“I think you’ve been on a hard road for a while, and it’s grown worse since you and Claude broke up.” He waited for an answer that didn’t come, and watched her, and she hated his watching her, because she knew he could see things she did not want to show. “You’ve always been brave, but this is something else. You stare alone into the abyss.”

“That’s what you pay me for.”

“You’re the best. Nobody’s arguing. But the pool isn’t all that makes a priest.”

“Then what does?”

“People. Human beings who trust us to solve their problems, protect them from gods and Deathless Kings.”

As a child, she’d built card houses with her sister. After a few thousand microcosmic catastrophes they learned to recognize the tremor of impending collapse, not in the structure but in the builder: first in her fingers, then in the bones of her forearm, and at last in her chest. She felt the same change now. She tried to ignore it, and failed. The room was too spare, Jace in his black suit too slick, to give her senses other purchase. As he spoke she heard an edge in his voice that had not been there before.

“You are a genius in the back room. You’re destined for great things. But keep on this path and one day you’ll dive into that pool and we’ll never find you again. You run risks. Now you hear voices. Who knows what happens next?”

“I heard what I heard.”

“That’s what worries me,” he said. “And that’s why you cannot stay.”

“You’re reassigning me.”

He must have heard the poison in her voice, but it did not sting him. “I am developing you. You’ve spent your professional life up here, hiding in numbers and mythography. That ends today. You’ll move down the mountain to the front office, work with Twilling’s people. Receive pilgrims, make them clients. Preach to the seekers.”

“And in the meantime you tell Ms. Kevarian that I’ve been sidelined due to mental instability. Moved to a noncritical position due to”—she had to inhale in the middle of the sentence—“a pattern of irrational behavior. And you won’t be lying.”

Jace didn’t move. He certainly didn’t nod.

“What happens to my idols while I’m away? To my clients?”

“We’ll take care of them.”

She pointed to his bare desk. “How much of my memory do you take when I leave?”

“None of it. No nondisclosure agreement, no memory loss. You’re not leaving. You keep your memories until you’re ready to come back. I don’t want to disturb that beautiful brain without cause.”

“How long will I be gone?”

“As long as it takes.”