Almond woke bewildered, but as always eager to please me. Seeing her tousled from sleep made me long to brush her: did the genets have brushes? I’d had one on the ship but hadn’t seen it in the luggage we’d packed. I would have to beg one off of Chester, or have one bought. They’d suffered so much in their lives; the thought of depriving them of so basic a necessity as grooming distressed.

At Chester’s request, the servants had left a child’s cloak for Almond, and so accoutered the two of us ventured into the deserted streets to make the journey to the Cathedral. There were lesser establishments, of course; Evertrue had long since grown past the point where its entire populace could squeeze into the nave of a single church. But there was no substitute for the Cathedral of the Holy Gift: its spires could be seen from anywhere in the city, and its sonorous bells marked the hours of the working day, from the vigil hour before dawn until the Star of Sacrifice set at night. The lesser churches added their bellsong for festival days, but we set our clocks by the Cathedral.

“It’s so big,” Almond whispered to me as we approached.

“It’s important,” I told her. “And it needs to hold a great many people.”

She glanced past her shoulder at the city, spreading behind us. “I think there are more people in this city than there might be in the whole of Serala,” she confided, pressing close to me.

“I don’t doubt it.” We mounted the stone stairs, heading for the great doors. According to Chester, they should be unlocked—I touched the handle of one, pushed, breathed out a sigh of relief as it cracked open without so much as a squeak. “Here we are. Go on in.”

Almond squirmed through before I’d finished opening it for myself, but I bumped into her as I stepped in, for she had frozen in awe. Nor could I blame her.

Pale shafts of colored light fell from the stained glass windows along the wall, high, thin windows granting them entrance in serried ranks all the way down the vast length of the nave to its grand altar in the apse, where a constellation of candles framed the shelf upon which the ceremonial cup had been set. The air was denser inside than it had been out: warm and thick with generations of incense, as if the air could hold the memories of the millions of beads of sap that had been burned here. Had I not seen real elves, I would have called the place enchanted and thought it metaphor; now that I had, I knew there was some magic here as real as anything pulled forth from the earth by sorcerers.

I found Almond’s hand beneath her cloak and pulled her after me, and together we walked the length of the nave. She would never have dared stop me to indulge her desires, so I did for her, at every window so she could stare at the images picked out in colored glass, now muted by the moonlight; at every statue tucked into an alcove and surrounded in flowers or placed over a basin of clear water; at every bank of candles where petitioners had left flames burning, in memory of the dead whose ashes reposed in the cemetery adjoining the church. There were wonders everywhere; even the crossing, which I had never stopped to examine, drew a gasp from Almond as she bent to brush little fingers over the tiles set in their starburst patterns.

But when we reached the altar, it was I who found myself unable to move. My mother would have genuflected before kneeling at the rail. She would never have stepped onto the dais reserved to the priests to look more closely at the altar dressing the way Almond did. Haloed in candles and drenched in the light of the windows that lined the apse’s curved ceiling, she craned her head back, wide-eyed. “Master?” she whispered. “What is that, in the painting?”

I could not bring myself to join her, though I did not think she looked out of place there. Unlike me, she was a complete innocent. I did not fear an angel’s reprisal on her behalf. Mine, though... the angels had come twice to elvenkind, if their own legends were right: once to give them language, once to save them on the battlefield. Would they come again to us now, knowing what we had become?

The painting that had captured Almond’s attention encompassed the entirety of the wall behind the altar, from floor to windows. It was dark, save for the center where Saint Winifred was depicted receiving the gift from the Angel. Was Winifred’s angel of the same cohort that had blessed the elves? And if so, was there a link between these visitations? Surely so, if only to prove that angels were apparently generous. “That is Saint Winifred,” I said in reply to her curiosity. “A mortal woman who offered her life to an angel in return for the salvation of mankind.”

“Did humans need saving too?” she asked, ears rising.

I looked at Winifred’s bowed head. “Perhaps all thinking beings do.”

“What from?” Almond wondered, eyes wide.

“Ourselves,” I replied, grave. “In the story, there was a danger that we would fall into darkness and death. Some say the scripture is intended to refer to the plague of pre-Break 90, which purportedly killed some fifty percent of the population, if our histories are correct. Others say it referred to one of the monarchist wars that afflicted us prior to the Empire of the Vow. No one is certain... only that the Church itself is old, too old for us to recall its origins with any clarity. The story of Winifred might be a folktale... or it might be history. Perhaps the Church has records on the subject, but they have never shared them if so.”

That had made me suspicious, once I’d reached adulthood and gone to the university. If the Church did have records of its genesis, why hadn’t it shared them? What were they hiding? And if they didn’t have records, how could they put forth the story of Winifred as truth?

“Which is it, Master?” Almond asked.

“I don’t know,” I admitted after a moment, humbled by the realization that it was true. I didn’t. And the experience of the past few months had amply indicated that it might very well be. “But I no longer think it impossible that angels saved the human race.”

“Why is this cup here?” she asked. “It smells....”

“Yes?” I asked, curious.

“Very good,” she finished. “Very... very old. Rich. There are layers and layers of smells in it.”

“That is the Cup of the Covenant. It symbolizes the pledge that humanity made in response to the angel’s gift.” Before she could ask, I said, “That we would keep faith with the angels, stand fast against sin and evil, bring forth the light at every opportunity, and wait... for... the coming of angels again.” I stopped, chilled. God Almighty. Had the Church foreseen the need for another visitation? Did they know something we didn’t?

Was that why they had not shared their records?

With a visible shiver Almond darted back to my side, startling me. She clung to me, my cloak falling in to hide her. “Almond?”

“It smells too good,” she said, chagrined, ears sagging. “I want to lick it. I don’t think I should touch something holy, especially not to lick it.”

“No,” I agreed, but I frowned. The cup always held wine from Church vineyards. But the genets had never shown any interest in alcohol. What else had it contained that it attracted her? I supposed the priests could have bled into it, but human blood did not draw them either. And had there been captive elves in cages, bled for the use of human ritual, at some point in the long history of the Church, surely someone would have noticed. Not only that, but... I thought I would know, if there were elves nigh to us. I could sense Last and his men in a way I could not Chester or the other humans. Come to that, I could vaguely grasp the genets and the drake as well. Was it because my ability to sense the world sprang from the magic in me that I could sense other magical beings as well? It was certainly not as distinct a sense as the world; I thought of them, and knew them to be close, but not where, or who.

So much I didn’t know. How could I wrest my brother from Sedetnet when I knew so little? We were tarrying too long. Everything I needed was in Vigil. I sighed.

“Thank you for bringing me, Master,” Almond said softly.

“I was glad to,” I said.

“We should go before we’re discovered, though.”

“I doubt any priest is stirring this late. But yes, it would be wise.”

As we made our way back to the door, she asked, “Do you think we will see angels again?”

Surprised, I glanced down at her. “Would you like to?”

“I should say no, because I am no one who would deserve to see an angel,” Almond replied. “But I would, Master, with all my heart. All of God’s love is wound up in angels, and all the magic too.” She sighed, her longing suffusing the exhalation. “Yes, I would be... oh, I would be grateful. To see an angel.”

“Angels only seem to come at times of great strife.” I smiled faintly. “It hardly seems fair that we never have the leisure to appreciate them, what with the demons and the walking dead overrunning the world when they appear.”

“But they do appear,” she said. “And when we need them most. Isn’t that the definition of a true friend?”

The notion of anything as rarified as an angel being granted such a homey appellation staggered. The angels of God, as good friends?

“I think you are a true friend, Almond,” I said instead.

“Oh, Master! I am just—”

“A genet, you will say, but you are kind, and generous with your heart, and here when I need you. If that qualifies an angel, surely it also qualifies you.”

She shivered. “I am nothing worthy of being spoken of in the same breath as an angel!”

“I think the angels themselves would disagree,” I said, and held the door open for her. She glanced at me, ears sagging, and then slipped out. Too well-bred to disagree, perhaps—or she’d decided it was no use attempting to convince me otherwise. Which suited me, because I was right, and in no mood to brook defiance. The Cathedral had left me feeling melancholic and uneasy, and I could not imagine why... only that I was glad to gain the safety of the St. Clary estate, and gladder still to slide into a warm bed.