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the Great Hog could be seen, and I wondered how the rain was kept out. By then I was chilled and headachey, so I returned to my bench and the gentleman’s coat.
    Not once through that afternoon and evening did I spare a thought for Sordaling School, or for Baron Howdl, or for the dream that had brought me away from both. For the rest of the night I slept like a dead man.
     
    The next morning I was still on my hard bed when Powl opened the door
and walked through to the central chamber. “Still asleep, I see,” he said, but it was
obvious he meant “still here.” He was carrying a bundle.
    I got up, shook out his felted coat, and followed him.
    In the morning light he was smoother than ever: smoother and cleaner
and more pink-scalped. His plumpness was an illusion brought on by small features and the delicate
joints of his fingers. While his dress was conservative, everything he wore had a little bit of gold
about it, including his teeth. He put down the bundle on the boneworks table, where it clattered. He
took back his coat, examined it—for fleas, possibly—and said: “The rules,
Nazhuret:
    “First, never piss against the walls of this building.”
    I started to interrupt, to explain it had only been the outside wall, and on a structure this massive, that could scarcely matter, but it occurred to me to wonder how he could possibly have known, and in the face of his inexplicable knowledge, my protest died.
    “It is unhygienic, it stinks, and it only encourages dogs. I find it an unappealing habit, and you will not do it. Further, for the sake of my sensibilities if not your own, you will wash every day—yes, of course you do, but I mean head to foot. Neatly. Cold or hot. You will launder your shirt every evening.” At this I must have gawped, for I had never heard of anyone except the clergy living with such nicety, and among those, only such who had servants with time to waste. Powl paid my expression no mind, or perhaps he answered it in directly, for he continued, “This training would be easier if you had been fifteen years instead of nineteen. You’re now at an age to balk, to challenge everything I say.”
    Indeed, I was about to challenge his rules as time-consuming and inappropriate considering my station in life, when I was overcome by a feeling of uncertainty amounting to pure dizziness, for I no longer knew what my station was nor in what voice I was about to answer this man.
    The student of sixteen years’ training in obedience was dead, as dead as if the body still lay cold on the cold stone flags. The perfect detachment of yesterday also was gone; I had awakened without it and not noticed the change. The fellow who had tried twice to object to very minor inconveniences was neither of the Nazhurets I knew. I heard him squeak my own confusion and I did not recognize the man. I was nauseated. I lost my balance.
    I think I fell to my knees, for I remember Powl holding me up, stronger than he looked, with the small hands with little gold rings about the fingers. He put my seat down on a bench.
    “Boy,” he said, “I understand. Don’t worry about it. Such moments were not made to be held to. What is necessary is simply… faith. Or obstinacy. That what happened did happen.” He let me go then and began to pace, his shoes with their lacquered heels making surprisingly little noise against the floor. “That, actually, is the only legitimate meaning of the much-abused word ‘faith.’ It is the… the cussedness… to insist that what we knew to be true remains true, in the face of confusion and distraction. When it is hidden from us. Because…”
    And he looked sharply into my face. “Because we were not made to live constantly in a glow of divine illumination.”
    He sighed and rubbed his lips with the tip of a finger. “Most people, I think, experience all the inutterable perceptions of a saint, a sage, or a scholar in their own times. Burghers, smiths, soldiers like yourself: all ripe for