The Physiognomy (Well-Built City Trilogy #1)

A feared and powerful functionary in Master Drachton Below's dark metropolis, the Well-Built City, Physiognomist First Class Cley can divine good or evil in a person by studying facial and bodily features. But now Cley has been ordered out of the city on a seemingly trivial assignment in the rural hinterlands.In a strange and unfamiliar place, far from the Master's omnipresent scrutiny, the great physiognomist falls prey to seductions of the flesh and the spirit. And there are inescapable revelations awaiting the eminent Cley that could shatter his perception of himself, his profession, and his world. A man tries to save his love by mutilating her face. The setting is a dictatorship in which people are judged guilty or innocent by their facial features. The man is a government official, the woman a revolutionary