This was not a conversation Isabelle meant to get dragged into any further. “Is that the lecture you’re going to give to the crew now that their shipmate is dead?”

Quill picked up his copy of the Instructions and said, “Shall I relay the Temple’s orthodox doctrine: Their shipmate, whose body is lost to the Gloom, has been dragged screaming through the Ravenous Gate and condemned to Torment until the Savior comes to release him? Only their hard work and dedication to the Prophecy can help his suffering end. Or shall I provide a gentler heterodoxy, that the saints are protecting Keelmate Gephardt in Torment until the Savior comes to cast the Breaker out and release him? Or shall I tell them the truth, which is that we have no more idea what happened to Gephardt’s soul than we know what happened to his body, but that we have a chance to find out?”

Anger flared like fire in Isabelle’s mind, for this was a clear threat to defy her directive of secrecy about the Vault. Fortunately the solution was straightforward. “Put your staff away. You will not be delivering the lecture. I will not permit you to undermine my authority with my crew. I am confining you to quarters until we reach Joubert’s Folly.” And then she would put him ashore and let him make his own way back to Craton Massif.

“Be at ease,” Quill said. “I have no intention of suborning your men. I will give them permission to be hurt and be frightened, to feel loss and grieve without fear of being thought cowards by their peers. As your spiritual adviser, the question I want to know is why you, who have by all accounts dedicated your life to puzzling out difficult truths, are so afraid of these. Either the Vault is there or it isn’t. Either the Savior is there or not. At this point it is unthinkable that no one will find out, and then you will have to deal with the facts whatever they are. And try as you might, you cannot stand athwart the future screaming, ‘No!’”

His words stung a sensitive spot Isabelle hadn’t known she possessed. “Do you honestly think facts matter to those who traffic in belief? Nobody wants a Savior for all mortalkind. They instead want a judge who will decide the future in their favor. Who will vindicate their prejudices and hand them victory over their foes while asking nothing from them in return.