The back three pages of Ato’s notebook were almost identical. All of them were headed with the words ‘For my tattooist’, and covered in tally marks. It would not have been clear to anyone other than Ato and Beep that almost all of them had been used already.

As the sun finally crested the smoking walls around Lord’s Shield, Ato added eight more marks to the back of her notebook. She already missed Beep. She had plenty of space for more marks.

‘Only bonus to finally getting inside is you and Beep aren’t going to wake me up in the middle of the day,’ Ryoko sighed, slouching into a hard bed in a small house.

Ato looked around. ‘I reckon me and Jules could do it.’

Jules, the correct choice for that comment, burst out laughing.

‘No time for rest.’ Ora patted Ryoko on the leg. ‘The sun is up and it’s time for work.’

Ryoko groaned. They had all been up since mid-afternoon, preparing and painstakingly creeping their way up the walls. Ato’s whole body hurt. But she was still young.

‘Time to get dressed,’ Ora announced.

Tengu didn’t protest taking off her mask, but it was the last thing any of them did before they went back outside.

Ato still had no idea how old Tengu was, aside from a couple of scars, her skin was still mostly smooth. Her mouth and eyes wrinkled just a little when she smiled, but all that indicated was that she was probably past her early twenties.

Beep and Ora had put quite a lot of thought and time into the clothes they’d dragged over the wall with them. It was lucky that their dresses had to be full-length and long-sleeved, but even so it was hard to hide Jules’ bulk or Ryoko’s muscles.

Pest, who had been picked as the uglier of the pair, got a slightly poorer suit than Heft or Emen, and got Jules as his first wife. Regardless of who was older out of Jules and Tengu, Jules looked older. Decades of refusing to wear a hat in the desert will do that to you.

Emen was probably least comfortable with the whole situation, since he got his little sister as his fake first wife. Heft got Tengu and Ryoko, Pest got Jules and Ora. Even with her brother’s discomfort, the only person Ato had any concern about keeping up the façade was Ryoko. If Ora didn’t like her so much, Ato might not have brought her.

While it was common practice to keep your wives locked up at home when you were out, it wasn’t so universal as to be suspicious if you didn’t. It was not difficult to blend in, in Lord’s Shield. Ora had been exactly right about the House’s ability to sweep things under the rug, and there were more than enough people in the fortress that eight strangers were not remarkable.

Ato was impressed at how well Pest held up to an absolute stranger accosting him to comment: ‘She’s looking about ready for the farm, eh?’

Pest chuckled and slapped Jules on the back. ‘Not quite yet, not quite yet. I reckon we’ll get one more out of her.’

‘How big she is, you might get a dozen,’ the stranger had laughed.

Jules, the biggest person Ato had ever seen, covered her mouth and tittered.

‘That’s the spirit, lady,’ the stranger grinned. ‘May the Lord shine down on the lot of you.’

‘And spare us from more flames,’ Pest smiled. ‘And shine down on you also, my friend.’

Jules had to find a private laneway to break down laughing in. But she recovered admirably.

This was a problem that Ato had expected. Jules was just so remarkable. People would remember seeing her. But Ato thought it would be worth it. She, Jules, Tengu, Emen, and Heft and Pest had spent over a year repeatedly infiltrating the Independent Cities, they knew what they were doing.

Ora was here because she knew a great deal about the Lord’s House, and Ryoko was here because Ora liked Ryoko quite a lot. And Ryoko was a good fighter and such.

Pest got three more comments about the size and age of his wife, Heft got one just on the size, before they all headed back to their rented house. The sun was just sliding below the walls and, as much as Ato wanted to get started right away, they were all exhausted.

As Ato had intended, lobbing fire over the walls in roughly the same place for a couple of days had made hiring a small house on the far side of the fortress extremely easy. Heft and Pest had complained about all the fire, and had raised no suspicion renting out a house that was a bit too small for eight people.

‘Given your advanced age, surely you should take the master bed,’ Pest told Jules. She grinned, and didn’t argue.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Pest and Heft took one of the big beds, Ora and Ryoko took another, and Jules got the third to herself. Thankfully, there were three single beds for extra wives, and no one had to sleep on the floor.

Four years ago, Beln had been correct. It was hard to tell the difference between a normal soldier and an army commander even when they were in town. It was only slightly easier than when they were on the march.

Before leaving to join the siege on Lord’s Shield, Ato and the others had talked to Beln and some of the defected soldiers at length. As much as Ora knew how everyone was supposed to act, Ato had wanted a sense of how people actually acted.

Though they had brought a good amount of money with them, Emen, Pest and Heft took what shifts they could get in smaller shops and workshops near the house they had rented. They had also brought a good amount of travel food, to make it easier to appear to be poor without having to actually go without meals.

Ato’s first victim was discovered four days after the eight of them had made their way into Lord’s Shield. He had been dead for three days. The golden sun he had worn around his neck had been hammered into his chest.

Ato would have made the scene worse, if not for argument from Ora, Ryoko, Heft and Pest. As opaque as Ato was used to being, after the fight over the Independent Cities, she had forgotten to have this discussion ahead of time.

‘A few assassinations won’t cause chaos,’ Ato said, sitting on the floor in their shared bedroom. ‘Perhaps if we had managed to get more people in here, we could be more effective. But we are here to inspire doubt and fear, aren’t we?’

‘Even without doing… anything too extreme, assassinations will inspire fear,’ Ryoko said. ‘Even if the military leadership remains intact, they’ll worry.’

‘Assassinations are an outside force,’ Jules said. ‘A killer, a maniac, that could be anyone. Especially targeting those officers and priests who flaunt their status.’

Ora went ‘hmmmmmm’.

‘Pride is a sin,’ Ato said. ‘Sin leaves us open to retribution from the Lord.’

Ora went ‘arg’.

‘I’m sorry we didn’t talk about this more,’ Ato said. ‘I am. I should have thought this through better. We should have had this discussion before we got here.’

‘We should have,’ Pest said.

‘We would not have come,’ Heft said.

‘Which is why you didn’t talk about it first,’ Pest said.

‘To make sure everyone you wanted was here,’ Heft said.

Ato had the good sense to look regretful.

‘We don’t all have to participate,’ Ora said. ‘But Ato and Jules are right. Pride is a sin. Excess is a sin.’

There was a moment of quiet, as Heft and Pest stared at Ato.

‘Ora is right again,’ Heft said.

‘We will look,’ Pest said.

‘Ora, you’re a genius,’ Emen sighed.

‘Fine,’ Ato said. ‘Ora’s a genius as we all know. I’ll just do it myself and the rest of you can look.’

‘I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it,’ Tengu said.

Ato snorted. ‘Thanks, Tengu. You’re so weird and mysterious.’

‘Thanks, Ato,’ Tengu said. ‘I do my best.’

The next body was a priest in full, ceremonial getup, with a bottle of moonshine lodged in his chest, where floated his golden sun medallion. The next was an army commander surrounded by rotten food, with his medallion in his mouth.

Ato had been right.

There were just too many people crammed into Lord’s Shield for rumours to be repressed. First Emen, working in a butcher that particular day, heard mutterings from his co-workers of some kind of righteous maniac rooting out sin in the military. They weren’t exactly happy about it, but they couldn’t deny some amount of sympathy.

‘Perhaps,’ Emen repeated that evening. ‘In normal days, they would be punished by the Lord’s House. But we can’t afford that sort of thing after three years of a siege.’

‘See?’ Ato said. ‘It’s already working.’

Pest and Heft crossed their arms in unison.

Over the next two days, two more bodies were discovered. Heft and Pest both ended up having discussions with their own coworkers about the possibility of some kind of divine retribution. Even their coworkers, ordinary men in the Lord’s House, were just a little worried about the tiny things that everyone did against the teachings of the Holy Book.

‘What’s what repentance is for,’ Pest repeated.

‘I don’t think a person should take the Word into their own hands,’ Heft repeated.

Ato shrugged.

The next morning, five soldiers were found with money stuffed into their pockets, another priest was found in their midst, festooned with jewellery. During that day, another priest renounced his priesthood and publicly repented for the sin of sodomy. He and two younger men were arrested.

In a week, two more priests and five army officers had publicly repented their various sins, as someone new turned up dead and symbolised every day. For the next three days, only members of the army’s purity enforcers turned up dead, all with mouths full of money.

While all this was going on, the siege breakers outside were doing their best to make guarding the wall as unpleasant as possible. Hooks swung over top of the walls and dragged men to their deaths. Fire rained down on the city from time to time, and two more of the portable walls tipped over.

As they had done way back in the siege at Lookout, Haven’s fighters worked to make the Lord’s House as defensive as possible. As they explained to Narmen and Oszrath, the more defensive you are, the slower you move.

‘Outstanding success,’ Emen declared, as he wandered into the rented house seventeen days after they had arrived. ‘Unless Ato and Tengu were very busy last night?’

‘One,’ Ato said.

Tengu shook her head.

‘We have replication,’ Emen said. ‘Four dead, this morning.’

On the morning of the twentieth day, eleven soldiers were found wrapped in layers of blankets. They had all already been reported for dereliction of duty, when the morning shift came to relieve them. They weren’t the only corpses found.

Ato and Beep did their best to wake everyone up in the mid-morning. There was a lot of tattooing to be done.