Then there was a barber for his hair and matted, tangled beard. And then came a doctor, attending to his bites and injuries. And then the same two women again, helping him into better clothing than he’d arrived in, by far. After, food at a table in a different chamber, simple food, in small portions, on the physician’s instructions. They had very nearly starved him in his cell, his body needed time, the man said. Thierry took a sip of the offered wine and felt it rush to his head. He didn’t drink any more.

He realized he was weeping at one point. Tried to make himself stop. It took some effort. He looked at his hands, his fingers. They didn’t even seem like his own. His eyesight was not good. He hoped it would recover. The light, even just candles in a curtained room, felt very bright.

He wondered if Mercier of Aurage, a cleric, a holy man, had broken him in the blackness underground. It was possible.

They sent him away that same day.

No time to recover. His absence, Thierry realized, was urgently required from here. Was someone coming? Likely so. His horse was waiting in the courtyard. They’d fed the horse. Better than him. He was given food in a leather bag they attached to the saddle. He was given a sum in coins, and a startlingly large amount by way of a letter of credit.

“It is too dangerous for you to carry an amount like this,” the steward said sententiously. “This is safer. Also, know that if you lose the letter, the amount will still be waiting for you at the clerical registry in Orane. It has been determined that your proper chastisement was…somewhat exceeded. This is by way of the high cleric’s well-known generosity.”

And that was his apology, Thierry thought.

“Very generous,” he said. “Extreme piety in the service of Jad.”

It seemed he was already a little more like himself.

“If I don’t even need the letter, why give it to me?” he asked. Pointless question, really. The steward didn’t answer. The man tried to remain expressionless, didn’t quite manage it. He looked nervous. Made Thierry feel better.

He never saw the high cleric. Mercier of Aurage did not appear, to express regret, to bluster, to demand Thierry make peace with the god for his sins. But something had happened if this was happening.

He had said, the day he arrived, the day he was imprisoned here, that people would find out where he was and the cleric would pay a price. Bascot de Thunier, too, if Jad was just. You didn’t throw people in a dungeon for disliking your poetry.

He would say that now, to anyone who would listen.