“I’ll be his what?”
“His mighty sword, raising up . . . no, that’s not right.” She shook her head. “No, no, no, I . . . wait. It’s not Erescan, is it?”
“It’s Oscan. Oscan twenty-fifth.”
Her eyes went very wide. “No, no, then it’s too late, much too late and we have—” She looked around the square surrounding Saint Limarre’s. “No, that’s not right. Wait. Is it Oscan in 1215?”
The girl was asking the year. Dayne had heard Sister Alana mention the troubled cloistress in her care. This must be her.
“Yes, that’s right,” Dayne said.
“Too soon. But yet you’re—” She looked off to her left for a moment, and then turned back to Dayne. “I’m sorry, I get terribly confused some times. What did I say I was waiting for?”
“Your champions?”
“Silly of me. I’m waiting for my carriage, to take me to my new assignment.” She paused, looking down the road, and then continued with a voice that was almost haunted. “At Saint Bridget’s.”
“Is everything all right, Sister?”
“Definitely not,” she said. She looked at Dayne carefully. “You, my dear friend, should remember the parable of Saint Keller. Namely, the seventeenth verse.”
“I’ve read it, but I don’t know the—”
She reached up and touched his cheek—which was quite a stretch for her—and the contact briefly made Dayne feel compelled to look her in the eyes. “Hold close those that are dear, thy beloved friends, and do not fear to share your burdens with them, for their counsel and wisdom shall guide you through the darkest places.”
Dayne suddenly wanted to cry, but had no idea why, how this strange young woman had unlocked something in him with those simple words. It was as if she had relieved him of a burden he had been carrying for years.
She stepped away and picked up the valise. “I think I don’t wish to wait for the carriage. I will find Saint Bridget’s of my own accord. You will find Sister Alana inside.”
With that, she walked off to the west.
Dayne went into the church, back toward the living quarters, finding Sister Alana in the kitchen with two other cloistresses.
“Dayne,” she said kindly as she came over to him. “Are you here for . . . absolution?”
“Yes,” he said, and she led him out of the kitchen to one of the private chambers off the chapel.
“What’s going on?” she asked, taking out her journal.
“I’ve been looking into a large number of children going missing in Dentonhill.”
“You think it’s connected to the children Satrine rescued from Quoyell?” she asked.
“Possibly,” Dayne said. “They were providing children for someone’s nefarious purposes. Maybe with Inspector Rainey stopping one source, they’ve resorted to a new one.”
“All right. What else?”
“One child saw an inhuman giant take children, in the basement of a collapsed, abandoned house.” He gave her the address.
“In the basement?”
“That’s what the child said. I checked it out, but it wasn’t safe to look around too much.”
“I’ll pass it on to Satrine and Welling,” she said. She thumbed through her journal. “Minox is wondering what you know about a member of Parliament named Chestwick Millerson.”
Dayne scratched his chin in thought. “He’s one of the chairs from Sauriya, I believe. Traditionalist. I don’t know much more off the top of my head, but I’ll look into it. Did he say why?”
“He did not,” Sister Alana said. “I recognize this partnership of ours is new, but he’s yet to be very open in his discoveries. I get the impression he wants to put together complete information before sharing it. And he’s hurting over his sister.”
Dayne remembered—Minox’s sister had gone missing, and presumed dead, on the same night Rainey had stopped the child abductions. Probably due to the same people.
Dayne thanked her and made to leave, then added, “Oh, and that young cloistress outside? She decided not to wait for her carriage and just walk to where she was going.”
“She wasn’t waiting for a carriage,” Sister Alana said. “She was supposed to go hours ago.”
“Well, she’s gone now,” Dayne said.
Sister Alana scowled and nodded. “Thank you, again.”
Dayne left the church, but the words of the young cloistress still rang through his head. And he was hungry. So it made sense to head to the Nimble Rabbit and seek out the counsel of some beloved friends.
Veranix returned to campus, more than ready to get back to Almers Hall and rest. Switching his shroud to an illusion of a student in a campus cadet uniform, he made his way across the grounds. Over the months of being the Thorn, he had tried a few different methods of going unnoticed as he made his way to his lair—Mila liked the word “safehouse” but “lair” was much more fun—but just looking like the very people who patrolled the campus for its safety was easily the most effective.
The entrance to the lair was not in the most convenient place, in terms of proximity to Almers. But it was close to the Dentonhill wall, and it was nearly perfect in so many other ways. It was a large underground room with a hidden entrance that no one else on campus had used for decades. How Kaiana had even found it was a mystery, but he did not complain. He slipped into the shed that housed the hidden entrance, opened it, and dropped down to the next level. He could see the flicker of lamplight in the chamber, heard voices. Kaiana was obviously there, possibly Mila and Delmin. He wondered what they were up to.
“I might know who this giant is,” Veranix said as he came in. “It might be a coinci—”
“Thorn,” Kaiana said as she came to the doorway. Her face was tense, her jaw grinding. “We have guests.”
Veranix jumped forward, drawing an arrow and nocking it as he came into the room, shifting his appearance to cover his face with shadow again.
“Ease down, Thorn. Just us.”
Sitting at the table next to Delmin and Mila were Asti and Verci Rynax,
