Thereafter, following every one of those dreams, she’d encounter a female devotee of Vkandis. And every single one of them seemed able to detect either her, or the sword.

It was unnerving, not the least because she hadn’t known—nor had anyone else to her knowledge—that there were women placed so highly in Vkandis’ priesthood. Up until this time everyone she’d ever talked to had spoken of the cult as being exclusively male, and certainly the little anyone outside of Karse knew of it painted the credo as being thoroughly misogynistic.

Certainly the Karsites had very little use for women in general, and positively despised fighting women like the ones in the ranks of the Skybolts, reserving particularly gruesome treatment for them when caught.

And yet—the order of Vkandis was a militant order. Every one of the women Kero had seen had worn a sword. The order of Vkandis deplored the use of magic—yet she had felt magic searching for her, and these women seemed perfectly willing to employ something like enough to magic as to make no difference.

It appeared that whatever the outside world knew of Karse and the state religion, there were things going on within it that were not to be discovered until one penetrated into the country itself. What those things meant, Kero had no idea, except that she had better keep her head down and her behind well-hidden, or she wasn’t going to be telling anyone of her discoveries. Except, perhaps, an inquisitor.

I think I’ve been in hiding forever, she thought dispiritedly, from her concealment among the rocks above the road. Sundown would be soon, and then she could get on her way.

For all the good it does me.

Hoofbeats signaled a Karsite patrol; she’d learned that the military were the only groups that traveled mounted. She watched yet another of those woman-priests riding by her, this one evidently in too much of a hurry to do more than raise her head in startlement as she passed Kero’s hiding place in the rocks above the road. And once again, she wondered what the presence of high-ranking women in the priesthood meant.

Maybe all that it means is that they haven’t much use for women except inside boundaries. Like it’s fine for women to do anything for the glory of the Sunlord, but outside the priesthood they’d better not even think of doing anything besides stay at home and breed more worshipers for the Sunlord....

Not for the first time, she wondered if she ought to abandon Need. She’d had half a dozen very narrow escapes so far, and she had the feeling that the only reason she hadn’t been caught was the blade’s belated realization that just because these were women, they were not friendly toward Need’s current bearer.