What Cyrene was doing was an attempt to plan ahead. All very well to say “we’ll find you,” but she didn’t know the country around Armesion so well, and she reckoned that if Dion could track her—or Enth—then so could Abnasio should he come off better. And what then, eh? Do I drag this monster all over the country with me? What am I supposed to do if we lose? She couldn’t just traipse along all the roads that led from the Heart of the Light and blithely assume that Dion would just be there at her fire one morning.

She was trying not to think about the suggestion that Dion could simply track her down—especially if it was indeed Enth, that blot of Darkness, that the priestess would be locating. Because that would mean that she and Lief had never needed to trail the monks to their lair before fetching help. That meant there had been no need for Lief to go in alone.

So she went to the sole tavern that the Heathen’s Quarter boasted, or at least confessed to under questioning, and she talked to people. She was aware that an air of desperation must cling to her, and that a heathen in Armesion was probably still holier than a priest anywhere else, but she needed a destination—close and potentially defensible.

She picked out the lousiest and shabbiest drinkers she could find, men and women who looked as though they still had the dust of the trail on them. Gathering information had never been her strong point—Lief, again—but she forced herself to smile and to banter and to seem terribly, terribly unconcerned by it all.

The man who finally gave up what she wanted had an assaying air to him, a stare that weighed and valued, but didn’t judge. She didn’t like him on principle, but the whole point of the exercise was to avoid the eye of the virtuous. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.

“There’s an inn,” he told her. “Out of the city on the north road, left takes you into a wood, an old wood, you know?” His gaze assessed her again, checking its figures. “Not much traffic, but there’s an inn. Quiet, there. Not a road that many pilgrims take, you know?”

Taking his advice made her skin crawl and her hand itch for a knife, but going somewhere that Enth would not draw too much horrified attention, somewhere they didn’t ask questions, that seemed the best place to hole up and await… await whatever might come.

But first she had to get out of the city.

Cyrene had considered briefly the gates of Armesion: big, obvious, guarded. And yes, perhaps she might be able to talk her way out: companion of Dion the Savior and all that. But could she talk Enth’s way out? It seemed unlikely, and the creature was plainly ill-suited to perform the task itself.

“We need out of here,” she hissed. “Any bright ideas? Penthos give you any useful magic powers?”