Lief wondered if this would turn out to be some bizarre anti-mugging, where he would get forcibly congratulated and rewarded against his will. “Ah, well, thanks.”

“We will take matters from here,” Abnasio explained pleasantly. “Bring the creature.”

Immediately, three or four of them had laid hands on Nth, lunging to try to pin him to his chair. The creature slapped them away—Lief heard at least one bone break—but then Abnasio had a disc of Armes flaming golden in his hand, and Nth recoiled away from it, strength gone from him, covering his face.

“No, wait!” Lief shouted. “This isn’t what it looks like! We’re with Dion, you know, what all that business at the gates was for? This is all part of it—!”

“We know, my child,” Abnasio told him. “We have long awaited the fulfilling of the prophecy. Our founding father, the prophet Gamograth, foresaw that one blessed by the Light would bring to the heart of Armes’s power the means to destroy Darvezian. It only remains for us to complete the ritual and extract the means of defeating the Dark One.”

“No, wait, we did that—” Lief started, but one of Abnasio’s heavier followers backhanded him hard enough to spill him to the floor.

“Bring the sacrifice,” Abnasio instructed, eyes gleaming with reflected Light. “Praise be to the Light of Armes, the battle will soon be won.”

5: Dueling Dogmas

CYRENE HURRIED OVER TO Lief even as the last of the Brotherhood heavies were bundling Enth out of the door. She hauled him to his feet, and dragged him out of the inn, to see the regimented mob that was the followers of Gamograth disappearing around a corner. Above them, the new sign proclaiming “Archbishop Prurient’s Home for Hopeless Moral Rejects” swung disconsolately.

“We go after them,” Cyrene decided.

“You go get Dion,” Lief corrected.

“And then what? First find where they go, then one of us gets Dion.”

The purposeful monks were marching quick-time to get clear of the moral quagmire that was the Heathen’s Quarter. Cyrene and Lief set off, keeping a turn behind, always in time to catch the last trailing cassock as it passed around a corner, using the night and the shadows, here in the heart of the Light.

Lief had to admit that Cyrene was good at this. He wasn’t entirely sure what she had spent her early life doing, but he had never before met a wilderness runner who was much good in a city. She had it, though, that indefinable ease that let a professional like Lief pass through the still waters of a built-up place without leaving so much as a ripple. Still crazy, though. Let Harathes lust after the poor woman all he liked, Lief was happy just to know he could rely on her skills.

“When we get there,” he murmured, “I’m going in.”