He left the victim with a group of rescuers at the bottom of the temple steps, then rushed back for another. The heat rolled over him like dragon’s breath. If the temple didn’t have such a high ceiling, he wouldn’t have been able to make past the doors. Marie and Djordji helped rescue another handful, but when Jean-Claude turned to go back for more, the inferno defeated him. Three times he crawled into the smoke, trying to get under it, calling out for anyone still alive, but it reached into his lungs to smother and choke.

He could do nothing but watch as the roof collapsed, shooting embers into the darkening sky. They were lucky, he supposed, that Rocher Royale was the one city in l’Empire Céleste were the fire had almost no chance of spreading. Etched into the side of an immense cliff, the capital city was carved from stone: bas relief on an urban scale. All the wood in the temple had been imported, a tribute to the Temple’s stately decadence.

Jean-Claude turned his attention to the stricken. He had seen many battlefields, but few where the victims were so bewildered. He sent runners to the royal infirmary, rallied the congregation, and moved the casualties to the temple outbuildings. They opened up the refectory and laid the worst cases out on the stone tables. He, Marie, and Djordji bandaged wounds and secured broken limbs. He applied every bit of battlefield medicine he’d ever learned until the doctors and surgeons from the infirmary showed up to do battle with death for those who clung to the brink.

A tight band around his chest loosened when Rebecca showed up with the orator in tow.

“I took him the back way in case the buggers chased us,” she said. “Never saw one though.”

“Well done,” Jean-Claude said. “Get some water and see what Marie has for you to do.”

Rebecca departed, and Jean-Claude turned his attention to the orator, a square man well padded and drooping round the edges. The orator dabbed at his red sweaty face with a cloth.

Jean-Claude said, “Learned one, what was so important about that reliquary that a Skaladin spy was willing to risk himself and sacrifice his followers to obtain it?”

“Oh.” The orator’s flesh sagged across his frame like a sail taken out of the wind. “That was the Hand of Saint Cynessus, a true reliquary, and now it’s fallen into the hands of that thief. Saints forgive me.”

“A true reliquary? As opposed to an untrue one?” Jean-Claude asked.

The orator winced and said, “Most reliquaries have been … adulterated over time, but the provenance of the hand is impeccable. It belonged to the gatekeeper himself.”

“That doesn’t explain why the thief wanted it. Does it hold some miraculous power? Will it restore a man’s grip or make his cock hard?”