A week or so later Henry and Maggie met Francis in one of the many small, book filled rooms in the Taylor’s Hall. Francis wasn’t moved to the dorm room with them, so they’d taken to meeting up with him elsewhere. And, while there had been no more challenges about where they slept, they stayed out of the dorms as much as possible to avoid another confrontation. The verbal hiding they’d all received from Byford was worse than the beating itself. Henry was surprised how quickly he sought approval from someone he barely knew. He was a little scared of it, too. When Byford rebuked them, he used words like “family.” Henry didn’t know if they were accurate, but he wanted them to be.

“So what did you learn this morning?” Francis asked, bringing them back to present.

“Still history. Lots of history,” Henry sighed. “I couldn’t have imagined so many people could do so many things before we were born and have none of them be interesting, even in the slightest.”

Henry laughed. And Francis started to laugh, but it trailed off and he looked off to the side. Maggie shots him a look.

“It’s more interesting than your jokes, Henry,” she said. And this time Francis did smile a little.

“And they’ve started teaching us letters,” she added.

“Letters?” Francis did his best to look pleased for them, but Henry could tell he was deflated. “That’s… wow.”

A few years before, Francis finally succeeded in convincing the priests at the orphanage to give him his own Bible. He couldn’t read it, but he still sat up some nights in front of the fire, tracing the symbols with his eyes, hoping to glean something from it.

Maggie, seeing what her comment had done to her brother, put her hand on his shoulder. “Master Byford said that you’ll be doing the same, when he finds you a placement.”

Henry wasn’t aware of their Master saying any such thing, but he was pleased to see Francis’ expression lighten.

“How’s the kitchen?” Henry asked.

“Yeah,” said Francis, and he forced the corners of his mouth up. “Good. Good. I should probably get back to it, actually. I’ll see you after dinner.”

Henry could see envy in the set of his friend’s face. He’d never seen it in Francis before. But it made sense. Their whole lives, Francis had always seemed more taken with his abilities than Henry was with his own. But now it was he who was being denied the chance to develop them. After these meetings, Francis always curled in around himself, as if he’d been punched in the gut.

They said goodbye, and Maggie got up to walk her brother back to his tasks, leaving Henry alone. He thumbed the spines of the leather bound volumes, the contents of which still entirely eluded him.

As he had time left before his lesson with the weapons master, and nothing with which to fill it, he wandered back to the entry hall to watch the people walking past on the street outside. The footman at the front door, Earnshaw, didn’t try to chat. They’d talked a few times in the last few days when Henry had come to the door, but had settled on greeting him with a warm nod. Even though Henry infinitely prefered his current situation over life in the orphanage, there was something about the freedom those people outside seemed to have; they appeared to come and go as they pleased, which was the kind of magic that truly mystified Henry. They hypnotized him.

He snapped out of his state at the sound of Earnshaw bellowing “Morning, young sirs, ladies,” and then casting a glance back to Henry. The boy heard voices approaching the hall. Familiar voices. Thomas, Robert, and the rest of his welcoming committee. Henry ducked back into the main hall, and then down the slim, nondescript door with the trick handle which led him into the main reception for the guild under the guild.

Henry turned and eased the door behind him. He didn’t shut it; instead, he pressed his ear to the space and waited.

“And what would you do to a Saint, Robert?” he heard Thomas mocking. “Eh? Turn around and punch me when you see him?”

Robert started to stammer. “No, I don’t…I just… Shut up, alright? You know I couldn’t do anything about it. You know I was cursed.”

“Cursed!” Thomas shouted. “Cursed? By who? No one here knows how to curse.” He cried, “Cursed!” again and again and laughs, until Henry hears Earnshaw shush the boys. Henry eased the door shut, careful not to let it make a sound. He spun around and pressed his back against it for a second.

To his surprise, when he got to the practice room, benches had been set up on the sprung floor and the room had been turned into an improvised lecture theater. Boys and girls dressed for combat sat uncomfortably, fidgeting and muttering to one another. At the head of the classroom, Byford and the other instructors stood, calm and confident. They watched as the last students trickled in, Henry among them.

Henry ducked down one of the rows, finding a seat next to Maggie just as Byford stepped forward and called for quiet.

“I know that you were all expecting combat practice today, however events in the wider world are forcing us to accelerate our own plans, so we have decided to give you some necessary information now, rather than waiting. Today, we will be telling what we know about our most dangerous adversaries.”

A murmur ran through the assembled apprentices, and a couple of rows ahead Thomas elbowed one of his cronies and said, quite clearly, “Saints! I told you, Brandon!”

Byford waited for a moment, and then clapped his hands together. The room fell silent once more. “Thaumaturges, or Saints, use power bartered from beings they claim to be Angels. We do not know much about them, really. The Angels are a mystery that is difficult to solve; even the Saints themselves do not have concrete answers on their motives. They are encouraged not to ask questions. What we do know is this: Angels have no physical body. They cannot manifest or act out of the line of sight of a Saint, even to defend them, even if they themselves should be able to see what the Saint cannot. And all Angelic powers come at a price. The price varies, and the cost is often not proportional to the effect.”

Byford let this sink in. Henry reflected, and found that this all tallied up with what he had seen of Francis’ powers.

“Saints pay through sacrifice, and some kind of balance exists for each Saint, a store of sacrifices made. The nature of the sacrifices seems to be irrelevant, as long as they have meaning to the Saint that makes them. We have seen everything from charity work, to self-harm, to burning of material goods… to human sacrifice.” Byford again paused for effect, and this time there was silence. All in this room would have seen a witch-burning, and known that no-one on the pyre was actually a witch. They had seen Saints do this, and wondered why. Henry felt sick, and he looked at Maggie and saw that she was pale and drawn.

Byford starts talking again. “Any act that a Saint performs that seems illogical, self-destructive or evil often has its roots in their having to bank sacrifice against future need. In this way, Angels seem to incentivise corruption. We do not know whether this is intentional, and certainly young Saints do a lot of good with their power, but it seems to be a common trend that as a Saint gets older and more powerful, they start to act less and less as one would expect a saintly person to behave. They often use their positions first to indulge themselves in vice and corruption, so that material sacrifices will temporarily become more real for them. Then they start to pay with pain, their own and then that of others. As these sacrifices lose their edge, they are forced to become more extreme. Eventually each Saint seems to hit their limit, and then they quickly fade, eventually losing their Angels entirely.”

“The final thing that we know is this: Unlike us, Saints are not born with power. They are made. Every saint gains their power after coming into contact with another Saint. The power is spread by touch, and as far as we know the saint who bestows the power does not do so consciously. The new saint will then develop an angel-mark, a golden brand that appears on their skin over a few days, and only vanishes when their power fades.”

Byford trailed off, then immediately started again, stronger. “This is all that we have gleaned. We have no inside sources, no ability to question the Angels directly. We can only judge them on their actions. Since their appearance during the first Crusade nearly six-hundred years ago, they have relentlessly pursued our extinction, and heavily infiltrated church hierarchies both Catholic and Protestant. We can only assume that this is at the Angel’s command, and so it shows that the Angels have some ability to plan and coordinate. But what else are they capable of?” Byford spread his hands, as if asking the audience, but he did not wait for a response.

“The Saint's greatest weapon outside of combat is information. Angels can communicate istantaneosly, meaning that if a Saint is willing to pay the price, he can purchase information from and coordinate with other Saints and Angels over vast distances. In combat their powers mostly involve manipulation of light, heat and force. They can create complex illusions, call down fire, and release concussive blasts of force greater than any cannon. A single Saint, unopposed, can hammer castles to dust. They can burn whole cities, and drive men mad with visions and terrors. The only reliable counter to a Saint’s power is another Saint, as they can spend sacrifice to neutralise one another. Obviously, this is not an option for one of us.”

“The best option for a Witch when facing a Saint is surprise. If you are facing discovery, act first and with the intention to kill. A dead Saint cannot harm you, and any workings they have initiated will stop instantly. If that is not an option, then speed is essential. Saints are powerful, but they are no faster or stronger than anyone else. Finally, if speed is not enough, then salt and iron both have some dampening effect on their powers. Fling salt in their faces and their defenses will usually falter, hide yourself behind iron, and at the very least it will take a moment or two for their powers to burn through it.”

Henry swallowed. This had been exactly what Byford had done in his fight against Williams. It was terrifying to think that Byford had put himself in such a position for him and Maggie, having to rely on the weapons of last resort.