She had always felt ambiguous about divine providence, but when the fled monk reappeared at that precise moment, wielding a wood-axe over his head in exactly the sort of way that a warrior wouldn’t, it seemed a fairly plain sign that Armes had sent his servant to her aid. Or at least his servant’s clothes. She moved to duck under his stroke, but the axe-blade had already embedded itself in a ceiling beam, leaving the jarred monk utterly open for the punch to the throat that she gave him. That didn’t exactly shut him up, and so she hit him a few more times, and then eventually just shook him out of his robe as he struggled and yelled and cursed her, because her hands were swollen and sore from the rigors of monastic life, and knocking someone out was far more difficult than people always thought.

Getting Enth into the robe was almost as difficult. He did not seem to understand what it was for, or why she wanted him dressed in it. She had to order him, and even then his ability to dress himself would have been risible under any other circumstances. All the time, though, Cyrene was wondering how many people were in the neighboring houses, and who had sent for the no-doubt-efficient watch. Too much to hope for, surely, that the activities of the Brotherhood of the Dawn regularly included screaming and breaking things.

Then the two of them were out and on the streets of the holiest city in the world: a man-monster and a woman who punched monks.

She got them away from the house first, and then the locality, until they were holed up in the Heathen’s Quarter, crouched in the darkest alleyway they could find. Even there, even in night’s most moonless pocket, Cyrene felt the presence of the Light against her skin like bright sun. It was as though Armes himself was casting an eye over the city to look for them.

“Stay here,” she told the creature. “Hide yourself as best you can.”

A human would have demanded to know what she was about, but Enth just hunkered down in the darkness, contracting into as small a space as it could, elbows and knees jabbing out at sharp angles.

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.