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“…of respect for your sex. But you shall be branded on the right cheek and the left, your legs broken, and your head struck from your body.” (I hoped they had had sense enough to remember that a brazier of coals would be required.)
“Through the power of the high justice laid upon my unworthy arm by the condescension of the Autarch — whose thoughts are the music of his subjects — I do now declare… I do now declare…”
He had forgotten it. I whispered the words: “That your moment has come upon you.”
“I do now declare that your moment has come on you, Morwe
“If you have pleas for the Conciliator, speak them in your heart.”
“If you have pleas for the Conciliator, speak them.”
“If you have counsels for the children of women, there will be no voice for them after this.”
The alcalde’s self-possession was returning, and he got it all: “If you have counsels for the children of women, there will be no voice for them after this.”
Clearly but not loudly, Morwe
“Many of you are my witnesses that I loved Stachys. I loved the child Stachys gave me.”
A patch of color caught my eye, purple-black in the strong spring sunshine. It was such a bouquet of threnodic roses as a mute might carry at a funeral. The woman who held them was Eusebia, whom I had met when she tormented Morwe
I hammered the planks with the blunt tip of my blade for silence. Morwe
Eusebia was about to speak again, but I silenced her with a look. The gap-toothed, gri
“Are you ready?” Morwe
“I am.”
Jonas had just set a bucket of glowing charcoal on the scaffold. From it thrust what was presumably the handle of a suitable inscribed iron; but there was no chair. I gave the alcalde a glance I intended to be significant. I might have been looking at a post. At last I said, “Have we a chair, Your Worship?”
“I sent two men to fetch one. And some rope.”
“When?” (The crowd was begi
“A few moments ago.”
The evening before he had assured me that everything would be in readiness, but there was no point in reminding him of that now. There is no one, as I have since found, so liable to fluster on the scaffold as the average rural official. He is torn between an ardent desire to be the center of attention (a position closed to him at an execution) and the quite justified fear that he lacks the ability and training that might enable him to comport himself well. The most cowardly client, mounting the steps in the full knowledge that his eyes are to be plucked out, will in nineteen cases from a score conduct himself better. Even a shy cenobite, unused to the sounds of men and diffident to the point of tears, can be better relied on.
Someone called, “Get it over with!”
I looked at Morwe
“We could seat her on the block,” I told the alcalde. I could not resist adding, “It’s more suited to that anyway.”
“There’s nothing to tie her with.”
I had permitted myself a remark too many already, so I forbore giving my opinion of those who require their prisoners bound.
Instead, I laid Terminus Est flat behind the block, made Morwe
The alcalde straightened himself and seemed to become a new man. “Let them see her,” he said.
I had been hoping to avoid that, but I helped Morwe
Eusebia held up her bouquet to Morwe
When we had gone once around, I looked at the alcalde, and after the pause necessitated by his wondering at the occasion for the delay, received the signal to proceed.
Morwe
“It is almost over now.” I had seated her on the block again, and was picking up my sword. “Close your eyes. Try to remember that almost everyone who has ever lived has died, even the Conciliator, who will rise as the New Sun.”
Her pale, long-lashed eyelids fell, and she did not see the upraised sword. The flash of steel silenced the crowd again, and when the full hush had come, I brought the flat of the blade down upon her thighs; over the smack of it on flesh, the sound of the femurs breaking came as clear as the crack, crack of a wi
To be candid, it was not until I saw the up-jetting fountain of blood and heard the thud of the head striking the platform that I knew I had carried it off. Without realizing it, I had been as nervous as the alcalde.
That is the moment when, again by ancient tradition, the customary dignity of the guild is relaxed. I wanted to laugh and caper. The alcalde was shaking my shoulder and babbling as I wished to myself; I could not hear what he said — some happy nonsense. I held up my sword, and taking the head by the hair held it up too, and paraded the scaffold. Not a single circuit this time, but again and again, three times, four times. A breeze had sprung up; it dotted my mask and arm and bare chest with scarlet. The crowd was shouting the inevitable jests: “Will you cut my wife’s (husband’s) hair too?”
“Half a measure of sausage when you’re done with that.”
“Can I have her hat?”
I laughed at them all and was feigning to toss the head to them when someone plucked at my ankle. It was Eusebia, and I knew before her first word that she was under that compulsion to speak I had often observed among the clients in our tower. Her eyes were sparkling with excitement, and her face was twisted by her attempt to get my attention, so that she looked simultaneously older and younger than she had appeared before. I could not make out what she was shouting and bent to listen.
“I
This was no time to explain that I had not been Morwe
“She took Stachys — from me! Now she’s dead. Do you understand? She was i
I nodded again and made another circuit of the scaffold, holding up the head.
“I killed her!” Eusebia screamed. “Not you — !”
I called down to her: “If you like!”
“I