“Not with Quill, per se,” Isabelle said. “But with the idea of splitting the Temple. Our ancestors already tried that once, and we ended up with the Tyrant of Skaladin, which remains our mortal enemy nigh on a thousand years later. To defeat the Temple, we must make it unnecessary. The Temple feeds the starving and clothes the poor, so we must make sure nobody goes hungry and everyone has winter clothes. The Temple treats the sick, so we must build free infirmaries and train physicians in medicines that actually work. Civilization should be a gift that we give our children to be handed down and improved upon with each new generation. The Prophecy says that the Savior will come when we have prepared the world for him. I think that as we perfect the world we will turn around and discover we have saved ourselves.”

“I think you underestimate the human ability to be dissatisfied,” Sireen said, “and our need for spiritual allies and divine guidance.”

Beliefs are but tools to leverage weak minds, her ancestral chorus pitched in, and the walls behind Sireen had turned to stone, moss-covered and pitted with age, with several half-decayed corpses in pilgrims’ robes piled at their base. Such is the fate of believers.

Isabelle shook her head, refused to heed the macabre scene, and said, “I cannot imagine why anyone would want some invisible, intangible voice telling them what to do.”

The audience concluded in short order, and Isabelle and Bitterlich bowed themselves out. They descended the spiral stair below Sireen’s throne room. The steps curled around a shaft of quondam metal, one of the myriad strange and apparently senseless internal components of the Célestial Spires—immensely long tubes of adamant that rose from deep beneath the royal plateau several kilometers up into the clouds. The outer edge of the stairway’s helix fell away into black nothingness.

Isabelle kept revisiting the conversations, looking for clues she’d missed, or angles she’d miscalculated. Even with her medicine dosage reduced, she still felt muddy-headed.

“Well done,” Bitterlich said. “You definitely showed those peacocks you’re not chicken.”

Isabelle dragged herself out of her mental cyclone and bestowed him the glower he was looking for. “You’ve been waiting to say that all day, haven’t you?”

Bitterlich contrived to look innocent. “I just thought it was another feather in your cap.”

Isabelle resisted the urge to groan. As handsome and dashing and daring as Bitterlich was, his sense of humor drifted toward vile puns. The only way to deal with him when he got like this was to play dumb. She took off her hat and examined it carefully. “I don’t understand. It doesn’t have any more feathers than it did this morning.”

Bitterlich glanced aside at her. “Since when did you become fusty?”

Isabelle replaced her hat and said primly, “I heard an atrocity being committed, and I stifled it.”

“I have no egrets,” Bitterlich said.