Asimov's SF, February 2010 Read Online Free Page A

purpose."
    Kanika took a few steps, then stumbled. Njeri caught her. Her skin was moist with sweat—heat and exertion were taking their toll. “The wall is about revealing a person's darkest truth. If they see their darkness, they can fight it. The knowledge can heal them."
    "It destroys them. It destroys me. And you condemn people to this torture."
    "I am the hands that do the work,” Njeri said. “I don't decide who faces the wall."
    Kanika tried to pull away a second time, but she was too weak. “You pass judgment every time you open someone onto the wall. Don't pass the responsibility to someone else. We all judge, and we all mete out our punishments. You saw how all the guardsmen fled at the sight of me."
    "Superstitious fools,” Njeri said.
    They walked in silence to Durratse's door. Njeri knew the old healer well, for he had cared for her for several months after her mother died. She watched carefully for his reaction when he opened his door. He hid his revulsion well, but she could see the slight flare of his nostrils, the falseness in his smile. She wondered how she'd failed to notice it with the other patients she'd brought him. Or perhaps he'd been more forgiving of the men.
    "We all judge,” Kanika repeated.
    Durratse led Kanika inside. It was late, so he did not invite Njeri in. He simply nodded his head and closed the door.
    The roughly hewn wood of the door had shrunk with weather and age, and she could still see them through the gaps in the wood. She wanted to argue with Kanika, to defend herself. Kanika insisted on focusing on the worst of the wall, the worst of her, the cutting. Like Odion, she paid no mind to the important work of sewing. She healed people, just as Durratse did, and her patients needed more healing than anyone.
    * * * *
    When Njeri went out to stoke her cooking fire shortly after sunrise, the village was bustling with unfamiliar guardsmen. The new arrivals were Upyatu—a tall people, with broad flat feet. She watched them as she boiled plantains for breakfast. They were more boisterous than Bahtir's men; they spoke in loud voices punctuated with barking laughter. Their heads were covered with elaborate beaded headdresses, and their shields were round and crimson. It could mean only one thing. The capital had fallen.
    Njeri pounded the boiled plantains into mash. It made little difference to her, the struggle for power. One general was replaced by another, but they all wanted the same work done. She wished for peace not out of support for any current ruler, but because in times of war she had to put more people to the wall. She took her mash back to the hut, where Odion was waiting.
    "The new general brought two prisoners for the wall,” he said, speaking quickly. “He wants to hang them together."
    Njeri divided the mash into two bowls and topped each one with slices of green mango. How could Odion be excited about such a thing? The Maiwatu were his people. Besides, to put criminals on the wall was one thing, but to leave one there for the time it took to flay a second was cruel. Dissecting them simultaneously, but slowly, would be no better. “Cruelty. Already I dislike the man."
    Odion stirred his mash. “I thought, with two men, I might be charged with opening one of them."
    "We have but one obsidian blade,” Njeri said, “and the new general will want the services of a surgeon, not an apprentice. I will open them, and you will assist, as we have always done."
    A guardsman came to fetch them before they'd finished their morning meal. He was paler even than Odion, with a reddish tint to his skin, like dry dusty earth. Shorter, too, than most Upyatu warriors, and injured. Njeri could just make out the outlines of a bandage beneath the guardsman's tightly fitted leather tunic.
    "General Yafeu commands your presence,” the guardsman's voice was nasal, and far higher pitched than Njeri expected. Not a man at all, but a woman with her breasts bound. The warrior laughed at Njeri's