She was often seen at his side, fully absorbed in whatever pearls of wisdom were dropping from the Saint of Patience’s lips; drinking calamitous amounts of hot tea with much the same expression, one you thought ill-suited to her shadowed eyes and white mouth; and, though less calmly, taking instruction in the long training hall with its polished wooden floorboards, the wood so new you were hesitant to step on it. It was only then that they seemed at odds, as the so-called Saint of Patience ran out of it every time Ianthe put hand to rapier.

He smoked his fierce cigarettes as he put her through her paces. She was always so tremendously bored by sword exercises: “I thought the point was to outsource this, elder brother,” you had heard her remark more than once. He would get cross quickly. From what little you could tell, her form was perfect. Her lines were exquisite. She never dropped the sword or fumbled with it, which proved again how inadequate a standard what little you could tell was. But there was something he did not like about how that right arm clutched that sword.

“Let go,” you heard him tell her once.

“I’m assuming you mean metaphorically.”

“Younger sister,” he said cordially, “some nice boy spent his life learning that sword for you, now you are trying to add your opinions to his, and they are simply not worth half a toot in this hot and terrible universe. Stop holding it like it smells—or like a banana you’re trying to burst—Emperor almighty, Ianthe! I’ve seen you do this perfectly, so why must you persist in doing it poorly?”

At that she had said a rude word, flung the sword down, and fled. Augustine finished his cigarette in a ruminative manner, and you stared at the rapier you had been given. The Emperor asked you to handle it, so you scheduled some time for handling it, with absolutely jack shit arising from the exercise.

“She can do it, you know,” he remarked to the air. “She simply needs to quit steeping in self-pity.”

You said, “Humiliating her is perhaps not the best curative.”

“Harrowhark,” he said, smiling, tapping his cigarette out on the skull of some long-dead Cohort hero, “if Ianthe’s opinion isn’t worth a fart in a hurricane, try to imagine how much less I value yours.”

So far away from Drearburh; so far from your congregation, and the elders and laypeople who had blushed to kiss your knucklebone prayer beads. You felt you actually had valuable information in this instance, but Ianthe’s secrets were not held in common, for you to spill so thoughtlessly. “Then that is your downfall,” you said.

“You are Anastasia come again.”