They left Crestfall at two in the afternoon.
Aldric's clergy meeting had taken three hours and produced two outcomes — seven of the twelve senior clergy accepting the truth with the specific relief of people who had been carrying something heavy for a long time, and five of the twelve walking out with the specific anger of people whose identity was constructed entirely around the thing that had just been dismantled.
"The five," Kael said at the gate.
"I'll manage them," Aldric said. He had the look of someone who had been managing things alone for eight years and had recently discovered that management was considerably easier when you weren't also maintaining a lie simultaneously. "They're angry. They're not dangerous." A pause. "Not more dangerous than the institutional inertia I've been navigating for eight years."
"The oversight board framework," Sera said. "The gaps I marked — "
