liquid in her glass. She leaned over to you and murmured, breathlessly: “This is the greatest night of my life.”
“I’ve drunk enough to Alfred over the years, so let me drink to Cristabel,” said the Saint of Patience, and he drank, and then he swirled the contents of his glass meditatively. “Here’s to Cristabel.”
Mercy said, with less rancour: “You never liked Cristabel, even before what happened.”
“Bullshit I didn’t like Cristabel,” he said instantly, with the careful, measured reasonableness of a man you had personally seen get through two bottles of wine. “You know what I feel … you know I don’t think she was the best influence on Alfred … you know I thought they brought out the worst in each other, and I don’t think you disagree.”
God said, “They were very similar people.”
“No,” said Augustine. “They weren’t, John. She was a fanatic and an idiot—yes, she was, Mercy—and he … was a man who regretted that he wasn’t. It took surprisingly little to lead my brother astray.”
“Nobody could lead him where he didn’t want to go,” said God, and his patience took a solemn edge. “You know that.”
“Lord! Don’t tell me that,” said his Lyctor, faintly smiling. “I have built an entire myriad on the idea that I could’ve made him come around, given five minutes.”
His sister-saint said nothing to this. She flicked her eyes down to her own glass, instead, and he quickly filled up the awkward pause with, “Anyway, let’s drink to a woman who never divided opinion. Here’s to Pyrrha Dve.”
All eyes trailed fatally down the table to the Saint of Duty. Your gaze was among them. You grasped the stem of your wineglass in your hand, and you looked at the face of the man who had been necromancer once to a woman called Pyrrha: the inscrutable lack of expression that had greeted you in the bathtub, and the first time he’d walked into the Mithraeum’s chapel.
He said flatly, with a note of warning: “Augustine.”
“I mean it. Don’t you think that’s astonishing, after all this time? Even Mercy doesn’t have a bad thing to say about her.” (“Why am I constantly painted as a critical person,” came the inevitable critique.) “I say, here’s to Pyrrha, the woman I cultivated a smoking habit to impress—the cavalier, the legend, the stone-cold fox … John, please stop joggling my elbow, I have heard stone-cold fox from your own holy lips.”
The Emperor protested, “Respectfully! Respectfully.”
Ortus said, “Another topic.”
“Right,” said Augustine. He took another gulp of wine as though to fortify himself, and Ianthe suggested: “To our enemies, older brother.”
“Yes! Great,” he agreed heartily. “A classic. This is why you are my chosen apprentice, chick. To our enemies—the enemies of the Empire—to those safely in the River, that is. I won’t drink to enemies alive, but let’s drink to enemies fallen, as we can afford to be gracious. Let’s drink to the dried-up Blood of Eden.”
Both the Emperor and Mercy said, immediately: “They’re not gone.”
“Fine, pedants—I drink to the best of them, gone for absolute certain … not the remnant kooks, idiots, and zealots who think a nuclear missile could give us pause. The commander would never have settled for a nuclear missile … Lord, that was a merry dance she led us. It deserves something. Perhaps it’s a toast.”
Across the table, you noticed that the Saint of Duty’s knuckles had clenched, just slightly. You had a good sense for knuckles. The Emperor mistook your focus for puzzlement: “It was before you were born, Harrowhark.” (“Long before you were born,” added Mercy owlishly, “because you are three years old.”) “This isn’t really a story that deserves to be told after … three glasses of wine.”
“That was never three glasses of wine,” said the man to his left.
“Four glasses of wine,” amended God, which was probably still inadequate. “This is a good lesson for you, girls, not to underestimate anyone. A quarter century ago these fanatics found out about the Resurrection Beasts. Which are classified to the upper echelons of the Cohort, mind, so that was an intelligence effort and a half…”
“They knew about them,” said Ortus. “They just didn’t know what they were.”
“Finding out what they were didn’t stop them. They searched one Beast out … threw away half their ships separating a Herald from the pack … killed that Herald, let’s drink to that—” (“To killing Heralds,” said his two elder Lyctors, and they drank, and so did Ianthe, and you put your lips on the glass.) “Even a