“Because my Lord trusted me,” he said. Bede opened his mouth, but Abelard pressed on, like running: falling forward to catch himself word by word. “My Lord showed Himself to me, though I did not see Him at first.” Tara stopped moving. He didn’t know how to read what he saw in her. “Last night, by asking my advice, by giving me a chance to choose, He led me to understand Himself: Lord Kos loves, and He must fight to defend those He loves. He would not be Himself if He let Seril fall, any more than I would be myself if I abandoned my friends, or my church. To turn from that truth is to turn from Him, as did Cardinal Gustave—to deny our living God and satisfy ourselves with the worship of His dead image, of a picture on a wall that does not change or ask us to change. We must accept that He needs Her, that He was less in Her absence. In Her return, we come to know a face of Him hidden for fifty years. You say I have endangered our God. I say I have grown to know Him, and the greater danger that lies in deafening ourselves to His purpose, in abandoning His truth for a version of Him that may seem comfortable. Faith is a state of constant examination and openness. In faith we must be vulnerable. Only in this seeming weakness do we live with God.”

No one spoke. Bede’s mouth closed.

Abelard breathed out a long thin sigh of smoke. “If I am wrong, I submit myself for guidance. But I do not think I am.”

*   *   *

Tara despaired of understanding the religious mind, but she knew how to read a room. When she entered that strange almost-court (no Craft circles to be seen, no judge, not even a bowl to catch shed blood), she’d pegged Abelard for dead.

Then he spoke, and many in the audience made the three-fingered triangle sign of the Flame and lowered their heads in an attitude that looked like prayer.

His argument didn’t even hold, unless the words had different meanings than she thought. Faith, for example: How could one’s fiduciary duty to church and God compel one to act against the interests of both? Yes, God and priests had goals beyond their own survival, but survival had to be prior certainly?

Her mind groped around the edge of a question she did not know how to ask. She wasn’t alone: Cardinal Evangelist Bede stood stunned. “Thank you, Brother,” he said. “Cardinals. I have no further questions, and must consider the Technician’s words.”

He bowed stiffly and swept out.

Tara cut through the crowd (not literally—these were her clients, after all) to Abelard. He still stood and stood still, cigarette in hand, head pendant on his long thin neck. “You saved my life,” she said.

“I’m sorry I made things harder for you.”