She considered this scene, caught as it was on the cusp of dawn, when night and day fell into their eternal, exhausted battle, against the backdrop of a bleeding sky, and wondered how it would be seen in posterity. Necessity’s bared teeth, transformed into smiles of joy in the centuries to come. That vast span of wilful forgetfulness we call history. Looking round the chamber, she saw but one other witness who might be asking the same questions. Rise Herat. The historian. I once attended one of his lectures. A night of self-hatred, I recall, uttered in the lifeless tones of an anatomist lecturing surgeons. Only, the body on the slab was his own. He was past even enjoying the pain he inflicted on himself.

When the historian’s love of history dies… alas, there is nowhere to go, no place to which one might flee and then hide.

Unless one chooses to live a life insensate. She glanced again at Hunn Raal, and saw how the man and the historian more or less faced one another, and as she noted this Vatha Urusander stepped forward, moving in between the two men as he approached the dais, and the woman who would become his wife.

He halted at the halfway point when Mother Dark suddenly spoke. ‘A moment, if you will, Lord Urusander.’

The man tilted his head, and then shrugged. ‘As much time as you need,’ he replied.

She seemed to consider that invitation for a breath or two, and then resumed. ‘This will be suitably written, as befits such an occasion. Two wounded halves… conjoined. The High Priestesses will speak, each on behalf of her… her aspect. And what is conjoined will be, one expects, healed.’ She paused, studying each person present, and then continued with an air of impatience. ‘The elaboration can await its writing. What we are witness to here is a bargain sealed in blood. Many have died to see our hands joined, Vatha Urusander, and I am in no mood to celebrate.’

Renarr saw Syntara’s flash of anger, but then Urusander was speaking.

‘Mother Dark. On behalf of my soldiers, I once petitioned the highborn – and you – in the name of justice.’ He waved dismissively. ‘This was not a challenge to my faith in you.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘that challenge came from elsewhere. Tell me then, will you now deny the title of Father Light?’

‘It seems that I cannot.’

‘No,’ she agreed. ‘It seems that you cannot.’

‘But this was not what I asked for.’

‘Nor is this my answer to your request for justice.’

‘Then, Mother Dark, we are understood?’

‘We are, Vatha, as best we can be.’

He nodded then, and Renarr saw how the tension left his body.

‘Rise Herat,’ said Mother Dark.

The historian took a single step forward. ‘Mother Dark?’

‘Our priestesses here will reconvene with you. Take a side chamber. Together, the three of you should be able to invent an appropriate retelling of this fated and fateful union. Concoct, if you will, a marriage to celebrate.’