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The slaves settled in a silent circle, their attention fixed on the ground in front of them. Juric guided Alyea to the opposite side of the carrier, away from their view. He spread the mat on the ground and motioned her to stand on it.

“Take off your clothes, and sit,” he said, stepping back several paces. He sank to the ground himself, sat cross-legged, and stared at her with a challenging gaze clear even under the faint light from stars and waning moon.

She drew a shivering breath, uncertain. Would she fail the trial if she refused? Or would obeying be a failure? Was the test to see if she blindly obeyed a strong voice or used her wits to choose her own path? Would Juric kill her the moment she failed? She had a feeling she'd never see the death blow coming.

So much rested on her sketchy memories of what the deep south believed; she wished she'd spent more time reading with Oruen about that. It had never interested her very much. What had that old book said? Comos represented neutrality. The god of the winds, the god of balance, everyone stood transparent before him . . . and transparent could be translated, loosely, as 'naked.'

She stripped off the loose robe and sat, fervently hoping she'd remembered it right. A light breeze feathered against her skin, chilling her instantly; she shivered and hoped even more strongly this wouldn't take long.

“You called on Comos earlier without knowledge,” Juric said. “I forgive the ignorance. You did not know me as Callen. Never call on a god blindly. They will answer, and mortals often regret their reply; and the followers of a god can be less gracious yet.”

Alyea knew this game. She'd heard Chac drill Oruen with questions like this, day after day.
She slowed her breathing and focused, centering herself to speak from the calmest, most objective place possible. That had been Chac's first lesson: politics demand that you decide from the mind, not the heart, and that mind must be perfectly still. But did Juric look for the same answer Chac would have wanted?
“Gria to live,” she said at last.
“Why?”
“The death of Sela would cause lesser ripples,” Alyea said, choosing her words with care.
“How do you know?”
Another question Chac had made Oruen answer countless times.
“I only know what I see,” she said. “What I see tells me Gria has more power to change the world around her than Sela.”
“Is that a reason for Gria to live, or to die?”
Alyea hesitated. Chac had never asked that question.
“To live,” she said at last.
“Because she has power? You would kill those without power, then?”
Although Juric's voice remained completely emotionless, Alyea had a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach now. He'd maneuvered her into a trap, and she didn't know the way out.
“That isn't what I meant,” she said at last.
“When you follow the words of another instead of your own wisdom,” Juric said, “you often speak other than you mean. Try again, Alyea, without the crutch of the
hask
's teachings this time. I will give you a second chance, which others would not. Which of your slaves would you sentence to die, if
you
had to choose?”
What she said next surprised her. Words bubbled up as if freed from a long-sealed vault: “I would ask them to choose. It's their lives, not mine; why should I decide their fate?”
A long silence hung between them.
“Always use your own wisdom,” Juric said at last. “If you die from it, at least you die with honesty in your mouth. If I asked you to mark for death one of the slaves that carried us here, what would be your answer?”
“It would depend on the reason for the death.”
“Why?”
“If it was a madman's whim, with no just cause, I would refuse,” she said. “I would protect the slaves as best I could. If the reason was good, I would ask first for the slaves to choose, and pick only if I had to, and as blindly as I could.”
“You lived under a madman who took your slaves from you. Is this how you acted then?”
She licked suddenly dry lips and sat very still. How had he known that? A chill ran down her spine. “No. I was afraid.”
“Is fear a reason to allow another to die that you may live?”
Tears dripped from her chin onto her bare chest; the moisture slid slowly around the curve of her breasts, leaving a damp trail that chilled her further.
“No,” she said. “It's not a good reason.”
“Reason,” Juric said, “is not good. It is not bad. It is what it is. Fear is a reason, anger is a reason, love is a reason. Good or bad does not attach. That is the way of Comos, to see the truth of what is. Aqeyva comes from Comos, and it is a powerful tool. Masters of aqeyva can hear the wind, which circles the world and knows everything that has ever happened and will ever be. With that understanding, it is impossible to judge right or wrong, good or bad.”
Alyea listened, frowning at the dimly lit figure in front of her. “Even Ninnic? Even Mezarak and Pieas?”
“What you see as a monster,” Juric said, “is the least part of a man. The slaves that carry you are named
comisti
; they have been convicted of crimes ranging from theft to rape. They appealed to Comos, and were granted the following terms: they are sworn to silence. They will not look at nor speak to anyone but their master. They will be worked hard and relentlessly for all the days of their sentence. At the end of their service, some comisti find themselves called to the service of a god; others go on about their lives. But whatever their choice, their debt is paid, their crimes forgotten as if they never happened. The only sign they bear of their service is a small, easily hidden brand. That is the justice of Comos.”
“And if they repeat the crime, or commit another?” Alyea asked.
“If a comisti appeals a second time to Comos, they receive the same terms as before, with one difference: this time, when their service is up, they will be granted an honorable death. There will be no dishonor to their family or bloodline.”
Juric held up a hand to stop Alyea as she began to speak again. “Enough questions. I have another for you; if the choice was between the two of us, that one must die, what would your answer be?”
The words remained as emotionless as before, but the hair rose on the back of her neck. She thought back over everything that had been said. Her breathing steadied and slowed as she considered, and she found herself slipping into a light trance. She allowed it, deciding it couldn't hurt to have more clarity of mind. As her pulse settled, she found herself on a mental high ledge of sorts, looking down at the question from a distance.
Did she deserve to live? What had she done that made her life of value?
Her faults, her mistakes, from childhood on, paraded in stately logic before her. She'd failed, not once, but many times; she hadn't protected her servants, hadn't listened to the people around her, hadn't lived her values at all. She'd believed herself special, all her life, better than a commoner because of her blood; later, she'd thought herself better than the court because she'd been seduced by a man who later became king.
Not easy to look at, even from a distance. She could feel tears rolling down her face and dripping onto her chest again, steady as her pulse. Many of the thoughts that appeared she'd never consciously been aware of before; but she could see now that her life had been filled with selfish, fear-driven motives.
She turned her attention to what she
had
done well, and another series of past decisions unrolled in front of her. She'd tried, to the best of her abilities and knowledge, to do right; and how could sacrificing her life help anyone? Ignorance and arrogance had influenced her life, but not ruled it; bright spots offset the painful memories. She'd found the courage to dismiss all her servants rather than risk losing any more to royal mishandling. She'd stepped in front of Chacerly to save a pair of obscure northern women. She'd had many discussions with Oruen, before and after he took the throne, about the standard beliefs about women and what she wished could change. Some of the changes he'd started had come from their long talks.
She'd done poorly, and she'd done well.
And Juric likely felt the same way about his life. Did he have more or less worth than she did? Should he die for her to live? Should she die so that he could live? The breeze stirred her hair, drew her attention away from her thoughts, pulled her into feeling every shift and whisper against her skin.
She opened her eyes, the answer clear in her mind at last, and found Juric watching her, his head cocked slightly to one side.
“I do not have the wisdom to choose between our lives,” she said steadily, “and would ask the wind to decide.”
He stood, motioning her to rise; she obeyed, stood unafraid and naked in front of him, waiting for his decision.
“The test of Comos is the test of the self,” Juric said. “It is a test of the ego, to see if you can set your own wants aside for the larger good. You cannot be a desert lord if you put your own fears before the good of those you rule and protect. You cannot be a leader if you listen only to yourself. You must recognize when you are too close to make a decision, and allow another to step in. The desert is harsh, and life is not fair; a cowardly or arrogant leader would cause many deaths. That is why a full desert lord must have the approval of Comos.”
He paused. She trusted her instincts and stayed quiet.
“You pass the test,” he said at last. “You may bear the mark of Comos. Come here.” As she approached, he drew a small glass box from a pouch at his waist. “Turn. Hold still.”
He smeared a cold paste on her mid-back, in a precise pattern no larger than the palm of her hand. A breath later, the cold turned to fire, and she screamed without intending to, dropping to her knees. His hands locked around her wrists, and she realized she'd been trying to claw at her back to get the stuff off.
“Quiet,” he said in her ear.
She gasped and forced herself to a muted whimpering, and finally to silence, but couldn't stop the tears or the trembling. Dimly, she sensed that Juric had released her hands; she bent forward, crouched like an animal on the ground, and tried to breathe through the scorching agony. Her breath came out in uncontrollable hoarse gasps.
Seconds or minutes or hours later, she felt pressure and a coolness as Juric smeared another, thicker paste over the first. The fire cooled, as if doused by ice water, and abruptly the trembling shifted to shivering. Her muscles began to loosen from their pain-locked tension; then the stars went out and darkness graciously took away sensation.

Alyea woke to darkness and the feel of a thick dressing on her midback. She'd been laid on her stomach. She lay quietly for a while, examining her memories; she must have fainted from the exhaustion of enduring that much pain. She'd seen people do that before, and they generally woke stiff and cramped, almost unable to move.

She stayed still, blinking, letting the sway of the carriage soothe her frayed nerves. She could feel Juric nearby, hear his breathing. If he had the aqeyva training he claimed, he knew she'd woken, but he said nothing. Letting her think, maybe, or waiting to see what she would do now, or possibly in trance himself. From the even serenity of his breathing, she guessed the last to be most likely.

Finally she risked movement. A finger first, twitching experimentally, then the hand, bending the elbow, and finally shifting the whole arm slowly to one side. No pain, no stiffness. She moved the other one similarly, took a chance and propped herself up on her elbows; nothing twinged. The dressing shifted with her, with no feeling of cracking or sliding off.

“Wait,” Juric said then, and partially unhooded the lantern again. He put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Pain?”
“No.”
“Lay flat again, and hold still.”
She couldn't help tensing as she settled back down, expecting him to rip the dressing off her back along with a layer of skin.
His hands patted the dressing lightly here and there, as if testing. He made a clucking, satisfied-sounding noise, worked his fingers under the edges, and slowly rolled the mass up. It didn't hurt; rather, it felt as if a layer of wet cloth had just been removed.
“Done,” he said.
Propping herself up, she saw a bundle of fabric in his hands: mottled with an evil, greenish yellow ooze and interspersed with flecks of thick white, like rotted milk.
“The fire of Comos,” Juric said, holding it up, “removes many evil things from your body. Your first purification is complete.” He dropped the mess into a leather bag, peeled off thick black gloves, and dropped them into the bag too. Tying the bag tightly shut, he pushed it to one side and sat back. “Hungry?”
Even after seeing that revolting mess, her stomach growled at the word. She sat up the rest of the way, shifting into a cross-legged posture without conscious thought. He smiled and handed her a spoon and a bowl of the same stew she'd eaten the day before.
“I removed the cactus peppers,” he said. “Eat safely.”
She ate the cold stew, watching him steadily as she chewed. He sat quietly, eyes closed, indifferent to her intent regard.
“Where to now?” she said when she finished, and held out the bowl. He took it without opening his eyes and set it on the bench beside him.
“The trial of Ishrai,” he said. “We'll be there by morning. Sleep.”
“Will Chac be there?”
“No. He waits at the trial of Datda.”
“Where are my slaves, and my servant Halla?”
“I already told you that,” he said. “They are all with the
hask
, and safe.”
“Chac wanted to kill Sela and Gria,” Alyea said, unable to resist pushing a bit more. “If they're with him, how can they be safe?”
Juric opened his eyes and smiled at her.
“They are safe,” he repeated, then doused the lantern. She heard him sliding the panels near him open, and a chill breeze filtered in through the latticed windows.
“He will not harm them. Sleep.”
She twisted her lips in a silent snarl, then sighed. He clearly had no intention of telling her anything else; but his advice made sense. She didn't have anything else to do, and her head still felt thick with exhaustion. As she stretched back out, he draped a thick blanket over her. It occurred to her then that she still didn't have any clothes on. For some reason, that didn't bother her at all.