“Only once since the time of the heathen,” Nannaferi said, her voice throat-smoky with age, “has the Struck Table been convened. Many of you were here that day. It was a joyous time, a time of celebration, for at last the Cult had regained this place, our Great Goddess’s earthly womb, where the long line of our sisters dwell, awaiting their Second Birth in the Outside. At that time we celebrated the Shriah and his Holy War, thinking only of what we might regain. We did not see the Demon that slumbered in its belly, that would possess it, transform it into an instrument of oppression and blasphemous tyranny.”

She allowed her outrage to twist this final word.

“We did not see the Aspect-Emperor.”

She slapped her cane of sacred acacia flat on the table. Her sisters jumped at the crack. Then she reached into her gown, whose silken folds seemed almost moist where they bunched against the bent joints of her body, and withdrew a small sphere of iron, no larger than a dove’s egg, ringed with indecipherable script. She raised it high between thumb and forefinger, gingerly set it on the table before her …

A Chorae. A Holy Tear of God.

As though following some irresistible logic, the women’s gazes moved in perfect tandem from the Chorae to her face. To be addressed in such a bald manner was shock enough: The Inaugurals, the ceremonial rites and prayers of initiation, were mandatory on such occasions. Now they stared at her in outright astonishment. They were beginning to understand, Nannaferi noted with grim satisfaction.

Their Goddess girded for war.

“But first,” she said, resting her right hand on the shaft of her cane, “we must deal with the matter of the witch.”

With the Chorae before her, the implication was plain: She meant one of them.

Several gasped. Maharta, the youngest of their number (and a political concession to Nilnamesh), actually cried out. Sharhild, with her piggish eyes and radish cheeks, watched with the expression of bland stupidity she always used to conceal her cleverness. Vethenestra, of course, nodded as though she’d known all along. What kind of Oracle would she be otherwise?

A hush fell upon them, so complete it seemed they could hear the dead ashes breathe.

“B-but Holy Mother,” Maharta fairly whispered. “How could you know?”

Psatma Nannaferi closed her eyes, knowing they would be globes of crimson when they snapped opened.

“Because the Goddess,” she murmured, “lets me see.”