This man had to have spoken with Lewko. How much had the Bastard’s divine conveyed to the Father’s scholar? The two orders were not usually noted for their mutual cooperation. “I fainted from the heat. Anything else is not such testimony as is admissible in a trial, I thought.”

The man’s lips pursed, and to Ingrey’s surprise, he nodded in approval. But then said, “This is not a trial. It is an inquiry. You will observe I have not requested your oath.”

Was that of some arcane legal significance? From the slight nods of a couple of the judges, apparently so. The scribe, for one thing, had set aside her quill and showed no sign of taking it up again, although she was staring at Ingrey in some fascination. It seemed they were speaking, at the moment, off the record. Given the company, Ingrey was not sure this was any aid to him.

“Have you ever fainted from heat before?” asked one of the King’s Bench judges.

“Well… no.”

“Please describe your vision,” said the scholarly divine.

Ingrey blinked, once, slowly. If he refused to speak, how much pressure would they bring to bear? They would likely place him under oath; and then both speaking and silence would have potentially more dire consequences. Better this way. “I found myself, Lady Ijada, and Prince Boleso’s sundered soul all together in a… place. A boundless place. I could see through Prince Boleso’s torso. It was full of the spirits of dead animals, tumbling over each other in chaos and pain. The Lord of Autumn appeared.” Ingrey moistened his lips and kept his voice dead level. “The god requested me to call the animal spirits out of Boleso. Lady Ijada endorsed the request. I did so. The god took up Boleso’s soul and went away. I woke up on the temple floor.” There, not too bad; as truthful as any madman and with quite a number of complications left out.

“How?” asked the divine curiously. “How did you call them out?”

“It was but a dream, Learned. One does not expect things to make sense in a dream.”

“Nevertheless.”

“I was… given a voice.” No need to say how, or by whom, was there?

“The weirding voice? As the voice you used on the rampant ice bear two days before?”

A couple of heads along the panel came up at that.

Damn. “I have heard it called that.”

“Could you use it again?”

It was all Ingrey could do not to use it right now; paralyze this roomful of men and escape. Or else squeeze his strangely diffuse wolf into a tight little invisible ball under his heart. Fool, they cannot see it anyway. “I do not know.”

“More specifically,” the divine went on crisply, “Lady Ijada is imputed to have been defiled with the spirit of a dead leopard. It is the teaching of Temple history, which your vision with the late prince would seem to support, that such a defilement sunders a soul from the gods.”

“A dead soul,” Ingrey corrected cautiously. For both he and Ijada bore animal spirits, and yet the god had spoken to both. Not to Boleso, though, Ingrey realized. He was moved to explain how the shamans of the Old Weald had cleansed their departed comrades’ spirits, then thought better of it. He was not at all moved to explain how he’d learned all this.

“Quite so. My question, then, is: were Lady Ijada to be executed as a result of her future trial, could you, Lord Ingrey, remove the defiling animal spirit from her soul as you did for Prince Boleso’s?”

Ingrey froze. The first memory that roared back into his mind was of Wencel’s worried vision of Ijada as an Old Weald courier sacrifice, opening Holytree to the gods. Wencel had thought that path safely blocked by Ijada’s defilement. Not so safe, and not so blocked, if Ingrey could unblock it again. And I could. Five gods, and curse Them one and five, was this the unholy holy plan for the pair of them? Is this why You have chased us here? Thoughts tumbling, Ingrey temporized, “Why do you ask, Learned?”

“It is a theological fine point that I greatly desire clarified. Execution, properly speaking, is a punishment of the body for crimes in the world of matter. The question of the salvation or sundering of a soul and its god is not more affected than by any other death, nor should it be; for the improper sundering of a soul would be a heinous sin and burden upon the officers charged with such a duty. An execution that entails such an unjust sundering must be resisted. An execution that does not may proceed.” A silence followed this pronouncement; the divine added solicitously, “Do you follow the argument, my lord?”

Ingrey followed it. Claws scrabbling, dragged as by a leash. If I say I can cleanse her soul, it frees them to hang her body with a blithe good will. If he said he could not… he would be lying, but what else? He whispered, “It was only… “ Stopped, cleared his throat, forced his voice to a normal volume. “It was only a dream, Learned. You refine too much upon it.”

A warm autumnal voice murmured, somewhere between his ear and his mind, If you deny Me and yourself before this little company, brother wolf, how shall you manage before a greater?

Ingrey did not know if his face drained white, though several of the judges stared at him in alarm. With an effort, he kept himself from swaying on his feet. Or, five gods forbid, falling down in a faint. Wouldn’t that be a dramatic development, coming pat upon his words of disavowal.

“Hm,” said the scholarly divine, his gaze narrowing. “The point is an important one, however.”

“How, then, if I simplify it for you? If I have not this ability, the point is moot. If I have… I refuse to use it so.” Eat that.

“Could you be forced?” The divine’s tone conveyed no hint of threat; it seemed the purest curiosity.

Ingrey’s lips drew back in a grin that had nothing to do with humor, at all, at all; several of the men pushed back in their seats in an instinctive recoil. “You could try, “ he breathed. Under the circumstances—under those circumstances, with Ijada’s dead body cut down from a gallows and laid at his feet—he might just find out everything his wolf could really do. Until they cut him down as well.

“Hm.” The scholarly divine tapped his lips; his expression, strangely, seemed more satisfied than alarmed. “Most interesting.” He glanced down the panel. “Have you any more questions?”

The senior judge, looking vastly disturbed, said, “Not… not at this time. Thank you, Most Learned, for your… um… always thought-provoking commentary.”

“Yes,” muttered another under his breath, “trust you to come up with a horrible complication no one else ever thought of.”

A slight tilt of the scholarly divine’s head and a glint in his eye took this as more compliment than complaint, despite the tone. “Then I thank you, Lord Ingrey.”

It was clearly a dismissal, and not a moment too soon; Ingrey managed a civil nod and turned away, quelling an urge to run. He turned onto the gallery outside the chamber and drew a long breath, but before he could entirely compose himself again, heard footsteps behind him. He glanced back to see the strange divine following him out.

The lanky man signed the Five by way of greeting; a swift gesture, but very precise, neither perfunctory nor sketched. Ingrey nodded again, started to rest his hand on his sword hilt, decided the gesture might be interpreted as too threatening, and let his hands drift to clench each other behind his back. “May I help you, Learned?” Over the gallery rail, headfirst, perhaps?

“My apologies, Lord Ingrey, but I just realized that I was introduced before your party came in, but not again after. I am Learned Oswin of Suttleaf.”

Ingrey blinked; his mind, briefly frozen, bolted off again in a wholly unexpected new direction. “Hallana’s Oswin?”

The divine smiled, looking oddly abashed. “Of all my titles, the truest, I fear. Yes, I’m Hallana’s Oswin, for my sins. She told me much of your meeting with her at Red Dike.”