Quill’s thin face pinched with pain that went beyond the physical. After a moment he said, “Yes,” in the manner of a pressure vessel letting off steam. “Amongst other things, Hasdrubal stole the reliquary of the Hand of Saint Cynessus.”

“I know,” Jean-Claude said. “I was there. What’s so important about a few old finger bones?”

Quill gave Jean-Claude a schoolmaster’s look. “Really, monsieur, you should attend Temple lecture more often, or perhaps you would remember the story of Saint Cynessus.”

“Every child knows that story,” Jean-Claude said. “The Builder blinded Cynessus for looking back on the destruction of the Primus Mundi. Always seemed a bit shabby to me, blinding one man whilst all of the Great Work is coming unglued.”

Bitterlich said, “Perhaps the Builder didn’t want anyone to witness his shame.”

Quill said. “Everyone remembers that part. It’s the part they teach in the children’s lectures. Sometimes I wonder if they teach that part in isolation so that when people get older they won’t remember the bits around it.”

“Do tell,” Isabelle said. She had read the whole Instructions, of which the first book was Legend, in the Saintstongue, but that was a long time ago.

“Saint Cynessus was the gatekeeper of the Vault of Ages,” Quill said. “As the last of the saints fled into the Vault, he turned to look back and see if there were any stragglers. The Builder demanded he avert his gaze, but he saw a shadow moving toward him and thought it might be another survivor. Then he was blinded and burned, but even in his agony, he managed to shut the door and seal the Vault, so that it lay safe and hidden for a thousand years, and when the saints emerged, it was he who set them free.”

Isabelle was stunned. “You think the relic has the power to open the Vault.” It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in the Builder—the evidence of his work was all around her—but the particulars of Legend had always seemed just that. Surely they were based in some truth, but they belonged to a world long lost.

Yet if the spires at Rocher Royale persisted, impervious to the passage of time, and artifacts like quondam prostheses still functioned after all these centuries, what sense would it make to assert that the Vault of Ages could not exist in fact as well as Legend.

“He means to wake the Savior,” Vrain said. “To draw him into the world.”