June 1st

“I killed Rolland Gorp,” said Merrily. Her hands gripped the rough stone parapet at the edge of the observation deck, and her gaze fixed itself on the gentle green of the farmland east of the city. Somewhere out there, at the edge of sight, she imagined she could see the little yard where they’d laid his body in the earth.

Only a nearby sparrow heard her confession, and only the wind answered her.

One never knows, with an epilogue, if it really is the end. Who can presume that the events of a life, after a certain point, are beyond the arc of its defining drama? When does one say: “Everything of consequence has happened now; this is what comes after, in case you aren’t yet ready to say goodbye.” Standing in a moment, can one say it is an epilogue? No. It might be a false ending, or a resting point, or simply the close of a chapter. Or it might be the last moment before death. It is presumption beyond all measure to shear off time with the word ‘epilogue.’ Life does not have epilogues.

“I killed Rolland Gorp,” Merrily said again. The pain in her head throbbed and raged, and her vision blurred.

He deserved to die, said the Second Voice. God’s law is perfect; if a man violates it, why should not his punishment be equally perfect? What mercy does he deserve?

She turned, walked away from the silent witness of the bird and the wind, and descended the long stair to the base of Redbun Hall. Then she made her way across the square to Bastings to attend her queen.

They met alone in Anne’s bedchamber. The Queen was disheveled, her face smudged with dirt and sweat, and dark circles beneath her eyes. She wore leather riding hose and a simple brown tunic, and a jacket of hardened leather was slung over the back of a chair. But her long, black hair had been carefully brushed.

Merrily gave a brief curtesy, then seated herself at a wave of the Queen’s hand.

“When did you get back in, ma’am?” asked Merrily.

“Late,” replied the queen wearily. “Or early, I suppose. We rode hard from Roosterfoot; the Guard nearly had us a couple times.” She sat down abruptly, and rubbed her eyes with one hand. “If the city hasn’t fallen already, it will soon. Logwall was moving his forces into place. We managed a few small victories, and some useful sabotage, but I didn’t have enough men to dislodge him. And Snugg’s guns aren’t exactly discreet. We only used them when we wanted to draw attention away from our main body.”

“And then?” asked Merrily, raising an eyebrow.

“And then they’ll come here,” said Anne flatly. “They’ll put the city under siege, set up a blockade of the river, and wait for us to starve. No more wizardry from Snugg’s engineers will stop them, this time.”

Merrily folded her arms and leaned forward, staring at the small table between them. The pain in her head continued to rage, and she focused her will on enduring it. “I suppose they can’t be counted on to arrive before I have to take my final exams,” she remarked acerbically.

Anne smiled. “No, Merrily. I’m afraid the seasons of the University will endure a little longer. You and your friends must ride out to your battlefield too. And when it is done, I hope you will have time to finish your composition for my coronation. The players have already arrived from the south.”

“Do you still intend to go through with it, then?” asked Merrily.

The queen nodded silently.

“Why?”

“Because even under siege, the symbols of the Crown are potent. Our only hope of survival is for support from ordinary people. There are tens of thousands of farmers, and craftsmen, and traders in the North, and all other sorts of people, who don’t want to live under Hobb’s republic. They have bows and spears for hunting, and plowshares they can beat into swords. They are not soldiers, but there are a great many of them, and they can be made into an army if they have the will to fight. That is what we must create for them, Merrily. The coronation is not about the crown, or about my vanity or right to rule; it is a declaration. And if Green Bridge falls, and I am captured and executed, it will still have been the right and correct thing to declare.”

“What will you declare?” asked Merrily tensely. The voices in her head growled at each other in fury, and the splitting headache made her want to weep.

Queen Anne looked up at her. Even in deep fatigue, her green eyes were piercing and the lines of her face potent.

“Independence,” she answered.

✽✽✽

As Merrily left Bastings hall, rubbing her head, a distant snatch of music in the air tugged at her attention and her memory. The tune was simple, and she found her mind constructing the chord progressions that would accompany it—even as the same chords emerged, played by a combination of strings and winds. Merrily’s head snapped around, her headache suddenly forgotten as her ears searched for the source of the music.

Where have we heard this before? asked the First Voice, even as an inexplicable surge of excitement flooded her body.

She found the players rehearsing in a cramped storeroom just off the large dining hall on the first floor of Bastings. The din of food sellers and their customers faded away as she slipped through the door, and she stared in wonder at the motley collection of musicians. Their instruments—strings and flutes and horns of a variety of shapes—were shabby, as were their clothes. They were crammed into the small space, nearly on top of each other. The conductor stood wedged into a corner, glaring furiously at his little orchestra and waving his hands in cramped patterns. But the music was familiar, with a throbbing, pulsing pattern in the texture that drew her unstoppably inward.

Merrily looked closely at the conductor. He was a little man with a large mustache, wild hair, and a prominent, beak-like nose. He wore a pair of spectacles with one glass missing, and his tie was dirty.

And then it dawned on her, just as her memory of that night flooded back.

Below her, a spreading fountain of corks and bubbling champagne flew into the air, and the orchestra’s music swelled up into a crescendo of the sheerest joy ever heard in the Neighbor Kingdoms. There was a rising chorus of wild, chaotic, exuberant cheers from below. There was… a backbeat.

She blinked, even as the little conductor turned his glare at her.

It wasn’t real, said the Second Voice. Because it shouldn’t be. It was a mistake.

She backed out the door and shut it. That was another time, and another place. Her eyes closed involuntarily as the torrent of pain in her head roared back to life.

Merrily sat in the cool dark of the library at Peacock Hall throughout the morning and afternoon, wearily studying for Cyrus’s exam in five days. Gerald Hornhugger and Kel Maliss and Freddie Greensmith and Aristine Le Hen, and many others, labored there with her. She could feel Kel’s eyes on her, and Gerald’s, from a table across the library, but she did not speak to them. They would find her later.

The lunch hour came and went, and Merrily did not leave. But the echo of the music would not leave either. As she listened to it her headache diminished, and the pain became tolerable. And so, as the sun was setting, she made her way back to the small apartment she occupied at Bastings Hall. The musicians were gone, but the music had transformed into something else—not the same tune or the same rhythm, but something new, born of that thrilling spark of passion and possibility.

She found a stack of hemp paper in one of her drawers, carefully drew out staff lines, and started to write. When sleep finally came, she laid her head on pages and pages, filled with note heads that might one day be magic.

✽✽✽

The sound of quiet chanting filled the dark air of the study. A man’s voice rose and fell steadily in the ritualistic cadences of the Disciple’s Creed, and the soft pad of massed human voices responded.

Praise be to God.

Merrily sat in the dim light of a candle, facing Father’s bookshelves, rickety and filled with eclectic spines. There was a small table in one corner, and two unpadded wooden chairs facing each other, one of which she occupied. The curtains on doorways into other rooms were drawn, as they always were. In the large chamber of the under-temple, the service droned on.

There was a noise behind her, but Merrily did not turn. She sat, facing rigidly forward, as a person crossed behind her and sat in the other chair. It was not Father; it was Kel.

“Why do you come back here?” asked Kel. Her dark hair was loose, and the top buttons of her blouse were open, revealing fine collarbones and the curve of the tops of her breasts.

This isn’t right, thought Merrily. Kel Maliss had grown exceedingly modest, near to prudery, since she joined the Elect. Though she was beautiful and athletic, she would never let herself be seen this way.

“This is a dream,” said Merrily flatly.

“Why do you come back here?” Kel asked again. She leaned forward, staring intently at Merrily. “Of all the people and places you could dream, you return here to Father, to me, to Gerald. Why?”

Merrily looked around. The image of the study was skewed and improbable. She shook her head, disoriented.

It was Gerald, sitting in the chair now. “Is it guilt, Merrily?” he asked. “Does your soul know of its guilt for what you will do to us? Does it drive you to return here?”

“Which voice are you?” asked Merrily. She heard desperation in her own words. “Which one is speaking?”

The voices chanting in the under-temple, grew louder suddenly, and Merrily jumped up in terror. They sounded just like the voices in her head. She closed her eyes. It’s a dream, she told herself.

When she opened them, Father sat in the chair. His face was uncovered, and the scars were deep and terrifying in the dim light. He was nude, and the flesh of his body was surprisingly taught for an old man.

“You’ve done well, daughter,” he said. “You’ve done as I asked.”

“I have?” she said in astonishment.

“Yes,” he answered with a broad smile. “My angel is pleased. He tells me that God favors you.” He rose to his feet then, and walked to stand directly in front of where she sat. His body was close to hers, and she was forced to crane her neck upward. The space between them was very little. Father’s hands moved slightly, and then he placed them on either side of her head, touching her cheeks.

“What have I done?” she asked, closing her eyes. Tears flowed down her face.

“You have killed Rolland Gorp,” he said softly. “You have fulfilled your promise of duty and love.”

The grip of his hands on her head tightened, and she looked up again. The face looking down at her was a smooth, blank, curved surface of silvery metal.

✽✽✽

The next morning Merrily went to see Cyrus in his office. He was little help. She found him pacing back and forth on his miraculously recovered leg, speaking earnestly to a potted plant. Gmork was useless; he could say barely ten words in Uellish. He smiled and waved at her, but could offer little else. Merrily’s headache began to grow again, and she left the two of them to their own madness.

We need a teacher, said the First Voice. We have lost our way. We need the old Cyrus Stoat back again. He was an insufferable ass, and we need him.

We have a teacher, replied the Second Voice, and he knows the way. We will see him tonight.

Father is madder than Stoat, shot back the First Voice. He is madder and more dangerous.

She made her way back to Bastings in the hopes of hearing the music again, but the musicians were absent. She sat for several hours, scribbling at her score, then grew restless. The headache swelled, and she wiped more drops of blood from her nose.

And then it was time for Father.

As the sun dropped low over the Green River, she made her way to the Cathedral of Saint Bob. The quiet chanting of Vespers could be heard within. Merrily heard the voice of Bishop Wildrick, rising and falling in the ritualistic cadences of the Disciple’s Creed. She shivered.

The man at the door was of the Elect, of course. How much Bishop Wildrick knew of the contents of his basement was still a mystery to Merrily, but the Elect were well-placed among his staff. The man glanced at her as she slipped into the stair down to the crypt, but said nothing. At the false tomb, she opened the weighted lid and let herself down the knotted rope, closing the lid after her. She walked down the dark passage toward the light that entered from the shaft in the ceiling of the forgotten old under-temple.

To Merrily’s surprise, the floor of the under-temple was choked with boxes, crates, barrels, and chests. Though many were closed, enough were open that she could see they were filled with a variety of weapons—spears, crossbows, polearms, and even the hilts of a few swords. Where yesterday there had been a place of worship for hundreds, now there was a small armory.

The hall was nearly empty of people, but a woman’s figure stood in the dim light near an open barrel sprouting a bundle of spear heads. Drawing closer, Merrily saw, with a shiver, that the woman was Nicola Snugg. Her thin, pinched face turned toward Merrily.

“Mrs. Hunter,” said the severe older woman, seeing her approach. “The peace of the Lord be with you.”

“And also with you,” replied Merrily automatically. “What is all this? And when did it get here?”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Had you attended Communion last night, Mrs. Hunter, you would know well,” said Snugg accusingly. “I arranged for these arms to be delivered here, and the Elect brought them down to the under-temple for safekeeping. May I ask what kept you away from us?”

Merrily hoped the darkness obscured her flushed face.

“I was up late studying for exams,” she said. “I fell behind on my schoolwork from this past winter, when I was away, and needed to catch up.”

A lie, said the Second Voice. That is a sin. We will have to tell Father. Last night we were scribbling at that useless, amateur twaddle that will embarrass us if it is ever played.

It’s for an exam, of a sort, rationalized the First Voice.

“Your classmates, Mr. Hornhugger and Miss Maliss, managed to join us,” continued Mrs. Snugg. “God requires corporate worship, Mrs. Hunter. It troubles me to see you absent yourself. That way lies damnation. I fear for your soul, Mrs. Hunter; truly, I do.”

Merrily opened her mouth to retort, but Snugg’s eyes drifted away from her, and Merrily followed her gaze. She turned. There was Father, standing in the mouth of the passage to the surface, and behind him were Kel Maliss and Gerald Hornhugger.

“We all risk damnation, Mrs. Snugg,” he said, “simply by walking in the world. Every particle of substance we perceive is tainted by corruption. It is only through the endurance of our souls, and the grace of God, that we hope to escape the Pit. My angel has revealed this truth to me, and I reveal it to you.”

Father strode up to Merrily and stood close to her, not touching.

“Do you believe in God, Merrily?” he asked.

She nodded. “I do believe, Father,” she said. “I have faith in God and the prophets and scriptures and the revealed truth. But I really, really needed to study last night.”

We pile lies on lies, sneered the Second Voice. Next we’ll tell him we are an angel ourselves.

Father smiled. “I used to teach history,” he remarked conversationally. He looked at Kel and Gerald, and raised an eyebrow. “I’m afraid you all missed the finest course on offer, north of the Gulf of Carelon, in the history of the Ecclesia and Uellish politics.” He turned back to Merrily. “But I’ll give you the important points, Mrs. Hunter, and spare you all the reading and studying. The history of our land is a story of blood and lies. The Kingdom was founded by a mass murderer and atheist, and his heirs have continued that tradition with slavish dedication. And when one King dared to permit the servants of God to return, he was deposed by a woman—a woman!—and sent away into exile.” His voice began to crescendo in outrage. “Whatever Cyrus Stoat and the other robed morons at Triad are attempting to teach you now, Mrs. Hunter, and whatever promises of glory and wealth they hold out if you should be given high marks on your final exams, I promise you that there is nothing you can learn there that is more worthy of your time than one second of our worship!”

Nicola Snugg smirked at Merrily, but Kel’s and Gerald’s eyes were filled with the light of fervor.

Father threw back his cloak, revealing the hilt of his rapier. It was a weapon that Merrily had returned to him not long ago. He had lost it, she recalled, in a duel with Cyrus Stoat on the roof of a house on Queen Anne’s Square. It had an elaborate hilt, embellished with the device of the crowned eagle; the sign of the Uellish royal house. He drew it out with a faint sigh.

“Give her your sword, Maliss,” he said sharply. Kel Maliss grudgingly drew out her own rapier and extended it, hilt-first, to Merrily.

“Now, Merrily Hunter. I will give you a lesson of more value than your entire semester in Cyrus Stoat’s classroom.”

He lunged at her with no salute or warning. Merrily hastily parried in Sixte, dropping into a crouch and drifting back to maintain the proper space between them. He lunged again, recklessly but with the speed of a viper; she parried and delivered her riposte.

“Your argument lacks conviction, Merrily,” sneered Father, parrying easily. “It reflects the state of your soul.” He twitched Kel’s blade aside lightly and struck at her again. Merrily’s chest was unarmored, and Father’s attack carried the full weight and momentum of his body. She flattened her chest into a line parallel to his thrust just in time, drifting to the side so that his blade could pierce the air in front of her.

He drove her around the under-temple in a continuous retreat, taunting her, quoting scripture, promising damnation. It was all Merrily could do to maintain space between her and him. Her ripostes, when she could manage one, were feeble, and rarely credible. She began to sweat, and her arms and legs ached from the effort of avoiding death at the end of his blade. The energy he unleashed in his attack was frightening—and yet Merrily began to perceive that he held back his deepest fury.

At last she could no longer keep up. He slapped away Kel’s blade and placed the tip of his own sword at her throat. He stood still before her, his face mocking. For all the relentless anger of his long attack, she could see that his chest was heaving. She reminded herself that Father was an old man.

“What have you learned from this lesson, Merrily?” he asked.

Her temples throbbed, and spots appeared in her vision. She felt something running from her nose.

Follow the Bright Path, said a familiar voice in her head, speaking in the fey-tongue. Instantly the headache cleared, and her vision was unmarred.

She fell backward, away from the point of his sword, her back toward the floor. Her right leg bent, and she extended her left leg straight; before her back hit, she caught herself with both hands. Then she hooked Father’s feet with her own foot, jerking him off balance. His eyes widened with surprise, he tumbled backward. Merrily kipped up again with a quick thrust of her arms, flipped Kel’s sword into the air with a foot, caught the hilt, and placed the point at his throat. Father stared up at her, his face unreadable.

“Faith,” she said. Then she turned and walked back to Gerald and Kel, giving the rapier back to her classmate.

“I remember that drop from Enderin’s Dirty Fighting seminar,” said Gerald, in grudging admiration. “I could never get the kip-up. He dinged my grade down to an A-minus.”

“You weigh too much,” sniffed Kel. “It only works if you’re light.”

“And young,” added Father’s voice behind her. Merrily turned. He stood close by now, his sword sheathed. He was tall and erect; his breathing had slowed. Merrily felt a compulsion to kneel, and could see the same instinct in the faces for her companions.

“Sit, children,” Father instructed. They took seats on nearby boxes. Even Nicola Snugg, majority owner of the largest trading concern north of the Gulf, who nobody else had called ‘child’ for many decades, obeyed without comment.

Father remained standing, and spoke. “My Order sent me to Green Bridge, many years ago, to wait for a sign that God’s judgment drew near. I have endured the corruption and decay of the city and its people. I have worn my disguises with patience. I have prepared to greet His holy day with praise and humility. And now God has told me, through His angel, that He will reward my patience.

“In four days, God will cause this fallen city to be burned from the face of His creation.”

Merrily blinked. This was a very specific timeline for the apocalypse—far more specific than any scripture she had heard of.

“And when God does this miracle,” Father continued, “those who He permits to survive must be taken into His kingdom, to worship Him and obey His law without question. We are His instruments, we of the Elect. A false and misguided man, who calls himself a Bishop, has delivered arms and armor to this holy place, thinking it secret, thinking to use them for his own corrupt purposes. The Elect will take them up, and, at the hour of God’s judgment, use them to work His will on those who survive the flames.”

Nicola Snugg, Gerald Hornhugger, and Kelestine Maliss listened in apparent rapture. But Merrily struggled to pay attention over the din of warring, screaming voices in her head.

Father paced up and down before them now.

“You are my chosen among the Elect. You must make straight in this desert a highway for our God. When the fire comes, you will be spared—but before the fire, there are those among the infidel who must be put to the sword, so that none will stand in the way of the Elect. When the leaders of this city are dead, and the fire has swept over it, the Elect will be the only leaders left for its people. They will know God and worship Him. These are your tasks of duty and love.”

He looked at each of them directly. There could be no doubt what he intended.

Yes, said the Second Voice. Now is the time for us to make our final commitment to God and to Father. There can be no going back.

Can you not see the insanity in this? screamed the First Voice. He asks us to commit murder; to kill another living human being to prepare the way for some imagined holocaust.

“To obey without understanding is the essence of faith, Merrily,” said Father, looking directly at her. It was as if he could see inside her and hear the voices. “The scriptures tell us that they are blessed who have not seen, and yet still believe. None of us can understand God’s plan, but we may know our part to play in it. My angel has brought me all the knowledge I need, and I give to you all the knowledge you need. Now is the moment, Merrily, when you must ask yourself what, exactly, you have faith in.”

There is only one faith, said the Second Voice. And the time has come for this debate to end. We cannot be divided any longer.

She could feel the tearing, ripping, agony of the First Voice as it was devoured. She lowered her head and wept.

“I have faith in you, Father,” she said, when the silent screaming inside her had died.

Then Father gave them the names of the people they must kill, and when they must do it.

✽✽✽

Merrily spent the next two days in a state of almost delirious joy. The voices in her head were gone, and her headaches as well. There was no conflict and no doubt; only certainty and faith. She spent her days in the Cathedral of Saint Bob, smiling to herself as she watched the coming and goings of the poor, deluded churchmen who were not of the Elect. For a whole day, she did not set foot on Farley Island, and spent not a single minute in preparation for Cyrus’s final exam. After all, it would never be given. Her life as a scholar was over. She prayed, and felt the peace of one who knows that her prayers are heard, and noted, if not immediately and obviously answered.

And then on the morning of the fourth of June, as she listened to the sung Terce, Jonathan came and sat next to her in the wooden pew.

His blond hair was a little longer than she’d remembered, and his face was thin. He wore a tidy suit of fine wool over his lanky frame, but she remembered the strength of the arms under that modest covering. He’d shaved quite recently, and she noted with concern the remains of a nick on his well-formed jaw. His gaze was haunted, uncertain, even fearful. It suggested he was prepared for her to stab him right there in the church.

A convulsion gripped her heart, and the monument of her certainty wavered.

“Hello, Merrily,” he said softly.

“Hello, Jonny,” she replied. What else was there to say?

They sat in silence for a long while, as he visibly struggled to decide what to say next.

“I’ve missed you,” he said finally. She looked hard at the back of the pew in front of her, and said nothing.

“I heard you went back to Uellodon,” he added. “I’m glad you returned.”

“That was five months ago,” she said flatly.

“I… I got the feeling you didn’t want to see me. So I left you alone.” He looked down at his hands. “But I wanted to see you. I’ve missed you so much, since you’ve been gone.”

She looked at the back of the pew, and said nothing.

He took a deep, shuddering breath. The choir at the front of the church began to sing a new tune; a rather pedestrian bit of hymnody, to Merrily’s ear.

“I’m leaving Green Bridge in a few days,” he said, as if searching for some excuse to make noise. “I have some business for Miss Snipe. I could have some messages delivered in Hog Hurst if you like.” He was lying, or dancing around a lie. It didn’t matter.

She shook her head. “No. I have nothing for anyone there.”

He looked at her sharply. “You’ve changed, Merrily. Sort of; some part of you has changed. It’s the part you’re wearing on the outside right now.” His gaze drifted back down to his toes, and his voice softened to nearly a whisper. “But I believe—”

“There isn’t,” she interrupted. “There’s no part of me, deep down, that is still who I was, and still loves you. Give up that hope. I’ve grown up, Jonathan. I expect you have as well. But whoever you are, I’m not the same person that said yes. Maybe it was the moment, or the music, or something else, but I said something up on that balcony that I never meant to say, and never should have said. And now here we are, paying for that mistake.”

She took his hand and looked him full in the face. “I’m sorry, Jonny. I’m really sorry. But I don’t love you. I don’t think I love anyone… any person,” she added lamely.

There was a whisper inside. It was the faintest hint of the dying breath of a point of view.

He took another deep gasp of air, visibly trying to control his face. He shut his eyes for a moment, then opened them and looked back at her.

“Do you suppose,” he said, “there’s another me that got it right? That asked the right question at the right time, and did the right things, so that this moment came out differently? Do you suppose in that moment when I made the wrong decision, some other me did it better, and went off and lived some other life? And… well, do you suppose some other you might love that other Jonathan?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know, Jonny. Those are questions neither of us can ever answer.”

He nodded slightly, then stood up. “I think there is,” he said. “It makes it easier to live this life, knowing some other me came out alright.” He thought for a moment longer. “You left a few things in our home,” he added. “I haven’t been living there. But I paid the rent, hoping, I guess… well. Hoping it would be different. The things you left are there, in the bedroom. If you haven’t fetched them by the time I leave the city, I’ll have them taken away.”

He started to turn, then paused a moment longer.

“I love you, Merrily,” he said. And then he switched to the fey-tongue, the language of their childhood and youth, and of the strange people of the forest who drifted through their shared memories. “Forever, in all the branches, I love you and my selves follow your path. Goodbye.”

As he walked away, her hand drifted toward him on its own. But if he saw, he gave no sign.

Merrily was left alone. She took a breath, put her hand back in her lap, and lifted her eyes to the Unbroken Circle behind the altar. And she smiled.

✽✽✽

As the sun set on the fourth of June, Merrily finally turned her feet back to Three Fish Bridge and Farley Island. For all the imposing stonework that had been built up on both ends of the bridge, there were just a few Billies on guard at either foot. They nodded politely to Merrily as she crossed over the long spans.

She did not go to her small apartment in Bastings. Instead, her feet carried her to Peacock Hall, home of the College of Applied History. She peeked in the library, where her classmates studied frantically by the light of candles and lamps burning low. Freddie Greensmith and Arisitine Le Hen sat together at a table in the corner, comparing hand-written notes. Merrily smiled; everyone around them could see the budding romance they fancied a deep, dark secret. Even Kel Maliss and Gerald Hornhugger were there. She wondered why.

Her feet climbed the stairs to Cyrus’s office.

There was a light beneath the door. She listened for a moment; it was quiet, but she thought she heard the sound of a pen on paper, and of muttering. She put her hand on the door. Her other hand reached down to a slim, well-sharpened poignard beneath her robe.

“Mrs. Hunter,” said a man’s voice. She whirled around to see a figure in the dim light of the hall. He wore a broad, floppy hat, and a breastplate, and a broadsword was belted to his waist.

“Cyrus!” she exclaimed. “You surprised me. I… was just coming to see you.”

Cyrus narrowed his eyes at her, then brushed past and opened the door. Gmork sat at Cyrus’s desk, bent low over a single sheet of hemp paper and carefully sounding out words in Uellish.

“After dark, listening at my door, with your hand reaching under your cloak for a dagger? Of course you were. Come in, Mrs. Hunter,” he said, waving her toward the decrepit chair in front of the desk. He shooed the goblin off his own chair and seated himself, self-consciously rubbing his right leg as if he weren’t quite certain it was there. “And you are quite right to defend yourself,” he rambled on, “as I may well grow a third or even a fourth leg while we sit here. I’m afraid I can’t control it. Strange men touch me, and out of nowhere—presto! A new leg. I’m told the Second Prophet healed quite a number of cripples, who were probably quite whole to begin with, but so far as I recall nobody ever grew a new leg from a stump. I shall change my name to Cyrus Starfish.”

Merrily felt a familiar surge of irritation at her loquacious professor.

“Would you shut up a moment?” she asked him irritably.

He looked at her with indignation. “Don’t you want to stare surreptitiously at my leg?”

She shook her head. “There is no part of your body I wish to stare at, Cyrus, including either of your legs.”

“Then why did you come here?” he queried.

Why did we come here? asked a voice inside her. It wasn’t the Second Voice. It sounded, rather, like some ghostly fragment of a long-dead idea. She struggled to remember what it once stood for, and then gave up.

“I’ve come to tell you that I won’t be taking the final exam in your course this semester.”

He eyed her cautiously. “May I ask why not? Your grades are good, but not that good. Has Anne sent you on some mysterious quest again? If so, you may have an extension, but not a pass.”

“No. No quests. I won’t be taking it…” she trailed off.

Because Cyrus Stoat won’t be alive to give it, said the Second Voice confidently.

Merrily shifted in the uncomfortable old chair.

“Mrs. Hunter,” Cyrus said, abruptly sober. “Is it time for this conversation again? I must have lost count of the weeks. The work I ask of you isn’t easy because it isn’t meant to be—”

“No!” she interrupted him, laughing despite herself. “Not that one again. I’ve heard it at least half a dozen times.”

He sniffed. “Eight, by my count. Then what’s the problem with the exam? I could have sold the publishing rights to your last one if you’d let me. I’ve had letters from Groob, Parsley, and Ouellier all asking for this semester’s edition.”

She blinked. “Are you serious? Chancellor Ouellier? In Carelon?”

He smirked. “Queen Keleste can’t write personal notes to me anymore, as it drives her husband mad with jealousy. So she sends it all through Ouellier instead. The old dragon manages to make even a polite request sound like a sneer, but it warms my heart to imagine the tooth marks he puts in his own tongue writing me a civilized letter. So do me a favor, Merrily, and don’t give me something substandard to send back to him. I’d never hear the end of it. Whatever your latest emotional catastrophe is, put it aside, study for the exam, and write me something incisive and witty. You can fall apart after this week.”

Merrily smiled and stood up.

“Alright, Cyrus,” she said.

“I’d stand up to see you out,” he added, “but I’ve got two legs now, and it bends the universe all into pretzels for me to walk about on them. Let’s just pretend you can’t see. But Merrily—speaking of final exams. I’m sure you recall that the final graded exercise in Doctor Pierce’s swordplay practicum is tomorrow. He’s assigned me as your sparring partner. So if you do want to kill me, then I’ll see you tomorrow on the practice grounds.”