"Just Zir Sisoruen and Chevaleresse Halford, actually," said Gilleland. "The Diggelby boy wandered in at an inopportune time, so you can imagine my relief that he wasn't harmed. You're smarter than your reputation, Maroto. I wonder just how smart."

"Dad, what-" Beard Bandit began, but Captain Gilleland's sharp frown cut out the boy's tongue. Oh, this was getting good, all right-the lighter the sky grew, the softer these bandits were looking. They were red with sunburn, not dark with tan. Probably hadn't been in the Wastes a week. For the first time since Maroto had made his sneering acquaintance, Captain Gilleland looked a little on edge.

"Smart enough to figure we lost everyone on the road who'd be loyal to their charges instead of going along with your plan," said Maroto.

"And here you stand, neck unslit despite your mouth," said Gilleland. "Advantages to sleeping in a noble's carriage with servants all about, instead of taking your turn on watch like the disgraced scout they thought they were hiring."

"I wondered how that red recluse got into the wagon. Lucky I always check my bedroll. Creeping things never stand a chance against the Villain Maroto-no matter how much venom they carry, a sandal settles them flat." Truth be told, it had taken a bit of willpower not to see if he could get high off the spider first.

"Game doth recognize game, Maroto," said Gilleland. "That's the only reason we're talking."

Maroto snorted. It would be bad enough if Outlanders just adopted Flintland slang, but they usually mangled the meaning. On the Frozen Savannahs, hunters meant a very different kind of game when they busted out that burn on a punk-even a scared hare knew the difference between a mouse and the maned wolf that stalked them both, was the idea.

"How would you have gotten them to take this route, if I hadn't put it out there?" Maroto recalled the captain's protests when he'd found the party at their inn and proposed the Desperate Road-he was cool as snowmead fresh out the ice-wagon, no doubt about it. "Your brat might have been waiting out here for nothing."

"Getting nobles to do what you want is simply a matter of telling them that they can't," said Gilleland smugly. "Now, dawn's upon us, so let's be done with this. I know you, Maroto, and to put it plainly you're not invited to this final fete. As a token of deference for your many heroic deeds during the Cobalt War, we'll give you a head start of a hundred heartbeats. In that time you can proceed through the caravan, taking what you can carry, and then travel a respectful distance back down the road. An hour after we depart, you can follow, leaving the Wastes however you like. Simple terms, yet generous."

"Simple is definitely the word," agreed Maroto. "What if I take the opportunity to rally the troops?"

"The rear guard, who are in league with us, or the fops? Either way, it doesn't end well for you."

"And how does it end for them?" Maroto's eyes kept flicking around the canyon walls as they came into clearer sight. So far, no glint of sunlight on arrowhead or gun barrel. "Ransom?"

"Ransom? Those chumps?" Captain Gilleland shook his head. "Sadly, much more trouble than it's worth. They have enough on their persons to make this a handsome enough windfall without our getting greedy and complicating things."

"Point," said Maroto, weighing his options. He wasn't being offered such a bum deal here, and it would pay out nicely for all parties. Well, other than the fops. Captain Gilleland wasn't so simple after all. One minute alone in the caravan and Maroto could seize enough loot to ride all the way to Agalloch in his very own pleasure wagon. He hadn't really thought much beyond traveling with the nobles back through the Wastes, anyway-what was he going to do, lead these hooting idiots all the way over the Star to Zosia and the Cobalt Company?

He only had two plays here: swing on five greenies and three hardscrabble toughs, with more sure to follow and a decided lack of dependable support from the only ones to benefit from such a suicidal move, or take Captain Gilleland's offer. He'd have a bit more blood on his hands, but what of it? They were stained enough he'd never notice another coat. Wasn't this exactly what he'd known might happen, taking the Giggle Contingent on the Desperate Road? Wasn't this what they'd expressly asked for, a gritty adventure in the real world?

Fight for your lives, fops, because Maroto won't!

The old Maroto would have already taken the deal, Old Black knew. He might've been the one to set up the betrayal himself. He might be stupid, but he was no fool.

"Tapai Purna comes with me," he decided.

"Not a chance," said Gilleland. "Your word means nothing, but hers might. What if she contacts the families of those unfortunate friends of hers who are about to be lost in a swarmstorm? Come on, Maroto, we both know this doesn't work if she walks."

"Yeah, I see that." There was nothing to stop him from accepting the offer, snagging Purna on his way back through the camp anyway, and then riding away with her. Tough luck for the rest of the fops, and tough luck for Gilleland if he felt like pursuing Maroto and Purna. That was the only move, when you got down to it-anything else was madness, and where had madness ever gotten him, other than right where he stood?

"Good. Now, that minute of yours starts now. It's been a real pleasure, hope we can do this again sometime." Gilleland waved Maroto off with his swordpoint, and his son's taut knuckles relaxed on his pommel. Beard Bandit thought Dear Old Dad had sorted everything. Well, sorted it soon would be.

"New terms," said Maroto, committing to his decision. "I'm afraid I can't give you a full minute to answer, though, just about ten beats of your chicken heart. You throw down your weapons and walk away, or I'll chop you all in half with my ax-if your own skin isn't worth the saving, Gilleland, think of your son."

Beard Bandit took a step back, bumping into one of his cronies, but Captain Gilleland was unimpressed. "Even in his prime, I doubt the Mighty Maroto could kill eight steady hands before one of them-"

"Chop in half," said Maroto, trying unsuccessfully to arrest the grin crawling up his face, the ax nearly floating off his shoulder. "Didn't say I'd kill you, said I'd chop you all in half. With my ax."

"Had we the time, I might actually like to see you try such a-" Captain Gilleland began, but the hard man never got to finish acting his part, because Maroto took him at his word.

Maroto had heard of Gilleland long before they'd met at the outset of this ill-fated job. The wiry ginger had made a name for himself at the Siege of Old Slair-if memory served, he was the one who'd taught the survivors of the first month how to trap the rats and vultures that went after the castle's dead, so the besieged would have something other than their fellows to eat. Maybe if they'd just sucked it up and eaten their fallen comrades they could've mustered the strength to carry the day when the gate finally fell, instead of getting their half-starved arses handed to them by the Usbans. Whatever the case, the treacherous veteran was about to discover that trapping a bear takes a lot more preparation than goes into catching rats.

Captain Gilleland had enough sense not to try to parry the double-headed ax. Instead, he dodged to the side, jutting his saber out to impale the charging barbarian. It might've worked, too, if his son hadn't been underfoot. Beard Bandit spoiled his father's play, leaving Captain Gilleland nowhere near so far from harm as he'd have liked as he bounced off his boy. And then Maroto proved himself an honest man.

Captain Gilleland's swordpoint missed Maroto's side by a good six inches, and Maroto's ax snapped through the smaller man's collarbone at an angle. The weapon hewed through meat and bone, grinding to a stop in Gilleland's ribs just beneath the captain's opposite armpit. To the amateur observer it might've seemed that Maroto had failed to deliver, but then he wrenched his wrists, twisting the ax's haft in his hands and leveraging Captain Gilleland's head, arm, and shoulder completely off his ruined body. Only the undamaged flank of Gilleland's leather dress uniform kept him from falling in two easy pieces, the upper half of the bisected man flopping sideways on the hinge of armor.

There was no moment of stunned wonder as everyone considered this feat, much as Maroto would have appreciated a brief reprieve to admire his handiwork. No, the fight was well and truly on, Gilleland's two goons already on top of him. The hard man and harder-looking woman had him pinned between them, and even a star of the Immaculate ballet would have been hard pressed to dance around their flashing blades.

You wouldn't guess it to look at him, but Maroto was one devil of a dancer, and as his two new partners assailed him, his hands jerked the ax free of Gilleland's teetering wreckage and his feet spun him away. Before the captain's carcass had even hit the ground, Maroto was tagged on the cheek by the man's sword and felt the whisper of the woman's blade open breeches and thigh alike. He'd also maneuvered himself directly into the pack of stumbling, fumbling wannabe bandits, and as the two heavies pressed their advantage Maroto put the greenies between himself and the real danger. He waltzed through the cluster of youths before their steel had cleared leather, the two mercenaries barking at the kids to "Get him, get him!"

Easier said than done, a single blade managing to swat his back only to bounce off the chainmail vest. Fast as he'd launched his retreat, Maroto braced himself and heaved forward again, the side-armed arc of his ax a grey blur. It nicked the side of a stubbly, sunburned bandit on its way to its true target. As the full measure of the weapon sheared into the hip of Gilleland's hard man, the first kid struck by the weapon collapsed against his fellows, guts falling out of the modest rend in his shirt. Maroto kept his ax sharp.

Eight against had turned to five, and Maroto was really only counting one of those. Yet he no longer had surprise on his side, and a volley of gunfire from the halted caravan implied that the four other traitorous guards were executing the fops with due haste and might ride to the front at any moment. Gilleland's sole remaining mercenary had the sense to follow Maroto's example and insulate herself behind the four upright bandits, none of whom seemed eager to be the first to charge the barbarian now that he had darted back out of striking distance. There came the breathy pause Maroto had wanted back when he'd hewed Gilleland in twain, a moment to appreciate what he'd done-lazy as he'd been these last few years, he hadn't lost his touch!

From the corner of his eye, he saw several riders break toward them from the caravan. Better sort this lot fast, before- Thwack. He reeled to the side, wondering how in the hells one of these runts had blindsided him, the pain in the side of his head rapidly rising from bad to White-Hot-Fucking-Agony. The arrow was still vibrating from its impact with his skull, sending dizzying waves of awfulness into the numb flesh of his ringing ear. Greenies and hard woman alike rushed him then.

Beard Bandit led with a saber clearly modeled after his father's, and Maroto went to the place he always did in a tough fight, the place from which there was no coming back, not until the last foe had fallen. His vision cleared, his heart slowed, his mind focused, even the church bell clanging in his ear fading away to a distant chime. He had made a promise to these scrubs, and he might not be able to keep an oath to himself, but he always kept those he made to his enemies.

Captain Gilleland's son came apart in a cloud of blood. Maroto's ax kept going, into a greenie behind Beard Bandit, lodging in the poor wench's rib cage. The hard woman almost nailed him but he yanked the ax free of the dying bandit girl in time to parry her slash. The noise of the world fell away into silence, save the riot his partners made for him-a grunt, a gasp, a boot heel grinding in the dust. Even deaf in one ear, Maroto heard them all so clearly he could have closed his eyes and cut them down by sound alone.

Probably. He had no intention of testing that theory at present.

Maroto danced with the bandits, with his ax, with the blades darting at him from all directions.

Chop. There went a hand, split down the middle, all the way up the wrist.

Step. There went a cutlass, skidding off his mailed chest.

Chop. There went a whole arm.

Step. There went a sunburned punk, blundering between Maroto and the hard woman.

Chop. There went the top half of a head.

Step. There went a rich spume, Maroto bringing a red rain to this parched earth.

Chop. There went Maroto, spinning away on the ground before the mercenary could hit him again with her sword. The slash across his knuckles shouldn't have been enough to make him drop the ax, but there it was, lying on the ground amid the splayed legs of felled fools. He rolled farther away from it. He'd put enough space between himself and his attacker to leap back up, but as he finished the roll the arrow in his ear dragged across the rough earth. The sensation utterly poleaxed him. It felt like wizard's lightning, his body shutting down completely, his mind as rattled as his flesh. He lay shuddering in the sand just long enough for the hard woman to tower over him, a long sword diving down to spit him...

First lightning out of nowhere, and now a thunderclap came just before its storm cloud, the whole order of the world running backward. The hard woman collapsed atop Maroto even as the fume of peppery gunsmoke enveloped them both. They sprawled like lovers, the contents of the mercenary's fissured skull running down into Maroto's stunned face. The cloud quickly rose, but Maroto was unable to extricate himself from the dead woman's weight. Either the arrow in his head had struck deeper than he'd thought or that first cut he'd taken to the leg was bleeding him out. Either way...

"Ho, Your Majesty, should I give you and your new friend some privacy?" Purna's voice came from far, far away, but then she leaned over him, a flintlock pistol in one hand and a kakuri in the other. Smoke rose from the muzzle of the richly filigreed gun and blood ran down the bow-shaped curve of the long knife, beading off its tip. She had clearly taken the time to apply several black and orange stripes of makeup beneath her eyes before rallying the rest of the fops to the greater cause. She wiped the blood from her blade on her victim's back, then sheathed her weapons in the black leather holsters on her studded white belt. "You two make a cute couple."

"Hey," said Maroto, his own voice seeming to drift down from somewhere high above him. "Get me up."

"Sure, I-ugh, is that in you?" Purna snatched back the hand she'd proffered him and pointed to her own ear. "Are you dying? Is it in your brain?"

"Get me up and I'll tell you," said Maroto, his voice even farther away now. He needed to get this done quick, before he blacked out. "Slow about it, now."

Purna obliged, rolling the dead mercenary off him with her foot and helping him up. As soon as she tried he slapped her away, collapsing back into the sand and trying not to puke. Standing hadn't been such a good idea after all. Woof.

Her voice sounded even more remote as she prattled on. "The rear guard were in on it, you know? They thought they were slick, telling us to hurry out of the wagons without even dressing. A fine thing I'd already roused everyone and told them to ready their weapons before I went looking for the guards, or who knows what would have happened! They didn't like us coming out with guns primed, and said as much, which was when I took a look with Diggelby's hawkglass, just in time to see you swing on Gilleland. I gave the order, and we shot them down."

Purna took another deep breath before concluding her account. Maroto reckoned she could probably hold her breath for minutes underwater.

"So we took their camels and rode up to help you, and Diggelby, Din, and Hassan went after the two who got away-they were hiding in that decoy wagon with crossbows, but we flushed them out. Hardly any casualties... other than you."

"Wonderful," groaned Maroto. Even lying flat in the dirt he felt like he was balancing on the prow of a dinghy in a hurricane, relying on chance to keep him from falling overboard. "You make an all right sidekick, kid."

"Sidekick?" Purna raised her penciled-on double brows at him. "Have you ever even listened to a song, Maroto? I'm the brash young hero, and you're the tired old master I have to persuade to teach me."

"Sounds awful," he said, suddenly wondering if he was going to die. Looking down the length of his numb body, he saw that his entire left leg was soaked red. "That mean you'll do what I tell you?"

"Until you die, sure," said Purna, her faint voice causing the invisible sea beneath Maroto's back to roil even fiercer. "You'll probably have to sacrifice yourself to save me before the end."

"Don't count on it," he said, the hot air tasting of blood and harsher metals.

"Well, we'll see if you last the day-you may have already gotten the jump on that part of the song."

There was a devil-blessed thought. The possibility did little to improve his outlook. "You want to be my protegee?"

"More than anything." Purna clasped one of his massive hands in both of hers. "When the time comes, I swear I'll avenge you, Maroto."

"Great," he said. "In the meantime, be a good girl and help me chop up these bodies."

"Excuse me?" Purna dropped his hand. It landed on his chest with the weight of a maul.

"In half. Every one." A nap seemed like a capital idea all of a sudden. Why didn't he take more naps? Devils knew he deserved them.

"Are you sure you don't need Koz's valet to tend you?" said Purna skeptically, and before Maroto could point out that he'd never said anything about not needing a sawbones, the darkness that forever lurks behind the eyes of mortals rushed up to give him a hug. I missed you, too, he thought as he blacked out in the sand, an arrow in his ear and a bloody-toothed grin straining his mouth. He still had it.

CHAPTER.

19.

The queues to the public booths were a constant of Diadem. Hundreds upon hundreds of citizens lined up each morning, the succession of sinners stretching out the wall of doors of the Lower Chainhouse and down the wending stairs to the streets far below. After a feast or festival, the lines numbered in the tens of thousands, the citizenry waiting all day and all night to have five minutes alone in the confession box.

The members of the clergy and the noblesse had their own booths in the Middle Chainhouse, and the wait there was rarely more than an hour. When Sister Portoles reached the front of the line and a confessional opened up, she did not wait the customary cooling time before entering. The old priest leaving the box before her had barely removed his thin, guttering candle from beneath the bench when Sister Portoles inserted her wider tallow into the alcove and entered the cramped booth. Settling onto the narrow bench, she found the iron bands of the seat still warm from the previous candle.

"Mother forgive me, for I am unclean."

Portoles never enunciated so well as when she was in the confessional. In all the corners of the Star, in all the chambers of the church, there was nowhere she felt more at home... save at her penitence bench immediately after a confession. Anticipating her sentence, she had exchanged the undergarments that usually protected her from the rough wool robes for a hair shirt and collar, tightly cinched garters of jagged glass rosaries around her legs. Each of the four thousand steps from her cell to the confessional hall had been a private hell of rasping friction, the hair of her vest turning to steel wool with the first drop of sweat, and despite the armor of calluses her chafed nipples and scarred thighs were bleeding by the time she arrived at the queue.

"How long has it been since last you cleansed yourself?" The grate separating penitent from confessor bubbled out in an iron reproduction of a face. Portoles had heard the grate was designed so that the innocent should see the benevolent visage of the Fallen Mother, Savior of Humanity, but that the guilty would instead behold the inhuman face of her brother-husband, Creator of the World, Deceiver of Angels and Mortals alike. Portoles only ever saw the one, but then she had never come to the box free of sin.

"Nearly four and twenty hours," she said, marveling at just how much the world had changed in such a short span.

"How much sin could one of the Fallen Mother's chosen accumulate in so few hours?" asked the confessor, and Portoles squirmed on the rapidly heating seat. Before Kypck, this had been the pinnacle of her desire, to come here and confess her wickedness so that she might be free of her deviltry, if only in the moments when the bench singed stripes into her robes and the flesh beneath, and after, when the scourge's chains licked her back and breasts, when the crown of barbs kissed her brow. Now her eagerness for atonement warred against the orders Queen Indsorith had given her, and despite the queen's confidence in her charge, she struggled with how to proceed.

"I defiled my temple," she began, reasoning that if she started at the beginning of the previous day she might better chart a safe path to the end. "Again."

A heavy sigh from the grate, which led Portoles to believe it was Mother Kylesa on the other side. "How many times have you committed this deed, sister, and how many times have you atoned for it?"

"I... I am not sure. Many times, Fallen Mother forgive me."

"She forgives those who regret their actions, and who struggle to improve their behavior." Even filtered through the molded grate, the confessor's voice carried a caustic tone. "It is a grave enough business when a lowly peasant chooses to sin and sin again, thinking so long as she confesses after she can do as she wishes. For a sister to behave so repulsively is another matter entirely."

"It's true," said Portoles, shifting from side to side on the bench despite herself. The scalding lines radiating from the seat made sitting still impossible, much as she deserved the pain. "I keep sinning despite your efforts and mine. I can overcome temptation, I can, and I do, more often than not... but sometimes I am weak, and I think it is not such an evil thing I do, so long as after I come here with an honest heart."

"What you are doing is the greatest sin of all." The Deceiver's face seemed to breathe in the heat of the box, sweat stinging Portoles's eyes. The light from the candle under her seat cast writhing shadows on the walls, as if she were already engulfed in flames. "You do not sin of ignorance, or even passion. You do not fall victim to temptation. You make a choice, sister, a choice to commit foul acts abhorrent to your Savior. You do this in spite of the example you are supposed to set for your peers and the laity, in spite of our many conversations on the matter. Yes, perhaps 'spite' is indeed the only applicable term, for why else would you continue to do this to those who love you?"

"Spite?" Of her many weaknesses, Portoles had never believed that to be one of them. She knew she had rebellious impulses, but truly believed in the goodness of the Fallen Mother with all her heart. "Mother, I swear I do not commit these acts out of ill will."

"No? And whom do you hurt with your actions? It is not only yourself, is it? You seduce your fellow anathemas, and then you come here, sin after sin, forcing we sisters who are far above such wickedness to sit audience to your crimes. I wonder, is it the sin itself or the act of rubbing my nose in it after that gives you more pleasure?"

"I'm sorry," whispered Portoles, bracing her arms on the warming walls of the narrow box and pressing herself down on the bench. The much-needed pain brought clarity, as it always did. The confessor was absolutely correct, yet try as she did to feel remorse, all Portoles felt was an eagerness for further penance. "I do try, Mother, I do, but you're right. I am base, ruined, wicked. It's what I am."

"Excuses," hissed the Deceiver, his mesh face leaning inward to Portoles, as though he meant to whisper in her ear, or steal a kiss. "It's easy, isn't it, to blame your nature? To lay all the fault on whatever ancestor of yours lay with a devil? To abuse yourself and others to sate your criminal appetites, and then shrug your shoulders and say it's a defect of birth? To blame the Fallen Mother for your own weakness?"

"Yes!" whimpered Portoles, her upper half warring with her lower to keep her buttocks pressed to the bench. She could smell the steam rising from the sweaty wool of her habit, taste the curl of smoke on her scarred tongue, and pushed herself down harder, knowing none of this yet was the worst. That would come when she had to rise from the seat. "Yes, yes, yes!"

"Of course." The Deceiver's breath stank of her musky sweat when she lay beside Brother Wan, defiling herself. "You are not so different from the pureborn, Sister Portoles, much as you deny it in your heart, much as they deny it with their tongues. Everyone wants an excuse for their bad decisions, for their selfish desires. Everyone wants to pretend they can't help themselves. Everyone wants to put the blame on the Deceiver for creating them with evil already festering in their souls instead of thanking the Mother for giving them both the awareness to know their own sins and the strength to fight them."

Too ecstatic to speak, Portoles nodded and wept. It was all true. She caught her left hand reaching down to pull up her habit and shoved the fist into her mouth, biting the knuckle until she tasted her own salty blood. Still she throbbed, and clenched her thighs together to grind the rosaries in deeper, pulling the scalded flesh free of the bench as she did. This brought on a dizzying rush far more perfect than anything she could effect with her fingers-the touch of the divine upon her wretched frame.

Before, when Portoles was at her most vulnerable, her confessor had insisted the witchborn's thirst for sin came from the Deceiver. That she sinned for base pleasure, to blaspheme. Her confessor was wrong. Here, when the candle of Portoles's faith burned away all distractions, she knew the true motive for her own compulsive sinning: she was seeking her Savior. For a good and pious anathema like Brother Wan, faith must come effortlessly, but Portoles never felt the presence of the Fallen Mother during prayers or mass or carrying out her holy duties. She had to hunt for her god, and in a lifetime of obedience to the Burnished Chain, the only times she found her were when she dared to transgress the holy laws, when she risked her very soul to capture the attention of its keeper. It was the touch of the Fallen Mother that gave Portoles the courage to sin, and it was her touch that released Portoles from the agonies of confession. If Portoles's sins were acts of rebellion, as the superiors insisted, they were rebellions against the Chain, not its maker; for all Portoles's doubts in herself and her monstrous ilk and even her church, with all its contradictions and cruelties, the one thing she never doubted was her elusive Savior.

Fast as it came upon her, Portoles slumped back on the bench, empty again, confused and scared as she always was after surviving another confession. She shivered, and realized the seat beneath her had cooled, and the booth had gone dim. Her candle must have burned lower than it ever had before. Wiping sweat from her face, she nervously met the mute gaze of the Deceiver-had she cried out?

"You shall wear the Mother's Crown, which her jealous husbrother forced upon her brow before casting her out of heaven," the confessor recited in her clear voice, what had appeared to be the Deceiver again but an artfully wrought grate. "And you shall lash thyself with the Scourge of Angels, as she was lashed by those anathemas loyal to he who made the world with his word, instead of she who questioned it with hers. Two score and six lashes, and the Crown until you are next called from the Dens by a superior. Perhaps you may provide an example yet."

Forty-six lashes. Portoles could not even offer the customary thanks, her scarred tongue glued behind her file-corrected teeth. Forty-six. She had never heard such a sentence. The most she had ever received at one time was a score, and that instance had nearly killed her. Brother Wan had tended her throughout her long recuperation. No pureborn could undergo such an ordeal and live, and Portoles doubted one of her kind could, either.

"Now, before you undergo your penance, we do need to discuss another matter. Lenience may be retroactively applied to your sentence, and indeed, those given for future infractions. All you must do is offer up the truth of what transpired last night, omitting nothing of what was said or done."

What was this, now? No wonder Mother Kylesa hadn't even asked if Portoles had more to confess before handing down the sentence-it was always going to be a fatal penance. The queen had warned Portoles that her superiors would likely pump her for information following their private meeting of the night before, but Portoles had believed they would simply ask her. This sort of low trick she had never expected, and it hardened her heart. Had Mother Kylesa plainly put the question to her before, as she was undergoing her righteous agonies, she might have ignored the orders of her queen and freely told all there was to tell. She would have betrayed the first person who had ever placed absolute trust in her, even knowing as she must that if she repeated the queen's secret to a confessor the sovereign could lose her very throne.

But now, being threatened instead of asked, Portoles found herself all too eager to accept Queen Indsorith's standing offer of absolution. The Crimson Queen of Samoth had powers of spiritual dispensation equal to the Black Pope-it was one of the Chain's major concessions to the Empire during the Council of Diadem, the parley that had ended the civil war. Portoles had never before found herself in such a precarious position, forced to make a decision that would not only affect the rest of her life but doubtless the fate of her eternal soul. This was a test of the Fallen Mother, a test every bit as dire as any found in the Chain Canticles, and until this moment Portoles herself had not known which path she would take... To refuse a confessor of the Burnished Chain was so grievous a sin that Portoles had never even fantasized of it, but now she found that like all her transgressions, it came as naturally as breathing.