Sister Mary was a tall, quiet girl with a brilliant mind and a straight back and a fine voice, both in the aethereal and in the real. She was young to be travelling, just seventeen, and her day-to-day struggles with the temptations of the world were palpable—sometimes amusing, and sometimes terrible. She was pretty, and afflicted with a need to be seen as pretty that conflicted with her quiet, and very genuine, piety. She was a poor rider, a peasant born, and she suffered from the youthful urge to refuse help. Her straight blond hair and ice-blue eyes were widely admired among the captain’s men.

Sister Katherine was warmer, with curly red hair and a vicious sense of humor. She was the oldest of the three, a mature thirty, and she had born and lost a child as a young woman. She was noble born—and had worked away the pride of her birth on stone floors and a hundred forms of penance and laundry.

It hadn’t been entirely successful.

In truth, both women had been handed to Sister Amicia as supports, but also as projects. Sister Katherine had a reputation for arrogance, and Sister Mary for wantonness.

It was, Sister Amicia thought, as if Sister Miriam was challenging her.

Despite which, the three had gotten off to a fine start. Healing knights and clearing boglins and hearing confessions had all been adventures, and the three had shared enough adventures in their first weeks together to create a bond that gossip and the stresses of castle or convent life might never have allowed. When Sister Mary paused by a pane of glass to look at her reflection, Amicia made no comment, and Sister Katherine’s rosary of coral and gold drew no comment either.

The first day on the road had been difficult enough. Sister Mary usually walked or rode a donkey, but the column bound for the tournament was moving too fast for her, and she was mounted on one of the company’s spare horses, and suffered cruelly from the first halt on. As a trained physiker and a hermeticist, she had an arsenal of cures she could deploy, but as a young woman, she bit her lip and endured and muttered darkly until Sister Amicia put a hand on her to steady her, and pushed ops into her thighs.

“Am I so obvious?” Sister Mary asked.

Amicia laughed. “Yes,” she said.

Sister Katherine, on the other hand, was in her element—she was on a fine eastern mare, and she rode better than some of the soldiers.

“Tonight, if you’ll allow it, I’ll split my kirtle and ride astride,” Sister Katherine said. “I can do yours and Mary’s, too.”

Sister Amicia sighed. Katherine was always at the edge of the allowed, looking for a way outside. “I’m not sure the world is ready for nuns who ride astride,” Amicia said.