tasteful paintings with wooden frames, and a general smell of wood polish and book glue. It was a friendlier room than you had expected, insofar as you had expected anything. The wide tapestry sofa was thick with fringed cushions in comfortable disarray. There were vases of eggshell-thin ceramic on the table set before the vast plex window—currently hung with primrose drapes, shut—filled with, though you had no idea where he had procured them, cut flowers in shades of orange, red, and gold.
The Saint of Patience was bent over a mirror above a wooden washstand, wearing a suit of antique make beneath his robe. You were grudgingly impressed by the sight of a historical artefact actually being worn: black trousers, black jacket, a plain white shirt with a high white collar, very starched. Augustine had combed his hair into a flat cap against his skull, faultless and shiny, with not a strand out of place. Within the collar sat a funny little black tie that was cut in a curve, and he was knotting it into a fat bow.
“Nicely done, my dove,” he said jocularly to Ianthe, taking her hands and kissing them. There was a tightness around his concrete eyes that belied the good humour. “You put me in mind of a statue of some lost goddess hauled up from the waters, painted lineaments removed but marble intact.”
“Covered in moss, mould, and gunge,” she suggested, consenting to be kissed on each cheek. “You should see my sister.”
“You always say that,” said Augustine. He looked at you, and relieved your mind by not kissing you anywhere; he simply raised his eyebrows and said, “And so the crow can be a swan! Ah, this is like the old days … you should have seen the shindigs we pulled off, when we dared congregate. We partied as though it were the days before the apocalypse. I will remember them always. John laughed more then. Mostly at that madman Ulysses, and Cassiopeia, under the table because she’d had a single glass of wine.… All right, kiddies, shall I tell you how we’ll play this?”
You asked, “Why are you helping me commit murder?”
He checked his little tie in the mirror again, corrected some imperceptible skew, and straightened up.
“For reasons of my own, dear girl,” he said, with the glacial cheer that seemed to be his first line of defence. “Once upon a time, if my younger brother had deemed it fit for you to exit this vale of tears, I would not have stopped him, but I admitted long ago that Ortus no longer listens to anyone. He always did get his own bizarre obsessions, and you could never get them out of his head with a pneumatic drill. He has caused me more pain over these last scant forty years than I dare to admit. No, there’s no question of me barring you here. I’ll get Teacher’s undivided attention. You’ll both skedaddle. Harrow will finish her bloody business … if she can, which I am not at all sure of.”
“She can,” said Ianthe, ruining it with “probably,” and the Lyctor said: “She can try. I once watched that man fight a city. The city didn’t win. He’ll leave the dinner first, and be in the training room afterward, that’s his habit; you’ll leave on cue.”
This seemed nonsensical to assume. You said, “He’ll leave?” at the same time the Princess of Ida said, “On cue?”
“Won’t tell you what it is; if you’re waiting for it, our Emperor will smell a rat. Just believe me when I say that when I want Ortus to go, he’ll be giddy-gone.” (This did not make much sense to you, as a joke.)
There was a brisk knock on the door. You immediately pressed yourself to the wall, out of direct sight if it opened, and Ianthe tightened bony fingers on the shining end—pommel—of her Third House rapier; but Augustine merely said, “Come in, lynchpin.”
The lynchpin walked in. It was the Saint of Joy.
Your erstwhile teacher ignored you, folded into your alcove, and she ignored your sister, whose pallid eyebrows had shot up so fast and so far that they were in danger of breaking the atmosphere. Mercymorn wore a long slip of peach-coloured silk, and her white Canaanite robe was tucked over her forearms and had slipped entirely off her slender, aggrieved shoulders. She had scraped her hair into a merciless and shining coil at the back of her head, and she had no eyes for either of you.