“That’s right,” he admitted. “It might well have been a true vision.”

“Or it might have been a dream. I might only have wanted to see her so badly. … It seemed so real. I saw her arguing with a youth, a young man—”

“Thiemo? Matto?”

“I never saw him before.”

“Might it have been the past you saw?”

“Nay—she was the age she was when we left her.” But not yet as old as in that terrible vision when she had seen Blessing held prisoner by Hugh. “It was the present, or the future. I’m sure of it. It means she lives.”

“If that is so, and if Gyasi brings her back to us safe and alive, then we made the right choice.”

“What if she dies because one of us did not go to her?”

“Then we will be responsible. How else can we judge? What else can we do? Each day I must choose, and some may die, and some live, because of decisions I make.”

“Ah, God. It is no good task. So many are already dead.”

‘And yet more would be dead, if you had not confronted Anne and killed her. You know it is true.”

“It is true,” she said reluctantly, “but I feel no triumph in victory.”

“That is because we gained no victory. All we managed was no defeat.”

“I met a party of farmers in Aosta. After the griffins rescued me from Zuangua. These farmers had lost their homes to the windstorm. Passing troops had stolen what remained of their stores. No doubt it seemed fitting to that lord and his army to do so, for he must supply his own in order to fight.”

“So he must, but he will not eat the next year if all those who farm for him die of starvation.”

One of the knots plaguing her stomach relaxed. “I suppose that is only one tiny injustice among so many great ones. Yet it makes me think of words Hathui once said: ‘The Lord and Lady love us all equally in Their hearts.’ “

“That being so,” he murmured in reply, “why did God make Wichman the son of a duchess and Fulk, who is in every way his superior as a man, the son of a minor steward without rank or standing except that which I give him? Why did I live when all my faithful Dragons died?”

“The church mothers have an answer to all these questions, else we would fall endlessly into the Pit for wondering.”

“What is their answer?”

“I can quote chapter and verse, but in the end, their answers are all the same: Humankind cannot know the mind of God.”

“As dogs cannot know the mind of their master, although they strive to be obedient?”

She laughed.

“I must acquire a pack of loyal hounds, who will sit at my feet and growl at the faithless and remind me of how untrustworthy courtiers can be. Poor things.”

“The dogs, or the courtiers?”