'Is the thing done?' read the newest line of her clay tablet.
For, above this, many wonderful messages about the Invisible God had been written for the Emperor's benefit.
"Ah!" said Borla, nodding peremptorily.
He held out his hand, and after a moment of confusion, Si'Wren placed the ivory writing sticks into his upturned palm.
Then, Borla insolently took her clay tablet, wrote mockingly upon it, and handed it back with a contemptuous flourish.
'It is finished,' read Borla's new line.
Si'Wren looked down at the tablet, eyes full of anguish, and reached to snatch one stick back from Borla to write quickly and far less perfectly, 'Where have they laid the body?'
Borla looked into her eyes with a serpent's wisdom as he nodded at this remark, and letting her hang onto the tablet, he merely inscribed the even more carelessly written reply, 'In yonder field.'
Then he waited with his arm half-raised, until she had finished reading this and looked up at him to see whence he pointed.
He raised his arm a little further and aimed a bony finger across the camp beyond it's far southern boundary, past which could be glimpsed a vast, sloping stretch of outlying fields, with the higher foothills to the right, and the far lowlands whence they had all come, somewhere beyond and to the left.