Chapter 107

There were three forms of meeting for the Book of the Golden Lady, though most believed only two.

The first was an open meeting in the High Court. They accepted petitioners, discussed certain plans, and passed or vetoed laws or regulations offered by the House of Nobility, a senate containing the High Seats of every Noble House represented in Darnell. Occasionally, they also functioned as a court of law, enforcing High Justice on criminals of the state.

The second form of meeting was a closed meeting, where severe or dire issues of high importance were discussed. Petitioners could approach the Book of the Golden Lady by appointment only.

The unknown was a closed meeting that took place in a small conference room with a secured entrance and a hidden exit. Items of secrecy were discussed here. No petitioners were allowed. No one knew of the meetings, or even the room itself, save the Book.

The surviving members of the Book of the Golden Lady were gathered there. Gabrielle, Olivia, Yuriko, and the Grand Cardinal sat uneasily at a table that used to host the full Book. Constance, Celeste, and Phoebe were gone now.

"So... she’s back." Gabrielle mused quietly. "Where did she go? What has she done in the time she was gone? What, by the sacred name of the Goddess, are we to do with her now?" She asked.

"All excellent questions." Yuriko agreed.

The Grand Cardinal let out a breath and opened her mouth to speak, but she was interrupted from an unexpected source.

"What future do you reach for, Grand Cardinal Francesca Bianchi?" Katarina asked from the door.

Everyone immediately looked up; the Grand Cardinal going rigid with shock.

Katarina was there in her green-and-white dress, hands folded on the pommel of her bared sword, the point pressing into the carpet. A thin circle of light glowed faintly above her head.

The Grand Cardinal opened her mouth to demand how Katarina had discovered and gained access to this secured location, but cut herself off. She was an Apostle who had died and been resurrected by the Golden Lady at least three times. There was obviously nothing she couldn’t do.

The Grand Cardinal sagged limply into her chair in resignation.

"What do you want?" She asked after a long moment.

"I asked you a question." Katarina replied, and then turned her head to look towards Gabrielle.

"Lady Cardinal Gabrielle Valentine." Katarina began, and then paused. Her face went through a few expressions; her eyebrow twitched, she blinked a couple times, she frowned a little as if in concentration, looking at her hands, and then she smiled.

Gabrielle shrank back from that overwhelming serenity. That was the implacable calm that came with utter authority, complete mastery of everything and everyone around oneself.

Katarina turned her gaze to the voluptuous Lady Cardinal and smiled warmly. She took a breath, closed her eyes, and surprisingly, burst into song.

"Dodo, l’enfant do,

Dodo, l’enfant do,

L’enfant dormira bien vite

Dodo, l’enfant do"

She sang in a low, clear voice, as soft as velvet, light as a blanket. Gabrielle stared at her, baffled, irritated, and a touch afraid.

"Forgive my accent. It’s been some years since I’ve spoken Lyonese." Katarina offered by way of apology, and that serene smile resurfaced. "Do not waste what the Goddess has given." Katarina advised gently.

Gabrielle frowned at her, and then her eyes widened in shock. She knew. Somehow, the Witch Hunter knew. It was an old lullaby, ancient, really. Her mother had sung it to her when she was young, had sung it to her brothers and sisters.

"You should sing it, too." Katarina encouraged.

Gabrielle shot up out of her seat, a hot blush suffusing her cheeks. There was no accusation in Katarina’s face, no hint of malice or manipulation, simply the warm advice of one woman to another.

The other Lady Cardinals eyed the exchange with confusion.

"I-" Gabrielle began, and then stopped. "I don’t feel like singing just now, Witch Hunter." She replied tersely.

Katarina only smiled at that, and then turned towards the Yamato woman who was eyeing Katarina with the curiosity of the unafraid.

"Lady Cardinal Hasegawa Yuriko." Katarina greeted, and the woman inclined her chin a cool fraction.

"Your daughter is doing well, and sends her love." Katarina offered with a roguish smile and laugh. "She’s twice my age and still dreams of love like a maiden of fourteen."

Yuriko smiled fondly for a moment.

Katarina looked to Olivia for a moment, but held her tongue. She’d said what she needed to say to Olivia already, in private.

She refocused on the Grand Cardinal.

"What future do you reach for, Francesca?" She asked again, frowning a little with impatience.

"I... return the question to you, Witch Hunter." The Grand Cardinal replied in a shaky breath.

"What future do you reach for, Katarina?" She asked worriedly, catching the eyes of the Lady Cardinals.

Katarina barked a laugh. "I reach for no future, Grand Cardinal. I see it, and it will come to me." She replied.

"And will you tell us what that’s supposed to mean?" The Grand Cardinal asked, and Katarina shook her head.

"I’m disappointed, Francesca. The future is no mere fantasy. It is a series of specific events happening at specific points in time made by specific people. There is no 'might be'. There was only 'will be' or 'will not be'. An event once past cannot be undone. It only reduces it further, the choices available to it, closer and closer to one eventuality."

She took a breath, and repeated her question a third time: "So what future do you reach for, Francesca?"

The silence that hung between them was timeless, limitless. The Grand Cardinal suddenly recognized the sword Katarina held before them; tip buried in the carpeting. It was the one from her dream from the Night of Miracles.

"You’re the herald." she whispered in a tiny voice. It seemed impossible to draw breath. Her mind was a haze, everything in her vision washing in and out in clouds of gray.

"Will you answer the question, old woman?" Katarina barked at her, and the Grand Cardinal jerked as if slapped.

"I..." She began vaguely, searching for an answer that would appease the... what was she? Woman? Angel? Saint? Herald? What was she? Who was she? Could Francesca even address her? A voice spoke up in her breast, then. ‘By the laws of this land and by my vow to the Golden Lady, I am the Grand Cardinal. I will answer her question!’

"I- I have begun releasing the translations you’ve given to us, Katarina. There’s so much to do. So many changes to make."

Katarina held up her hand and the Grand Cardinal stopped speaking.

"That is your answer?" Katarina asked, a note of anger entering her voice.

"I ..." Francesca paused, and found her own anger. "I am steering this Empire back into the light of the Golden Lady! That is the future I reach for, you horrible, spiteful woman!" She shouted.

An amused look flitted across Katarina’s face; she chuckled. "Imagine that. You can answer a question." She replied, a smile on her face. "I’ll answer the question that Gabrielle asked when I came in. It was..." She paused, and repeated Gabrielle’s question. "It was... ‘What, by the sacred name of the Goddess, are we to do with her now?’" Katarina quoted.

"What should we do now, Your Radiance?" Yuriko asked calmly, and Katarina looked at the stiff-backed woman and saw the tension, the fear in her posture.

"It’s a simple problem, with an equally simple solution." Katarina replied from the door. "The problem is simple: If I stay too long, the Book of the Golden Lady will begin to second-guess everything I do, and a dark and secret seed will sprout in your breast: You will think I have come to usurp you."

She adopted a falsetto: "Who does she think she is? I am one of the most powerful women in the nation dedicated to the Golden Lady! I know what I’m talking about!"

Yuriko frowned at this mockery in distaste.

"Or, on the other hand, you’ll decide that everything I do and say is canonical holy writ and the moment I fuck up you’ll think that it’s-" She broke off. "Going too fast for you, Your Grace?" She asked the Grand Cardinal.

The other woman shook her head.

"Likewise, the solution is simple: I leave. I walk the path I am meant to walk, and you run the Golden Lady’s Empire."

Gabrielle opened her mouth, but Katarina glanced at her. "And before you pass your judgement, ask yourself if it will serve the Golden Lady, or the Anglish Empire."

"Why are you here?" the Grand Cardinal asked quietly.

"For three reasons." Katarina replied. "First, I was asked to bring to you the relics you found in my quarters. Two: I was sent to be the striking lance of the Goddess." She added, glancing to one of the empty seats. "The Golden Lady could not countenance a monstrous blasphemer in Her holy ground."

"And the third?" Olivia asked.

"I was given a message: You guys follow the Emerald Tablets. It will be a painful change. Either it works completely, and the Anglish Empire is redeemed in the eyes of the Golden Lady, or it works partway, and the empire falls out favor with the Golden Lady, who will send her Angels to retrieve the tablets." She paused. "Or the Empire does nothing at all, Inanna’s Angels of War take back their sacraments and relics, the Empire is razed so that not one stone is upon another." She replied in a dreamy voice. "Then the Golden Lady finds another people, a more deserving people, and she builds anew."

It started simply enough: Kuroyuki and Sasaki were looking for a spot to camp as they circled the base of a mountain, and instead of finding shelter, they found the lair of an adult male drake.

Katarina had told the Yamato duelist that drakes were intelligent, and even demonstrated they could be reasoned with, after a fashion. She hadn’t quite gotten around to explaining that even though they were intelligent thinking creatures, they were territorial and they might not care whether or not you were a thinking, reasoning creature yourself.

Of course, Sasaki reflected as she tried a third time to behead the drake, the ones she’d seen before were much smaller, the size of dogs. This one was huge, in the prime of his maturity, with jaws that looked able to swallow Sasaki’s head whole, and a body that looked to be more than capable of accommodating Sasaki and Kuroyuki both.

The sword was useful, drawing blood from a number of superficial cuts on the beast, but not as useful as she’d hoped. The drakes’ scales were like armor, her slashing strikes were only able to find purchase where the scales layering was thin. Thrusting strikes were right out. Her sword’s blade was longer than most, which maximized the reach potential of her slashing strikes, but conversely, the blade was absurdly flimsy along the bias; a thrust at an armored foe would surely snap the blade.

The drake spat fireballs conservatively; the thing was crafty, and circled Sasaki to cut her off from Kuroyuki, keeping her penned in against a natural barrier of tumbled boulders with swipes of its claws and serpentine, lunging strikes with its head filled with long nasty pointy teeth. It initially seemed surprised at Sasaki’s mobility and acrobatics, but as it circled, it found ways to cut her off from using those abilities. A lunging slash at her scoured the ground and filled it with gouges and pebbles and loose scree, making footing uncertain. A tree that she’d scurried up in order to find a better spot to lunge off of now burned like a torch.

On Sasaki’s right wrist was a cunningly designed leather bracer with three foot-long steel spikes concealed within. With a twist of her wrist, the spikes would shoot from her wrist with lethal force. She’d tried to use it, hoping that at least one spike would find purchase in the thing’s eyes, but she wasn’t nearly as lucky as she’d hoped.

Sasaki dived into the thing’s cave and the drake surged forward; Sasaki had allowed herself to fall into its trap since there was no way out past it.

The drake took a huge gurgling breath, and Sasaki was certain she knew what that meant. She cast her sword aside and yanked her gun from her waistband, thumb jerking back both hammers. As the drake’s head lunged forward, flaming spittle drooling from its jaws, she snatched the trigger.

The Drake’s head exploded, showering her with gore and gushing a thick spurt of liquid that immediately caught fire upon contact with the air, setting the thing’s den ablaze.

The neck writhed for a moment, spraying blood, and then the body collapsed, shuddering, and then falling still.

A tall tale is born of hopes, dreams, and a tiny seed of truth. Just enough to ground it in reality, but fabulous enough to stretch the boundaries of imagination, and the indwelling desire that I too, could be part of such a story, someday. Because while it was wildly impossible, it was brought forth from the minds of men, therefore it was possible in some form or another.

Sasaki had grown up with tall tales. Tales of wild, savage, brutal Oni, fond of loud music, strong drink, and violence. Tales of a giant of a man, peerless in battle, single-handedly holding the gate against a thousand warriors, felling each and every one of them, buying time for his liege lady, family, and retinue to escape and flee to safety, only to finally surrender and die when he discovered his wife, soul-mate and lover had been slain by a cowardly, poisoned arrow.

Aside from the faith in the Golden Lady, tall tales were the bread and butter of Yamato life. A troublemaker was often accused of having oni parentage; a strong family, with wealth and prestige and nobility were said to be born from the dragon. So when the Anglish Empire mockingly and indifferently called them ‘elves’, the Yamato people had been incensed. They were not mere ‘elves’; they held the noble blood of the dragon, the savage and mercurial blood of the oni, the eternal patience of the elves, and the persistent curiosity of humanity. No, The Yamato were not ‘elves’, they were the Yamato, and woe betide the lesser man who thought to say otherwise.

History is not without a sense of irony. The conquest of the Yamato by the Anglish took a week. Reality recorded a slightly different tale, but the long and short of it was a lone Anglish ship had struggled into port into Yamato lands, lost and desperate for help. The Yamato drove them off. Six months later, the entire Anglish warfleet shelled the Yamato port cities with relentless waves of cannon fire for an entire week. Whole cities were pounded flat, and the Anglish hadn’t deigned to even set foot on their land. "You belong to us, now." They’d triumphantly declared, and sailed away in triumph.

A land of myth and legend, a world of strange and terrifying realities. There were other people out there beyond the horizons of the oceans. They should have listened to the portents of the First Empress, whose name meant Glory, the Morningtide.

Sasaki screamed, grabbing at her stomach, as fiery waves of pain surged through her middle, cramping her guts. It was her fault. She shouldn’t have eaten it. She didn’t know if it was poisonous, toxic to her, but her guts felt as if they were on fire.

Har hands were knotted fists against her belly, she had to consciously keep from trying to disembowel herself to tear the offending food from her stomach.

Her strange daughter Kuroyuki watched her mother with eyes that seemed to glow like amber and gold in the reflected firelight. Neither of them had expected this. A blast of heat and pressure forced its way out from Sasaki in a hemisphere, charring the ground, forcing the air away, snuffing the campfire in an instant.

The shockwave buffeted Kuroyuki, who tried to brace her feet into the simple stance her mother had taught her, but the pressure, the force, seemed to mold itself against every angle, every surface of Kuroyuki’s body and it lifted her up and sent her tumbling and rolling out of the drake’s lair along the ground, alongside sticks, leaves, pine needles, and other small bits of detritus.

When the blast wave lifted, Kuroyuki struggled to her feet, and stumbled drunkenly through the forest back towards the camp.

Another scream of pain; another blast wave erupted from Sasaki. This time, Kuroyuki grabbed onto a low-hanging tree branch with both arms as the force, the heat and pressure washed over her, causing her sinuses to spike in pain and her ears to pop as the air pressure changed.

"Whatever shall we do with this?" Kuroyuki asked Sasaki as she curiously inspected the corpse of the fallen drake.

"I was thinking about taking some of its hide; maybe some of its scales. Could make some armor from it; I don’t know." Sasaki replied as she prodded the body with a knife. "You know, I once heard a story about these things." She relayed to her daughter, who was examining the scales, which were each the size of her hand, ridged, and were a glossy, almost metallic black.

"Oh?"

"Yeah. If you were to eat a drake’s nine-chambered heart, you’d be able to take some of its power." Sasaki murmured. "They’re cousins of dragons, so even in this debased form, you’d be able to obtain a fraction of a dragon’s power."

"Do you think that it’s true?" Kuroyuki asked curiously.

"Well... I don’t think I’d be able to steal its power, but the meat on its legs is much too difficult to cook, much less eat." Sasaki replied.

That had been an hour ago. She’d eaten the heart, hot and steaming, idly complaining of a lack of sake and some proper radish to chase it with.

The cramps had started soon after, coupled with a baffling euphoria. Then the pain.

Sasaki screamed, convulsing on the ground, throwing off waves of power that blasted dirt and dust everywhere, making a gritty, unbreathable cloud that itself was blasted away with the force of the power that was coming off Sasaki in waves.

Kuroyuki couldn’t understand the power itself. It didn’t have the uncomfortable spiders-crawling-beneath-the-skin feeling of clerical powers that were drawn from the Gods and Goddesses that stood in careful watch over the world and its inhabitants, and it certainly had no hallmarks of the arcane. In fact, every time Kuroyuki attempted to use magic so that she could approach Sasaki, it simply unraveled.

This baffled and terrified the ancient-young creature that called itself Kuroyuki. This power was not arcane, it was not holy; it was a power wholly derived and sustained by the person itself, which flew in the face of everything that Kuroyuki understood about the world.

"K-Kuro..." Sasaki croaked weakly, and Kuroyuki realized the power that had blasted off Sasaki in raw waves of unfocused bursts had weakened with each consecutive blast, until it finally hung over Sasaki as a trembling haze that quivered and flexed and wavered even as it faded.

She hurried to her mother’s side.

"Are you well, mother?" She asked, trying to probe her mother with senses that defied reality.

"I’m not doing that again." Sasaki complained weakly.

"I should hope not." Kuroyuki encouraged.

"Let me sleep until morning, Kuro." Sasaki mumbled, and slipped into sleep.

Kuroyuki examined the camp, and carefully removed their packs and saddlebags from the corpses of the horses. Neither Sasaki or Kuroyuki had any fondness for the beasts, but they certainly served a purpose albeit a one born from pragmatism. They needed the horses in order to travel quickly with their gear, but a proper Yamato woman did not ride a horse as it was impossible to maintain ones’ modesty while riding the beasts.

It was possible that they could have avoided the fight with the drake had they given up the horses for food to the beast, but Sasaki had leapt into action, baring her sword and trying to ward off the reptilian beast. Kuroyuki could have warned Sasaki of the impossibility of the task; the drake had no desire at all to countenance anything edible entering its territory uncontested, but whatever Sasaki wanted, Kuroyuki would follow along as was proper for a Yamato daughter.

"The Goddess must truly love you." Francesca murmured.

"I wonder about that." Katarina replied. "It seems to me... I think maybe this time I was just the courier. That the Goddess wanted them to be brought to the new capital of Darnell and I happened to be convenient."

"You were convenient?" Gabrielle questioned. "You were on another continent- had to cross the Mirras Sea- had to trek all the way from Ardeal to Montesilvano, to- to the Samarkand Highlands, the Blighted City itself and... you think it was an act of convenience?" She blurted.

"Make no mistake, Katarina: You are a hero. A hero as well as a Saint." She exclaimed. Her voice was trembling.

"I don’t want to be a hero. I don’t want to be a saint." Katarina replied levelly.

"What do you intend to do?" The Grand Cardinal asked diffidently.

Katarina frowned. "I don’t understand the question. I plan to visit the stables and spend time flying my drake. I also have an appointment with the College of Firearms today."

The Grand Cardinal waved that all away. "No, Your Radiance, I was asking what you intended to do." The weight she added to her words implied a deeper, more significant meaning than the mundane response she’d received.

Katarina blinked. "My job?" She asked. The Grand Cardinal sat back with an irritated sigh.

"You’re right, you know. You are a Living Saint." She sighed again. "I will be as frank as I can, we don’t have any sort of... established protocol to guide us on what needs to be done. So, tell us, Your Radiance: What needs to be done?"

Katarina shook her head. "The only thing I want is to do my job. That’s all I have ever wanted. I was brought to the church at six, I have been a Witch Hunter for ten years, since I was sixteen." She adjusted her stance, and sheathed her sword.

"I have not been given new insights beyond what has already been revealed." She smiled diplomatically, still trying to come to terms with her new position. "I really just want to do the job I was given. Being Blessed, being a Living Saint, being … addressed as ‘Your Radiance’ … I don’t need any of that to do my job. That’s it, that’s all I want: to do my job."

The Lady Cardinals all glanced at each other, and the Grand Cardinal sat forward, folding her hands and resting them on the table.

"I think..." The Grand Cardinal began, but Katarina looked up and continued speaking. "I think that’s been my major point of contention; why I’ve been so … discourteous... with the representatives of the Church. You raised me, you trained me to do a job, you gave me the tools to do my job... and yet I find myself pigeonholed, doorstopped, and distracted from doing the job I was assigned at every turn."

The Grand Cardinal frowned, but Katarina held up her hand.

"I did not come to Darnell so that I could put on dresses, attend functions, simper and gossip and play at politics." She stated flatly. "I am a Witch Hunter, my responsibility is-" she cut herself off. "Elsewhere." She finished. "In fact, the only reason I was summoned here by the Book of the Golden Lady is because one of you wanted to score points off the others." She pointedly eyed one of the empty seats.

Katarina paused, choosing her words. "In the woods east of Norn, I found an army of fouled dead, demonkind, and beastmen, all moving against the town. The cause is clearly a Witch, perhaps even my own sister." She shook her head. "I don’t want to sound ungrateful. I appreciate the gift of the drake. I will use it to the best of my ability in my job. But I don’t want to waste any more time. You ask me what I intend to do?" She asked, turning towards the door. "I intend to do my job in the service of the Golden Lady until the day I die. That is all." She curtsied gracefully, bowing low, and then rose. "With all due respect, Your Grace, Lady Cardinals, I must attend to my responsibilities. If you will excuse me."

She exited quickly, nearly running, her hair bouncing and swaying with her stride.

The Grand Lady sighed and sat back in her seat. "Well? What do you have to say to that, Ladies?" She asked.

Gabrielle laughed, a full, throaty, rich laugh. "I like her. I confess I did not like her when I first met her, but I like her. It’s a shame she’s up here, in the north. If she were on the southern continent, in my district, I am sure she would flourish." Olivia frowned at this, but said nothing.

"I disagree. Despite her position, she flaunts her disrespect." Yuriko replied, shaking her head.

Olivia raised an eyebrow. "That was an unbelievably discourteous thing to say about someone who is, by all definitions set forth by the Goddess of the Dawn Herself a thousand years ago, a Living Saint, the embodiment of Her Favor. I wonder how future generations of Cardinals, Clerics, Paladins, Witch Hunters, Inquisitors, pastors, and missionaries will feel when they read in the history books to come that Lady Cardinal Hasegawa Yuriko thought the Living Saint Katarina nothing more than an uncivilized peasant savage?"

Yuriko’s face darkened with every word. "And how will the history books reflect your involvement?" She spat vehemently.

Olivia shrugged. "If they are as honest about me as they are about you, Yuriko, I have nothing to fear. I will be known as Katarina’s lover," She tapped her finger against her lips and continued "Perhaps a mentor. I have, after all, taken the time to get to know the woman that armors her heart with duty, faith, and responsibility." She glanced at the others.

"Can you say the same? Do you know who she counts as friend? Confidant? Who here in this temple does she respect? Do you know her favorite food?" She shook her head. "The Grand Lady spoke of this weeks ago. Weeks before any of us knew what was to come, and yet here we are. We have a Living Saint for the first time in over seven hundred years and we know as much about her as we know of the Blessed Saint Celestine." She glanced around the table, and then down at her hands. "We have a larger problem, though: What if I take Katarina to bed with me tonight, and she dreams of the Goddess again?" She asked. "What if, instead of saying, ‘I will give you my strongest, and most powerful blessings’ to Katarina as she did, she says, ‘Come home and serve as my right hand, my vengeful striking hammer against the evils that lie beyond this world.’ and I wake to find Katarina ascending on golden wings to the heavens, as the legends say happened to Saint Celestine?" Nobody said anything.

Yuriko opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again. She decided to speak anyway. "I think... I think she just wants exactly what she has said: To do her job. I see no reason to withhold her request, and every reason to grant it. I think that if we were to ask ourselves how we can best …" She shook her head. "If we were to ask ourselves, "What can we do to help her?" I think that the answers will provide themselves. I think we should give her the best tools we have. Reserve nothing. Be helpful, accommodating."

The Grand Cardinal glanced at Yuriko, surprised. She typically wasn’t involved in anything that didn’t concern the Yamato directly. "I’m surprised at your opinion, Lady Yuriko." The Grand Lady murmured.

"What? You asked what we should do. I think it’s self-evident. She thinks of herself not as a Saint, but as a Witch Hunter. She wants to do the job we gave her. I say let her."

"Why?" Gabrielle inquired. Yuriko regarded the larger woman coolly.

"I don’t ask ‘why’ to insult you, Lady Yuriko. I ask to gain clarification." Gabrielle added.

Yuriko picked up an inkpot with the quill inside. "This will never be a knife." She shrugged. "I understand that we want to keep her here. Every time she has returned to Darnell in these past ten years we have tried to keep her here because of her unique qualities. Have we ever succeeded? Think of how the mapmakers alone would benefit from learning where she’s been, the places she’s seen. How much wisdom could she pass on as an instructor? Now she has been Blessed by the Goddess- the first in centuries. So now more than ever we absolutely need to keep her here, keep her close at hand, keep her safe... except for one thing: that she cannot be what we want her to be. She will fight us at every turn, and then one day she will simply decide that she does not need us. She will realize that since she serves Inanna, why should she answer to an earthly authority? She has done so once, already, a few minutes ago. She will do it again. And then we will have lost her more completely than Saint Celestine."

She set the inkpot down and slid it to the side. "My solution? Give her what she wants. Give her a new Writ, giving her complete authority over everyone, answerable only to ourselves. Craft her a new gun, with the most advanced techniques, the most powerful blessings, the strongest charms. If she wants armor, give her armor. A new sword. Whatever she asks, give her our absolute best, and when she leaves, let her leave with our blessings and affections. She will leave, knowing that the Church loves her, that the Church encourages her, that we believe in her, and perhaps if we are very lucky, she will remember us to the Goddess."

The other Cardinal pondered her words. The Grandy Lady nodded. "I see no reason to oppose you, and I agree with you. Let’s move forward with that plan."