court of Koniortos, genius of the River—ten thousand years old and oldest among saints, quick and sophisticated and devious—had a shrewd plan to assist you in the murder of his dutiful brother. His shrewd plan: to get everyone profoundly drunk.
Two hours later you sat amid a pillage. The remains of a meal lay before you, more than you had ever eaten of your own volition. You’d had to. The only other option was unconsciousness. A pyre of candles cast their radiance across the snowy white linen and the silver cutlery that the Saint of Patience had so carefully set, and on the crumb-strewn plate that had once contained rolls of some description, but they had been eaten—or put somewhere—you did not know, and you didn’t care. The shining bones of Cohort heroes hung as silent observers on either side of the room, and you fancied weariness in their eyeless expressions.
You were not sure how it had happened. It had seemed to begin as all previous dinners had, just more formal. Maybe Augustine’s cooking was more careful and more lavish—he tended to cook in short bursts of violence, serving many parts of a meal but not all at once, which coming from the Drearburh table you found bewildering. You hadn’t been able to focus on what you were eating; only that by the third course, you had to continue or suffer the consequences. You did not really like the taste of wine, which Augustine had served you before, and had not imagined there could be that much of it. He refilled the glasses before you ever finished one, so that you never made it to the bottom of the first.
Now, in the smoking ruins of dinner, he and the Saint of Joy, and God and Ianthe, had moved their seats to a cluster at the end of the table. Ianthe’s First House robes were somewhere on the floor, and her elbows were on the tablecloth, and her cheeks were pink, which gave her a spurious loveliness. Augustine had removed his jacket and was sitting in his white button-up shirt. The tie at his throat had come undone entirely to hang limp and black beneath the points of his dishevelled collar. Mercy had it worst: the knot of hair at her neck had come down, and now was springing loose in pale, rose-gold strands, and she was actually sniggering.
God sat between them. Teacher had his sleeves rolled up to his elbows; if it was a tidier or nicer shirt than he usually wore, you could not tell. The coronet of bones and leaves had fallen from his brow, probably in among the napkins, and his top button was crooked, and every so often he would come around and fill up everyone’s water glasses, and say with increasing earnestness: “Keep drinking water, Harrow,” as though water were the greatest and most impossible boon granted to the Nine Houses. His smile kept crinkling the edges of those white-encircled eyes.
Every so often you would look over the table at the man you intended to kill. The Saint of Duty had drunk just as much as Augustine, but had an expression like stone, with not a button out of place. He had more than once shared a glance with you that you were very afraid was solidarity. You weren’t sure. You were drinking water. You were drinking a great deal of water.
“To absent friends,” said Augustine suddenly, and raised his glass.
And everyone said, “Absent friends,” and raised their glasses, and drank. That was the invention of torture; you had no doubt that either the Third or the Fifth House had come up with the damned rule that whenever you raised your glass and proposed a sentimental toast, everyone had to drink with you. You sipped. You did not have any absent friends.
“And to our cavaliers,” said the Saint of Joy, quite suddenly, after everyone had drunk.
Augustine raised his glass again. “I’ll drink to that. To cavaliers—we didn’t deserve ’em … and they didn’t deserve us, as I always say. To Alfred—Cristabel—Pyrrha—Loveday—Naberius—to them all.”
You saw the Emperor darting an impassive glance at the increasingly disarranged saint at his right, but she did not greet this toast with anger. She simply said, “To Cristabel,” and drained her glass in one single, violent motion. When God briefly pressed the tips of his fingers to the tips of her fingers, she said instantly: “I’m not drunk!!”
“I’d never think it,” he said.
You watched Ianthe take another swig of the pale, apple-yellow