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beyond.
    Perhaps that was the key to his restlessness. The thing that seemed out of order in his life. Perhaps it was just the yearning for something . . . more .
    â€œI will, then,” Bessett muttered. “If you indeed lay no claim to the lady?”
    Without so much as looking at him, Lazonby waved his hand as if in invitation.
    A little awkwardly, Bessett cleared his throat. “Are you at all anxious about the new acolyte?”
    Lord Lazonby’s head jerked around, an odd smile curling one corner of his mouth. “Why should I be?”
    â€œYou’ve seemed . . . different the last two days.” Bessett set his head slightly to one side, and studied his old friend. “Distracted.”
    Lazonby threw back his head and laughed softly. “You cannot read me, Geoff,” he answered, “so stop trying. Besides, this is a solemn occasion—or so our Preost keeps telling me.”
    â€œI find it odd that until now, you’d never agreed to sponsor an acolyte,” Bessett mused. “You seemed not to take this part of the Fraternitas with any seriousness. Are you afraid the new recruit might forget his vows? Or trip over his own two feet?”
    Lazonby crooked one eyebrow. “If the fellow falls arse over teakettle at Sutherland’s hems, it’s nothing to me,” he said evenly. “After all, he was groomed by old Vittorio, and Sutherland’s the one who made me do this.”
    â€œIt was your turn, Rance,” said Bessett.
    â€œAye, and now I’ve taken it.” Lazonby’s hands slid from the stone balustrade as he straightened. “And what Vittorio and I hath wrought, old chap, let no man put asunder. Remember that, won’t you?”
    Just then, a gong sounded, the low reverberations echoing off the vaulted walls. With a roguish wink, Lazonby threw up his hood. “Ah, the witching hour is upon us,” he said. “Curtains up!”
    Still, Bessett hesitated. “Damn it, Rance, what have you done?” he asked, seizing his old friend’s arm. “Do you dislike the lad? Or distrust him?”
    â€œThere you go again, trying to read my mind.”
    â€œOh, for God’s sake. I don’t read minds.”
    â€œNo?” Lazonby turned and started down the stairs, the hem of his brown wool robe dragging over the steps as Bessett followed. “But to answer your question, Geoff, aye, I like the acolyte very well indeed,” he continued over his shoulder, “but I’m not at all sure the rest of you will.”
    After descending to the main chamber, Bessett and Lazonby took their places in the rear with the remaining Guardians. The ceremony commenced at once, all of them responding a little mechanically to Sutherland’s liturgy. The traditional prayers were said, then the chalice of wine was passed, but Geoff sipped from it with half a mind.
    The truth was, though he might accuse Rance of not taking such ceremonial matters seriously, Geoff, too, often skimmed over the finer points of rite and ritual. They were both far more concerned with the practicalities of how to resurrect and restructure an organization that, just a few short years earlier, had lain scattered over war-torn Europe in tragic—and potentially dangerous—disarray.
    The initiation ceremony was always performed in Latin, the language of the last formal Fraternitas manuscripts still in existence. Over the centuries, many of the Brotherhood’s records had been destroyed—often out of self-preservation—particularly during the Middle Ages, when the Gift had nearly died out, and during the Inquisition, when many of the Vateis had been put to the rack.
    Though the Vateis were neither, being burned as a heretic or drowned as a witch was not an uncommon fate for those whom history had so grievously misunderstood. And out of such cruelty and ignorance, the Guardians had sprung, in order to protect the weaker among