The morning was cold enough to make breath like smoke. It rolled out over the clearing in thin, blue veils and settled against the faces of the rogues like a witness. Liora rose before the others, sleep still heavy in the hollows under her eyes, and moved toward the place they had cleared for the punishment, a ring of stones in the center of the camp, where every mockery and lesson could be seen.
Vanya was already there.
She stood at the center, arms bound above her head to a stout post, bare and exposed naked to the chill and to the eyes. Her hair fell in a dark curtain that might once have been elegant, now it clung wet to her shoulders where the night air had chilled her skin.
There was a pallor to her that did not suit the vicious little smile tugging at her mouth. The rogues had fashioned crude manacles and ropes, had hammered stout stakes into the earth. Around them, men and women of the camp murmured, waiting.
