She had hurled the question at him as they moved down from the cliff top, steadied by hylighter tendrils, the red streaks of dayside fingering a gray horizon on their right. It had been a nightmare setting: the babble of the army, the muted flutings of hylighters. The great orange bags had floated some people down to the plain, carried equipment, guarded the descent of those who stayed afoot.

Hundreds of people, tons of equipment.

Thomas had not answered her question until she repeated it.

“We have to take over the Redoubt. Ship will destroy us if we don’t.”

“That makes us no better than them.”

“But we will survive.”

“Survive as what? Does Ship say anything about that?”

“Ship says, ‘When you shall hear of wars and the rumors of wars, be you not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet.’”

“That’s not Ship! That’s the Christian Book of the Dead!”

“But Ship quotes it.”

Thomas had looked at her then and she had seen the pain within his eyes. Christian Book of the Dead.

Ship had shown parts of it to her on request, displaying the words within the tiny cubby where Panille once had studied. If Thomas really were a Ceepee, he would know those words. She wondered if Oakes knew them. How strange that no one shipside had responded to her careful questions and probes about the events on the Hill of Skulls.

Thomas had frightened her then as they paused to regain their breath on a little rock platform deep in a fissure.

“Why did Ship show you the crucifixion? Have you ever asked yourself that, Hali Ekel?”

“How do you . . . how do you know about . . .”

“Ship tells me things.”

“Did Ship tell you why I . . .”

“No!”

Thomas set off down the steep trail. She called after him: “Do you know why Ship showed me that?”

He stopped at a gap in the fissure, looked out at the morning light growing on the plain, the glistening brilliance of reflections off the Redoubt’s plaz in the distance. She caught up with him.

“Do you know?”

Thomas rounded on her, the pain terrible in his eyes. “If I knew that, I’d know how to WorShip. Did Ship give you no clues?”

“Only that we must learn about holy violence.”

He glared at her. “Tell me what you saw there at the crucifixion!”

“I saw a man tortured and killed. It was brutal and awful, but Ship would not let me interfere.”

“Holy violence,” Thomas muttered.

“The man they killed, he spoke to me. He . . . I thought he recognized me. He knew I had come far to see him there. He said I was not hidden from him. He said I should let them know it was done.”

“He said what?”