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Heriburg started, but said nothing Ruoda leaned forward eagerly, her scarf slipping to reveal honey-colored hair
"True enough," agreed Rosvita "Noe are all stained by it Knohat powers he has, we cannot speak against him, since we stood aside and let him use those powers to help us escape Ironhead"
"I beg you, do not be so hard on yourself, Sister" He paused, like a fox about to snatch an egg, and then slipped a hand up his sleeve She heard rustling "Do you recall the young lay sister, Palo dove? Poor child, she will soon be withered by that hard work, and in such a lonely place"
"She is here"
"Here! In Darre?"
"Hush, Sister" Was that sweat on his brow? Was he really so anxious? A breeze stirred the stuffy rooh to waft away the worst of the closed-in s fronize her, but she kneho I was She contrived to es where I usually go walking until Lauds She said she’d coatia, with a h because of your illness"
"She could have come to one of us!" exclaimed Ruoda
"You were not at St Ekatarina’s," he retorted "She did not know you" He turned back to Rosvita "She brought this to th of parchh it were a sleeping snake that ht bite She unrolled it on the sed up over the horizon, its light splayed across the table, illu the lines drawn into the parchment before her
"A map"
Fortunatus rose to stand beside her, leaning on the table Ruoda and Heriburg crowded behind him They had all seen maps, mostly drawn in the time of the Dariyan Empire, in monastic libraries and at the schola at Autun Emperor Taillefer had commissioned mapmakers to mark the boundaries of his holy eh and unpolished coreat library in the skopos’ palace also kept a nu maps from the old days, frail papyrus that flaked away at a touch This map was crudely drawn and freshly, even hastily done; inkblots had not been scraped off; the coastline of Aosta--well mapped by the sailors and nizable; off the western coast only a sie island even though Rosvita had seen in Autun athe southern coast, randfather, who had er son to the Alban queen
"What are these marks?" Fortunatus pointed to scratches, like chicken’s tracks, set here and there across the land, erratically spaced, each one nunify?"