“Thank you,” I said. “I heard it at Orithena and couldn’t get it out of my head.”

“Fascinating! Tell me, what are the people like there?”

“Like us, for the most part. At first they struck me as quite different. But the more I see of the different kinds of avout here—”

“Yes, I take your meaning!” Lodoghir said. “Those savages in the breechclouts—what tree did they fall out of?”

I didn’t think it would be very productive for me to say that Fraa Lodoghir seemed more foreign to me than the “savages in the breechclouts,” so I nodded.

“Has anyone explained to you that you’re about to be the guest of honor at a Plenary?” Fraa Lodoghir asked me.

“It was mentioned but not explained.”

Fraa Lodoghir seemed a little nonplussed by my way of talking, but after a moment’s pause he went on, “Well, briefly then, I’m to be your loctor—”

“Loctor?”

“InterLOCuTOR,” Fraa Lodoghir said, showing impatience, which he tried to mask with a chuckle. “You are much more formal in your pronunciation at Edhar! Good for you, sticking to your guns like that! Tell me, do you still say savant, or have you adopted saunt like the rest of us?”

“Saunt,” I said. Fraa Lodoghir was doing so much talking that I didn’t feel the need to say much.

“Splendid, well then, the idea is that the Convox have been crunching the numbers, analyzing the samples, perusing the speelies of the Visitation of Orithena, but there is some interest, naturally, in hearing from an eyewitness—which is why you’re here. Rather than putting you to the trouble of preparing a lecture, we shall use the format of an extemporaneous dialog. I have some questions”—he rattled a sheaf of leaves—“handed to me by various interested parties, as well as some topics of my own that I’d like to pursue, should time permit.”

As this dialog, or rather monolog, went on, the Plenary took shape. The suur with the headset shooed us up a stairway that had been rolled into place, and Fraa Lodoghir followed me up onto the stage-platform. Microphones were clipped to our bolts. Two mugs and a pitcher of water were placed on a little stand at the back of the stage. Other than that, there was no furniture. For some reason I did not feel the slightest bit nervous, and I did not think about what I was going to say. Instead I was musing about this funny structure that my loctor and I were standing on: a snatch of geometric plane held in a three-dimensional space grid. Like a geometer’s fantasy, a modernized rendition of the Plane where the theors of Ethras used to have their dialogs.

“Do you have any questions, Fraa Erasmas?” my loctor asked me.

“Yes,” I said, “who are you?”

He looked a bit regretful that I’d asked, but then his face hardened into a visage that—as I could see from a glance at the huge moving picture above us—was going to look much more impressive on a speely feed. More impressive than mine, anyway. “The First Among Equals of the Centenarian Chapter of the Order of Saunt Proc at Muncoster.”

“Your microphone is live—now,” said a fraa, flicking a switch on the apparatus clipped to my bolt, and then he performed the same service for Fraa Lodoghir. Lodoghir poured himself a mug of water, then took a draught, gazing at me over the rim of the mug, coolly curious to see what I was making of the news that my loctor was probably the most eminent Procian in the whole world. I have no idea what he saw.

“The Plenary begins,” he said, in a voice that had somehow gone an octave deeper, and that was amplified all over the nave. The crowd began to quiet down, and he gave them a few more moments to suspend conversations and take seats. I could see nothing, because of the lights; Fraa Lodoghir might have been the only other person on Arbre.

“My loctor,” Fraa Lodoghir said, and then paused a moment for silence. “My loctor is Erasmas, formerly of the Decenarian chapter of something called the ‘Edharian Order’ in a place that, unless I’ve been misinformed, styles itself as the Concent of Savant Edhar.”

A titter ran through the nave at this ridiculously old-fashioned pronunciation.

“Er, I think you have been misinformed—” I began, but my microphone wasn’t in the right position or something, so my voice did not get amplified.

Meanwhile, Lodoghir was talking right over me. “They say it’s up in the mountains. Tell me, don’t you get cold, with nothing but that simple bolt between you and the elements?”

“No, we have shoes and—”

“Ah, for those of you who can’t hear my loctor, he is very proud to announce that the Edharians do have shoes.”

Finally I got the microphone aimed at my mouth. “Yes,” I said. “Shoes—and manners.” This got an appreciative rumble out of the crowd. “I’m still a member of the chapter and order you mentioned, and I may be addressed as Fraa.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon! I’ve been looking into it, and have uncovered a different story: that you went Feral a day after the start of your peregrination, and rattled around the world for a bit until you fetched up in this place called Orithena, where I gather they welcome just about anyone.”

“They were more hospitable than some places I could mention,” I said. I thought about what Fraa Lodoghir had just said, looking for some way to break it down and plane him, but every word of it was factually correct—as he knew perfectly well.

He was trying to bait me into quibbling over how he’d phrased it. Then he’d crush me by quoting chapter and verse. He probably had the supporting documents right there in his hand.

That day on Bly’s Butte, Fraa Jad had told me that when he got to Tredegarh, he’d make it all okay—prevent me from getting in trouble.

Had he failed? No. If he’d failed, they would not have permitted me to celebrate Inbrase. So Jad must have succeeded at some level. Along the way, maybe he’d made enemies.

Who were now my enemies.

“That is all correct,” I said. “Yet here I am.”

Fraa Lodoghir was off balance for a moment when he saw that his first gambit had failed, but like a fencer, he had a riposte. “That is extraordinary, for one who claims to know so much of manners. Thousands of avout are in this magnificent nave. Every one of them came straight to Tredegarh when he or she was summoned. Only one person in this room chose to go Feral, and to switch his allegiance to a society, an organization, that is not a part of the mathic world: the cult of Orithena. What in the world—or should I say, who in the world—induced you to make such a self-destructive choice?”

Now something funny happened inside of my head. Fraa Lodoghir had hit me with a sneak attack. He was good at this kind of thing and he had counters prepared for anything I might do to defend myself. My first reaction, naturally, had been to get flustered. But without knowing it, he’d just committed a tactical mistake: by making so much of my unauthorized and “self-destructive” peregrination, he had flooded my mind with memories of Mahsht and the sneak attack I had endured there: something so terrible that nothing Fraa Lodoghir could say to me could possibly be worse. His best efforts seemed kind of funny by comparison. Thinking of this made me calm, and in that calmness I noticed that Fraa Lodoghir had, with his last question, tipped his hand. He wanted me to blame it all on Fraa Jad. Give up the Thousander, he was saying, and all will be forgiven.

Only an hour ago, Tulia had warned me not to attempt to play politics—just to tell the truth. But some combination of stubbornness and calculation told me not to give Lodoghir what he wanted.

I thought of how the scene in Mahsht had ended, with the onslaught of the Valers. How they had observed what was going on, and construed it as an emergence. I didn’t have their training, but I knew an emergence when I saw one.

“I did it on my own,” I said. “I accept the consequences of my decision. I knew that one such consequence might be Anathem. In that expectation I found my way to Orithena. There, I thought I might live in a Mathic style, even though Thrown Back. That I was returned to Tredegarh and allowed to celebrate Inbrase is a surprise and is an honor.”