We had better luck with trees and casks. For while the Vrone avout had been busy creating the library grape, their fraas and suurs a few miles up the valley at the rustic math of Upper Vrone Forest had been at similar pains with the trees that were traditionally fashioned into casks. The cells of the Vrone oak’s heart-wood—still half alive, even after the tree had been chopped down, sliced into staves, and bound into a cask—sampled the molecules drifting around in the wine, releasing some, making others percolate outward until they precipitated on the outside of the cask as fragrant sheens, rinds, and encrustations. This wood was as choosy about the conditions under which it was stored as the library grape was about weather and soil, so a winemaker who treated the casks poorly, and didn’t provide them with the stimulation they liked, would be punished by finding them crusted and oozing with all the most desirable resins, sugars, and tannins, with nothing left on the inside of the cask but cleaning solvent. The wood liked the same range of temperature and humidity as humans, and its cellular structure was responsive to vibrations. The casks, like musical instruments, resonated in sympathy with the human voice, and so wine that had been stored in a vault used for choir rehearsals would taste different from that stashed along the walls of a dining room. The climate at Saunt Edhar’s was well suited to growing Vrone oaks. Better yet, we were somewhat renowned for our prowess with aging. Casks felt comfortable in our Refectory and our Mynster, and responded warmly to all the talking and singing. Less fortunate concents shipped their casks here to age. We ended up with some pretty good stuff. We weren’t really supposed to drink it, but every so often we would cheat a little.

Corlandin got the stopper out without incident and decanted the wine into a blown-quartz laboratory flask, and from there served it out into the thimbles. The first of these was passed to me, but I knew better than to drink from it right away. Everyone at the table had to get one—last of all Fraa Corlandin, who raised his, looked me in the eye, and said, “To Fraa Erasmas, on the occasion of his freedom—long may it last, richly may he enjoy it, wisely may he use it.”

Then clinking all around. I was uneasy about the “wisely may he use it” part, but I drank anyway.

The stuff was tremendous, like drinking your favorite book. The others had all stood for the toast. Now they sat down, allowing me to see the rest of the Refectory. Some tables were watching the toast and hoisting tankards of whatever they were drinking. Others were involved in their own conversations. Standing around the edges of the place, mostly alone, were the ones I most wanted to talk to: Orolo, Jesry, Tulia, and Haligastreme.

Dinner became quite long, and not very ascetic. They kept refilling my glass. I felt very well taken care of.

“Someone get him to his pallet,” I heard a fraa saying, “he’s finished.”

Hands were under my arms, helping me to my feet. I let them escort me as far as the Cloister before I shook them off.

My time in the Mynster had made me well aware of which parts of the concent could not be seen from the Warden Regulant’s windows. I made several orbits around the Cloister, just to clear my head, and then went into the garden and sat down on a bench that was shielded from view.

“Are you even a sentient being at this point or should I wait until the morning?” a voice asked. I looked over to discover that Tulia had joined me. I was pretty sure she had woken me up.

“Please,” I said, and patted the bench next to me. Tulia sat down but kept her distance, the better to get a thigh up on the bench and turn sideways to face me.

“I’m glad you’re out,” she said, “a lot has been going on.”

“So I gathered,” I said. “Is there any way to sum it up quickly?”

“Something’s…funny with Orolo. No one knows what.”

“Come on! The starhenge has been locked! What else is there to know?”

“That’s obvious,” she said, a little bit annoyed at my tone, “but no one knows why. We think Orolo knows, but he’s not telling.”

“Okay. Sorry.”

“It has been shaping Eliger. Some fids who were expected to join the Edharians have gone to other orders.”

“I noticed that. Why? What’s the logic?”

“I’m not so sure it is logical. Until Apert, all the fids knew exactly what they wanted to do. Then so many things happened at once: the Inquisitors. Your penance. The closure of the starhenge. Fraa Paphlagon’s Evocation. It shook people up—made them rethink it.”

“Rethink it how?”

“It got everyone thinking politically. They made decisions they might not have done otherwise. For one thing, it cast doubt on the wisdom of joining the Edharians.”

“You mean because they are on the outs politically?”

“They’re always on the outs politically. But seeing what happened to you, people got to thinking that it was unwise to turn one’s back on that side of the concent.”

“I’m starting to get it,” I said. “So a guy like Arsibalt, by going to the Reformed Old Faanians, who want him desperately—”

“Can become important in the Reformed Old Faanians, right away.”

“I noticed he was serving the main course at supper.” That was an honor normally reserved for senior fraas.

“He could become the FAE. Or a hierarch. Maybe even Primate. And he could fight some of the idiotic things that have been going on lately.”

“So the ones who have been going to the Edharians—”

“Are the best of the best.”

“Like Jesry.”

“Exactly.”

“We’re going to screen you Edharians, protect you on the political front, so that you can be free to do what you do best,” I said.

“Uh, that’s the gist of it—but who’s this ‘you’ and ‘we’ you’re talking about?”

“Clearly where this is going is that tomorrow you join the Edharians and I join the New Circle.”

“That’s what everyone expects. It’s not what is going to happen, Raz.”

“You’ve been—holding a space for me in the Edharians?”

“That’s an awfully blunt way of putting it.”

“I can’t believe the Edharians want me that badly.”

“They don’t.”

“What!?”

“If they held a secret ballot, well, it’s not clear that they would vote for you over me. I’m sorry, Raz, but I have to be honest. A lot of the suurs in particular want me to join them.”

“Why don’t we both join them?”

“It is considered impossible. I don’t know the particulars—but some sort of deal has been made between Corlandin and Haligastreme. It’s decided.”

“If the Edharians don’t want me, why are we even discussing this?” I asked. “Did you see that keg the New Circle tapped for me? They want me bad. So why don’t I join them and you go to the loving embrace of the suurs of the Edharian chapter?”

“Because it’s not what Orolo wants. He says he needs you as part of his team.”

That affected me so much that between it and the wine I almost cried. I sat quietly for a while.

“Well,” I said, “Orolo doesn’t know everything about what is going on.”

“What are you talking about?”

I looked around. The Cloister was too small and quiet for my taste. “Let’s go for a walk,” I said.

I said no more until we were on the other side of the river, strolling in the moon-shadow of the wall, and then I told her about what I had done during Voco.

“Well!” she said, after a long silence. “That settles that, anyway.”

“What settles what?”

“You have to go to the Edharians.”

“Tulia, first of all, no one knows besides you and Lio. Second, I’ll probably never come up with a way to retrieve the tablet. Third, it’s probably not going to contain any useful information!”

“Details,” she scoffed. “You’re missing my whole point. What you did shows that Orolo is correct. You do belong on his team.”