Morning found Hellen back where it had all gone wrong. The counting house smelled of bodies sleeping too close together. The wide floor where clerks once stood to tally coin had been cleared of tables and benches and turned into a holding space. Dagorlind veils and gray robes pooled along the walls and across the floor in uneven rows, people curled into themselves on cloaks. Guards stood in the doorways in shifts, posted with rigid focus. They seemed relieved to have a task that did not require them to interpret the city’s grief.

  Catherine’s men guarded them in pairs at the doors and at the stair landings, the kind of watch that did not drift. Their coats were travel-worn and uniform in cut, foreign to Ivath in a way the Glinnel could read at a glance. They didn’t look away when Hellen entered. They treated her like a piece being placed where it belonged.

  They marched Hellen inside. A soldier – one of Catherine’s by the cut of his cloak, not Ashborn – caught her elbow and steered her into the room. It stung, the way they handled her like property. Hellen steadied herself and moved toward the nearest open patch of floor by a pillar, because there was nowhere else to go and because she could not bear to press her body into a stranger’s warmth.

  She folded her cloak under her hips the way she’d been taught as a novice: make yourself smaller, take up less space, do not demand. The habit came so fast she almost hated herself for it, but the room around her was full of eyes and she had no strength left for pride.

  Across the space, the other Glinnel watched her settle. It was hard to see them this way, a pile of people stripped down to raw nerves, hungry for a shape to blame. Some stared with flat exhaustion. Some watched with a heat that looked like relief at having something to aim at. Hellen kept her gaze lowered and tried to breathe.

  A voice rose from the far side of the room.

  “Well,” the woman said, her tone making the word carry. “They’ve brought us a wanderer.”

  Hellen’s head lifted. Sister Isabelle sat with her back against the old counting desk, veil pinned high and perfect even here, as if order was something she could impose by force of will. Two Glinnel women leaned close to her on either side, like attendants at an altar. Isabelle’s eyes found Hellen and held with the calm satisfaction of someone who enjoyed the sight.

  “Sister Hellen,” she said. “Elder Tanel’s favored instrument.”

  Hellen tasted copper at the split lip and forced herself to swallow. She kept her voice low. “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “Indeed,” she agreed. “Elder Tanel hasn’t been gathered up and penned by a foreign lady’s soldiers, while the city shakes itself apart beyond these walls. We are all of us prisoners, are we not?” Her eyes moved over Hellen’s face with clinical interest. “Yet you look as if you’ve been singled out.”

  A few Glinnel leaned in. Someone muttered a slur under their breath.

  Isabelle rose and crossed the floor in an unhurried walk, careful not to give the guards an excuse. She stopped in front of Hellen and looked down at her as if Hellen were a lesson laid out on the boards.

  “They took you from her,” Isabelle said.

  Hellen’s stomach turned as she pictured Sena, held by stronger hands, fighting the grip anyway. Sena’s eyes were fixed on Hellen with a kind of fury that had nowhere to go. Hellen kept her face still, because Isabelle would read any reaction as permission to carry on.

  Isabelle crouched, bringing her voice down so it carried to Hellen and to the nearest listeners.

  “Did she fight?” Isabelle asked. “Did she demand you back? Or did she stand aside the moment a soldier’s hands closed around your arm and decided that compliance would preserve her little arrangement?”

  Hellen’s throat tightened. She forced her next breath to come. “She didn’t discard me,” Hellen said, and hated how quickly the words arrived, how much they sounded like defense.

  Isabelle’s eyes brightened, as if she’d found a seam worth pulling.

  “Oh,” she murmured. “So you still believe in that Kelthi, Sena.”

  The name made the room shift. Hellen. Sisters turned their heads, attention snapping into place. Hellen thought, not for the first time, of how Sena was seen by the outside world: Sena, the Warden. Sena, the antlered Ashborn whose runners had been moving bread while the city shook. Sena, a convenient place for blame.

  Isabelle rose from her place on the floor and stepped into a position where the room could hear her, looking down at Hellen as though she had come to offer shelter.

  “You look bruised,” Isabelle said, her voice carrying pity like a blessing. “Your veil is torn. Your lip is split. They brought you in like a thief.”

  A murmur moved through the Sisters. Hellen could not tell whether it was outrage on her behalf or delight at the spectacle.

  Isabelle glanced toward the doors, then back to Hellen. “We are under arrest. All of us, gathered up in the counting house like coin. The Lady’s soldiers did not ask whether we are holy women; they did not ask if we are dangerous. They only count us, and lock the doors.”

  She let that sit in the air long enough for the anger to have a place to attach.

  “And yet,” Isabelle continued, “our Sister Hellen arrived to us already broken. That means something happened before the door closed.”

  Hellen’s fingers curled inside her sleeves. The scale pressed against her chest through the fabric, a private weight she could not touch without calling attention to the place her hand wanted to go.

  Isabelle crouched, close enough now that her words could be intimate, close enough that the Sisters near Hellen could hear every syllable.

  “Tell me,” Isabelle said. “Did Sena send you to us?”

  Hellen’s pulse kicked. Isabelle had phrased it carefully – no claim of orders or claim of command. It was a question that allowed any answer to become a confession.

  Hellen kept her gaze level. “No.”

  Isabelle’s brow lifted, as if she were relieved.

  “Good,” Isabelle said, and in that single word she made herself Hellen’s advocate. “Then you did not choose this. You were taken. Taken from the Warden who was meant to protect you.”

  A sister near Isabelle scoffed. Protect?” she said. “The Warden protects herself.”

  A few voices answered with agreement. Hellen heard the shape of it, resentment turned certain. Sena had been visible, and visibility drew blame.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Isabelle lifted a hand, palm up, gentle as an Elder calming the congregation.

  “Careful,” Isabelle warned, and the room obeyed. “We do not know what happened.”

  She looked back down at Hellen.

  “But we can ask,” Isabelle said, her tone merciful. “We can ask our Sister to speak plainly, so none of us have to guess.”

  Hellen’s mouth went dry. “When they took you,” she asked, “Where was Sena?”

  Hellen saw the shape of the trap immediately. If she said Sena was there and fought, Isabelle could twist it into an accusation: that Hellen had been close enough to be protected, but she hadn’t been. It would be apparent that Sena had been stripped of Wardenship, no longer in a position of authority. If Hellen said Sena was not there, Isabelle would declare abandonment. If she said she did not know, Isabelle would call her evasive and let the room do the rest.

  Hellen knew she could not let the Sisters know that the Ashborn command structure had shifted overnight.

  “You don’t have to protect her,” Isabelle said softly. “You don’t owe the Kelthi Warden your silence.”

  An answering sound came from the cluster behind Isabelle, a voice pitched loud so it could be heard by the whole room.

  “Heat-sotted,” Sister Ribbon said. She might as well have spat on Hellen. “That’s what she is. Heat-sotted and compromised.”

  Several Glinnel reacted at once, some with disgust, some with laughter that tried to sound pious. A few made warding gestures. A few glanced toward the guards, measuring what kind of cruelty was permitted under foreign eyes.

  Isabelle turned toward Ribbon with a look of sorrowful reproach, as if she were protecting Hellen from vulgarity.

  “Ssiter,” Isabelle said, “mind your words.”

  Ribbon lowered her chin, chastened in posture and pleased to have been noticed.

  Isabelle faced Hellen again and lowered her voice, tender as confession.

  “Do you see?” Isabelle whispered. “They are frightened. They are angry. They need a story to make sense of what happened to us.”

  Then she straightened, and when she addressed the room again her voice carried with the ease of a practiced leader.

  “We will not call her ruined,” Isabelle said. “We will not turn a Sister into alley-talk.”

  A few heads nodded. Isabelle had offered them an identity to wear, of discipline and mercy, above the filth of the streets.

  “And we will not pretend,” Isabelle continued, “that a Glinnel can spend her nights at the Warden’s side and return unchanged.” Isabelle used Hellen’s name as if it were a summons. “Hellen. Tell your Sisters what you were doing with Sena in the hours before you were brought here.”

  One of the guards turned his head, eyes flicking between Hellen on the floor and Isabelle crouched before her. Perhaps he could sense the room was turning into a problem that might require management.

  Isabelle knew it too. Isabelle had set it in motion on purpose.

  Hellen lifted her chin and chose the only answer that did not place itself like a knife in Sena’s ribs.

  “I was working for the city.”

  Laughter moved through the Sisters. Someone repeated the word working as if it were obscene.

  Isabelle let the laughter run. She held her face in gentle disappointment, as if the room’s ugliness pained her and Hellen’s evasiveness pained her more.

  “Working,” Isabelle echoed, softly, tasting the word. “For the city.”

  Hellen kept her chin lifted. Her pulse hammered at the hinge of her jaw. She didn’t look down. She refused to fold.

  Isabelle’s gaze stayed on her with the patience of a woman who understood that hunger always won. “When we were children, we were taught that the Tuning is a gift, to be accepted with joy.”

  A few Sisters stilled. The ones who had been laughing leaned closer. They knew this voice, Isabelle’s cadence like a lesson.

  “We were taught that holiness is not comfort; it is discipline. Holiness is the refusal to let the body write doctrine with its cravings.”

  Hellen bit her tongue as the room’s attention narrowed.

  Isabelle’s eyes moved toward Hellen’s torn veil.

  “And now,” Isabelle said, “we have a Sister who speaks of duty while she arrives to us with the marks of intimacy.”

  Hellen’s fingers curled inside her sleeves. The scale pressed against her breastbone.

  “Stop,” Hellen said.

  Isabelle’s brow lifted, surprised in a way that read as innocence to the watching Sisters.

  “Stop?” Isabelle repeated, gentle. “I haven’t accused you of anything.”

  Of course she hadn’t; no, she’d only made implications. Those were cleaner. Implication let the listener do the cruelty, which meant Isabelle could keep her hands spotless.

  “I’m asking you to stop,” Hellen said again.

  Isabelle tilted her head. “Of course,” she said. “You’re tired. You’ve been living among Ashborn. Among Kelthi women whose Heat makes them think their appetites are sacred.”

  Hellen’s stomach turned. “Don’t talk about her.”

  Isabelle’s mouth softened. “Surely we must be able to speak of our Warden. Our miracle of antlers and borrowed authority.”

  Hellen heard the room respond to that, relieved that Isabelle was saying it aloud.

  Isabell rose like a woman stepping into a pulpit. “You all know what Heat is,” she said to the room. “A Kelthi woman in Heat is a fire. It does not care about vows. It does not care about prayer. It does not care about the Tuning.”

  Hellen pushed herself to her feet. She swayed with exhaustion. “Stop,” she said. “You don’t know what you’re saying. Stop using doctrine to justify cruelty.”

  “Cruelty?” Isabelle asked. “No, sister. This is compassion. Compassion is telling you the truth before the room does it for me.”

  Hellen’s hands shook. She kept them inside her sleeves, not trusting what they would do if given freedom.

  Isabelle stepped closer, voice dropping into something intimate. “You went to her for safety. You went to her because her Heat makes her generous. Because her body wants to gather and keep.”

  Hellen’s lips parted, but no sound came out. The room was listening too hard.

  “And you didn’t go alone,” Isabelle continued, gentle, kind, as if she hated being the one to say it. “Captain Rhalir is there as well. Lord Balthir’s second. What a holy little nest. A Glinnel, a Kelthi in Heat, and a captain who has found a pet in this crisis.”

  Hellen’s breath hitched.

  Isabelle’s voice rose once more, sure as a sermon, so the room could hear every syllable.

  “The Dagorlind taught us that we must never be alone with power. Because power always takes. It takes bodies, it takes belief, and turns them into tools. So tell me, Sister Hellen. When you say you were working, which of them was pulling your veil back? The Warden with her Heat on your skin? Or the Captain, with his hands on you so she could share.”

  “Do not speak of Sena and Rhalir that way,” Hellen said. Her voice was thin. She tried again, louder. “Hold your tongue, Sister Isabelle.”

  “Oh, Hellen,” Isabelle said. “If you can’t bear to hear it spoken, perhaps you should not have allowed them to do such things to you.”

  Hellen took one step forward and struck Isabelle across the face with the flat of her palm.

  The sound cracked through the counting house. Several Sisters gasped. A few flinched back as if Hellen would turn on them next. Good, Hellen thought.

  Isabelle staggered, fingers rising to her cheek. Her eyes went wide, not with fear but with triumph. She looked wholly victimized.

  “You see?” Isabelle said to the room. “This is what I mean. She has transformed.”

  Hellen lifted her hand again, knowing she could not survive another sentence.

  But boots hit the boards at the edge of the room, and a guard seized Hellen’s wrist and wrenched her arm behind her back. Hellen struggled instinctively, then stopped when the grip tightened and her breath hitched.

  Isabelle pressed her fingers to the redding cheek and let herself look shaken. She didn’t wipe away the satisfaction in her eyes.

  “We’ll not have fights breaking out,” the guard mumbled as he dragged her backward.

  Rage blurred Hellen’s vision. Isabelle raised her voice to the room, turning Hellen’s breaking point into a lesson.

  “See?” Isabelle said. “Ashborn and Kelthi and Heat have made an animal out of our Sister.”

  Hellen’s nails dug into the guard’s sleeve as he hauled her toward the stair. She fought for breath and found one.

  “They didn’t,” Hellen rasped. “You did.”

  Isabelle only smiled, and the room watched Hellen disappear, some of the horrified, some of them relieved, and too many of them convinced.