Dion was trying to meditate, but the walls around her thrummed with the bustle of soldiers, on and off duty. Their clatter and scuff and jabber constantly intruded on her. Cad Nereg was a bastion of the Light, and she had expected everyone here to have nothing more on their minds than contemplation of the power that they were seeking to preserve, or that they were relying on to preserve them. Instead, they all seemed to have their minds on far earthier things, and it leaked through the walls. Fierce, gallant, passionate, wild, merry, melancholy, duplicitous, sincere: all the facets of men and women facing a great tumult, each borrowing bravery from the others and lending it back with interest. Through the storm of their emotions she tried to ascend to the Light, to bask in the serene adoration of Armes, and she failed and failed again.

Then she heard the door of the next room slam, and a commotion start up, of thumping and banging, and groans and snarls, so that it seemed to her that one of her fellows must be struggling with a Ghantish assassin sent to murder them all. She burst through, and found only Harathes, who had been rather ineffectually kicking the furniture about and slamming his fists on the walls. He looked drunk and angry, but he had the grace to look shamefaced before her.

“What is it?” she demanded. In all honesty she was sufficiently worldly to be able to guess, but she left it to him to speak or hold his peace.

He stared at her, confessions boiling beneath the surface of his face, but at last he said, “Nothing,” and, “I’m going to find solace elsewhere in the fortress. Lots of solace.” He plucked a coin purse out and actually shook it at her, as though daring her to disapprove. She knew exactly what he meant, and could not find it in her to castigate him. He was not a priest, after all, and the rules for church knights were laxer. The odd foible was practically expected. What was atonement for, after all?

After he had gone, she went back to her prayer, trying to fight her way up to the Light, as though the turbulence around her was a tangled briar thicket, and her devotion was the occluded moon above. And she did wonder, even then, what was wrong with the world, and her faith, that these riotous and exuberant and, above all, honest emotions were a bar to her. Were they not also part of the world?

Then the door opened softly, and she looked up with a foreknowledge of dread. In truth she might have more welcomed a Ghantishman with a poisoned dagger.