IIIGREAVES, ADELIE AND Vigil stood beside the beast-couch. “All right,” Greaves said. “Now there are things I want to know, and I want no quarrels, Vigil.”
“And by what right do you order me around?” the old man growled. “You may be a god to some, but you are not my god.”
“You owe it to me, atheist. If I was awakened today, at this pat moment, I could have been awakened before. I wasn’t. You kept me asleep, guardian, when I could have been free as any other man. So you owe me.”
The old man grunted. “You’re brave with Mayron and brave with me. But all men are brave, each in his own way. We need no gods.”
“But you have one.”
Adelie touched his arm. “You have lived from the beginning of human history. And you were a great hero. That much the legends tell us. You were braver than any man,
