If Quill took anything away from her distracted pantomime, it didn’t show on his face.

Isabelle asked, “Was this against your will?”

Quill laughed. “On the contrary, I begged for it. I wanted to join my family’s proud lineage, to receive the wisdom of my ancestors. I was terrified of being gravebound.”

Despite her loathing of the whole Fenice tradition, Isabelle understood the yearning for sorcery, for acceptance. For a saintborn to be unhallowed was to be condemned to a sort of living death, shunned and ignored, deliberately forgotten. For years and years, she’d prayed for her sorcery to manifest, if only to stop her father torturing her in an effort to awaken it.

Bitterlich stepped into the silence Isabelle had let grow. “But something went wrong.”

Quill grimaced, the line of his mouth twisting like a snake with a cramp. “The vitera could find no place to take root in my mind even as it extended its tendrils into my body. My every nerve was aflame. My bones felt burned like dry twigs.” He brought his hands up, one twitch at a time, and examined them as if they were foreign things. “This gracelessness is a reminder of my failure.”

Isabelle’s innards tightened with sympathy; she knew something of how that felt. “For how long did you endure this?”

“Days,” he said. “I refused to yield even when the outcome was assured. How could I not be worthy? What great sin had I committed? How had I failed?” His tone was bitter. “In the end, to save my life, the vitera was removed. My parents were both horrified by what had happened to me and mortified at my failure. The pain in my body was nothing compared to the agony of the shame in their eyes. They packed me off to the Temple before I could even walk again. To their credit they secured me a comfortable sinecure. To my disappointment, they imagined I would spend the rest of my life mourning my failure and repenting whatever sins had made me unworthy to receive the Builder’s gift.”

“But you chose differently,” Bitterlich said.

“Oh, I spent a good deal of time feeling sorry for myself, angry at the Builder, afraid of the Breaker, but eventually I discovered the freedom that comes when no one has any expectations of you. I found a passion for the truth, and I became a Temple seeker.”

“How long did it take you to recover, physically?” Isabelle asked. Had he ever had voices in his head? Might he understand the everdream? Even here on her own ship at the height of her power, she dared not ask him directly. Quill might yet be here hunting evidence against Isabelle on behalf of his brother.

He held up a trembling hand. “Do you consider this recovered?”