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showed the shadows of a sleepless night.
    Neither he nor his father had yielded. I hadn’t expected it, but it still made me angry. At both of them.
    A sullen murmur rose from the crowd, and Michael looked around, eyes widening in astonishment. He’d never been hated before. Get used to it, Noble Sir. I’d spent the last three weeks trying to warn him, but had he listened?
    I found precious little satisfaction in being right.
    A mushy snowball splattered against one of the platform’s supports as they led Michael up the steps. There was only one judicar today. A plump, nervous-looking man who hadn’t dared to speak up yesterday in Lord Dorian’s presence. I was pleased when, free of his liege lord, he stepped forward and glared at the crowd until the rustle of movement settled.
    The only other person on the platform was a neat, older man who looked like a notary. I wondered whom they’d roped into the job—he might be the town’s executioner, for all I knew. On the small table beside him sat a needle, a paintbrush, and a bottle of ink.
    The guards hovered close as the moment approached, bravely prepared to see justice done, no matter what it took. They looked rather disconcerted when Michael sat down, rolled up his sleeves, and laid his arm on the table without fuss.
    He chose this, I told myself fiercely. He could have gone home and become his brother’s steward. We’deven had Ceciel in our hands. (Though hauling an unwilling woman cross-country for three weeks might have been a bit dicey.) But he’d chosen to let her go. I couldn’t have stopped him if I’d tried. I had tried! It was his choice.
    The older man was probably some sort of healer, for he washed the inside of Michael’s arm carefully before he dipped the brush in the ink and made two small strokes. The platform was so high that no one could see the mark, but we all knew what it looked like—two broken circles, interlocked, like half-open links of a chain. The symbol was so old, no one truly knew its origin, though scholars speculated that they represented the two moons, and that once the Gods had had some part in this. Though it was hard to see how the Gods of animals and plants could be involved in a matter of man’s justice.
    Whatever their origin, the circles now stood only for a broken debt. A ripple of nasty satisfaction swelled as the ink was laid down, but this time Michael ignored the crowd, staring at his wrist with fixed fascination. He seemed not even to notice as the older man took up the needle, though I saw the muscles in his shoulders tense as it pricked.
    It looked strangely painless for such a dire punishment. The needle rose and fell rapidly, driving inkinto the skin, and the old man worked for several minutes before he took up a clean towel to wipe away a trace of blood. After ten minutes it became obvious this was going to take a while, and that as spectacles went this was neither bloody nor dramatic. The crowd began to break up, as people who had better things to do left to do them. I was sorry to see them go—the ones who stayed were the ones who’d come with intent.
    The old tattooist gave Michael’s wrist a final rub with the towel, inspecting his work before he released it. Michael pressed it against his stomach as if it stung, but he yielded his other arm without protest. The old man was washing it when the next snowball flew.
    It passed over Michael’s head, and the guards, who’d abandoned their official postures and were standing about quite casually, ducked aside. But this time, instead of glaring the crowd into submission, the judicar moved himself to the far end of the platform, out of range. The next snowball splattered messily against Michael’s shoulder. It was half melted, as much mud as snow, and he flinched when it hit.
    The guards looked expectantly at the judicar. He looked aside. Lord Dorian owned this one, all right.
    The snow/mud