The orator fluffed up like an angry chicken and scolded. “That reliquary was sacred. To touch it was to touch the path to Paradise Everlasting.”

“The Hand of Saint Cynessus has never produced a miracle, but I imagine the relic will be of great interest to the heretic’s master back in Skaladin,” said another voice, deep and grating, as if the gears of the speaker’s voice box did not quite mesh. Up the aisle between the tables in the makeshift surgery strode a quaestor, one of the Temple’s own hounds. Jean-Claude knew the man’s rank by the pair of scythes sewn in yellow thread on his umber mantle. The hand sticking out of his right sleeve was made of quondam metal the color of bronze but filled with purple shadows that oozed and flowed like clouds of ink underwater.

The sight of the living prosthesis raised all the hair on the back of Jean-Claude’s neck; the last man he’d seen wearing one of those had been the same one who cut off his beloved Isabelle’s arm and nearly plunged the whole world into war. Yet this quaestor had no clockwork eye, and no hump on his back that might indicate the presence of a pickled head.

The orator placed his hands on his chest and bowed. “Quaestor Czensos, thank the saints you’re here.”

“Be about your business,” Czensos said. “And reflect on your failures today.”

The orator’s face went red and he bowed himself out. “Builder keep.”

Czensos did not respond in kind.

Jean-Claude didn’t like men who bullied their subordinates. “So, Quaestor, you’re saying this mummified hand has only sentimental value.”

Czensos adjusted the line of his nose so there could be no mistake he was looking down it at Jean-Claude. “The Tyrant of Skaladin hates the Risen Saints with the terrible passion of a jealous lover. He knows salvation is beyond him and therefore seeks to deprive the Savior’s gift to everyone else. He razes temples wherever he finds them, burns books of Enlightened wisdom, enslaves sorcerers, binds them to the lash and breeds them like pigs. It would give him great pleasure to destroy the last remnants of the saint who held the door to the Vault of Ages or anything that took part in Legend. Is that sentimental enough for you?”

Jean-Claude rubbed the back of his neck. “It seems a rather trivial prize for all the effort put in to obtain it.”

Czensos folded his arms across his chest in a pose Jean-Claude silently dubbed “A study in imperious prickishness.”

Czensos said, “You underestimate its political value. It is a victory the tyrant can parade in front of his own people or a token he can use against the Temple. Your failure to stop the theft cannot be excused by diminishing the value of the stolen item.”