Remi had warned of the same.
I know it must have to do with me and the magick I can use. “The reason doesn’t matter,” I insist. “Just that your whereabouts are accounted for. Why won’t you tell anyone?”
Magister Thomas shakes his head. “You know the high altum has wanted to replace me for a long time. I’ve taken several cuts in pay to keep him from hiring someone younger but with less experience. It doesn’t matter what he says from the pulpit about Selenae being harmless, they’re considered heretics. If my friendship with…”
Gregor, I fill in silently.
He sighs. “It’s complicated, but that would be the last excusethe altum needs. You, Remi, and Mistress la Fontaine would be left with nothing.”
“Thatis your concern?” I ask. “You’re willing to sacrifice your life so we can keep ourjobs?”
“It would destroy everything Remi has worked his whole life to achieve,” Magister Thomas says. “If I’m executed for an unrelated crime, he can take over. If I’m banned as a heretic, so is my assistant. So are you. Either way I’m lost, but this way everything I care about is safe.”
“I’d rather you were found innocent and came home.”
“As would I.”
This is the man Remi described as having a violent past? Whatever drove him from Brinsulli must have been a false accusation. “Magister?” I whisper. “May I ask you a personal question?”
He wrinkles his brow. “If you think this is really the time for it.”
It’s not, but I have to know. “What happened to your wife?”
Magister Thomas sits back into the shadows with a long sigh. “She left me.” For several seconds I don’t think he’s going to say anything more, then he murmurs, “Maybe it would be more accurate to say I left her.”
The question is difficult to ask, but I suspect I don’t have much more time, so I force the words out. “Was there another woman?”
“You could say that.” He smiles without humor.
“But… who?”
“Not who, Catrin,” he corrects me. “What. What do you think came between us?”
“The Sanctum,” I breathe.
Magister Thomas nods. “I wanted to be the youngest master architect on the continent and build the most beautiful home for the Sun that ever existed. When ambition that great is in yourheart, there’s room for little else.” He looks down. “We had a daughter. A tiny thing with blond curls and the bluest eyes, but then came the plague. She didn’t have a chance.”
I sniff and rub my cheek on my shoulder, unwilling to let go of his hands. “What was she called?”
“Therese.” Magister Thomas pauses for several heartbeats. “I haven’t said her name in years. She deserves better than that.” He clears his throat before continuing. “But the head architect also died, and I was named to replace him. Just when Eleanor needed me most, I wasn’t there.” He shakes his head sadly. “I came home one day and realized she was gone. There was a note, saying she went back to Londunium, but it was dated twenty-nine days earlier. She’d been gone for nearly a month, and I hadn’t noticed.”
“Why didn’t you go after her?”
“A number of reasons. The plague had passed, but it still existed in other towns. Collis refused to let anyone in for over a year. If I’d left, I wouldn’t have been able to return. I’d already lost what was most precious. The Sanctum was all I had left.”
“It’s only a building,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Catrin, you know it’s more than that,” he scolds, beginning the lecture I’ve heard a hundred times. “You, me, Mistress la Fontaine, Remi—even Mother Agnes—our lives are as short and fleeting as phases of the moon, but what lies Beyond the Sun is forever. That’s why we need a Sanctum like ours—to bring the divine to where we can experience it. Life is full of suffering. Nothing is more important than to give people a place of hope and beauty and meaning so they may endure it. And there is no greater privilege than to create that.” He pauses. “Can you honestly tell me a part of you wouldn’t die if it was taken away from you?”
I’d asked myself that very question last night. “No, it would be like losing an eye or a limb,” I admit. “But I would still live,” I add defiantly.
Magister Thomas smiles. “I know you would. You have so much yet to live for. But I…” He sighs. “By the time I realized I’d sacrificed the wrong thing it was too late. Now the Sanctum is all I have left.”
“You haveme!”
“Yes, I do.” He switches his hands to cover mine. “It has been my honor to be your guardian. You gave me back a piece of what I lost.”
He’s acting like this is goodbye. I shake my head. “Stop talking like this!”