Before the executions, Lenardo had the distasteful task of Reading the condemned men to discover whether they had acted alone or represented a larger group of malcontents. It was a skill he had learned years ago, interrogating savage prisoners for the Aventine Army. To his relief, he found that Bril had trusted no one but the three who had joined him, formerly wealthy businessmen with whom he had often traded financial favors.

When Lenardo stood once more on the steps, bracing himself to witness the executions, Julia joined him. "I told you to go to the watchtower, child."

"They tried to kill you. I want to see them die." Sensing that he would have her removed bodily, she tried a different tack. "Please, my lord. I must learn my duty."

Lenardo waved Sandor over. "Julia insists on witnessing the executions. I'll help her block the pain, but if it becomes too much for her, I want you to put her to sleep."

"It won't be too much," Julia insisted.

Lenardo was astonished at the girl's strength. He showed her how to block the worst pain of the men being flogged to death, but she had little control, and both of them were sick and shaking by the time the last of the attackers passed out. By Lenardo's order, they were not revived; the beatings continued until all three hearts had stopped.

Faint and nauseated, Lenardo stood his ground while the bodies were cut down. Greg and Vona stepped forward, and purifying fire consumed the bodies. Lenardo could not help but recall the burnt-out canyon in which Galen had died. A few bones were all they had ever found of the four Adepts and one Reader destroyed by powers Lenardo guided. Scavengers had made it impossible to know which of the scattered bones were whose.

Bril and his henchmen may not be accorded funeral rites, Lenardo thought, but at least their bodies were not desecrated.

The crowd broke up in silence, and Julia collapsed at Lenardo's feet. He picked her up, but Sandor quickly took the child.

"Come inside and lie down yourself, my lord."

Inside, Julia came to, threw up, and began to return to normal. "I should have had you carried to the tower," Lenardo told her.

"No," she insisted. "People mustn't think we're afraid to deal out punishment just because it hurts us."

He agreed with her in principle. The savage child seemed to understand instinctively what he was learning through trial and error, but he was faintly repelled at the way she sought to rum her abilities into power over others. And yet that is what I must learn in order to achieve a treaty with the empire.

As word spread that the new lord was a Reader, the population shifted. People fled across borders or into the hills, swelling the ranks of the hill bandits. In the city, as people came out of shock, Arkus' troops had their hands full as fights, broke out between those willing to give their strange new lord a chance and those who feared his nonAdept status.

Even those on Lenardo's side resented his attempts to stop the regrowth of certain occupations; they were used to thievery, gambling, and prostitution as normal daily activities.

Helmuth advised Lenardo to punish theft and accept the other activities. "Sex doesn't harm ordinary people, my lord, and if some are foolish enough to pay for it, let them."

Lenardo sighed. In the Aventine Empire, prostitution was taxed along with everything else. Gambling would never stop-the problem was to prevent cheating. "Where is all the money coming from?" he asked. "We confiscated what the looters stole."

"You've been paying your army regularly."

"Helmuth, how can I allow-"

"My lord, you are worrying over which way the wind blows. Unless you plan to start a fire, it doesn't matter."

In the old man, Lenardo Read the wisdom of experience. "We've enough to do without starting fires, but all reports of anyone robbed or cheated come directly to me. It's easy enough for a Reader to discover who's lying."

Lenardo was constantly grateful for Helmuth's advice. When the old man had volunteered to join him, claiming that Lenardo's land was closer to Lilith's, where he had a daughter and grandchildren, Lenardo had hesitated. But there had been few in Aradia's land willing to throw in their lot with him, and Helmuth had quickly proved invaluable. It had been his idea to give Arkus and his troops a new chance, his connections who had scouted out Sandor, Greg, and Vona, all distantly related to him and all with the Adept powers Lenardo lacked. Josa was Helmuth's niece, entrusted to her uncle in hopes that in a new land she might find a suitable husband.

Once they were established in Zentli, Helmuth demonstrated new talents, for agriculture and for organizing people without antagonizing them. Lenardo couldn't have ruled without him.

As the summer passed, the crops were harvested, and the new lord's reputation for fairness spread. People began to return to Lenardo's land. There was plenty of work, as Zendi had been the central trade city and all its warehouses had been destroyed in the burning and looting. Before winter, there must be not only food but shelter and clothing for everyone. The miserable huts that had served Drakonius' peasants were quickly replaced with more substantial homes. The materials were available, and willing hands could put up such a dwelling in a day or two, but Drakonius had never allowed them such comforts.

Everyone with Adept talent had fled before Lenardo arrived. Now many straggled back, offering their services. Healers were desperately needed, as Lenardo found chronic disease everywhere. Some would suffer all their lives from malnutrition in childhood. It would be many years before he could hope to have the robust population he had seen in Aradia's land.

Meanwhile, though, very few people were worse off than they had been under Drakonius. The vast majority, for the first time in their lives, were adequately fed and housed, and they worked with a will in return. Lenardo saw Helmuth's wisdom in not denying their leisuretime pleasures.

He could have used a hundred Readers, and frequently longed to be rid of the one he had. It wasn't that he didn't like Julia; no one could help loving the child, and that was her undoing. Lenardo had little time to spend with her, and so he assigned Helmuth to teach her to read and write and Josa to teach her "whatever girls are supposed to know." As it turned out, the old man melted at Julia's smiles, while Josa, a plain girl of an age when her society warned her to prepare for a life of lonely spinsterhood (Twenty-jive this winter! Lenardo once caught her plaintive thought), took out her frustrated motherhood on the little girl, who, cleaned up and fed, her hair a halo of dark curls about her face, was turning into a pretty creature indeed.

Since Julia accepted Lenardo's authority and worked eagerly on her lessons in Reading, he did not at first realize that she was not performing equally well for her other teachers. Nor did any of them know the games she played when she was not under adult supervision.

A ruined city was a dangerous playground. The completely burnt-out sections were off limits, but Julia did not consider that the order applied to her. Unfortunately, she had little trouble persuading other children to join her in exploring and treasure hunting. They stole a rope and some digging tools and went into the abandoned northwest sector, where Julia Read a cache of coins at the bottom of an old well. They lowered Julia and two strong boys into the well to bring up the treasure, but inevitably their efforts caused the walls to start to collapse. When the three children above tried to haul up the rope, the terrified ones in the well all scrambled to be pulled up at once. Their thrashing dislodged more dirt to fall in on them, along with one of the girls hauling from above.

The other two children ran screaming for help, but long before they could reach the forum, Lenardo's mind was torn with, //Master Lenardo! My lord! Help!// and then a mental screech of panic, //Father! Father,// and a terrifying sense of suffocation.