“Squire, be so good as to fetch clean linens for this bed,” Ser Balin asked courteously. As soon as the young woman was gone, he shook his head at Ser John. “Sister Amicia is a saint? In my lifetime?” The Prior of Harndon was a round-faced, portly man; a life of arms and abstention did not seem to affect either his girth or his good cheer. “God works in mysterious ways.”

Wishart bore down, concentrating on his working; cleaning the afflicted woman’s blood in a laborious sweep that was far more like the drudgery of a long patrol in the Wild than like a reckless cavalry charge of power. The cure took time, power, concentration, and patience, and any missed animiculae resulted in the caster having to work the patient all over again; it had happened too often, and every failure wasted the precious resources of ops and ivory.

But there was a specific feeling in the patient and in the aethereal when the corpus was clear of infection, and Wishart could feel the denouement coming. He honed his concentration the way he would have done in prayer, walling off thoughts of Amicia’s elevation, of her powers and their loss. His thought became a torch, burning away the poison in the woman’s blood, and then the moment of triumph was reached, and she sighed, and he sat back, his attention relaxing gradually until he could release his focus. Almost no time had passed in the real; he glanced at Ser Balin and replayed the brother knight’s words inside his head.

He smiled. “I’m really not surprised,” he said.

Balin put a hand on his own patient, testing her for a recurring fever. “But . . . in our lifetimes! Someone we know!” He laughed aloud. “What a wonderful thing!” He winked at his commander. “Perhaps I’ll address a prayer to her now.”

“Balin,” Wishart said.

“Is it true?” asked Sister Mary. She burst in, arms full of creamy white linen sheets, and she didn’t even curtsy.

But Balin grinned. Sister Mary was one of his favourites; she had been with Amicia until Easter, and was developing into a fine young doctor. And had just tested for enough latent power to be trained further. “Yes,” he said without preamble.

Wishart shook his head. “Friends,” he began, and then he heard the cheering.

He had been about to caution them to keep the news to themselves, but throughout the priory, men and women were cheering.

Sister Mary dropped down on her knees and began to pray.

Harndon—Master Pye