“Is there?” she said with a laugh. “I have not yet discovered it, then. No, I pray you, I am only jesting. What do you need?”

“You see in what manner we are dressed. Sanglant’s road has been a difficult one. He and his army escaped the cataclysm with little more than their weapons and horses and the clothes on their backs. A regnant cannot be anointed and crowned without vestments appropriate to such a ceremony.”

“Yes, it’s well you warned me. I will see that suitable robes are brought, although it will be difficult with his height. Still, it can be managed.” Unexpectedly, she reached out and took Liath’s hand in hers. ‘Ah. Your skin is warm. Do you have a fever?”

“No. I’m never sick with such things.”

“Is it true?” she whispered. “That your mother was a daimone of the upper air? A creature of fire?”

“It’s true.”

“What does it mean? Do you have a soul?”

‘All creatures created by God have souls.”

“Can you fly, as it is said daimones can?”

All at once, grief choked her as she remembered what she had lost. Barely, she was able to rasp out the words, although she didn’t know why she should confess something so dangerous, so terrible, and so private to a woman she scarcely knew. Her rival. Possibly her ally.

“Once I could, but not on Earth. Only in the heavens.”

“Have you walked in the heavens? Have you seen the Chamber of Light?”

“No. Only souls unchained by death can walk there. But I have climbed through the armature of the spheres, I have climbed the ladder of the heavens. I have seen … such things that I weep to recall them. So much light.”

‘As in the prophet’s vision. Yet you are here.”

She nodded, unable to speak.

“You were forced to return?”

She shook her head.

“Did you come back of your own volition, for him?”

“For him,” she said hoarsely. “For the child.”

‘Ah.” She turned Liath’s hand over and placed the tip of a finger in the middle of Liath’s palm, as if reading something from that touch. “That was a great sacrifice. I think even Mother Scholastica does not understand this.”

“Why are you here, Lady Waltharia?”

“Do you think I mean to curry favor for my family by befriending you?”

“I admit … I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“I have already told you. Wendar suffers, and Sanglant will be a strong regnant. To support him, I will support you. But you must help me. No more scenes like the one played today in Mother Scholastica’s study. Do not hand them the weapon they can use to pierce you with.”

“Yes, I understand that. I thought she would be my ally. She is a scholar! She ought to want to know the truth!”

“She is a daughter of the royal line and the most powerful abbess in the land. Scholarship is not her first consideration.”

“No, perhaps not.”