“Pallas will know where you are, too,” Annuka finished darkly. She’d been quiet until now, not that she’d ever been the most talkative to begin with. But Jude could sense the bitter loss and betrayal radiating off her at the mention of the Hierophant. He could barely fathom the pain it must have caused her when Yarik had forsaken the Order to join Pallas.

Jude nodded. “Everyone will have to leave Kerameikos before we do this.”

“Leave Kerameikos?” Penrose echoed. “We’ve only just gotten it back. Some of our people lost their lives retaking it from the Witnesses.”

“Pallas is going to do whatever it takes to find us and get Beru back,” Anton said.

Penrose looked like she was going to protest again.

“Penrose,” Jude said gently. “We wouldn’t ask this of you if we didn’t think it was the only way.”

“You can’t just waltz back here after everything you did, Jude,” she said sharply. “You can’t just make these outrageous demands and expect us to go along with it. You left us, Jude. When we needed you the most, you abandoned us. And do you know what happened? Other Paladin lost faith. They broke rank. The Order is not what it once was, and it’s your fault. Our people left! Yarik left to follow Pallas because you and the Prophet weren’t here to lead us. Pallas convinced him that you had turned your back on us. And he was right, wasn’t he?” She punctuated that with a swift look at Anton, making her meaning clear.

Jude felt his own anger rise up in his chest. He turned to Anton and the others. “Could you give us a moment?”

The Wanderer retreated toward the door with a mild look, the rest of the Guard filing out behind her. Anton hesitated, gaze trained on Jude, before following.

Once the door shut, Jude turned back to Penrose. “I know about Yarik,” he said unsteadily. “I saw him in the citadel, following Pallas’s orders.”

“You are the Keeper of the Word, Jude,” Penrose said. “And when you disgraced yourself, you disgraced the entire Order. It wasn’t so long ago that we worshipped Pallas, and the fact that you weren’t here to stand up to him made it all too easy for some of us to return to him.”

Guilt crawled up Jude’s throat. There was some truth in what Penrose said, and there was even a part of Jude that understood what Yarik had done. Jude had been told his whole life to follow orders. Told not to question the Order or the Prophets. That was what had stopped him from stepping out of line for so long. The fear that if he didn’t have the Order’s rules, he would have to make his own choices.