"Who are these agents?"

"Anonymous individuals who we keep under retainer, for lack of a better term, for this exact purpose. There's no telling what or who we might need to know about."

"What happens after that?"

"Well, it's due to continue tomorrow night. There will be more questions, one more session's worth maybe two, then there will be a break for a few days until the verifications filter back in from our sources. You and your advocate will be summoned, perhaps for more questions, and then the panel will deliberate in private and render its decision. At that point, all the palingenesists will be assembled and the judgment will be read. When you are confirmed there will be a large festival at which you will choose a name and be introduced, formally."

"What happens if I'm not confirmed?"

"No neophyte has failed in over two hundred years," he said, dismissing my comment.

"What happened to that candidate?"

He took a long drink of wine, finishing the glass. "We killed her," he said equably. "But she never came back so our conclusion about her must have been correct."

"Sounds reminiscent of the Salem witch trials. If you survive submersion, you are possessed; if you don't, you are pure, though none the less dead."

He laughed. "Yes, I can see how one could make that comparison." He offered no other explanations.

"Would I be killed if I fail?"

"Yes," he said, signaling for more drinks. "But if you believe in what you are, that shouldn't be a concern for you."

"What do you mean?"

"If you know that you have lived before and, more importantly, have faith that you will live again, then the annihilation of death would hold no horror for you. Correct?"

"Poppy said to me, once you come back you always will. If that's an immutable fact then your assertion is correct."

He leaned over the table close to me, so close I could smell the alcohol on his breath and could make out intricate patterns in the light brown irises of his eyes. "It's true," he whispered in a low voice. "I've come back 16 times. That makes 17 lives all told, and I remember the slightest detail from every one, as if it happened yesterday. You will come back again and again, like the rest of us, each time stepping up onto your own shoulders, standing a little higher, able to look out a little farther on the horizon and able to look back a little farther in time."

"Logically, I can't argue with you. I just don't know that my faith is there quite yet, but time is on my side right?"

"Rrrrright," he said in one long low tone. He raised his glass. "To faith."

"To faith," I toasted. "Tell me something else. How does a candidate change advocates?"

He was silent for several seconds. "You're pretty angry with her aren't you?"

"I'm not sure what I feel."

"Were you lovers?" he asked.

I nodded.