“If you killed me, I don’t think he’d forgive you, you see,” said Augustine. The easy, confidential tone of voice had gone. It was now flat and immovable and bored. “But if I killed you—if I stubbed you out beneath my foot, which would still be more than you deserve—then I am convinced that it would take me a mere hundred years to get John to say, I know why you did it, old chap, and I’m sorry, and for everything to come up Augustine. You have shot your bolt too many times.”

“How dare—”

“You have rendered yourself unlovable, Mercy,” said Augustine. “You’re the second saint. He’s sentimental over you. But don’t forget that he’s spent the last ten thousand years on a perpetual search-and-destroy mission out of, as far as I can tell, purely symbolic retribution. John is never as sentimental as you think. Do you need me to write this down for you, so you can read it to yourself each night? You—are—unnecessary—to—him. Worse still, you’ve become an embarrassment. I wouldn’t set myself up as his replacement A.L. He doesn’t need another bodyguard, and even she was significantly more lucid than you are.”

You’d expected a response. None came. You looked at the Saint of Joy—and at her expression withdrew into your alcove, flattening yourself, lest she pick you as a target to vent her frustrations on. There was silence from the corridor. Then Augustine broke it: “Stay away from me, Joy. I find myself so profoundly tired of looking at your face,” and his clickety-clackety bootsteps sounded down the corridor.

Mercymorn’s voice floated back, somewhat strangled: “But I haven’t even touched Cytherea!”

Afterward you stopped seeing them in the same room, except when the Necrolord Prime called you together for dinner, and then they sat as far apart as possible.

Favours Ianthe.

A source of continuing annoyance to you. You’d never been anybody’s favourite anything and did not intend to start. But the idea that the Princess of Ida had managed to capture another’s affection was bilious. Yet from the very start, Augustine had inclined toward her, and she had deployed her whole menagerie of coquettish smiles in return, each looking as though it had spent a month prowling the desert before being captured and put to this circus use.