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Piper looked her up and down. She was very large and powerfully muscled, but she wasn’t even wearing armor. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

He looked at Jorge for confirmation. Jorge nodded. “I’ve fought two of these men before,” he said quietly. “I didn’t enjoy it, but I didn’t lose.”

“We don’t expect trouble,” said Clara. “But we’re planning for it anyway.”

Piper looked past her, to where the paladins had threaded their way through the ruins. They stood in a semicircle around a vast, fire-blackened stone slab. As he watched, one by one, they went to their knees.

They waited. The vigil kept at the coach could not compare to the one at the altar, but it felt like vigil nonetheless. Piper swallowed repeatedly. Jorge tapped his foot. Grace wrung her hands. Zale, the slender solicitor-sacrosanct from the Rat, kept pushing their hair out of their eyes, whereupon it would immediately fall back down.

At last, Istvhan rose. He turned toward the coach and lifted a hand in acknowledgment. Clara let out a long sigh of relief.

Would she have fought the man she loved? Somehow Piper thought she might. There was a hard practicality to Clara.

The others began to rise. Only Marcus and Galen stayed kneeling for a long time.

Stephen made a beckoning gesture. Clara pushed away from the coach and nodded to the others to follow.

The stones turned underfoot. Weeds had sprouted between blackened tiles. Even now, Piper could smell burning.

It had been a very large temple. It took a long time to reach the altar, and still Marcus and Galen knelt before the stone.

“Speak to him,” murmured Stephen to Piper. “I’ll take Marcus.”

Speak to him? What could Piper possibly say to a man in mourning for a god? He swallowed hard and nodded.

Galen’s shoulders were drawn tight. Piper winced in sympathy for how his legs must feel, kneeling so long on the uneven terrain. He reached out and put a hand on Galen’s shoulder, and the paladin flinched.

“Galen,” he said softly. “Galen, I love you.”

“He’s dead,” said Galen.

“I know.”

“Something that big shouldn’t die. It’s like the ocean or the wind dying. It doesn’t make sense.”

“I know.”

“It’ll never make sense.”

“I know.”

Galen’s hand came up, slowly, and squeezed Piper’s. Piper waited.

Finally, the paladin took a deep breath and rose to his feet. “Thank you,” he said.

“Of course.”

Galen turned away. Piper looked past him to the altar stone. Nothing but a chunk of stone in the middle of a burnt-out ruin. A strange thing, to have such power over men.

You were the center of Galen’s life, Piper thought, to the absent Saint of Steel. I cannot forgive you for what you did to him, but perhaps you had no choice. And you made him the man he is, and I love that man very much.

Thank you for my husband.

He reached out and laid his fingertips on the broken stone in gratitude and reverence. Bare skin touched sun-warmed stone.

And suddenly Piper knew what it felt like when a god died.