"I fail to see-"

"Hynthia is one of the forty-eight aspects of Saint Sefrus," Roger said. "An obscure one, I'll grant you. But I seem to recall that one ties knots to her."

Praecum opened his mouth in protest, closed it, then opened it again.

"Saint Sefrus is male," he finally said.

Roger wagged a finger at him. "You're guessing that, based on the Vitellian ending. You've no idea who Saint Sefrus was, do you?"

"I…there are a lot of saints."

"Yes. Thousands. Which is why I should wonder that you didn't bother to check the book to see if Hynthia was a saint before you started accusing her followers as shinecrafters."

"She gave sailors knots and told them to untie them if they needed wind," Praecum said desperately. "That reeks of shinecraft."

Roger cleared his throat. "And Ghial," he quoted, "the Queen, said to Saint Merinero, 'Take you this linen strand and bind a knot in the name of Sephrus, and when you are becalmed, release the wind by untying it.'"

He smiled. "That's from the Sacred Annals of Saint Merinero. Was he a heretic?"

The sacritor pursed his lips and fidgeted. "I read the Life of Merinero," he said. "I don't remember that."

"The Life of Merinero is a paragraph in the Sahtii Bivii," Roger said. "The Anal is a book of seven hundred pages."

"Well, then I can hardly be expected-"

"Tell me. I've noticed you've a chapel for Mannad, Lir, and Netuno. How many sailors make their offerings there before going out to sea?"

"Few to none," Praecum exploded. "They prefer their sea witches. For twenty years they've spurned-" He broke off, his face red, his eyes bugging halfway from their sockets.

"Truth?" Roger asked mildly.

"I have done what I thought best. What the saints wished of me."

"So you have," Roger replied. "And that clearly is neither here nor there as concerns the truth."

"Then you have come to, to…" His eyes were watery, and he was trembling.