“I will let the High Patriarch be the judge of that,” he said.

“Of course you will,” said this astonishing cleric of a roadside sanctuary. “Very well. On your way, then. You will die one day, soon or late, and Jad is waiting. There is no bribing your way past the god.”

“You should be killed for this effrontery,” said Barratin. “There are men here who will gladly do it for me right now. But I am not the evil person you deem me to be. I will leave you to your ignorance. Good day, cleric.”

He went out into the rain, fury consuming him.

Which became the problem. As it had been before in his life. Even after mounting up and starting west again he could not calm himself, or think clearly. His breathing had become shallow, his mind jumbled with rage.

And so.

And so, a little distance along the road, as that summertime shower ended, he called van Aribert to ride beside him and ordered that someone be assigned to go back and end the life of the cleric with silver hair. He felt he would choke if he did not order this.

He added, “It is to be arranged as a loyal soldier doing this of his own will after hearing of what happened there, the insult of it. Not by my orders. Do you understand?”

“I do,” said Burkard van Aribert.

“Then have that soldier killed, quietly, after we stop for the night. And take his body away. Bury it or throw it in a pond.”

He still remembered Corbez Barthelmy, who had known too much and could not be killed, because he had sent letters.

Alas, the events of that day did not unfold as he’d commanded.

The soldier chosen to commit the murder of a cleric (and then be killed) was a young man named Pons van Cové. Originally just Pons Cové, it later emerged, but his father had changed the family name to sound more northern when he moved them from the village of Broché to Berga on the sea, in search of a better life in the cloth trade there.

Which he had found, being intelligent and industrious and pious. And for which he gave continual thanks to holy Jad, and raised his three children to do the same. And yes, Broché had been the village of the Maiden. It was even determined afterwards that the two fathers had known each other.

The world can be vast, or very small.

As it happened, under the late-day sun that came out after the rain, Pons van Cové refused to kill the silver-haired cleric at that sanctuary when he rode back to it.

He was also clever, like his father, and surmised he’d be killed himself, afterwards. He knelt before the cleric and he told of the order he had been given. The cleric, who was much more than clever, immediately set about preparing his own letters.