In another lifetime you might have been icily furious, or at the very least chagrined. In this one, you were simply looking at your knife, and your fork, and your spoon, and trying to remember which did what. The spoon, with its concave pit, was probably for transferring liquids. In its back you caught sight of Ianthe, who had put her colourless chin in her hand and was leaning her head into it, as though listening without much interest to a bedtime story.

“As you will it, brother.”

Everyone was snappish and cross—except Ianthe, and except you. You drifted through the Mithraeum with your great sword on your back and your hand never far from the end—pommel—of your rapier. And you made soup.

Two days after Augustine’s ultimatum, perhaps impressed with your newfound understanding of soup or hungry for social cohesion, a frazzled God asked you to make everyone dinner. You opened more of the recipe books—you spent some time cleaning out your weights and measures, and picking through the warehouse-sized supply rooms for the most appropriate ingredients—and, for a long time, you locked yourself in the bathroom, to do what you had to do. One hundred and twenty-six hours. You no longer felt pain. Sometimes your jaw rattled to itself, but it was almost musical.

That night you made soup more carefully than ever. The recipe said it had to cook for a long time. You paced up and down the kitchen, distracted and startled by lights as the air grew steamy and a little sweet-smelling. When the alarm sounded to say it was done you nearly screamed. It took you a while to turn it off. You tested the result of your labour, after a moment’s hesitation: you still hated strong flavours, and it took you a while to understand tastes. The soup did not taste like anything very specific, but you did not add Ianthe’s teaspoons of salt.

You transferred it to a big tureen, and when you all sat down around the table, the Emperor served everyone, like he always did: on those first few days in the Mithraeum you had been terrified by the idea of the God of the Nine Houses serving you food, but it was just his way. He was pleased with you. He smiled that rueful, dented smile, and he rested his hand on your shoulder, very lightly, when he filled your bowl. “As I said, Harrowhark,” he said. “Make a meal. Read a book. It’s the little things…”