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crackled, and Mossem, firmly gripped by the serfs, writhed in pain.
    Inexorably Rao pursued his task; it was the text of the parchment itself that he copied slavishly onto the counterfeiter’s foot.
    At times he replaced the poker in the hearth, grasping its twin that glowed as it emerged from the coals.
    When the left heel was entirely covered in hieroglyphs, Rao continued the operation on the right foot, still alternating between the two reddened iron tips as they cooled.
    Mossem, choking on his own muffled roars, made monstrous efforts to escape his torture.
    When finally the mendacious document had been copied down to the last character, Rao stood up and ordered the slaves to release Mossem, who, seized by horrible convulsions, expired before our eyes, overcome by his prolonged agony.
    The body was taken away, along with the parchment and the brazier.
     
     
    Back at their post, the slaves took hold of Rul, an oddly attractive Ponukelean, the only remaining member of the ill-fated trio. The condemned woman, whose hair sported long golden pins arranged in a crown, wore a frayed red velvet corset above her loincloth; the corset bore a striking similarity to the curious marking on Sirdah’s brow.
    Kneeling in the same direction as Mossem, the proud Rul vainly attempted a desperate resistance.
    Rao removed from her hair one of the golden pins, then applied its tip perpendicularly to the woman’s back, choosing the circle of skin visible behind the first eyelet to the right on the red corset with its frayed, knotted laces; then, with slow, even pressure, he buried the sharp spike, which penetrated the skin to the hilt.
    At the scream provoked by this horrendous injection, Sirdah, recognizing her mother’s voice, threw herself at Talou’s feet to beg his sovereign mercy.
    Immediately, as if to receive an unexpected change of orders, Rao turned toward the emperor, who, with an inflexible motion of his hand, commanded him to proceed with the torture.
    A second pin, pulled from the woman’s black locks, was planted in the second eyelet, and one by one the entire row bristled with shining golden studs. Repeated on the left, the operation finally stripped her hair of its ornamentation and successively filled all the eyelets.
    It had been a while since the wretched creature had stopped screaming; one of the sharp points, penetrating her heart, had caused her death.
    The corpse, quickly taken up, disappeared like the two others.
     
     
    Lifting the mute, anguished Sirdah to her feet, Talou walked to the statues aligned near the Stock Exchange. The warriors parted to clear the way for his passage and, promptly joined by our group, the emperor made a sign to Norbert; the latter, approaching the small cabin, called out his sister’s name.
    After a moment the skylight in the paper roof slowly opened and flapped back, pushed from within by the slender hand of Louise Montalescot; gradually appearing through the wide aperture, she seemed to be climbing the rungs of a ladder.
    Halfway out, she stopped and turned to face us. She was quite beautiful in her officer’s uniform, her long blonde curls flowing freely from beneath a tight policeman’s kepi tilted over one ear.
    Her cavalryman’s blue dolman, molding a superb waist, was decorated on the right with shining gold shoulder braids; from these emanated the discreet music we’d been hearing through the walls of the hut. The sound was generated by the woman’s own breathing, thanks to a surgically established connection between the lobes of her lungs and the looped braids that concealed flexible, sonorous tubing. The gilded tips hanging from the ends of her aiguillettes like gracefully elongated counterweights were hollow and contained vibrating strips. At each contraction of her lungs, a portion of her exhaled breath passed through the multiple conduits and, activating the strips, triggered a harmonious tone.
    A trained magpie perched motionless on the alluring captive’s left