The eyes of the Abbess were a cool blue-gray. They studied her for a moment before the religious spoke herself: “But his is a militant order, and necessarily involved in politics and war. We . . . are not. We have our life here according to our Rule, here and in the daughter-houses we have established since the Change. We work, we teach, we heal, we help God’s poor, and for our joy and our rest we have prayer. All this I would endanger, if I help you and you fail. Possibly even if you succeed, in the end.”

Ritva nodded gravely. All that was perfectly true. Reverend Mother Dominica had to think of it. She was responsible for her followers, after all; and for all those who depended on her Order.

“Everything you are and do is endangered if we lose, Reverend Mother. As it was in the days of Duke Iron Rod, but more so.”

The older woman flinched; very slightly, but Ritva was sensitive to such things. Oops, she thought. She must have been a member back then too. Or one of Iron Rod’s prisoners, or both.

“I have tried to forgive,” the nun whispered after a moment. “But to forgive evil men is not to submit to the evil they do. You are right that we owe your family a debt from those days.”

She sighed. “I’ve also heard of this Sword of the Lady. A pagan thing, and a pagan King wields it.”

I’m a pagan thing myself, Ritva thought; she restrained herself from arguing: It’s all different avatars of the same Lady, right?

Christians could be irritatingly rigid about that. She’d had two years of Father Ignatius’ implacably polite certainty to drive home the lesson.

“I’m the High King’s half sister,” she pointed out instead. “And I’ve known him all my life and besides, it’s the same with us Dúnedain as it is with the Mackenzies: it’s a point of our faith that everyone finds their own path to the Divine. We’re in more danger from you than you from us. There will be a lot more Christians in Montival than anyone else, and your type of Christian is the commonest. Matti . . . the High Queen Mathilda . . . is one of you. Whereas the Church Universal and Triumphant . . .”

“They are evil and they serve evil,” the Abbess whispered. “I don’t say that idly or simply because their theology, the public version, is absurd. There must be freedom—even for error.” She smiled a little. “Even for taking the stories of a long-dead Englishman who was a good Catholic with appalling literal-mindedness, for example, my child.”

Ritva suppressed an impulse to stick out her tongue. She suspected that the Abbess read it anyway.