“(Topper) I’ll story ’em, Fin. I’ll story ’em clean.”

“(Topper) I’ll story ’em, Fin. I’ll story ’em clean.”

“She will at least be decently clothed as she waits. Tomorrow I shall find her a brush and powder and whatever else a woman of her dignity requires.” Fin rolled her eyes. “Is ‘dignity’ what you call it?” Jeannot offered her his hand. Fin took it and pulled herself up from the deck. She was barefoot and her pants and shirt were stained with everything from blood to oakum to lampblack. She stretched her shirt out between her hands and considered its mottle of stains. “I’m not dignified?” she asked. When Fin looked up, Jeannot had an eyebrow cocked high and one side of his mouth was curled in amusement. “Where you are concerned, much requires redefinition.”

“What do you know of the Knights?” he asked. Fin shrugged. “I thought knights were only in children’s stories until a few days ago.” Jeannot smiled. “A man could do worse than to live in the stories of a child. There is, perhaps, no better remembrance.” “Until the child grows up and finds out the stories aren’t true. You might be knights, but I don’t see any shining armor,” Fin said. Jeannot stopped near the gate of the auberge and faced her. “Each time a story is told, the details and accuracies and facts are winnowed away until all that remains is the heart of the tale. If there is truth at the heart of it, a tale may live forever. As a knight, there is no dragon to slay, no maiden to rescue, and no miraculous grail to uncover. A knight seeks the truth beneath these things, seeks the heart. We call this the corso. The path set before us. The race we must run.”

“(Topper) I’ll story ’em, Fin. I’ll story ’em clean.”

“Don’t seem right, do it?” said Topper. “It ain’t right,” replied Fin. “Not at all.” Jack guzzled his wine and wiped at his beard. “Mayhap it’s right and we can’t see it...” Topper scratched his bald head and hummed in thought. “Still don’t seem right,” he proclaimed when he’d hummed enough. Jack dropped his flagon to the deck and it rolled away clattering. “Yeah, well, what seems ain’t always what is.”

“Most often, their association was one of silence, but that is a thing of uncommon worth when partaken of in the ease of another.”

“Though he wouldn’t take it or offer it back, she gave. She squeezed it into him and held it there. She accepted him. She loved him in his wretchedness, kissed his ragged cheek, and called him /father./”

“Then she took up the bow and began to play. The tone was warm and deep, storied with layers of age.”

“She chased the song like a hound fast upon a scent. She pursued it through a forest primeval: a dark land planted with musical staves and rests and grown thick with briars of annotation. On she went and on still until she caught sight of the song ahead of her, fleeting and sly. “I see it,” she said aloud, though she didn’t mean to.”

“in all the vastness of the world, the deepest adventure is not of war or mortal danger, but of heart, of soul, of the infinite discovery of a beloved other.”

“Her mind circled Georgia, circled Ebenezer. It called up images and memories and things nearly home but never that final destination itself, as if it existed at the center of her mind, shining like a sun too radiant. She knew there was a face at the center of that radiance. A face too bright. A face she sought and longed for but could no longer bear the light of. She drifted into sleep, circling, circling, circling.”