He had expected a rather longer search, but there were only a handful of other chambers there. The Brotherhood had no dedicated cells, which at least suggested that they didn’t make a habit of this sort of thing. Instead, there were just alcoves, and some held monks doing monastery to each other—Lief was rather vague on what monks actually did—and others were stores, and one, the grandest, held Abnasio midway through being adorned in robes of red and gold that shone like fire, so that Lief retreated hurriedly. And the next one, when he drew the curtain aside, had Enth in it, lying miserably on the stone floor with his hands chained before him, shaking.

He crept close, wondering if the man-spider would just go berserk and attack him: perhaps simply being removed from the company of Dion’s people would have plunged Enth back into something monstrous.

“Enth,” he hissed, poised to flee. There was no response at the first call, but on the second those black disc eyes were turned toward him, lips drawn back from fang teeth. The expression there was terrifying, feral and snarling, and a stranger might have taken it for the epitome of savage evil. Lief had learned to read that book, though, and what he read there was pain, dreadful pain. Enth’s hands were crooked into claws, and the manacles they had put about his wrists seemed to glimmer and shine.

Lief understood. It made him sick, but he understood. These shackles were made here in Armesion, by priest-smiths. Just as the beer would have turned Enth’s stomach, simply for where it had been brewed, so these chains must scorch and sear his skin by their very touch.

And it took him aback. It made him stop and think about precisely what he was doing. Even he, a creature of sin as he no doubt was, had never thought of himself as having gone to the Darkness. He had never quite committed such an irredeemable act of cruelty or madness or willful ambition so as to take that step. Unlike Dion he could never claim to know the wiles of evil, nor to own to the piercing sight of one who wore the mantle of the Light. For all that Abnasio had seemed a self-important thug, he was also a man who wielded that golden power. He was, in that great cosmic war, a force for good. And Enth…

Enth was a creature of Darkness. There was no getting round it. And what if Dion is wrong and Abnasio is right? Am I really about to rescue a monstrous servant of evil from the hands of the righteous?

Enth whimpered. It was a human sound. Lief knew it: he himself had once or twice been beaten and broken just enough to make that sound.

Fuck the righteous.