The two boys stared at him and the girl in turn, appalled at what they had heard and yet fascinated by the girl. It took a moment for Kleist to come to himself.

“You killed him, Cale-why drag us into this?”

“Don’t be stupid. Once they realize it was me, they’ll torture Henri because they know we’re friends. Then they’ll connect Henri to you. This way you have a chance.”

“But I had nothing to do with this.”

“What difference will that make? You’ve been seen talking to me at least twice over the last few days. They’ll kill you to make a point and to be on the safe side.”

“Does this mean you have a plan?” said Henri, afraid but trying to calm himself down.

“Yes,” said Cale. “It’ll probably fail. But we have a chance.” He blew out the candle and told them what he’d come up with.

“You’re right,” said Kleist when he’d finished. “It probably will fail.”

“If you’ve got anything better…?” Cale left the sentence unfinished. He lit the candle again and took it close to the girl, who was staring into the distance, shaking and holding herself in her arms.

“What’s your name?” said Cale. She didn’t seem to hear him at first, then her eyes turned to look into his face. But she said nothing.

“Poor thing,” said Vague Henri.

“What’s she to you to make you sorry for her?” said Kleist bitterly, torn between his own fear and the strange creature huddled in the corner. “It’s yourself you should be worrying about.”

Cale stood up, handed the candle to Vague Henri and moved to the door.

“Now,” he said.

Henri blew it out. There was the sound of the door opening and closing and Vague Henri, Kleist and the girl were left in utter darkness.

The shock of the events of that night were beginning to wear off as Cale made his way through the Sanctuary for the third time. He was, of course, keeping to the shadows, but he was calmer now. He was beginning to realize that the habits of his lifetime-the awareness that you were always being watched, that there were always eyes prepared to note and report on every movement-no longer applied. The Redeemers had made an assumption, and for good reason, that their skill in watching the acolytes along with the viciousness of their response to disobedience in thought or word would keep order among them. They had made an assumption that at night, with the acolytes locked in their dorms, exhausted and rightly fearing the consequences of trying to get out, they could relax their deranged vigilance. On this third trip through the Sanctuary at night, in a few hours Cale had seen only one Redeemer in the distance.

A strange exhilaration spread through Cale. The people he hated and who seemed so invulnerable and powerful were not. He had outwitted Bosco, killed the Lord of Discipline, and now he was moving easily about the Sanctuary. A warning sounded deep in his heart not to become cocky-“Be watchful, or else you’ll swing for this.”

Still, however much he thought about it, however much it smacked of recklessness, it made sense to return to the Lord of Discipline’s rooms. He had taken a few things before he’d left with the girl, but if the four of them were to have any chance outside, they would need… In fact he didn’t know what they would need, but there was a chance to find many things to help in the dead man’s rooms, and it would be foolish not to take the chance. Given luck, there would be another four hours before the dead Redeemer was found.

Ten minutes later he was standing over Picarbo’s dead body again. He paused for a moment and then began to search. It was an odd experience because there was so much. Acolytes were not permitted to own anything. Even Redeemers were supposed to own only seven things, though why not eight or six nobody knew. Picarbo’s rooms were filled with stuff. Cale did not know what many of the things were, and he would have liked to spend time just rolling them over in his hands and speculating about their purpose-how peculiar and pleasant to the touch a shaving brush made of badger hair, and how wonderful the smell and slippery feel of a bar of soap. But death soon damped down his curiosity, and he began to pick and choose what would go into the rucksack he had found: knives, a telescope-a fabulous thing he had seen being used by Bosco from the battlements-a sharpening tool for Picarbo’s medical instruments, a linen bag, some herbs he had seen used for the treatment of wounds, fine-bore needles, thread, a ball of string. He searched the cupboards, but most of them contained tray upon tray of preserved specimens of bits of women’s bodies. Cale did not, of course, recognize most of them. Not that he felt any need to justify killing Picarbo, a man he’d seen beat many children in formal punishments and even kill one. But the carefully dried body parts made him feel both disgust as well as dread.

Then he tried one of the doors leading off the room, avoiding looking as he did so at the poor creature on the dissection table.

He opened it, and at once a strong smell of stale priest afflicted his nostrils. He had noticed before whenever he was in the midst of more than two Redeemers in a confined space that they smelled odd. But this room seemed to be stained in its very walls with the odor-something rotten, as if everything inside them, the very living spirit, was in the process of becoming rank. On his way out, Cale did not want to look at the body of the girl, but something drew him toward it. He looked only for a moment at the careful and meticulous mutilation of the beautiful young woman. He felt an unaccustomed surge of pity that something so soft and delicate should be laid to waste in such a way. Then his eye caught the small, hard object in the metal dish that the Lord of Discipline had removed from the girl’s stomach just before Cale left the first time. It was not bone or anything that looked very gruesome-it was the shape and texture of a small pebble washed smooth by long exposure to a fast-flowing stream. It was milkily transparent, and a golden brown color. Wary, Cale touched it with his forefinger. Then he picked it up and looked at it. Then he sniffed. The smell almost overpowered him, as if every cell in his brain was taken over by its strange but wonderful perfume. He stood for a moment, dazed and ready to faint. But he had to move on. He took a deep breath and continued searching, taking a few more things he thought could be useful and a few things he just liked the look of; then he was out the door and off to his hiding place.

7

For nearly two years Cale had been planning his escape. This was not a plan that he ever intended to use if it could be avoided, because the chance of success was so very poor. The Redeemers moved heaven and earth to recapture runaways, for whom the punishment was to be hung, drawn and quartered. No one, as far as Cale knew, had ever succeeded in evading the Dogs of Paradise, and his long-term plan to escape the Redeemers involved patience, waiting until he was twenty and sent to the frontier and taking his chance as it came. Still, he thought to himself, well done for preparing for this. He tried, as he crept along the ambo, not to think of the chances of success. Nevertheless he could not stop the resentment at what it had cost to intervene. Saving the girl was pointless. All he had achieved was his own almost certain death, as well as, though less important, the deaths of Vague Henri and Kleist. Stupid! He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. But she had looked so happy the night before, her smile so… what? It was hard to describe what he felt about happiness, watching someone actually being happy. That was what had come back to him as he tried to leave and stood in the dark corridor, trembling at what he had seen in the Lord of Discipline’s room and the horror of the disgusting cruelty. It had made him livid with anger and he was used to that, but this time, for the first time in his life, he had given way to it. But you didn’t do any good, he thought to himself. No good at all.