She’d probably taken a few of them to her bed, but at this distance, and in the uneven light, there was no way to tell.

Father, I should tell you. I have intimate knowledge of your legion, its soldiers, with their myriad faces, their singular needs. I know them better than you. It’s how certain things blur together, you see. The heat of sex and the heat of battle. Death entwined with love, or something like love, if we are generous enough to gauge the motions, there beneath the furs.

Tents and temples, beds and altars, the propitiations and rituals, all the forms of confession, weakness and desire. The conceits and pride’s fragile temerity. All the appetites, Father, flow together in those times, those places. I could list for you the cowards, and the ones who would stand fast. I could speak to you about conscience and grief, and above all, about what a soldier needs.

Alas, that need no mortal can answer, though I can see you, Father, I can see you trying. When few others would dare.

Shall we give it a name, that need? Dare we venture inward, to face that sorrowful child?

Tent and temple, we raise them to disguise all that haunts our soul. Between lover and priest, I think, it is the lover who can reach closest to that shivering, wide-eyed child. The priest, ah, well, the priest killed his inner child long ago, and now but plays at wonder, dancing joy’s steps with shuffling, self-conscious feet.

Consider this, Father. No whore has ever sexually abused a child. I know this – I watch them, my hard women and men of the stained cloth. Some are harsh bitches and bastards, no doubt about that. Hardened beyond pain. For all that, they know innocence when they see it.

But priests? Most are fine, I’m sure. Honest, diligent, trustworthy. But what of those few others who took on the robes and vestments for unholy reasons? What do they see – the ones so eager to ruin a child?

Best ask the High Priestess, Father, because I have no answer to that question. All I know, and I know this with certainty, is that inside that abusing bastard priest there is the corpse of a child. Wanting company.

She was in the house now, upon the stairs, reaching the landing and making her way towards Urusander’s wing of the keep.

Soldiers stood at guard in the corridor. They eyed her warily as she approached.

‘My father is awake,’ she said. ‘Captain Sharenas summoned me to him, at his request.’

They moved aside.

One spoke as she passed. ‘Taking the night off, Renarr?’

Low laughter, dying away when she opened the door and strode into the first chamber.

A desk buried beneath scrolls and the strange seashell cases the Forulkan used to store their sacred writing. Behind this misshapen monument, her adoptive father. He had half risen at her appearance, and now, upon his weary face, there was the look of a cornered man.