They did not bring us back through the archive corridors.

  Instead, Prodvin handed us off to Halvic once more, who ushered us into a small antechamber near the cloister’s inner court.

  “Payment may be rendered here,” Halvic said pleasantly. “I’ll see the reliquary fetched from its niche.”

  Anabeth inclined her head. “Of course.”

  The door shut behind him with a muted thud.

  I turned to her at once. “You are not actually going to spend twenty-eight thousand Kohns on that.”

  She gave me a sidelong look. “Why ever not?”

  “Because that is—” I searched for a word that would not sound hysterical. “—obscene.”

  She hummed, already reaching into her satchel.

  I watched, morbidly fascinated, as she withdrew a small, plain leather pouch. There was nothing to suggest it held more wealth than most people in Branfield would see in a decade of working.

  She loosened the drawstring and began to count.

  One coin hit the table. Then another. Then another.

  They were thousand-Kohn pieces. Thick, heavy, stamped with the Concord crest and edged in fine radial grooves. She laid them out in neat rows of seven.

  Seven. Four rows.

  Twenty-eight.

  What…

  She had twenty-eight thousand Kohns.

  She had twenty-eight thousand Kohns. And she was using them on this.

  Halvic returned with the reliquary wrapped in layered cloth, smiling with professional relief. “Ah,” he said. “Excellent.”

  He did not recount the coins. He did not test them. He simply swept them into a prepared coffer. Anabeth accepted the reliquary with both hands.

  “A pleasure doing business,” she said.

  “The pleasure is ours, Lady Armas,” Halvic replied.

  We were escorted out beneath the open sky a few minutes later, the reliquary secured, the transaction complete. Halvic told us to wait for another church member to escort us to our rest chamber, so we did.

  Only once the cloister doors had closed behind us did I finally manage to speak. “You spent twenty-eight thousand Kohns.”

  “I didn’t spend it, I placed it.” she said, tapping the side of her satchel. “And besides, it would’ve been suspicious if I hadn’t paid. This item could always be resold, hopefully for half the price at least. And I still have half my allowance left.”

  So she had at least fifty-six thousand Kohns with her…

  The cloister doors had barely finished settling back into their grooves when footsteps approached from behind them again.

  Halvic emerged once more.

  “My apologies,” he said. “It appears Brother Temsel has been called away, and the others are occupied with evening observances. I’ve been asked to see you to your rest chamber myself.”

  Anabeth smiled at him, polite and unremarkable. “How fortunate for us.”

  “Yes,” Halvic agreed.

  He gestured for us to follow and led us away from the Cloister’s brighter arteries and into a quieter wing, where the gold gave way to darker marble veined with soft light. The doors here were fewer, heavier, each marked with a discreet sigil of warding rather than ornament.

  Our chamber stood at the end of the hall. Halvic stopped before the door and gathered himself. He set two fingers to the sigil worked into the stone, lowered his eyes, and murmured his prayers,

  “By ledger kept and vow unbroken,

  By ash made witness and gold made humble.

  Let what is entrusted remain so,

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  and let the threshold remember whom it serves.”

  The sigil warmed beneath his touch. Light traced the prayer’s path through the carving, and then the stone eased apart.

  A simple lock would have done the same job with fewer words and less ceremony, but I guessed a lock could be picked. Words couldn’t.

  Halvic stepped back at once, deferential again. “Your chamber. The wards are keyed to that prayer. Should the Representative or her guardian wish, the passphrase may be altered from within. Any competent practitioner can do so.” His smile returned, mild and earnest. “Just remember to dispel it before you depart.”

  “Mm,” Anabeth leaned against the wall, rubbing her eyes. “Thank you for such wonderful service.”

  Before he turned to leave, Halvic hesitated, then reached into the satchel at his side as if remembering something he had nearly forgotten on purpose.

  “Ah—Representative,” he said softly. “A courtesy of the Cloister. Nothing formal. Merely… provisions.” He set the items down on the small table by the door with care that bordered on reverence. “For your comfort during your stay.”

  There were three vials, stoppered in pale crystal etched with Saint Eurelin’s sigil, their contents catching the wardlight with a gentle, living sheen. Beside them lay a modest trinket, no larger than a coin, worked in gold-thread filigree around a smooth core of translucent stone.

  “Blessed restoratives,” Halvic continued, almost apologetic. “And a minor reliquary charm. The Saint’s hand is said to linger kindly on such things.” He smiled, embarrassed by his own offering. “Hardly worth mentioning, of course.”

  Halvic bowed once and withdrew without another word. I picked one of the vials up once he had gone.

  This ‘minor’ charm had such a restorative effect… better than an Epic item? No wonder that the High Priest’s miracles had been spoken of in the same breath as scripture.

  The door closed behind us, and the chamber revealed itself.

  It was the most lavish room I had ever been invited into without being expected to kneel. I took a few steps in, despite myself. The wards, in the form of pale orbs hovering near the ceiling and corners like oversized saucers, emitted just enough aetheric light to remind you they were awake. The walls and velvet hangings drank it all in. Even the air seemed tinted, thick with warmth and a weird quiet. This place even came with a private annex for baths. I had the uncomfortable sense that if I stayed long enough, I might start to match the place and forget that I was a man who usually counted coins before spending them.

  “Mm,” Anabeth murmured. “How very thorough of them. These wards can truly smother all sounds! We could shout confessions until dawn, my lord, and the Cloister would hear nothing but its own prayers.”

  She stepped closer, close enough that the warmth of her presence intruded my personal space. “Mmm,” she hummed. “So. Have you decided where they hide their precious truths yet?”

  “Between the first and the sixth chamber. A high possibility of the third or the fifth.”

  “Well. That settles tomorrow’s work, doesn’t it?” She peered closer. “Which means today is quite free.”

  I sighed, already recognizing the direction of her thoughts.

  “In a chamber like this,” she continued, “so private, so carefully sealed… it would be a shame not to make use of the hospitality. There are surely a few ways the two of us could pass the time, my lord.” She leaned in then, close enough that her breath brushed my ear. “You’ve promised.”

  “Patience,” I said. “The Lord has pressing matters to attend to, in the ablution. Temptations must queue behind necessity.”

  “Naturally,” Anabeth replied. She perched on the bed as if she had been invited to do exactly that, legs swaying as she hid a yawn that did not trouble her in the least. “I’m waiting, my lord.”

  I retreated into the ablution sanctum—a private annex cleverly concealed behind a velvet-draped arch, complete with heated stone basin, privacy wards, and enough incense to suggest repentance was optional but encouraged.

  I shut the door and leaned back against it, and immediately pulled out a potion vial and drank.

  Fatigue dulled performance, and the last few… engagements had set a standard I was not keen to publicly fail to meet. I would not survive the humiliation. There were monasteries less isolated than my potential shame.

  Henry, I told myself, do not fret. You have pleased her grandly before. You will do so again. You will give her a performance she will never forget.

  I glanced toward the basin again. Saints help me, but habit was habit.

  A quick wash would do no harm. Respectability demanded it.

  I turned back to the ablution sanctum, splashed water over my hands and face, rinsed my mouth three times, and scrubbed at my neck with more care than strictly necessary. I leaned closer to the polished stone, inhaled once, then again. The smell was incensed and not foul. Acceptable.

  I opened the door with the quiet care of a man prepared to be judged.

  Anabeth was… asleep. She was sprawled across it at a diagonal, one arm flung over a pillow like she had wrestled it into submission. Her boots were still on.

  Right. Perhaps I should have offered her a vial as well.

  She hadn’t changed the door’s passphrase, though. That wouldn’t be a problem, would it?