There was no thought in you of fighting Ianthe as she walked you away. You could have gone meekly to the slaughter without a muzzle or a leash. Behind you, the Kindly Prince was saying, in far more ominous tones than you had ever heard him use: “Six days. No sleep. She still manages a full skeleton commencement from diluted marrow. What else have you failed to see, Mercymorn—?”

You were already at the door when her peevish response came: “But this is insane! She’s only nine years old!”

The Saints of Duty and Patience were out in the corridor. If either had wanted to run you through, you could not have stopped them. You looked at them despite Ianthe urging you away: at Augustine, looking as though he had seen the ghost of someone he did not particularly like, and at Ortus.

Ianthe kept trying to turn you to face forward, but you kept watching even as she hustled you down the corridor. You saw Augustine fumble for a cigarette, light it with the little silver arc lighter he kept in his breast pocket, and pass it silently to his brother Lyctor. Ortus was impassive. There was not a trace of blood on his clothing. There was not a stray lump of viscera upon the shabby shirt, nor on the mother-of-pearl cloak still slung over his shoulder. There was no betrayal of any emotion on his face: not the surprise that had dawned over his heavy-lidded eyes earlier, nor anger, nor even dissatisfaction. He caught your gaze. You held his.

And the Saint of Duty lifted his lit cigarette to you in an unmistakable salute.

26

ONE DAY, HARROWHARK’S EYE was caught by the rain drizzling outside on the docking terrace, and by black figures rising in the fog. They were on the very edge of the terrace. She tugged her hood deep down over her head, walked outside into the rain—she kept bone chips clutched between her knuckles so that they would not grow wet from sweat or weather—and approached. One of the black figures resolved itself in that grey, stinking blanket of cloud: large and imposing, like the midday sun amid clouds. It was Coronabeth Tridentarius.

She was turned away from Harrow, and her riot of hair—half-caught in a fillet, half-escaping—was soaking wet, a dark and crinkling amber in the rain. She was not fighting or arguing. She was still as a statue, and ready and waiting as a dog.

The figure behind her was much smaller and slighter, the aseptic robes of his office a bleached, blued grey with the water. The braid pinned high on his head was so pale as to be white, and his rain-sodden chainmail kirtle gleamed, wetly, amid the fog. At her creeping pace, Harrowhark had covered only half the distance when she heard Silas Octakiseron say, clear above the patter of falling drops: