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halls and discourse theaters connected the towers in a broad pentagon that held walking gardens at its center.
    “The annual position forum, you mean.” I hadn’t planned to attend. Usually a waste of damn time.
    “Aubade Grove’s College of Philosophy has recently taken a charter from the League of Civility.” The Velle turned down a narrow alley. “A few members is all. More of an experiment than anything else, at this point.”
    “I don’t give a spit for the League,” I said, grateful for an angry thought to combat the chill still rolling through me. “But the few who’ve signed on with them are influential with the college, that’s a truth.”
    “They’re responsible for this year’s philosophical position. They plan to submit that the stories about the Bourne are misunderstood. They’ll call to question the existence of the Veil that imprisons the Quiet. They’ll argue to rationalize all of this as an unfortunate mythology. Put it away. Ignore it in the same way rational men ignore all irrational things.”
    Favoring my broken leg as I was, my boot caught on an ill-fitted stone and I fell. “Good gods-damn!” I was pretty sure I’d just broken my wrist trying to stop my fall.
    The Velle paused, staring in the direction of the Grove towers. They ascended the night, carving dark pillars from the star-filled sky.
    As I watched him, I began to have an idea about why he’d come to me. Of all the philosophers in the Grove—hell, maybe of all people in the Grove—I was one who held Bourne stories to be true. Anna had been taken there. And I’d once tried to go there myself.
    “What do you want?” I asked.
    “Simple.” The Velle turned and stared down at me. “You will argue against them. You will be sure the existing philosophical position about the Bourne remains in place.”
    I forgot myself for a moment, and asked, “Why do you give a tinker’s damn what a bunch of high-minded philosophers thinks about the Bourne and all its beasts.”
    A sharp pain erupted behind my eyes and nose. My eyes began to water. My nose bled. Then abruptly the stabbing sensation was gone. The Velle’s brief touch.
    When I’d caught my breath, I reframed my question. “I would have thought you’d prefer we pay you no mind. Attentive men prepare better. You know, in times of rumor and threat and war.”
    The Velle shook his head, and tossed his tobacco stem away. “We’re not concerned with your little armies. Or your Sheason, who render the Will as we do.” He paused a long moment, as if deciding whether killing me might prove a better course. After all, he was asking the Grove’s frail albino to make his argument for him. I was awfully damn good on the theater floor—no false modesty there—but that didn’t always matter in the ways it should.
    “What we care about is the Veil,” he continued. “We want to understand it, scientifically.”
    “That’s not been a focus—”
    “I know,” he replied. “But you’ll get to it eventually. And the concerted effort of the Grove colleges in understanding how it works is something we care very much about.”
    “Because in understanding it, you might be able to bring it down, that it?” The logic wasn’t hard to follow. “Why in every last hell would I want to help you, then?”
    He looked past me, back the way we’d come. “Because we’ll find a way to bring it down, eventually. Because you might want to be considered a friend when we do. And because I can return Anna to you. Permanently.”
    End the catatonia he meant. My silent prayer for so long.
    “There are risks, of course,” he added. “Her mind has found a sanctuary. You’d be taking that away from her if I make her fully awake .” His resonant voice came low, deep, almost from the stones beneath me.
    I stared at him. To get Anna back . . . And I had no love for the League. Still, could anything he wanted of me be the right thing?
    “And consider . . . it’s the argument you’d have