Meoraq grunted agreement, still smiling. His body ached in every bone, but he felt so much better just knowing that pompous little fool would be waiting in mortal terror of him the rest of the day. “It has its uses,” he told Amber. “Perhaps now the rest of them will leave.”

“You couldn’t disperse that lot with flaming oil, son,” Jazuun snorted. “There will be twice this number and twice again once word slips out that you’re awake.”

“Me?”

Jazuun gave him a dry sidelong glance. “Who else would they be here to see?”

Meoraq looked at Amber.

“Well, yeah,” she admitted. “I’ve had some of that, but believe me, it’s always as your little monster.”

“Why?” asked Meoraq, genuinely baffled. “What did I do?”

Lord Uyane laughed, clapped him once on the shoulder and bounded on ahead to open the rooftop door.

Light flooded the stair at once, blindingly bright. Meoraq’s vision swam. He raised a hand to shield his eyes and left it there, his neck bent, seeing nothing but the stairs under his bootless feet until he reached the top. And so he was looking down when he stepped out under the open sky and saw the shadow of the stairwell hatch sprout long beneath him, as stark and black as if it had been painted there. Then he stepped around the stairwell hatch and suddenly the sun was in his eyes—not the light of the sun, but the sun itself—dazzling white, burning ghosts of pink and yellow in his eyes. The clouds that had been endless all his life had swept themselves into no more than a handful of high, wispy smudges. The sky beneath was green, as it had always been green, whether anyone knew it or not.

He had no idea how long he stared. He did not notice whether he found the stairwell wall and let it guide him to the ground or whether he simply collapsed. He did not see the others who shared the rooftop with him, not even Amber, whose hand remained clasped with his the whole time. It was not Sheul’s lamp or the glow of His forgiveness, but it was the sun and the sun was still a miracle.

When at last Meoraq came back to himself, there was Amber, sitting beside him on the rooftop, her hair turned to white gold around her face. Her mouthparts were smiling, but her eyes were watchful and unsure.

“When?” he asked her.

“Same day we got here.” One corner of her mouth crooked up a little higher. “I saw it happen, actually. I was right here on the roof. Praying.”

Jazuun waited for her to stop talking and then gave Meoraq a light tap to catch his attention. “The Oracles have been in sequester for days, but the only thing they’ve decided is that you’ll be able to explain it.”

Meoraq could feel his throat working, but could not hear any words. Amber squeezed his hand. He looked at it, at her, at the sun, at Lord Uyane.

“I don’t envy you, son.” Jazuun braced a hand on Meoraq’s shoulder and eased himself down with a grimace and a curse. Then he leaned back, rubbing at his knee and watching the few clouds drift in the wind. “But it isn’t really you they care about. Oh, you’ll go home with the kind of fame fools dream of and twenty years from now, your sprat with be taking six breaths and counting them slow every time some piss-licking gatekeeper holds him out in the rain to say, ‘Uyane? A son of Meoraq?’”

Meoraq coughed out a laugh and clapped a hand to the end of his snout, rubbing hard.

“But that’s his problem,” Jazuun finished. “All you have to do tonight is tell them what happened in Xi’Matezh. Let them decide what it means.”

Gentle words. They pierced him like a sword, pierced and twisted.

Meoraq shut his eyes against the sun and let his head drop. Lord Uyane let him be. Perhaps he thought he was praying. He wasn’t. He was trying to think, just think, and the thought that kept coming back to him was that of Lashraq, no Prophet but only a man, who had nevertheless raised Sheul’s lamp for the whole world to see, and of Master Tsazr, who had once told his awe-struck brunt how he had passed the doors at the holiest shrine the world ever knew and heard the voice of God and how Meoraq had judged him honest.

He gave himself a slow-count of six, this time with faces to put to the names he had chanted since boyhood, and when he was done, when he was decided, for good or evil and for all time, he raised his head and said, “I stood before the doors in Xi’Matezh and Sheul our Father brought me in. He spoke to me.”

Amber reached up and stroked the back of her hand across his brow. He closed his eyes and felt her warmth, together with the warmth of the true sun.

“His words were not a comfort,” Meoraq said. He caught her hand, pressed it over his eyes and kept it there until he knew he would not show tears, then released her and stared boldly into the face of Lord Uyane Jazuun. “How do you judge me?”

Jazuun held his gaze a long, long time before it finally wavered. He looked at Amber, then at the sky and the other braziers lighting along the rooftop and finally back at Meoraq. He frowned. “Truth.”

“Truth,” Meoraq echoed. He nodded—a human gesture—and rubbed at his snout some more. “The Word which was given to Lashraq was for an age which has ended. Some things…must change. We must learn to judge with wisdom and not with blades. We have become too eager to see Gann’s taint where there is none. We must learn to show mercy. We must try to forgive.”

Jazuun breathed in deep and let it out slow, looking out over the city as if all the sins and wisdoms of its uncounted masses could be seen and weighed in a glance. “You have a great deal of faith in men,” he said at last.

“More than I had at the start of this journey, but it is Sheul whose faith in men burns brightest. We believe that only He can save us. He believes that we can save ourselves.”

“And do you?”

Meoraq watched the clouds drift.

“I don’t know,” he said at last. “But I hope so.”

Jazuun grunted and labored himself back onto his feet. “I’ll start arranging audiences, I suppose. I’ll hold as many of them off as long as I can, but you’ll be seeing the first of them tonight, that’s as good as a promise, and you may never see the last.”

“I mark. You may as well begin with the exarch I had you confine for me,” Meoraq added. “He and I have unfinished business.”

Jazuun acknowledged this and retreated, leaving them alone together on the rooftop.

“What are you going to do to him?” Amber asked.

“I’m going to demand my oaths of office,” he replied distractedly, still gazing at the sky. “And I’ll probably make him my personal scribe for all my future dealings with the Oracles, at least until I’ve finished rewriting the Word, which should keep me occupied while I finish coughing out my wetlung and you and Uyane’s wife have more gowning parties.”

She bore up under that news well. “And then?”

“Then we go home. Where we would have gone even if the doors had opened on God Himself…or if they had never opened at all. We will go home. With God’s…” He trailed off, waiting to feel that hollow loss and feeling instead the sun’s warmth on his face and Amber’s hand twining with his. “With God’s favor and fair weather, we will be in Xeqor before the hottest days of the season come.”

“Are you sure that’s what you want to do?”

“Yes,” he said. “Truth, all the reasons I had for coming here were answered long before now. I know I could stay here if I asked and I know the Oracles will probably push for it, but I want to go home. I want to see my child born behind the walls where I was born. I want to see my wife lying in my bed. I want to see my brothers again, even if it means I have to fight them a few times first. I want to go home, Amber, and I want to stay home when I get there.”

She leaned against his side in sympathy, then startled and gave him a sharp, wondering stare.

He noticed and shrugged his spines. “If there is no God, it doesn’t matter. If there is, surely He would want me to call my wife by her beautiful name. Amber.” He pinched her chin and leaned in to nuzzle at her. “My Amber. Come home with me.”