“Amen, child,” said Olin Eddon in a stunned whisper. “If Heaven is still watching.”

The streets were full of murmuring crowds as Daikonas Vo reached his rooming house, a dilapidated place near the Theogonian Gate, just inside the city’s ancient walls and just beneath the ramshackle hillside cemetery which had once been the estate of a wealthy family. The narrow street was not in the least fashionable now, but that didn’t bother Vo, and in all other ways a house full of transients suited him excellently.

Most of the people seemed to be heading for the nearest Trigonate temple or across the city toward Three Brothers and the citadel. When he had passed through Fountain Square on his way back from the stronghold, hundreds of citizens had already gathered outside the citadel gates, staring anxiously at the lightening sky as though the clamor of bells would be explained by heaven itself.

Many of them had guessed the cause of the alarm, and shouts and curses directed toward the Autarch of Xis were mixed with some harsh words about their own so-called protector, Ludis Drakava.

Vo, of course, was pleased. He had thought the invasion still months away, and had been creating and examining plan after plan for smuggling the girl out of the city. He had experienced a few bad moments when she seemed to attract the attention of one of the noble prisoners in the citadel, Olin Eddon, the king of Southmarch, but to Vo’s relief whatever flash of interest had provoked the northerner seemed to have died away. He had been aghast at the idea that the Marchlander might plan to make the girl his mistress: nothing would make his task harder than having to smuggle her out of Drakava’s own palace under the noses of Drakava’s own guards. But instead, she was still in Kossope House and still unprotected as far as he could tell.

He would be able to sneak her out of Hierosol now in the confusion of the autarch’s attack. Easier still, if the triumph of the invaders was quick, he would be able to walk out of the city with Autarch Sulepis’ safe-conduct in his hand and approach the Living God-on-Earth in high honor, to hand over the prisoner and receive his reward—and, he hoped, to have the noxious thing inside him removed. Daikonas Vo was not so naïve as to feel certain that would happen—after all, why should the autarch take him off the leash precisely when he had proved helpful? But the Golden One was notoriously whimsical, so perhaps if Vo pleased him he would do just as he had promised.

Just now, Daikonas Vo couldn’t imagine needing more from life than to serve a powerful patron like autarch Sulepis, but he was no fool: he could imagine a time might come when he might wish to be free from this living god. Vo decided that if the autarch didn’t immediately remove the invader from inside his body, he should find his own way to loose himself from his master’s fatal control, just to be on the safe side.