"Wonderful," another voice said. This was also in well-cultured Vitellian, but with a faint foreign lilt to it.

"Let's have a talk with him."

As his eyes adjusted, the faces came into focus, but they were faces he didn't recognize any more than he did the voices. Their clothes, in contrast, he recognized very well. One was clad in the black gown and red mantle of a patir. The other was all in black, with a single red star at the collar. Only one man in the world was allowed to wear that habit.

"Fratrex Prismo," Cazio murmured.

"Oh, a devout," the fratrex said.

"I'm only devout to the saints that love me," Cazio said. "But I'm from Vitellio. Your portrait is everywhere. But it isn't your portrait, is it? You aren't Niro Lucio."

"You're two nirii behind," the man said. "I am Niro Marco."

"You're a long way from z'Irbina, your grace," he observed. "I'm flattered you came so far to see me."

"Cover your teeth!" the patir shouted. "You're speaking to the Voice of the Saints."

"Oh, let him talk," the Fratrex Prismo said. "He seems an interesting fellow-a Vitellian dessrator sent to invest a castle with Crothenic troops? I can really think of only one person he is likely to be."

"Oh, it's him," another voice said from his right. Cazio turned toward the third man. "You I know," he said. "Sir Roger, yes?"

"Yes," the fellow agreed. "I wonder what you're doing here."

"I was just traveling with the soldiers," Cazio lied. "Hoping for a free meal and a bed here tonight."

The highest man of the Church wagged a finger at him as if he were a little boy eating berries in the wrong garden. "Now, that's clumsy. Have you forgotten you were carrying a letter from Anne?"

Right.

"No," he said. "Just taking the chance that you can't read."

The patir started forward, but the fratrex held up a hand, and he stopped in his tracks.

"I really don't understand your hostility," he said.

"Your men attacked me," Cazio said.

"Naturally. You were invading a castle we have occupied in the name of the saints. If you hadn't had an army with you, we might have spoken first, but since you came on unfriendly terms-"

"I offered no terms, unfriendly or otherwise."

"Where servants of the saints are concerned, Crotheny's standard terms seem to be slaughter," the fratrex said.

"We have fought corrupt churchmen, if that is what you mean," Cazio said. "Very near here, in fact."

"That? That was a handful, and that was before Anne Dare made claim to Crotheny. I'm talking about since she usurped her uncle's throne: the military expeditions. I'm talking, for instance, about the butchering of five hundred men at Tarnshead."

"They meant to do the same to us," Cazio said. "Ask Sir Roger there. They believed the odds were in their favor, and they were wrong."

"Their throats were cut as they slept," Sir Roger exploded.

"No, they weren't," Cazio said.

Sir Roger's brow wrinkled, then cleared.

"Oh. You weren't there, were you? You never saw what happened to them."

Cazio opened his mouth to retort, but he hadn't been there. Anne's Sefry guard had led that attack.

He felt a nasty something in his belly. The Sefry had lost only two men. Maybe the Sefry had killed them in their sleep. Anne wouldn't have known about it, but the Sefry might have done it.

"He didn't know," the fratrex said. "I never thought a dessrator would be involved in such a despicable business, especially the son of the Mamercio."

The name struck through Cazio's breast like a sword stroke. "My father? How do you know who my father was?"

"The Church keeps records, you know. But beyond that, I met your father a long time ago. A man of honor."

"You met him? Not with a sword in hand, I suppose?"

The fratrex smiled broadly. "I see. You want to avenge him?"

Cazio felt suddenly very light-headed. "It was you? You killed my father?"

The fratrex snorted. "No. I'm sure it would be convenient for you if I had. Give you good reason to murder me, eh?"

"My father was a fool," Cazio said. "I never pledged to avenge him, only to live better and longer than he did."

"Really? Then I don't understand. You seem to follow the way of the sword, just as he did."

"He fought for honor," Cazio said. "He lost everything he owned and his life in a duel over a ridiculous notion. I fight for food and coin. I fight to survive, and I fight smart, for no other reason. I-"

He stopped. It had been a long time since he had had this conversation with anyone, he realized.

Why had he turned down the chance to walk the faneway of Mamres? Why had he been so disappointed when Acredo had been shot full of arrows?

Ah, no, he thought. How did it happen?

He tried to summon up the anger he'd once felt at his father, the outrage, the disdain.

It was gone. When had he changed? How had it happened without his knowing it?

The Fratrex Prismo was still regarding him, apparently waiting for him to go on. When he didn't, the churchman leaned forward.

"So you're just a mercenary, then? Honor means nothing to you?"

"I-Never mind that," Cazio said. "Do you know who killed my father?"

"I've no idea," the man said. "I knew him years before his death. He was on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Uni in Abrinio, and so was I. He saved our lives when bandits attacked."

For the first time in years, Cazio remembered his father's face and his voice, talking about going to Abrinio on pilgrimage. It was shocking how clear his memory suddenly was, how suddenly full of tears his head seemed to be.

"I don't want to talk about this," he said. His voice felt wet and gritty.

"What shall we talk about, then?" the fratrex asked. "What to do with you?"

"Why not?"

"It's an interesting subject. And it depends so much, you know, on-well, you. I'm willing to imagine you've been guided up until now by a personal sense of loyalty to Anne rather than by honest opposition to the Church. But to maintain that viewpoint, I'm going to need some cooperation from you. I'm going to need your help with Anne."

"Suppose," Cazio said after a moment, "I offer you a similar bargain? Just an arrow's flight from here I witnessed men of the Church committing the foulest possible atrocities. At first I was willing to believe that the clergy involved were renegades, but we discovered that the praifec of Crotheny was involved and that the events I witnessed weren't unique. It seems impossible that the rest of the Church fathers knew nothing of this, yet I am willing to imagine that you were unaware of these abominations. But to maintain that viewpoint, I'm going to need some cooperation from you. I'm going to need your holy kiss on my bare arse."

The patir was beet-red now, but the fratrex only smiled an odd little smile.

"I see." He leaned forward. "I'm going to give you a bit of time to think about this, my friend." He nodded, and the patir clapped his hands. A door he hadn't noticed opened, and five large monks entered.

Cazio met the man's gaze dead on. "I will tell you one thing: You shouldn't go to Eslen. Anne will crush you."

The Fratrex Prismo shook his head. "No, she won't. I know something she doesn't. If you help me, she might live. Otherwise I fear for her."

"Fear for yourself," Cazio snarled. "If you threaten Anne, I will have to kill you myself."

"Really?" the fratrex said. "Well, you might as well do it now." He nodded at the guards. "Gentlemen, loan us a pair of swords, won't you."

"Your grace," one of the men said. He removed his heavy cut-and-thrust weapon and walked it over to the fratrex. Another man brought Cazio his own weapon, Acredo.

Cazio took the hilt. Certainly it was a trick of some sort, but at least he would go down fighting, not tortured to death in some dungeon.