How many people dreamed of fairies riding through their dreams that night? The absolute stillness of the city in the hours before dawn struck me as uncanny enough without adding our fey glow to it. Chester vanished among our company, a darkness cutting our light. Passing through the empty streets in a cold that seemed deeper than the season warranted, I was grateful for the heat of the drake beneath my legs and the genets clinging to me, before and behind me on the drake’s saddle. When my nose grew too chilled I hid it in Kelu’s hair until feeling returned. She did not seem to mind, or perhaps she didn’t notice.

Evertrue still felt like home. I knew this when the realization that this quiet would never end if I failed stole my breath.

The north gate should have been guarded. When we passed under it, I espied men on the ramparts, but they wore the Church’s tabards. They watched us pass beneath the arch but did not challenge us, and as easily as that we were quit of the capital.

Alongside the road two groups tarried in expectation of our arrival, and very disparate groups they were. My classmates were clustered together with Eyre, who had come alone, as prophesied. Larger of the two was my Church escort: the Vessel, three of her priests, and....

“Are those knights?” Chester asked, shocked and, I thought, fascinated. “I did not know the Church had militia.”

“They know about demons and undead,” I replied. “Perhaps we should not be so surprised.”

His eyes snagged on their weapons, and he fell silent.

I greeted the Vessel first, out of courtesy for her rank, and for that she was a stranger to me. She inclined her head, not at all disarmed by my mount or my cloud of furred attendants. “My lord. You are punctual.”

“Honored Vessel,” I said. “The need is great.”

Her mouth flexed in a near smile. “We must be well away from the city before dawn, sir.”

“Lead the way.”

She reined her horse around and sent it trotting down the road, her priests falling in around her. As she drew away, I turned to the second group. Eyre was waiting for us, mounted on a sturdy horse, nothing so fine as the priests rode. Unlike theirs, his beast was hung with bags and bedroll, and more supplies were secured to the back of a packhorse. Did the priests expect to be provisioned on the journey? I had thought the Church’s power waning; I suspected we had all underestimated its resources.

Guy looked bored—unsurprisingly, for he rarely evinced excitement—and Radburn groggy, which suited the hour. But they were not too tired to find the elves, the drake, and the genets unworthy of commentary.

“Fancy,” Guy said.

“Really, Morgan,” Radburn added. “Animals?”

Kelu bared her teeth at him from her perch in front of me. “You’d better be talking about the drake.”

Radburn started. “God Almighty! They talk!”

“Can I bite him?” Kelu asked. “I’d like to bite him. He deserves biting.”

“Kelu!” Almond exclaimed, ears splaying. To Radburn, “Please, don’t mind her. She doesn’t do most of the things she says.”

“Most of them!” He looked torn between fascination and horror.

“I’ll explain them later,” I promised him. “Let’s not allow the priests to outpace us.”

My elven guards were studying the knights with interest... and knights I had to call them, for they wore dark gray armor beneath surcoats emblazoned with the Church’s cup and edged in its gold and sanguine. Swords hung from their hips, and spears were racked across their saddles, though not one of them struck me as sinister, somehow, as the staff I carried across mine. They looked effective nonetheless.

The leader of the human warriors, a massive man with skin like polished ebony, considered Last with both reserve and respect; they seemed more akin in that moment than I did to any elf despite my new skin.

“We trained as best we could,” the human said at last in a deep bass. “But we lacked targets.”

Last tilted his head, then said in his accented Lit, “We will ride together, and talk.”

Just that easily, they had an accord, and ranged themselves around the back of our party. Chester chivvied my classmates forward, leaving me with the last of our party, bless him, and how glad I was to rest my eyes on her. I had half-hoped Ivy would stay in Evertrue, where she would be safe, but seeing her I knew I would have felt her absence painfully. She belonged with me; more than that, she belonged with us. But because I feared for her, I made one attempt to dissuade her.

“You could have stayed home,” I said softly.

“I could not!” She wrinkled her nose at me, and my heart contracted. Her every expression endeared her further to me. Truly my cause was hopeless. “If the Vessel can ride off among a passel of men to do great deeds, then I may as well.”

I hesitated. “But... you’re not moving?”

Ivy cleared her throat. “I do not know how to ride.”

I reached over and looped my hand through the reins, tugging her horse into motion. The beast was of such placid temperament it didn’t seem to notice the drake was some other species, so I fell in alongside. “You sit with such grace that it hadn’t occurred to me that you might not know what you were about.”

She shook her head. “Really, Morgan. Where would my family find the money for a horse?”

Nowhere, and I should have known. I glanced at the animal. “Chester’s?”

“He fetched me forth earlier and helped me onto her back before sending me off with Guy and Radburn to await you at the gate. I’m just relieved she requires so little direction. I am half afraid I’ll fall if she starts moving any faster.” She glanced at the drake. “I like your mount far more. He is a handsome creature! Some elven beast, then?”

“He is, yes, and a good companion.” I paused, then added, “The individual in front of me is Kelu, and behind me are Almond and the two Black Pearls, who have not yet chosen their names.”

Ivy glanced at the genets and smiled at them. “I am glad to make your acquaintances. Any friend of Morgan’s is welcome in my company.”

Almond peeked past me at her. “Oh,” she said, hushed. “She really is pretty, Master!”

Ivy blushed, and Almond blushed back, and I looked away to hide my smile.

“I have heard about you from Morgan,” Ivy was saying. “Of your bravery and fidelity to him during his travails.”

“Bravery and fidelity,” Kelu repeated, one ear flopping.

“He is our master,” Almond said in earnest. “We live to serve.”

“We all live to serve,” Ivy agreed. “It is why we must choose our masters wisely.”

I glanced at her sharply, but she was continuing, “Morgan... I fear I didn’t have time to go to the orphanage.”

“The answers will keep,” I said. “If indeed, there are any answers left after over two decades. They might have forgotten my provenance by now.”

“You might have looked a human infant, but your mother was surely not. And no one who sees someone like you forgets you. But you’re right. It will keep.” She shifted in the saddle, wincing. “I don’t suppose you know how long we’ll be riding.”

“I don’t,” I say. “But I would be surprised if we stopped soon.”

The Vessel held our procession to a walk for the two hours before sunrise; we plodded past the city limits and into the farmland encircling it, and past it to where the wild bordered the road. A pastoral wilderness, that; I could sense it in my veins, the temper of it, the sweetness, the way the brush rambled through the trees, and the sparse copses gave way to broad fields soaked in cold dew. My shoulders prickled with the wet coolth of it beneath my coat; its smell seemed impregnated in my blood, clean and autumnal and rich.

When the first white rays pooled in those fields, the priests broke from their easy pace. Two of them galloped down the road, vanishing as the knights alongside us strung square banners on their spears and locked them upright on their saddles. They spread out to flank us on both sides and urged their mounts into a canter. Last and his men pulled in around me, and we rode encircled in pageantry, hooves drumming on the road. The pace seemed impossible to sustain, but the priests alternated between a canter and a walk, allowing the horses to catch their wind before urging their mounts into a fresh lope.

Ivy, of course, was no horsewoman. Guy and Radburn were well enough off to know how to ride, though I didn’t know if they kept their own beasts, and I couldn’t guess how accustomed Eyre was to spending hours in the saddle. I thought only Chester might have been able to maintain such a pace without difficulty, but even he eventually lost interest in conversation and rode alongside Radburn with grim determination. By the time we stopped in the early evening, I sincerely doubted there was an early morning in our future. I guided the drake to the Vessel’s side and said, “A word, Honored.”

She canted her head, reminding me of her fleshless sparrow. I suppressed my shiver. “Our party needs more consideration of its frailties.”

The priestess glanced past me at Chester, who was helping Ivy off her borrowed mare. Looking at me again, she said, “There is no time to waste.”

“No,” I said. “But I will not go north without them.”

Some cloud passed over her features then. “It is not yet time, my lord—”

For what, I wondered? I repeated myself. “I will not go north without them.”

Behind me, Ivy made a sound I hoped never to hear from her lips again, a whimper swallowed against the loss of dignity. The Vessel closed her eyes, dark fingers knotting in the reins of her mount. When she opened them again, she took in the sight of the genets wilted against my back, then slid out of her own saddle. Touching her palms together, she bowed her head to me, then glided toward the others.

Curious, I dismounted, careful not to overset the genets. Leading the drake with a hand on its shoulder, I followed.

The area the priests had led us to had been used as a campsite before; it was some distance from the road behind a sheltering line of trees, and there was a broad apron of cleared grass, with a firepit and old logs set around it for seats. My friends were standing together, helping Ivy who did not seem to know whether she wanted to sit or stand.

It was into this group that the Vessel intruded. She studied Ivy’s body, then her face. “You have pain.”

“Of course she does,” Chester said for her with unwonted asperity, and then continued, chastened. “I beg your pardon, Honored One. But she hasn’t ridden before and this day’s labors have been sufficient to tax those of us accustomed to it. Its toll on those who aren’t....”

The priestess glanced at Radburn and Guy. “You also.”

“We’re fine,” Guy said at the same time Radburn said, “Maybe a little—”

A faint twitch tugged the corner of the priestess’s mouth. She reached to Ivy and set a palm to her brow. “Do you believe, sister?”

“In the Covenant?” Ivy asked. “With all my heart.”

The priestess marked her brow with a circle and then her throat, then crouched and began to pull Ivy’s shoes off. We all stared, wondering what she was about but unwilling to question a woman of her position.

Having exposed Ivy’s feet, the priestess marked them with the circle as well, then rose again, dusting off her robes. Pressing her hands together, she began to murmur a soft prayer in the unintelligible language the Church used for its high rites—

—which was when I became aware the unintelligible language was, in fact, the Angel’s Gift.

“...bless this heart, mend her spirit, and heal her wounds,” the priestess was finishing. And then she opened her palms, kissed them, and reached to transfer that kiss to Ivy’s brow. My skin prickled as if someone had spilled blood.

Ivy gasped and stumbled back. All the awkwardness had left her limbs. She lifted a knee, shocked, then the other, shifted from foot to foot, then glanced up at the priestess, her lips open in a little ‘o’ of astonishment.

“What did you do?” Guy asked, frowning.

“I have expressed the promise of the Covenant,” the priestess said. When no one spoke, she finished, “I healed her.”

“How?” Radburn said, though it had to be obvious. Surely they had all felt it and like me were reeling from the implications.

The Vessel said, simply, “With magic.”

Silence. A cool, moist wind shivered the leaves of the trees.

“I think,” I said, “it is time we heard the full story of the Church, Honored Vessel.”

“Yes,” she said. “I think it is.”