“I have been with no man but you!” the girl blurted. “Please, you must believe me! I did not burn, I admit that, but even without His fires, I was blessed! Oh, hear me, honored one, will you not hear me? This is your child!”

Spectators exclaimed amongst themselves in gleeful shock at this blasphemy. The high judge struck his hammer upon the wall, but silence was not forthcoming, and though Lord Saluuk seized hold of his daughter’s arm, she did not go quietly but instead increased her struggles, actually reaching out to try and catch at Meoraq’s arm.

“Everything you say is truth!” she cried. “My only lie was the mark that—”

Lord Saluuk’s arm swung and ended whatever she meant to say next, a slap no longer but a fist that broke the delicate upper bone of her narrow snout and sent her crashing to the floor. “Bridle her!” he roared, and no less than six of his servants leapt to obey. “I will hear no more lies spoken through that poison tongue! Remove her!”

Meoraq’s disapproving hiss earned him half a pulled knife before Lord Saluuk shoved it back into its sheath.

“Go on with you, sprat!” he spat. “Go back to Xeqor! I knew your father and don’t you just fill his fucking shadow! He’s bred his House nothing but lack-wits and bastard-makers since he took the blade! Be damned to him for pissing you out and be damned to you—”

The hand of Sheul touched his heart; Meoraq’s own flew out and caught Lord Saluuk by the wrist. In a moment, the warlord was on his knees with his face mashed against tiles still wet with his own daughter’s tears and Meoraq was on him, trying to think through the haze of Sheul’s fire and unsure, for an eternity of moments, whether it were an enemy beneath him or a woman.

The pounding of the judgment hammer cleared his head some. He shook himself, focused on the body twisting and hissing in his grip, then pulled his hooked kzung—a hunting blade, and still more than this particular animal deserved—and put it to Lord Saluuk’s vibrant throat.

“Hold, honored one.” The high judge struck his hammer a final, deliberate time. “This tribunal has not been concluded. If you have offense, you have the right to seek redress, but only at the proper hour.”

Truth. Meoraq closed his eyes, breathed himself calm in the cooling grip of Sheul, and then released Saluuk with a contemptuous shove and stood away.

“How do you speak, lord?”

The steward of House Saluuk fought himself to his feet and turned a perfectly murderous glare on Meoraq. After several deep breaths of his own, he pressed his empty hands together and bent his stiff back in a bow. “I have offended,” he hissed. “My accusation stands false in the sight of Sheul. I will make whatever reparation this tribunal demands for bringing her lies to this hall. My daughter—” His flat spines made a dry, scraping sound as they tried to flatten further against his skull. “—has gone to Gann. Uyane Meoraq stands acquitted of her and her bastard.”

The judge raised his hammer, but Meoraq halted him with a raised hand. He cocked his head meaningfully, waiting.

Lord Saluuk glared at him, color throbbing in his throat. One moment became many, but it finally came: “Forgive me, honored one. I have offended you and your House.”

Meoraq’s head canted further. “And the father who pissed me out?” he prompted blackly.

Lord Saluuk’s spines ticced. Breathing hard, all but stinking of hate, Lord Saluuk knelt. One knee first, then both, and then he bent to touch his head to the floor and turn his naked palm up beside Meoraq’s boot. “Forgive.” He managed this time to say it without hissing, although the effort clearly came at a high price. “It is Saluuk Tzugul before you, son of Ulhathev, son of Shagoth, son of all my fathers before him. I am my House and the bloodline of my fathers and I have offended. I bend before you, Uyane. Forgive me.”

Meoraq grunted and stepped back. He did not make an answer, but then, the law demanded that pardon be asked of him, not that he give it.

“You are perhaps too quick to remove evidence from this tribunal, Lord Saluuk,” said one of the judges after a moment. “An impression could yet be made of the girl’s scar and compared to those men of your household whom you suspect—”

“She’s gone to Gann,” the steward spat, already back on his feet and just as furious as he had been before his showing of humility, if not more so. “Why should I care who sired her bastard?”

“Forgive, lord, but it is the matter of who put a Sheulek’s mark upon her that concerns me.”

Saluuk continued to glare at Meoraq for a breath or two, but then slid his cold stare up at the tribune wall.

“The girl’s corruption may be a sin,” said the judge, “but the forging of that mark is a crime. If these witnesses you bring before us can truly account for every hour of the girl’s life, then one of them surely aided in her deceit. She did not bite her own shoulder.”

The other tribune judges grunted solemn agreement. The spectators eyed one another and whispered.

“I will hold interrogations,” Saluuk said at last, visibly struggling with his temper. “I will find the man responsible and send him over the wall with his lying poke.”

Meoraq frowned. It was customary to exile those who had been corrupted beyond redeeming—giving to Gann those who had given themselves to him—and only after they had served a certain time of imprisonment under the Temple’s watch. Only when the priests had declared her unforgiveable would she be sent out to wander in the wildlands until Gann took her into darkness. She would never be burnt, never truly die, and Meoraq supposed she would come to this fate whether she walked out the Temple gate or fell from her father’s rooftop, but still it troubled him.

And he was not alone, for one of the lesser judges hesitantly said, “Would it not be better to place the girl in Temple custody until her guilt is proved?”

“Her guilt,” Saluuk hissed, “is biting at her teat! I will not be dishonored in my own House!”

As all the judges bowed, Meoraq said, “You have been too long within walls if you can think to preserve the honor of your bloodline only by exterminating it.”

Saluuk’s neck stiffened, the marks of his anger visibly throbbing in time with his heart. “If she cannot behave herself as a proper woman of my House, better she be dead. Her and her bastard both.”

“Honored one,” said the high judge reprovingly. “Your opinion is not asked. You stand acquitted and your part in this tribunal is done.”

Truth, and if he could not get clear of Lord Saluuk’s presence, he knew it would end in violence regardless of all the training in the world. Meoraq bent his neck briefly and received the bows and salutes of all those who shared the hall with him. The high judge beckoned to an usher and Meoraq left, feeling Saluuk Tzugul’s eyes burning on his back all the way out into the hall.

* * *

The Halls of Judgment were empty enough to echo beneath Meoraq’s feet. The sound worked on him like the hammers of a headache, adding to his black mood instead of easing it. A bad business, Saluuk, and he could have handled it better but it should have waited until the morning. He had always been too eager to see blood spilled after a battle and he knew it.

‘I thank You, Father, for Your temperance and restraining hand,’ Meoraq thought sourly. ‘Without which, I would surely have slaughtered a man with much disgrace and deep satisfaction.’

Sheul did not receive his prayer.

“I do thank You,” Meoraq said again, aloud this time, and with the proper gravity. The usher did not look around; a Sheulek speaking to God could hardly be a singular occurrence. “O my Father, I am ashamed that I require Your hand upon my heart to hold me from brawling, even with so low a man as the steward of Saluuk. Gann’s touch stains more than the daughter, I think,” he added with a scowl. “It would not shock to me to learn he put the scar on her himself.”