The door opened with the sound it always made, which was the sound of a door that had been opened thousands of times by the same person and had developed an understanding with that person about how much force was required.

  Aris came through it with his satchel over one shoulder and a bundle of something wrapped in cloth under his other arm and the specific expression of someone who had accomplished what they set out to accomplish and was already thinking about the next thing. His hair was slightly damp from the morning air and there was a smear of something dark on his left hand that was probably soil from the lower floors.

  "Found more Deepbloom than expected," he said, to the nave in general and Edric in particular, moving toward the corridor that led to the clinic. "The patch on Floor Four has spread since last week. If it keeps going we'll have enough stock to last through—"

  He stopped.

  He'd seen Elysse.

  She was on the bench with her back reasonably straight and her hands in her lap and the careful composed expression of someone who had been managing a body that wasn't cooperating and had decided composure was the appropriate response to this. She was also, he noticed immediately, sitting upright without the wall behind her, which meant she'd walked to the nave from the room under her own direction and without telling anyone.

  "You shouldn't be up," he said.

  "I'm sitting," Elysse said.

  "You walked here first."

  "Briefly."

  "On a floor that isn't even," he said. "In borrowed armor that doesn't fit you properly." He set the bundle down on the nearest bench and looked at her with the expression he used when patients made decisions he hadn't sanctioned. "How does your side feel."

  "Fine."

  "Your side," he said, "has two cracked ribs in it."

  "Which Edric treated."

  "Which Edric began treating," Aris said. "Marionette doesn't finish in a day. You know this because I told you this yesterday."

  "I needed to move," Elysse said, with the flat certainty of someone who had made a reasonable assessment of their own requirements and was not interested in revising it. "Lying in a room doesn't help the ribs or anything else."

  "Lying in a room," Aris said, "keeps the ribs in the position they're supposed to be in while they—"

  "The boy is right," Edric said, from somewhere near the kitchen doorway, with the serenity of someone watching something pleasant unfold.

  "I know he is," Elysse said.

  "Then—"

  "I'll sit here," she said. "I won't move from this bench until you tell me I can. Will that satisfy the clinic's requirements."

  Aris looked at her.

  She looked back at him with the grey eyes that had been reading things and finding their angles since she was old enough to do it and had not stopped doing it in the nave of this church despite cracked ribs and a curse on her back and a morning that had apparently included walking here without assistance.

  "Yes," he said, because it was the honest answer and because arguing further was going to produce the same result and he knew it.

  He picked up his bundle and turned toward the clinic corridor and found, for the first time, that there was someone else on the benches.

  She was sitting two rows back from Elysse and she was looking at him with an expression he couldn't immediately read, which was unusual because he could usually read the expressions of people who came to the church within a few seconds of encountering them. This one had several things in it simultaneously and they didn't resolve into a simple category.

  She was his age or close to it. Red hair, deep and specific, the kind of red that meant something in Valerne if you knew what it meant. High grade armor, a cape, both of which had seen a difficult morning but were clearly exceptional equipment. She was sitting with her hands folded in her lap and she was looking at him with the expression of someone who had already been having a significant morning before he'd walked through the door.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  "Good morning," Aris said.

  "Good morning," she said.

  "Are you here for the clinic or the church."

  She looked at him for a moment.

  "Both," she said. "But I've been seen to."

  "Edric," Aris said.

  "Yes."

  He nodded, accepting this, and turned again toward the corridor.

  "The girl," she said.

  He stopped.

  "Elysse," she said. "How did she come to be here."

  Aris turned back. He looked at the woman on the bench and then at Elysse and then back again, doing the reading he always did, finding the shape of what was being asked.

  "She came in injured a few days ago," he said carefully. "I found her in the dungeon and brought her here for treatment." He paused. "Can I ask why you're asking."

  "Where in the dungeon," she said.

  "Floor Six."

  Something moved through her expression.

  "She came up from deeper than that," Aris said. "From below Floor 40, as far as we can tell. She was in bad condition when I found her."

  The woman on the bench was very still.

  "Is she going to recover," she said.

  "The physical injuries yes," Aris said. "Edric's treatment is progressing. She'll be mobile properly in a few more days." He watched her face. "There's a separate condition that's more complicated. We're working on it."

  "What kind of condition."

  Aris looked at her for a moment longer.

  "I'm going to ask again," he said, "why you're asking. Because you came to this church this morning and sat in this nave and you're asking about my patient with the specific attention of someone who already knows her. And I'd like to understand why before I answer further questions about her condition."

  The woman looked at him.

  Then she said:

  "My name is Colette Aurel. I am the captain of the Aurelian Compact."

  The nave was quiet.

  "Was," she said, and the word cost her something. "As of this morning."

  Aris looked at her. He knew the name. Everyone in Valerne knew the name, and everyone in Valerne had heard what had happened to the Aurelian Compact's expedition three days ago. The story had moved through the city the way large disasters move, fast and in all directions, changing shape as it went but retaining its essential weight.

  Over fifty Wanderers. A single night. Below Floor 40.

  He looked at Elysse.

  He looked at Colette.

  "She was on the expedition," he said. Not a question.

  "She was my best," Colette said, and her voice had the specific quality of someone who has been holding something at a careful distance and has just felt it get closer. "I thought—" She stopped. Started again. "When the seals came back. When the report came in. I thought she was—"

  She was already standing.

  Aris stepped back without deciding to, the instinctive movement of someone clearing a path, and Colette crossed the nave in the quick direct way of someone who has stopped managing the moment and is simply inside it.

  Elysse looked up at her approach with the attentive reading expression, the face of someone trying to place what was coming toward them.

  Colette stopped in front of her for one second.

  Then she went down onto the bench beside Elysse and put her arms around her and held on, and whatever composure had been doing its job all morning stopped doing it completely and let everything through at once.

  It came out of her without sound mostly, the specific grief of someone who had been mourning a person and has just discovered the mourning was wrong and doesn't know yet what to do with the relief except hold it.

  Elysse sat very still.

  Her arms, after a moment, came up slowly and returned the embrace with the careful uncertainty of someone whose body remembered how to do this even when their mind didn't know why it was being asked to.

  Aris stood in the nave and watched and said nothing.

  Edric, from the kitchen doorway, watched and said nothing.

  After a long moment Colette pulled back. She looked at Elysse's face, at the grey eyes, with the searching expression of someone looking for recognition and finding the place where it should be and discovering it empty.

  "Elysse," she said.

  "I'm sorry," Elysse said quietly. She said it with the composure that was her default and underneath the composure something that was not comfortable, the specific discomfort of someone who knows they are failing to provide something another person desperately needs and cannot explain why. "I don't—"

  She stopped.

  She looked at Colette's face with the focused attention of someone trying very hard.

  "Are you," she said slowly. "Were you supposed to be my captain."

  Colette stared at her.

  The question hung in the nave air, simple and devastating, the grammar of it — supposed to be — containing everything that was wrong in four words.

  "Yes," Colette said, barely.

  Elysse looked at her with the grey eyes that had nothing in them except the present moment.

  "I'm sorry," she said again. "I don't remember you."

  Colette turned and looked at Aris.

  Aris looked back at her.

  He had seen this expression before, the specific expression of someone receiving information that changes the shape of something they thought they understood, but he had not seen it arrive this fast or hit this hard.

  "She doesn't remember anything," he said. "From before I found her on Floor Six. Her memories of the expedition, of the guild, of everything before — they're gone." He paused. "It's connected to the condition I mentioned. There's a sigil on her back, placed by someone. We don't fully understand it yet. The amnesia appears to be part of what it does."

  Colette looked at Elysse.

  Elysse looked back at her with the patient, careful attention of someone listening to information about themselves that they have no way to verify.

  "A sigil," Colette said.

  "Yes."

  "Placed by someone."

  "That's our current understanding."

  Colette was quiet for a moment, looking at Elysse's face, at the face she knew and that didn't know her back.

  "Show me," she said.