Constance is terrible indeed to leave her with the duty of gathering bones - and more terrible still to leave her in the company of vengeful ghosts. The accusations ring in her ears now that she has time to hear them, now that her heart is not stopped by fear. Of course she is innocent of guilt - she walked a path of holy pilgrimage by the direct command of her sworn lady. 

But she does not feel cleansed by the east. She does not feel inspired by the temples of Jerusalem. She did not succeed in safeguarding her lady. What then was her journey for? If not holy revelation and if not knighty guardianship, then what? It was a journey for journey's sake, interwoven with vice and horror, in the end consumed in draconic metamorphosis. Can she [i]truly[/i] claim pilgrimage as her defense? Would her answer be different if her journey had at least been holy? 

It had not passed her mind that Constance had denied her a knightly calling. To take up arms for the wronged and achieve vengeance - that would have been a great duty, a great quest. Without glance it had been ruled out, the oath denied her - why? Did Constance think she would be incapable, unwilling? If she had courage to speak before the dead she might have given in to their oath anyway instead of picking gnawed bones from the grass and thinking not of how they used to be.

She wishes she were a surgeon who could know one bone from another and lay them out as precisely as in Imperial apothecaries. She is not, and has seen too many battlefields to believe that such things are always possible. So she stacks them high and begins to dig, sweat shining upon her brow in place of tears.