“Yes it was!” Harathes shouted in her face. “It must have been like that. What else could it have been like? It bewitched you or it forced you, because it is a thing, Cyrene! A disgusting, inhuman thing that had you! How can you even sit there and face us—!”

“Enough!” Dion bellowed, the sheer volume forcing Harathes back into his seat. Cyrene was looking shocked and shaken, far more so than Dion had ever seen her.

“I will talk with Cyrene,” she decided. “Alone, I will talk with her. And then I will give my judgment.”

“Tell me,” Dion suggested.

With the men gone, the room seemed cavernous. Two mugs of hot nutmeg steamed between them, which Dion hoped Cyrene would see as a peace offering of sorts, a sign that this was not the inquisition but just two women talking together. Like old times, Dion reflected. They had talked, once, when Cyrene had first sworn to the quest. They had spoken of all manner of things. Then the quest had grown larger and larger in Dion’s mind, and she had stopped talking to anyone.

“As a priestess of Armes, tell me,” she tried again. “I will listen.”

“It wasn’t rape,” Cyrene said, not looking at her.

“Then… help me understand, Cyrene. Because I don’t. All I see is… something terrible.”

“Something that offends you.” The warrior woman’s voice was dead.

“Yes,” Dion admitted.

“Something disgusting. Something that sickens you.”

“I’m… afraid so.”

“And if I’d slept with Harathes instead?”

“Then that would probably have disappointed me, but it’s the lesser of two evils.” The words came out without vetting, a sign of just how tired Dion felt.

“So it is carnal relations you disapprove of? Or just Harathes? Or just monsters?” Cyrene was staring at the table.

“The church has a variety of opinions, from sect to sect,” Dion said, taking refuge in pedantry, but then, “but either of the last two. I’m a realist. I know what people do.”

“A realist? You? The Lady of the Ivory Tower? You don’t even live in the same world as the rest of us.”

“That’s unfair. And not true.”

“You don’t feel like we feel,” Cyrene accused her. “You’re holy, chosen by the Light. What would you know of it?”

“We’re not talking about me,” Dion said somewhat hurriedly. “I just… I need to make a decision, you know that. So help me, Cyrene. Tell me what the creature did.”

“Nothing.”

“Very evidently not true.”

“It’s just…” Cyrene put her head in her hands. “It’s just… he was there.”

Dion frowned at her.