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Harriot

A shriek of pain lifted into the pearl-colored sky and hung on the wind above Tarnshead like a seabird. Roger Harriot didn’t turn; he’d heard plenty of screams this morning and would hear quite a few more before the day was done. Instead he focused his regard on the landscape, of which the west tower of Fiderech castle afforded an expansive view. The head itself was off to the west, presently on his left hand. Stacks of white stone jutted up through emerald grass, standing high enough to obscure the sea beyond, although as they slouched north toward town, the gray-green waves became visible. Along that slope, wind-gnarled trees reached their branches all in the same direction, as if to snatch some unseen prize from the air. From those twisty boughs hung strange fruit. He wondered if he would have been able to tell what they were if he did not already know.

Probably.

“Not everyone has the stomach for torture,” a voice informed him. He recognized it as belonging to Sacritor Praecum, whose attish this was.

“I find it dreary,” Roger replied, letting his gaze drift across the village with its neat little houses, gardens, and ropewalk. Ships’ masts swayed gently behind the roofs.

“Dreary?”

“And tedious, and unproductive,” he added. “I doubt very much it accomplishes anything. ”

“Many have confessed and turned back to the true path,” Praecum objected.

“I’m more than familiar with torture,” Roger told him. “Under the iron, men will confess to things they have not done. ” He turned a wan smile toward the sacritor. “Indeed, I’ve found that the sins admitted by the victim are usually first in the guilty hearts of their interrogators. ”

“Now, see here—” the sacritor began, but Roger waved him off.

“I’m not accusing you of anything,” he said.

“I can’t believe a knight of the Church could have such views. You seem almost to question the resacaratum itself. ”

“Not at all,” Roger replied. “The cancer of heresy infects every city, town, village, and household. Evil walks abroad in daylight and does not bother to wear a disguise. No, this world must be made pure again, as it was in the days of the Sacaratum. ”

“Then—”

“My comment was about torture. It doesn’t work. The confessions it yields are untrustworthy, and the epiphanies it inspires are insincere. ”

“Then how would you have us proceed?”

Roger pointed toward the headland. “Most of those you question will end there, swinging by their necks. ”

“The unrepentant, yes. ”

“Best skip straight to the hanging. The ‘repentant’ are liars, and those innocents we execute will be rewarded by the saints in the cities of the dead. ”

He could feel the sacritor stiffen. “Have you come to replace me? Are the patiri not pleased with our work?”

“No,” Roger said. “My opinions are my own and not popular. The patiri—like you—enjoy torture, and it will continue. My task here is of another nature. ”