Two went that same evening to Orane, one to the Great Sanctuary there, and another to the court. A good horse and a good rider could greatly outstrip an army with foot soldiers. Those letters reached Orane in days.

The cleric also sent another letter, which would take longer to arrive, to the High Patriarch in Rhodias, detailing what van Cové had been ordered to do by a man rejecting the demands of decency, faith, and the god. He invited the Patriarch to send someone to take testimony. He left out, unsurprisingly, his own remarks on the portico about bribery in Rhodias.

Then he summoned one of his senior clerics to act as a notary, and he had Pons van Cové dictate his story, and sign it, and the cleric affixed the sanctuary’s seal, and they did this three times, and hid these documents.

Then they settled in to wait, and pray. The cleric did anticipate his own death now, along with that of the soldier. He hoped it would do some good in the world Jad had given his children.

Those deaths did not happen.

The Duke de Barratin, when the soldier sent to do his will did not return, drew certain conclusions, and decided that for now he had larger matters to address than an arrogant cleric in the countryside. The cleric—and the soldier—could be dealt with later. And would be. He was still angry, but he had taken control of his rage.

Back in the roadside sanctuary, Pons van Cové had not stood up after kneeling to reveal the instructions he’d been given. Instead, kneeling still, he’d beseeched that he might be permitted to remain there, take vows, enter the sanctuary as an acolyte, with a view to being initiated in due course as a true cleric of Jad.

He was accepted in this request.

He ended up having a different sort of life, however. Who can know where and when storms will crash upon us, or what slanting sunbeams, as at summer twilight, might illuminate our lives?

Pons van Cové and his beloved were eventually to become the subject of a famous poem by the celebrated Marina di Seressa. The poem that marked a divide in her body of work and how the world understood her.

It was largely invented, that long poem. Poets do that, tellers of tales do. But the foundation was real. Van Cové had indeed met Célia Maronniel when he was sent in early autumn with firewood and wine to the retreat of the Daughters of Jad that lay not far from the sanctuary. She, too, was an acolyte, seeking a life with the god.

The poet had them falling instantly in love, deeply and entirely, at their first meeting. It might have been so. No one knows. It is known that they left together not long after, and made their way south.