“Have they said anything?”

“Not yet.” The quiet, deceptively gentle-sounding observation comes from a few feet away, where the vicar stands fully dressed for evening vespers. A handful of parishioners have followed him from the chapel to the village square, their curious murmuring turning into a more anxious buzzing as they glimpse the Shepherds and their charge. Adhemar regards the prisoner with dutifully neutral eyes.

Let him die, he supposes privately, and let them move on.