on the street, practicing certain trades outside designated areas, carrying weapons in sacred spaces, poaching, fraud, bribery, perjury, spellcasting, inappropriate dressing, possession of banned books, and the violation of a myriad cultural taboos. People convicted of all these crimes were tied to whipping stakes all round the racetrack.

Despite the punishments being meted out in every corner of the Siwanj Aesandrius, the mood around the circuit was jovial. Some men were gambling on whether they could make a man scream louder than the previous whipper. Allara noticed that men preferred whipping other men while the few women present only attracted cursory attention and thin crowds. The biggest men attracted the largest crowds and the most eager whippers. Making the giant squeal, Corvinia called the game.

Screams of a thousand men filled the air but everyone on the Siwanj Aesandrius treated it like music. It was an orchestra of suffering. The louder the screams, the louder the cheers the people clustered around the screaming man. Allara had always thought there was one type of scream. On that day she learned that there were at least a thousand kinds. She had heard screams before, but never a thousand people screaming all at once.

Unbeknownst to her, the more she listened to the screams, the less she really heard them. They became as much a part of the landscape as the sand below her soles and colors on the clothes of everyone she passed. All these things were there. She just didn' actively notice them any more.

Vendors circulated all over the place, selling foods and a hundred different kinds of wares. Young couples walked hand-in hand, so in love that they were oblivious to everything around them. This was just another picnic for them. When they stopped before condemned men, they didn't swing the whips so much as they merely flicked their wrists. The lashes they dished out were perfunctory. Allara envied them. She prayed that if she ever found herself tied to a whipping pole, it would be young lovers flogging her. They inflicted almost no pain.

Parents used the condemned men as object lessons for their children. Nobody under fifteen was allowed to dish out punishment but there were no limitations on attendance. Allara's father had always threatened to take her and Bogdyr to a Judgement Day punishment session when they misbehaved but he never followed through. On the one a day a year he attended the event with his household, the children would remain at home with the younger slaves.

"People actually enjoy this? It's a sacred duty," Allara could still not believe how happy everyone looked.

"The people of Pharasandria enjoy performing their sacred duty. On Judgement Day, the lowliest of slaves can whip a lord and there's nothing the lord can do. Take it away and they will riot," Corvinia promised as they came to the child rapist from their trial. He had already been whipped. His back looked like raw meat. Fresh brands marking him as a child rapist decorated his forehead and both cheeks.

There was a major argument over who would get to castrate him. "It's my niece he defiled," a man was saying. "It's my right."

"I'm the one who caught him. I should get some satisfaction for what I saw. You take the pillar. I take the stones," another man countered.

"No, I want both the pillar and the stones," the first man insisted. The patrolman watched without comment while the rapist was too far gone to care. Only the ropes binding him to his whipping pole kept him upright.

"I'm Lady Lamanbhurg," Corvinia interrupted the argument. The quarreling man turned to look at her. "I outrank all of you. I get the knife," she held out her hand. The patrolman gave it to her. "Who's the father?" she asked.

"He's dead. The girl he raped lives with me," the uncle answered.

"Ok," Corvinia nodded. She cupped the rapist's testicles with her left hand and sliced them off with her right. He screamed as blood spurted out, splashing on the ground and on Corvinia's left hand. The patrolman cauterized the wound with a red hot iron. The rapist screamed worse.

"Louder. We can't hear you," the man identifying himself as the uncle to the rapist's victim mocked.

"You get the pillar," Corvinia handed the uncle the knife and walked off. Allara and company followed obediently. A water vendor was on them in an instant. "Water, m'lady?" he offered.

Corvinia held out her bloodstained left hand and the man washed it with a sliver of cheap gray soap and clear water from a waterskin. He regulated the floor of it so carefully that only a little of it splashed on the ground without cleansing Corvinia first. "How much?" Corvinia asked when he was done.

"Five crowns, m'lady," came the response.

"One," Corvinia countered.

"M'lady…" the man tried to protest.

"You got the water for free from the public fountain outside. What am I paying five crowns for?"

"M'lady, the soap, the washin–" the man tried to justify his pricing.

"Is it worth five crowns?" Corvinia interrupted him again.

"I am willing to accept four. Because of the baby," the man offered.

"Still one. I would pay half a crown but there is no such coin," Corvinia was adamant.

"M'lady, you're killing me here. Be reasonable," the water vendor compalined.

"I'm being reasonable," Corvinia insisted. "One crown."

"I'll take two and let that be the end of it. Honest to Aembaur, I cannot accept less than that," the man said with an air of finality.

"Fine," Corvinia relented. "I'll let you rob me out of two crowns," she dug into her purse and handed the man a silver coin.

"I can't make change for a stallion," the man said.

"I don't have any copper crowns on me. Spent the last on an apple," Corvinia responded. Allara, Marissa, and Sylvia didn't have any coppers either. Corrina had brought no money. The water vendor flailed his hand in a gesture of powerlessness. "You're sure you're not just lying about not having change?" Corvinia pressed the vendor.

"By all the gods," the man swore. He opened his purse and emptied copper coins into his hand.

"How much is that?" Corvinia asked him.

"74 crowns," he answered without hesitation or pausing to count.

"I'll take them all."

"But your change is 98 crowns, m'lady," the water vendor pointed out.

"Keep the 24 crowns. I'll collect them some other day," Corvinia handed her the stallion.

"Thank you very much m'lady. May the gods bless you. And your baby," the man bowed and nearly knelt.

"You too," Corvinia returned the blessing and pocketed the copper coins without counting them. She led them into the inner rim of the circuit where condemned men were.

Execution methods varied with the severity of crime, gender, and, and status. Warriors were rarely executed save for exceptional circumstances. A warrior reserved to the right to take his own life to save his honor. This also allowed their families to burn their bodies, an act that allowed for rebirth as a human, allowing the disgraced to redeem their souls in the space of a generation. Common criminals were buried. They would spend 100 generations inhabiting the souls of worms and other low animals before a rebirth.

While executed female criminals didn't receive the mercy of a cremation, they got some reprieve in the manner of execution. They were put to death by drowning unless the crime was considered exceptionally heinous. Men of the lower orders bore the brunt of the most painful execution methods. Hanging was the gentlest. It was reserved for men a lord magistrate determined to be worthy of mercy.

The default execution method was stoning while other methods could be concoted in the cases of grusome murders using the principle of an eye for an eye. Unrepentant blasphemers were burned alive while priests who broke their chastity vows were buried alive with their lovers.

Slaves were whipped to death and were the one class of people that weren't entitled to a trial before execution. Your master could just hand you over for execution. May slave owners skipped this step entirely and just killed offending slaves themselves. There was no penalty for killing a slave. Unless it was another man's slave in which case you would just compensate the owner.

The first man they ran into was a counterfeiter. He was a goldsmith caught passing off gold and silver-plated copper coins as genuine eagles and stallions. He was dead already. A pile of stones covered him. Twelve feet to the countefeiter's right was another man, convicted of defecating in a public fountain. He too was dead.

A convicted murderer a dozen feet to the defecator's right was still alive. They dutifully lined up to throw their stones. The murderer's ribs were already showing. He just grunted as the stones landed on him. He was more tired than anything.

The man in front of them in the queue struck the killing blow, throwing his stone with such force that it split the murderer's skull open and permanently silenced him. Everyone dabbed his forehead with two fingers, the index and middle finger, to partake in the blessing released after the banishment of evil from the world. Allara pressed a silver coin into his hand. She wasn't the only one. Then she left with her friends, throwing rocks at a few not-yet dead murderers as they walked the circuit.

Allara realized that she had grown increasingly indifferent. She would throw a stone at a muderer and move on. Corrina and Marissa did their duty with similar grim determination. But Covinia and Sylvia had more fun, whooping and hollering when their stones landed a hit.

A person could only throw one stone and the girl missed a lot even with the close range. Only Corvinia consistently hit her targets. Sylvia was catching up quickly. Corrina and Marissa both had aims as poor as Allara's. After throwing 30 stones, she had only managed to land eight solid hits. She wondered whether it was her aim that was so poor or if there was something else.

After a circuit around the stoning pits, they moved to a new set of whipping stakes. These were for men sentenced to be whipped to death. "How is he still alive?" Sylvia asked of a man whose lungs were showing through his ribs. The whips had peeled nearly all the flesh off his back.

"I don't know," Allara shrugged. They joined the queue. The man's screams were low and hoarse. Allara wondered how many lashes he had received for his back to look like that. She wondered how long he had been screaming for his voice to grow that hoarse. More of his flesh peeled back with every lash.

The queue moved slowly but it was soon on them. Allara was at the back of her friend group, behind Sylivia. "What did he do?" Sylvia whispered as her turn approached.

"Innkeep. Killed one of his guests, butchered him, and served the meat to his other guests," Allara read the plaque.

"Ugh," Sylvia groaned with disgust as she took the whip. She swung in around her head and brought it down. The whip whistled through the air, cracked against the skin, slipped between two ribs, twisted around a lung and ripped it clean off. They wheezed and went still. "Whoa!" the small crowd gasped in amazement and started clapping.

"Did I kill him," Sylvia asked.

"Yes," the patrolman supervising the whipping answered after checking the man's pulse. "Anyone wants to flog a corpse?" he asked the crowd. Many shrugged and moved on to the next damned man.

As they left, they touched Sylvia's forehead with the first two fingers. Others pressed coins into her hands. A person who rid Aeduia's children of an evil man was blessed and one could share in that blessing by touching the blessed person. The forehead had the strongest of the blessing. Sylvia's friends dabbed her forehead last and Allara last of all. She had never seen Sylvia so happy.

The moved on to the next man sentenced to death by whipping, a kidnapper who murdered his abductee, a boy of eight. He was still alive when they left him. The other two dozen damned men were slaves accused of murder and rape. Allara paused and declined to whip them.

"You can't do that," Marissa told her. "You have to do your duty."

"But I'm supposed to act according to my conscience," Allara argued. "I shouldn't kill anyone I believe doesn't deserve to die," Allara argued.

"They're here. They're condemned to die by whipping. They deserve to die. What other justification do you need? The Bhangel says sinners must suffer. It's your duty to bring about that suffering. Only then will they be cleansed of Aemousikour's taint and be reborn anew," Marissa countered. Allara looked to Sylvia and Corvinia for support and found none.

"They're slaves, Marissa," Allara tried again. "They weren't given a trial. Their owners just handed them over for execution. How do we know if those owners lied about the charges?"

"What does it matter?" Marissa was relentless. "If they're innocent, the gods won't let them die. If they die anyway, they'll be rewarded with Mwikul."

"But wouldn't it be more pious to reward a man in this life instead of the next?" Allara asked.

"It would be," Marissa agreed. "But are you willing to risk divine retribution on the gamble that all these men are innocent? Do you really believe that? Do you think someone would just hand over a valuable slave to be executed on false charges?"

"They may not be," Allara agreed. "Many of them are definitely guilty. But how do we know which ones?"

"That's for the gods to decide," Marissa whipped the first man. "Your duty is to send these criminals to them." She handed the whip to Sylvia. Sylvia declined it. As did Corvinia and Corrina. A man behind them grabbed the whip and flogged the slave Corvinia had been whipping.

"You're seriously not going to do your duty?" Marissa raged.

"You've been a slave, have you Marissa?" Corvinia finally spoke up.

"No. No Karkbhurg has ever been a slave. Twenty generations of warriors and two royal marriages in 400 years. My ancestors rode with The Restorer," Marissa said proudly.

"So you have no idea about how a slave might feel or the things he might do to avenge himself against a cruel master," Corvinia pointed out.

"I expect you would know more about that than me, Corvinia. Your father has more slaves than mine," Marissa retorted.

"My father does not mistreat his slaves," Corvinia contended. "And my grandfather was born a slave. He was only freed when he was 28."

"But when was he freed? 50? 60 years ago? Wasn't he freed even before your father was born? So all you know about the experience of being a slave is from second-hand stories? How is that different from what I know? You are just a spoiled rich girl. Like me. At least Allara Stefanus here and Lyvia know what it's like to be poor and enslaved. Do you?" Marissa retorted.

"I'm not a spoiled rich girl," Corvinia denied the accusation. "You are the one with a lord for a grandfather."

"Yes," Marissa admitted. "My grandfather is a lord. And somehow your commoner father is almost as rich as him. Have you ever worked a day in your life, Corvinia? Or you think you're more virtuous than me just because you like slumming it with the help?" Marissa flicked her wrist derisively at Allara and Sylvia.

Corvinia's face took on a stormy look but she didn't say a thing. Allara realized she didn't like being referred to as the help. The truthfulness of the statement didn't make it sting any less. As a lady-in-waiting, Marissa was more of a companion to Lady Ermina than a servant. The most strenuous thing Marissa did all day was probably combing her mistress's hair.

Then Marissa said the quiet part out loud, "Why do you prefer the company of the poors, Corvinia? Is it because you are an up-jumped vulgarian that the rest of us proper ladies do not care for? No amount of gold can buy you good breeding. Or wash away the stench of urine."

The ever sunny Corvinia stormed off in a huff. Corrina followed her with one last dirty look at Marissa. Allara and Sylvia remained rooted to the spot, unsure of whether to follow Corvinia or stay with Marissa.

And why do you prefer the company of the poors? Allara couldn't help repeating Marissa's words in her head. Hey! I'm not poor, Allara wanted to protest. I earn twice as much as an unskilled laborer. I'm middle class! But it didn't matter. To people like Marissa, anyone who worked for a wage was poor.

Trades were looked down upon as lower-class occupations. Aevard The Vengeful had once threatened to demote any warrior caught engaging in trades or commerce two rungs down to the craftsmen's order, where such things belonged. "Warriors don't shoe horses. That's what farriers are for," the king had declared. He died before making any demotions official. His son, Baeon VI (The Burner), King Daegan's grandfather, rescinded the threat following his coronation.

The only respectable professions for a member of the warrior class were farming and fighting. Both were done by men. Women of the warrior class were expected to do no work besides raising children and burnishing their husbands' names with good works, mostly giving alms to the poor and organizing feasts and dances on holidays.

Teenage boys and girls served as squires and ladies-in-waiting to higher-ranking nobles in preparation for their future duties as warriors and wives. That's how the 17-year-old Marissa Bramyrlus Karkbhurg ended up in Lady Ermina's service.

Her father Bramyrl Karkbhurg was one of the army's most talented commanders, often spoken of in the same breath as The Thunderbolt. He was the man tasked with prosecuting the 12th Cod War. If he returned victorious, his daughter would have suitors lining up from Pharasandria to Namantown.

"That was not very polite," Allara murmured in Marissa's ear. She had always tried to stay on the prickly girl's good side. Bogdyr served under her father. It would be unwise to antagonize her.

Marissa was not feeling friendly. She jerked her head away, disgust clouding her face. "You're too familiar, slave," she spat. "I do not need lessons in courtesy from you!" Then she stormed off too.

I am not a slave, Allara repeated the mantra in her head as she watched Marissa vanish into the crowd. I am not poor either, she remembered The Thunderbolt's gold. Her gold.

"25,000 eagles!" Bogdyr had wheezed after counting it. "Two and half MILLION silver stallions! Gods!" His voice had dropped even lower as if saying it out loud would reveal the whole thing as a dream. Allara had just watched him without comment. The figure seemed unreal to her as well even as she watched the gold glinting in front of her very eyes.

"What can it buy?" Bogdyr had asked.

"1,000 acres of farmland back home in Salandria," Allara had answered after some rough mental calculations. "Or just 10 acres here in The Gods' Quarter in Pharasandria provided there's no house standing on the land. Which is pretty impossible. I don't think you can buy land in The Royal Quarter. Or we can go the animal rearing route. Buy either 3,000 horses, 7,000 cows, or 50,000 sheep. But we will have nowhere for them to graze. Maybe cut the animal numbers in half and spend the rest on land. We might have to lease more land. Lots of ranches in the south," Allara's mind had run amok with the possibilities.

Allara had never touched her half of the gold. She had idea what to do with it. Bogdyr had spent a full tenth of his share on armor alone. Allara had never known suits of plate armor were that expensive. Bogdyr told her his suit was one of the less costly ones because it was made of common steel instead of Temple Steel and didn't have any filigreeing in silver and gold.

It was still a magnificent suit. It had taken the armorer a full month to forge it. Everything from the barbute and gorget to the greaves and sollerets shone like silvered mirrors. All of the armor's pieces bore Bogdyr's inscribed initials but were otherwise unadorned except for the breastplate. It featured the severed head of a black bull engraved onto the steel, dripping blood. The blood was rendered in shimmering red enamel.

Allara had been too terrified to entrust something so valuable to any of the courier services operating out of Pharasandria's harbors. Luckily for her, one of Corvinia's father's ships regularly brought silk from Trevantum to Pharasandria. Corvinia had the captain lengthen his voyage by 150 miles and deliver the armor to Bogdyr in the Cod Islands. These thoughts occupied Allara's mind as she approached her friend.

Corvinia was sitting on a log, wiping away tears. Her niece Corrina was standing over her, comforting her. Allara placed a hand on her shoulder and massaged it gently. Corvinia took Allara's hand into her own and squeezed it. "Thank you, Alla," she said. "Thank you for getting rid of that stuck-up bitch." A hint of anger had crept into her voice. "I need to pee," Corvinia added.

Corvinia wouldn't use the public latrines on the Siwanj Aesandrius. They took her outside the racetrack where Samr waited by her carriage. Corvinia had been using the stablehand as a carriage driver. He was feeding the horses when they arrived.

"Lady Corvinia, ready to go?" Samr asked.

"Not yet," Corvinia climbed into the carriage and closed the curtains. Sylvia was tasked with driving Samr out of earshot

"What are you so glum about?" Corvinia asked a downcast Allara.

"Nothing," Allara forced a smile.

Corvinia was in a better mood as they headed back to the racetrack. They walked to the condemned men. The blackening corpse of a blasphemer sat on a grate while blocks of wood stood near it. They threw chunks into the fire below. Blasphemers had to be burnt whole so their spirits could be dispatched to meet the gods and explain themselves.

After a couple of paces, they came to people mocking the man Allara had seen being chained inside a cauldron earlier.

"What did he do?" Sylvia whispered into Allara's ear for what had to be the 100th time that day.

"Chandler. Set fire to a competing chandler's house with the man's wife and three children inside. All five burnt to death and were found encased in beeswax once the fire was put out," Allara read the plaque. She made a mental note to teach Sylvia to read.

"Please, m'lady. Mercy," the man begged as Corvinia picked up a small cube of tallow.

"Why did you burn down the other candlemaker's house?" Corvinia asked.

"It was Aemousikour, m'lady," the man pleaded. "He possessed me. He made me do it. I wasn't myself."

"Then we have to exorcize him, don't we?" Corvinia asked.

"Yes," the man nodded.

"And how do we do that?" Corvinia asked.

"By killing the sinner," the chandler repeated The Bhangel's words verbatim. Too late, Allara thought. The man's face was immediately clouded with regret as he realized the mistake he had made. He had condemned himself. Corvinia dropped the cube of tallow into the cauldron. Tears flowed down the man's face.

Corrina dropped a cube of tallow into the cauldron. Allara and Sylvia dropped blocks of wood into the fire before leaving. The man's screams weren't too far behind them.

Next they came up on a cluster of three men, naked, tied to poles, and bleeding from a thousand wounds but still alive. Their skin was more red than brown. They grunted with every new wound, their voices long lost.

The men were condemned to the most terrible punishment: death by a thousand darts. It was the punishment Aembaur had prescribed for Aemousikour after Aemlilon defeated and captured the renegade god. For the crime of killing his own father, Aephyr, and stealing part of his soul, the master of darkness was sentenced to be pierced by a thousand darts every day for eternity.

Death by a thousand darts was reserved for the most abhorent of murders: patricide, matricide, filicide, regicide, clericide, fratricide, and sororicide. The three men tied to the stakes were condemned to the same fate as Aemouskikour. "Killed his father, killed his brother, killed his brother," Allara read the plaques for Sylvia before she could ask.

A stack of darts sat on a table. They were less darts and more sharpened sticks, about six inches long and as thick as a finger. The darts had a short tip, designed to pierce skin but not penetrate much farther.

The men gathered around whooped and hollered as they threw their darts. The darts would draw blood and fall to the ground. The intention of the punishment was to deliver a slow agonizing death with as many small cuts as possible.

A trio of well-dressed men with upper class accents stood before each condemned man. "Let's go for the left eyes," one of them said. The others nodded. "3, 2, 1," he counted down. All three men threw their darts as one. The condemned men closed their eyes but the men drew blood from the eyelids nonetheless. The damned men blinked rapidly and a mixture of blood and tears flowed down their cheeks.

The dart throwers switched targets and repeated the process with the right eyes and finally the noses, hitting their targets every time. "I told you," the counter told a fourth man.

"Wait and see," the fourth man said. He stepped forward with two companions. The fourth man was an excellent marksman. His companions weren't as good. Their darts kept missing the mark by the narrowest of margins.

"You lost," the first man put out his hand.

"I don't carry that much gold on me like some commoner," the fourth man said. "We'll settle it later." The six highborn men left to find new experiences.

C

"Let's go see the women," Corvinia suggested so they all followed her. There had only been six or seven condemned women. The first they came up on was already dead, a slave stoned for killing a child under her care.

The next was a priestess of Aemeia. The mikhlin had to be at least forty. Her bald head was bare, she had been stripped of her headscarf and priestly robes. She lay in a shallow grave, embracing her lover, a young man of twenty or so years. A dozen priestesses stood over the grave, granting absolution to everyone who threw a handful of sand into the pit.

The mikhlin's legs were already buried but half her upper body was visible. The mikhlin nuzzled her lover's chest and kissed him. This so angered one woman she flung a fistful of sand into their faces. "Unrepentant whore!" the woman cursed.

The woman picked up a second handful of sand. "Calm, my child," one of the priestesses standing over the grave told the woman. "Only one handful per person." The angry woman dropped the sand from her hand. The priestess beckoned her. The woman approached. The priestess dipped two fingers into a tankard of holy water and anointed the woman's forehead. "May Aemeia be with you," the priestess intoned.

"You too, mikhlin," came the woman's answer.

"I'm not feeling well," Syvia said with a troubled face. "I'll go back home." She turned and left while grasping her stomach. Allara had to run after her. Corvinia and Corrina weren't too far behind.

"What's the matter?" Allara asked.

"It's just my stomach. Something I ate. Probably," Sylvia's eyes were watering and she was hyperventilating.

"We can take you home Lyvia, come one," Corvinia offered.

"No. No," Sylvia protested. "You shouldn't cut short your day for me. I will take a cart."

Corvinia insisted but Sylvia was more stubborn. They finally let her go. "She probably has bad diarrhea," Corrina commented as they watched Sylvia sprint across the racetrack towards the latrines. Allara felt there was something else but she dismissed it and went back to the grave. They each threw a handful of sand into the grave, received absolution, and moved along.

"She's pretty unrepentant for someone about to die soon," Corvinia commented as they walked away.

"What else is there to do?" Corrina shrugged "They're not going to pardon her just because she's repentant. She spread her legs and got caught. She gets buried alive. That's the law of the gods. There's no room for mercy. Might as well get those last kisses in before they're fully covered," she added.

"I could never be a mikhlin," Corvinia said. "Doesn't she know herself? Why marry a god, swear you're going to be celibate and then fail to keep that vow?"

"I don't know," Allara answered, her mind turning to Mukhlun Gregory and Nicanor. They never seemed to spend any time together in Landshield but Allara couldn't forget what she had seen that day at the Rainbow Palace in Caedmyria.

She knew the affair was going on. Nicanor always had a lingering look whenever he walked past the warrior priest. And the two of them liked to leave the castle at conveniently similar times. Mukhlun gregory always left first and Nicanor would follow through a different gate. She didn't know where they met but Pharasandria was large. She hated the warrior priest for threatening to kill Bogdyr but Nicanor had done everything in his power to ingratiate himself with her even as she kept rebuffing him. She prayed that he would never be caught.

"Have they ever buried a man?" Corrina interrupted Allara's thoughts.

"Last year. In spring," Corvinia answered. "One of Aembaur's priests was caught in bed with another man's wife. Both were buried there," Corvinia pointed at a spot a few yards away. "Most of the men kill themselves when they're caught. It's less embarrassing. You die faster..."

"Cooorviiii!" a loud voice interrupted. It was Sir Parnyrl, leaning against a crutch and gesturing wildly from about a hundred yards away. A large crowd stood behind him. Corvinia waved at him and made for his position.

They passed three more women, murderers all of them, in three feet tall coffins. They were already dead, their faces looking peaceful under the water that had drowned them. The crowd behind Sir Parnyrl was rowdy. A heated argument was in full swing.

"Please talk to the boy, Corvi," Sir Parnyrl pleaded as soon as they arrived. "I'm going to kill him."

"Kill who?" Corvinia asked.

"Baxtyrn. I'm going to kill the bloody imbecile. Talk some sense into him before that happens," the seneschal huffed. Allara caught glimpses of Baxtyrn, still in his lord magistrate's robes, gesturing wildly.

"Have you been standing long, my love?" Corvinia caressed her husband's cheek.

"Now's not the time for that," Sir Parnyrl said with some feeling.

"I don't want you getting tired. Or too worked up," Corvinia moved close and gave him a small hug, letting him lean on her. Sir Parnyrl inhaled loudly and sighed. The stormy features of his face softened. Allara thought she detected a hint of a smile. That made her chest hurt. She thought about The Thunderbolt. And wondered if she made him that happy.

"Alright, Corvi. I will find a log to sit on," Sir Parnyrl relented. The harshness was gone out of his voice.

"You don't need to do that, my lord," Corvinia gave her husband a small kiss on the lips. The way he closed his eyes and savored it gave Allara chest pains. She wanted to be loved like that. "Alla and Corrina will get you a log," Corvia nodded at them. "And I'll try talking to Baxtyrn."

"Thank you, Corvi," Sir Parnyrl gave his wife a small kiss on the forehead and caressed her pregnant belly, intensifying Allara's chest pains. Those two were the happiest couple she knew.

Corvinia pushed through the crowd while Allara and Corrina set off to find a suitable log for Sir Parnyrl to sit on. They didn't have to go far. The Siwanj Aesandrius was riddled with whipping and execution stakes.

The challenge was in finding one that wasn't stained with blood. Many were now vacant as whippees were released after their punishments and the dead were carted away by slaves. A patrolman ordered two corpse collectors to help them uproot a whipping stake and carry it over to Sir Parnyrl when he saw them struggling with the log. Sir Parnyrl tipped the men a silver stallion each for their service.

"M'lord, this is far too generous," the taller of slaves gushed while his partner nodded his agreement.

"Don't worry about it, son," Sir Parnyrl told the slave. "May Aephyr be with you."

"Thank you, my lord," the corpse collector bowed and went back to his duties.

"Thank you m'lord," his partner bowed too.

"I'm a cripple, not an invalid," Sir Parnyrl shrugged away when Allara and Corrina tried to help him onto the log.

"I can't change his mind," an exasperated Corvinia announced upon her return. Sir Parnyrl gave her a blank look. "Did he tell you he was in love," she asked him.

"Yes," Sir Parnyrl spat, his previously neutral face twisting again ain anger. "All his life, never looked twice at a girl and he does this? Now? In love with a murderer no less," Sie Parnyrl raged.

Corvinia sat down next to her husband and caressed his shoulder. "Calm down. It's youthful foolishness. He will grow out of it," she soothed him.

"He is not bringing that husband-murdering foreign whore home," Sir Parnyrl was adamant. "Imagine what His Highness would say when he hears about it."

"Maybe he will fail and we won't have to deal with her," Corvinia told him.

"That's a sweet dream," Sir Parnyl pointed at the late summer sun in the western sky. Allara estimated that there was about an hour or two left until sunset. In the distance, temple bells rang to announce the time. Allara counted the gongs. Ten.

Allara and Corrina excused themselves to see what the fuss with Baxtyrn was all about. Allara had a pretty good idea. The boy had stormed out when Lucan Draper cast the decisive vote that sentenced Bridgitte of Paccadan to death. But Baxtyrn wouldn't, would he?

"She killed my son!" Bridgitte's mother-in-law, Leila Ebhuchingbhurg, asserted.

"He was an animal! He deserved to die!" one of Bridgitte's relatives, a sister or a cousin, Allara couldn't remember retorted.

There were two factions. One around Baxtyrn and Bridgitte's Paccadinites and another around the Ebhuchingbhurgs, a minor noble family, Bridgitte's in-laws. Bridgitte herself lay face up in a wooden coffin identical to the ones Allara had passed by. Her hands were bound and she had straps across her feet, torso, chest, and head, making her immobile.

A cask of water stood by her coffin along with a small wooden cup. The water in Bridgitte's coffin reached her earlobes. Ten patrolmen kept the two rowdy factions in check.

After hearing impassioned arguments from both sides, a man walked up to the coffin, drew water from the cask and stood over Bridgitte with the cup in hand. It was the same dartman Allara had seen earlier betting on throws against men sentenced to death by a thousand darts. "So, honey, tell me why you killed your husband?" he asked in an oily tone. Bridgitte didn't respond.

"You know I could empty the water in this on the ground or in your coffin. Slowly until you drown when it reaches here," the man went for Bridgitte's nose.

"No touching!" a patrolman barked. The man jerked his hand back and some of the water in his cup spilt.

"Will you give me an answer, sweetie?" the man asked Bridgitte again.

"I…" she started. She never finished. The man emptied the water in her open mouth and nose. He laughed as Bridgitte coughed and snorted some of the water then exchanged high fives with the Ebhuchingbhurgs.

"You swallow the water," an annoyed Baxtyrn told the coughing Bridgitte. "It can't drown you if it's inside you."

"Oh. Hello Beanstalk," the lordling teased Baxtyrn. "Didn't see you there. A breeze is coming. Get down before it blows you away," he chortled at his own joke.

"Eat shit, Ryrn Nobertus," Baxtyrn hurled back.

"Where's that lowborn stepmother of yours?" Ryrn Nobertus leered.

"Cutting off your father's balls," came Baxtyrn's answer.

"I won't take insults from you, Beanstalk," the lordling threatened.

"Yes?" Baxtyrn asked. "You only take it from slaves, I hear. How does that slave cock taste like?"

Allara was surprised to hear such words coming out of Baxtyrn's mouth. The boy was usually so mild-mannered and well-spoken. Ryrn Nobertus didn't like Baxtyrn's implication and lauched himself at the boy with a guttural war cry. A patrolman caught him mid charge.

"You can't fight here, m'lord. It's sacrilege," the patrolman told a huffing and puffing Ryrn Nobertus. Baxtyrn just watched the whole scene with an amused look on his face. You would think he was watching a corny play instead of a man trying to beat the daylights out of him. Ryrn Nobertus was built well enough to snap the lanky Baxtyrn in half.

"Why don't you put your sword where you your mouth is?" the incensed lordling shouted at Baxtyrn while trying and failing to get out of the patrolman's iron grip. "Settle this like warriors, eh? Duel?"

"Only if I get to send a champion."

Ryrn Nobertus laughed. "And who would fight in your stead, Beanstalk? Your father's a cripple, your brother is a baby. Do you mean for me to slaughter them?"

"Marvyrn," Baxtyrn gestured at one of Landshield's guardsmen. "5,000 stallions if you kill this preening cunt for me tomorrow morning."

"Sure thing m'lord," Marvyrn dipped his head and took one step forward. "But I will need more. I'm thinking 50. For my life in exile," he explained when Baxtyrn looked at him funny for increasing the price tenfold.

"Fine," Baxtyrn shrugged. "Duel?" he held out his hand to Ryrn Norbertus.

The lordling looked Marvyrn up and down. Like all of Landshield's guardsmen, he was a baenarite. Marvyrn called guard duty at The Thunderbolt's castle a luxurious vacation compared to life at camp or on campaign.

He was tall, young, and supremely fit. He wore a sleeveless linen tunic that showed off his muscled arms. They looked like coiled ropes. The tunic was tied around the waist with his distinctive soldier's belt, ten inches thick and studded with all the medals he had won. Ryrn Nobertus's gaze lingered on the belt. Counting the medals, Allara assumed.

"Coward!" the lordling spat at Baxtyrn's extended hand and all but ran away.

Baxtyrn wiped his hand on his robe. "And yet you're the one running, Ryrn Nobertus," he called. "Keeping up the family traditions, aren't you? A bloodline of cowards. Running from battles since The First Age."

Ryrn Nobertus favored Baxtyrn with one last dirty look and vanished into the crowd.During the whole altercation, no one poured water into Bridgitte's coffin. Allara was impressed by Baxtyrn's strategy: waste as much time as possible. He continued with it, antagonizing every man or woman who poured water into the coffin. The Ebhuchingbhurgs didn't seem to have wisened up to it.

"Let's go help," Allara took Corrina's hand.

"Are you out of your mind?" the girl jerked her hand back. "I'm not interfering with an execution."

"Who said anything about interfering? We're just talking to people so they don't kill a fellow woman. You were there. That husband of hers was a monster. Come on," Allara argued. It took some convincing but Corrina finally came with her.

Baxtyrn was glad for their help. But the work wasn't easy. "She's here. She's been condemned. If she was innocent, the magistrates would have let her go," was a common retort to their argument that Bridgitte had been justified in killing her cruel husband.

In an unexpected twist for Allara, the most amenable people weren't women as she had expected but rather young men. Their reasons for not wanting to kill Bridgitte weren't borne out of any high-minded sense of justice either. The most common reason young men had for not drowning her was, "She's so pretty. I would totally let her kill me."

It made Allara wonder if the other women she had walked by would have survived their executions had they been more attractive. And that got her wondering if she was pretty enough to survive an execution. But she quickly dismissed that thought and went back to advocating for Bridgitte.

They couldn't win them all. Not with the Ebhuchingbhurgs spewing vitriol on the other side. With every cup of water that was emptied into the coffin, the water level rose and Bridgitte inched ever closer to drowning.

Every man and woman that chose the Ebhuchingbhurg side was a personal failure for Allara. As the sun crawled across the sky and temple bells rang eleven times, both sides got ever more desperate. The Ebhuchingbhurgs had gotten wise to Baxtyrn's delaying tactics and quickly whisked away everyone who emptied water into the coffin to make way for a new one.

As the red disk of the sun started vanishing in the western horizon and dimming, clouds gathered, and a stiff breeze began blowing, the pleas from both sides got even more frantic. The water was close to covering Bridgitte's face. She had to constantly snort it out of her nose and swallow mouthfuls of it to prevent it from drowning her.

"Swallow! Swallow! Swallow!" became a constant refrain with every cup of water that was emptied into the coffin, uttered in both Rhexi and the Paccadanite tongue by her friends, relatives, and the other supporters she had landed during her time in the coffin.

The Ebhunchbhurgs had their own mantra, "Drown! Drown! Drown!"

Allara prayed hard. Everyone prayed. Even the Paccadanites, many of whom claimed they worshiped the children of Aephyr, started openly praying to the gods of their homeland. The gods they had long abandoned. This was very illegal and would get them whipped but nobody cared. Not even the pious Allara. At this point, she would accept divine help from wherever she could get it.

Both sides prayed to every god they knew. And in between the prayers, they would hurl unspeakable insults and curses, some outrightly blasphemous at the other side. Allara had never seen such a combination of piety and impiety exercised in the same place by the same people all at once. Whichever side the gods came down on was anybody's guess. It had become a chanting contest. The number of patrolmen restraining the two increasingly belligerent crowds had risen to over 500.

Corvinia had joined them. Sir Parnyrl had stormed away. "He'll get over it," Corvinia said. The race to stop people from drowning Bridgitte was a frantic one. They couldn't physically retrain them but Allara wished they could. The Ebhuchingbhurgs wanted to beat them all up so they had that going for them.

A middle-aged woman walked up to the coffin, drew a cup of water from the cask and emptied it into the coffin. Bridgitte, snorted, swallowed, coughed out nearly a gallon of water, completely submerging her face.

"Die! Die! Die!" the Ebhuchingbhurgs chanted as Bridgitte desperately gulped down mouthfuls of water and snorted. She kept gulping down the water she had just vomited out, her supporters chanting encouragement while her detractors chanted death. Soon, she had swallowed enough to keep her nose above the water. But that's when the skies decided to open and rain came pouring down. Aembaur The rainbringer had decided to intervene.

The Ebhuchingbhurg faction broke into cheers, dancing, jumping and shouting. "Aembaur! Rainbringer! Aembaur! Rainbringer! Aembaur! Rainbringer!" they chanted. This alternated with, "Sinners must die! Sinners must die! Sinners must die!"

Allara was broken. Her entire faction was demoralized. The gods were not on their side. They hang their heads in shame as the rain pounded down on them. Some started slinking away. Bridgitte was dead. She couldn't swallow all the rainwater.

But just as suddenly as the skies had opened up, they closed again. The rain stopped. The Ebhuchingbhurgs went quiet. Everyone looked up at the sky with a puzzled expression. In the distance, temple bells rang. Allara knew how many gongs there would be. She counted them anyway. Twelve.

"The gods have spoken," Baxtyrn announced solemnly. It was their faction's turn to burst into cheers.

"Aembaur! The Just! Aembaur! The Just! Aembaur! The Just!" they chanted while the Ebhuchingburg supporters melted away.

"She's drowning!" someone cut the short. They turned to see to Bridgitte coughing and swallowing with her head under the water. Two patrolmen ran to her, untied the strap binding her head and raised it. She took in a wheezing breath while the second patrolman untied the straps binding her chest and legs to the coffin. The two men helped her out.

She was unsteady and the patrolmen had to help her stand straight. Bridgittte's skin was wrinkled from the hours she had spent in the water and her stomach swollen from all the water she had swallowed. Alara had seen heavily pregnant women with smaller bellies.

Her relatives ran to her and took her from the patrolmen. She doubled over and vomited out a gallon of water. Then another, And another. "I need to pee," she said when she straightened out.

"Just do it here," one of her cousins told her.

Ebhuchingbhurg supporters had all vanished but Leila Ebhuchingbhurg remained with one of her sons, a niece, two nephews and half a dozen other people Allara assumed were servants or lesser relatives. "Whore! Murderous whore!" she shouted.

"The gods think otherwise," Baxtyrn told her.

"You are why she's alive," she wagged a finger at Baxtyrn. "YOU ARE MY ENEMY! Baxtyrn Parnylus. All Lamanbhurgs are my enemies."

"I was merely an instrument of the gods," Baxtyrn said with forced modesty.

"Instrument of the gods my ass!" Leila Ebhuchingbhurg raged.

"Can I borrow your sword, brother?" Baxtyrn asked a patrolman.

"M'lord, I ca…"

"I'm not going to stab you with it. Or anyone else for that matter. On my honor as a Lamanbhurg," Baxtyrn swore.

The patrolman slowly unsheathed his sword and handed it to Baxtyrn hilt first. Baxtyrn walked across the divide to Leila Ebhuchingbhurg and handed her the sword. She gripped it with all her strength, her jaw clenched, her hand trembling in anger, and her eyes trained on Bridgitte.

"She's right there," Baxtyrn pointed at Bridgitte. "Highborn woman like you? Avenging her son? They would never execute you. They wouldn't even charge you with a crime. The worst that can happen is that you get disinvited from a few parties. Go ahead. If you believe the gods are wrong, go and kill her now," Baxtyrn egged her on.

Leila Ebhuchingburg gave Baxtryn a dirty look, dropped the sword on the ground, and stormed off. Her relatives and servants followed. The Paccadanites cheered and soon had Bridgitte and Baxtyrn on their shoulders chanting something in their tongue as they carried the pair towards the exit of the Siwanj Aesandrius.

They soon got to Landshield. Corvinia invited her to dinner in her apartments in the castle but Allara declined gracefully. Seeing her with Sir Parnyrl always elicited envious feelings. Those two were happy together. Disgustingly happy. Allara didn't like the envy she felt around them.

"I should check on Sylvia," she excused herself and ran off. First she went to her room and put The Thunderbolt statuette on the bedside table. Then she picked it up, hugged it, and kissed it. It was hard and a little cold. Not soft and warm like him. The statuette was nice to look at but it could never match the real thing. She set it down and went to check on Sylvia.

She knocked on Sylvia's door thrice before Sylvia opened it.. Sylvia's eyes were red and puffy. But the most concerning thing was the handprint on her cheek.

"What happened to you? Who did this to you?" Allara patted the handprint. It was a large hand. Rita didn't slap servants. Her voice was terrifying enough. The handprint was too large to be hers anyway and Sylvia wasn't scheduled to work that day. It had to be a man.

Sylvia collapsed onto her, breaking into fresh sobs. Allara kicked the door closed behind her and escorted Sylvia to her bed. Sylvia sobbed for a long time. Allara held her the entire time, soothing her and caressing her back.

"Who did this? Is it the secret lover you told me you don't have?" Allara asked when Sylvia was done sobbing. Sylvia nodded, averting Allara's gaze.

"Why would he do this?"

"I wanted to end things. He got angry," Sylvia sniffled and broke into another round of crying. Allara held her again.

"Who is it?"

"Greeeg," Sylvia said mid sob and kept crying.

"Mukhlun Gregory!" Allara exclaimed. That put an end to Sylvia's tears. She jerked back, realizing the enormity of what she had revealed. "Sylvia, you could get buried alive for that!" Allara's heart wasn't her own. She could hear it pumping the blood through her ears. She tasted salt in her mouth and felt her body trembling.

Sylvia grabbed the neck of Allara's gown and dropped to her knees. "Alla, you can't tell. Please Alla, don't tell," she begged with tears coursing down her cheeks. "Please, Alla. I will never see him again. I swear. Please don't tell." The stream of Sylvia's tears had turned into a river.

"Sylvia, you're my friend. My best friend. You're like a sister to me. I would never tell. I don't want to see you dead," Allara promised.

"Thank you. Thank you, Alla," Sylvia sobbed even more. Tears poured down her cheeks like rain. "I will never see him again. I will never even look at him. I swear on my life," Sylvia promised.

She rose and embraced Allara. It was a crushing hug. Sylvia held her like she was hanging on to dear life. Only Caedmyr hugged her like that. But instead of the warm fuzzy feelings she had when he squeezed her in his arms, Sylvia's embrace put Allara in a cold rage. Her thoughts were focused on Mukhlun Gregory, the most impious priest to ever walk the earth..