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too. The local stores were grievously inadequate to supply a population with sufficient clothing and bedding for cold weather.
    He’d heard it said — by displaced Nurail, and more than once — that it had been deliberate, an artificial shortage to increase their suffering; but Joslire knew better. To imagine that the Bench spared a second thought for their suffering was to be misguided. The Bench simply didn’t care.
    It was Koscuisko’s responsibility to work through the holding areas, the ad-hoc cells set aside to hold the Nurail identified as prisoners as well as deportees. There was a difference, and it could be a critically important difference — deportees were subject to privation and dehumanization, but they could not be put to the torture merely because they were no longer to be permitted to die on their own land.
    All of the people his Excellency had examined in the past three days were prisoners detained for Inquiry, though no Charges had been filed absent a Writ — until now. When they got to the Domitt Prison, his Excellency would himself record Charges where appropriate, but for now the Relocation Fleet Captain wasn’t pressing him. There was no question but that he had as much as he could manage, just working his way through these eights of sixteens of people, trying to decide whether they were fit for the trip and free from communicable diseases.
    Finished in yet another overcrowded eight of cells, his Excellency came out of the dark low-ceilinged shed into the chill light again. Koscuisko had been working hard, he was tired; and if Joslire knew his officer, the prospect of having all these souls to be subject to his will at the Domitt Prison was beginning to eat away at him inside.
    “I will for a moment in the air sit,” his Excellency said to whoever was listening. “I would not mind a cup of rhyti. Very much would I like to smoke. But it would be more cruel than decent to those around, if I did that.”
    Lefrols stank, but they had their place. His Excellency was not an habitual smoker of lefrols: instead of being mildly addicted to them, for the stimulus they provided, he had recourse to the herb when he needed distraction and could not get drunk. The relief from his cares the lefrols provided was moderate, to be sure; but at least afterwards he was not hung over.
    Kay snapped the camp-stool he was carrying smartly into shape and set it down in the middle of the barren graveled patch that led between the long lines of temporary cells. Toska had the jug across his back, and broke the thermal seal to pour a steaming cup of rhyti as Koscuisko sat down wearily. Koscuisko took his cup of hot rhyti but didn’t take a sip, not right away, resting the cup on his left knee, staring at the drink with an anxious frown on his usually tranquil face.
    It wasn’t easy for any of them to be here.
    It was going to get a good deal worse before it got any better.
    “How much further do we go today, gentlemen?” Koscuisko asked, squinting up into the sun with slumped shoulders. Code Pyatte flipped the status-leaves and squinted in turn, gazing down toward the end of the line.
    “Says two more cellblocks in this section, sir. Eighty souls — no, sorry, hundred thirty. Doubling up a bit. It’ll be just sundown, sir.”
    As difficult as it was to be here during the day, it only got worse at night. The whole camp was like one large, dark, cramped and overcrowded room at night. And then it started to get cold. It was a sharp depressing thing to know that he was warm and well-clothed, if a bond-involuntary Security slave, while there were children shivering in their parents’ arms unable to sleep for the chill in the air.
    Koscuisko drained his cup of rhyti and handed it back to Toska for safekeeping. “Better pick up, then. Thank you, Kaydence, I’ll go on. Code?”
    Koscuisko wanted the roster for the next cell-building; Code found it for him and passed it over. Koscuisko scanned the ticket and seemed to set