Bolt nodded. “What’s the last thing you remember before you found yourself on my couch?”
He looked at the cathedral and the sun in confusion. “It was night and I was on my way . . .” His face clenched with the effort of remembering. “I was on my way . . .” He shook his head. “I was on my way somewhere, somewhere important.” He tapped his chest. “I can feel it here.”
“Can you take us to Bishop Serius?” Bolt asked again. “I think he might know.”
Hradian nodded, but lines etched his face as he struggled to piece the memory of his purpose together. “This way,” he said, his voice hollow with abstraction. “The offices of the bishops occupy the eastern wall so that they can watch the sunrise each morning.”
He led us through an entrance imposing enough to make a full squad of soldiers feel small, and we walked an open-air corridor constructed of archways that surrounded most of the cathedral. We came to a set of doors at the middle of the east-facing wall and traversed a broad hallway that connected to another corridor running from north to south.
“These are the offices of the leaders of the Merum church,” Hradian said. He pointed to the office immediately to our left. “That’s the Archbishop’s office. He . . .” Hradian stopped. “No, that’s not right. The Archbishop is dead.” He squeezed his eyes shut—“I knew that”—and shook his head, trying to clear it. “Come.” He set off at a crisp walk. “Bishop Serius’s office is only a few doors down.
We entered the anteroom of the bishop’s office, a high-vaulted space apparently designed to impress upon its occupant their insignificance in the grand scheme of Aer and the church. If so, it succeeded. In the center of the room sat a man of more than middle years dressed in the red of the Merum order, writing. The scratching noise of his quill reached us despite the distance.
Bolt stepped forward to the edge of the table and waited. Gael, Rory, and I stood behind him while Lieutenant Hradian walked the perimeter of the room, his eyes hooded and confused. After another moment, the man raised his head, showing no recognition of the last Errant.
“Yes?”
Bolt bowed from the waist until his torso paralleled the floor, a gesture I’d never seen him make before. “Errant Consto seeks an audience with Bishop Serius.”
The man rose and nodded. “I will see if the bishop is accepting visitors.” He disappeared through the door behind his desk, only to reappear a moment later.
“The bishop will be with you shortly, Errant Consto,” the secretary said. “If you will excuse me, I have an errand to attend to.” Without a glance for the rest of us, he departed, closing the door behind him.
Rory was the first of us to speak. “Have you ever felt someone not looking at you?”
Gael nodded. “He had his eyes locked on the door the moment he came out from the office.”
Behind me, I heard Hradian muttering. “Was I here? Is this where I was?”
Bolt growled an oath and crossed to the exit. “Locked from the other side,” he growled. “Quickly,” he ordered, “into Serius’s office. They’ll be coming for us.”
We darted the length of the room and into the bishop’s expansive quarters. Bookshelves of rich, silver-gilded wood lined each of the four walls, their contents filled with books and scrolls of every imaginable description. In front of a pair of arched windows stood a solitary desk, three paces wide and a pace deep, with a heavily padded chair in red behind it.
Where Serius sat staring blankly at us.
“Rory, lock the door and find some way to wedge it closed,” I said.
I didn’t bother to wait for Bolt’s encouragement or permission but crossed over to the bishop and entered his mind, touching him just long enough to see the disruption to his memories. Less than a heartbeat later, I came out. “Mud,” I said, “just like I saw in Hradian’s mind. Mirren’s been a busy girl.”
“You’ve got to put his memories back together,” Bolt ordered. “With Vyne dead, this man is our best chance for stability in the Merum order.”
I shook my head. “I can’t do what I don’t know how to do. You’ve been with me the entire time I’ve held the gift. You know I can’t do this.”
“Mirren’s newer to the gift than you are,” Bolt said, “and she managed to destroy them.”
“What’s easier, breaking a bone or healing it?” I asked.
The sound of men flooding into the room beyond, curtailed whatever answer he might have made.
Rory crossed over to the window casement and swung the lever that opened the windows. “This way,” he said.
Bolt nodded. “Go.”
I caught a glimpse of Rory’s fluttering cloak as he dropped out of sight. The sound of a key turning in the lock behind us accompanied his departure. Gael crossed over to the casement and looked down. “It’s too high,” she said. “Willet can’t make the jump.”
Bolt shook his head. “He can if we catch him. Now go!”
The fall lifted her hair, giving the impression that she didn’t jump so much as flew. Then she was gone. The chair Rory had used to block the door shifted and cracked as the men on the other side hit it with their weight. Bolt crossed over to the window and leaned out of it, but instead of jumping, he closed the casement.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s too far. When you’re as old as I am, your bones can snap like dried twigs.”
I didn’t bother to look out the window. I knew he was lying to me. A pair of thumps sounded from the far side of the door and the frame of the chair wedged beneath the lever cracked. “If you leave, the three of you will have a better chance of rescuing me.”
His shoulders shifted beneath his tunic, but he didn’t make
