For five days, while the boats full of gonnes and grain and soldiers moved at what seemed to him a snail’s pace up the Albin River, he’d sat in the stern of the first boat, his hermetical sense watching the sky while the rest of his intellect unpacked, sorted, and put to rest the subsumed power of Richard Plangere; royal magister, lover of the king’s mistress; traitor, Thorn. In the process he had learned a surprising number of festering secrets that had driven his former master to despair. Most of them were no longer even pertinent to the world in which they lived; secrets about the court, about sex, about illegitimate birth, and murder, and the process by which a kingdom is governed. Harmodius was able to watch his former master’s disillusionment, his crisis of faith, his change. His fall, as a poet would describe it. Yet there were other stories to be told from his fall; and in five days of reliving a great many of Richard Plangere’s memories, the silent Harmodius found that he liked the cautious, thoughtful Thorn a great deal more than he liked the socially grasping, upstart Plangere; and he learned so much about Ash that he began to question whether he had ever understood anything before.

In fact, he thought he might understand Ash.

And on the last day, the day when Master Pye set his ambush and all the boatmen hid in the great cave, Harmodius had a long time to wait for Ash; time to think.

Time to think that he had subsumed Askepiles and Thorn. And thus, held within him the total knowledge of two servants of Ash.

“Indeed,” he said aloud. “Now I might be said to be Thorn.”

He smiled. He had no fellow feeling for Askepiles at all. But for Thorn . . .

Lissen Carak

Abbess Miriam felt the tipping point when her adversary began to lose control of its choir. It was as if it had been ambushed in the real; a pinprick, a tiny scream, and suddenly the enemy will was slipping away, elusive and alien, into the endless darkness.

She looked up. “Ladies,” she said in the real.

Both of her choirs were there, every woman present. Even the women who would ordinarily be in the hospital; even Sister Helen, who was one hundred years old.

She smiled. “That was not the battle,” she said. “That was the morning alarm. Our enemy is as great as ten cathedrals and outnumbers us the way the stars outnumber the earth. Remember your parts; remember prayer and faith. Remember that what we do here is not for ourselves, but for everyone who lives here. Sister Elisabeth, you will watch while the right choir takes communion. Then the right choir will have the watch. Carry on.”

Women rose and stretched. Most prayed. A few brushed their hair.

Novice Isabella turned to Novice Stefana and said, “This is going to suck.”

Stefana failed to stifle a giggle.