Her guide is the only sister she sees as they slip into the chapel, though Phosyne cannot see the whole wide room. Now, at midday, the open walls only let in sharp shafts of light and a dim glow; otherwise, the rest of the room is cool and shadowed. But at this time of day, there should be at least ten women here, engaged in various devotional tasks, or sitting with the faithful. Tending the timekeeping candles that burn despite the availability of the sun for measuring each hour, the better to calibrate each measurement. Instead, Phosyne can only make out the shadowed form of somebody standing at the far end of the hall, their posture too martial to be praying.

She doesn’t have time to look closer. The girl’s hand tugs on her sleeve again, and Phosyne turns to follow.

They wind up the stairs that lead to the observatory platform above the chapel proper, and are almost to the door when the nun stops. She bows her head, and Phosyne expects she’s praying, but then she asks, “Did you do this?”

Phosyne can’t stop her panicked smile.

“We were tasked to find food,” the nun continues, without looking back. “Impossible task, of course, and yet—and yet there’s food here now, and when we were tasked to clean the water, impossible task, you delivered us.”

If Phosyne speaks, she’s going to blurt out her guilt. The temptation is too great. She doesn’t like the weight of secrets on her, wants help to solve this problem, wants absolution. Phosyne makes a weak, strangled sound, animal in its tone.

“No, it doesn’t matter,” the nun says, presses her hands to her eyes, then beckons for Phosyne to go ahead of her. “She’s up there. She wouldn’t talk to me, but maybe she’ll talk to you. I just . . . this all feels wrong. Is it blasphemy, for this all to feel wrong?”

Phosyne wishes she remembered this girl. Wishes, too, that she remembered that oceanic feeling of faith she knows she must have had. Worship was her life for twenty years; shouldn’t it feel more real to her now than an old, unraveling dream? If it did, maybe she could offer some comfort.

Instead, she slips past the nun and eases open the door.

The wind fights her. The insubstantial breeze down in the yard is stronger up here, where the walls can’t stop it, where it’s maddening instead of useful. She can’t move the door more than an inch until the wind abruptly changes directions, catches the door from the other side, and throws it open. Phosyne stumbles out into the midday sun.