“No. You have?”
“Once. Only once. It is not a private ceremony. Many cultures approve of, and even encourage, public executions.”
“They believe,” Teela said, taking a seat, but turning it around so the back faced the table, “that execution serves as a deterrent. If the death—the punishment—is publicly seen, the reasoning goes, people will assume that they’ll face the same fate if they commit the same crime. It doesn’t work that way, in my experience.”
“No?”
“People see the condemned as stupid. They believe that they would never be in that position because they are not stupid. And my apologies, Moran. I did not mean to interrupt.”
“Interruptions—mostinterruptions—are gratefully accepted. I admit that Annarion shouting at his brother wears a bit on the nerves; there’s almost nowhere you can go in this house that drowns it out.”
“If it helps,” Mandoran said, “Nightshade is shouting, too. His voice doesn’t carry the same way if you’re far enough from it.”
“Because he is only speaking on one level,” Helen told him.
Mandoran joined Teela, moving from his chair into one closer to the Barrani Hawk. He leaned into her left shoulder as if his spine had momentarily deserted him. Teela rolled her eyes, but didn’t move.
“There is ceremony involved in the...excision of wings.”
“Ceremony? Like—religious ceremony?”
“Very like, yes. In theory, the gods are not invoked.”
“In theory.”
“In practice, however, there is very little difference. Up until the moment the wings dissolve, the supplicant, the criminal, has hope that the sentence will be stayed. In theory, the removal requires permission.”
“From who?”
Moran shook her head. She started to answer twice, but barely made it through the first syllable of the first word.
“They ask,” Helen said, coming to Moran’s rescue, “the spirit of thepraevolo.”
* * *
For one long moment, silence reigned. Moran did not, however, deny Helen’s words—and once those words were out there, Kaylin understood why Moran hadn’t been able to give them voice.
“And the livingpraevologets no say?”
“Maybe in the past. I’ve been the livingpraevolosince birth, and no one—no one—has asked my permission.” The words were bitter, terrible, desolate. “I would never have allowed them to take Lillias’s wings. She saved my life. Her crime—if I understand the politics at all—wassaving my life. I’m not a god. I’m not the Avatar of a god. I’m a sergeant. I’m a Hawk.”
Kaylin heard the guilt, the anger, even the self-loathing in Moran’s voice. “You think somehow if you were a betterpraevolo, if you’d played their game, Lillias wouldn’t have lost her wings.”
Moran didn’t answer.
“You werea child. Lillias lost her wings because she wouldn’t allow you to be killed. There is nothing you could have done to prevent what happened.”
“And now?” Moran asked, bitterness seeping into her expression, which hardened and aged her face.
“Right now, I’d like to concentrate on my question. Could the wings be removed from a corpse?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are there stories of it being done?”
“Two or three.”
“When the wings are removed, what happens to them?”