“Minor,” he repeated when he could, taking out a handkerchief and dabbing his mouth. “Minor—how many times must I say it?”

“You’ve lost your senses,” she said unsteadily.

“You think I am joking, Mercymorn?”

They looked at each other. Then followed the type of conversation you had only seen once before, between her and God—that exchange of shrugs, and words begun in the mouth and aborted at the first breath, and at one point she said, “Gradient?” and he answered, “Radial,” and then they devolved again into a shorthand of facial expressions. In its own way, it was swifter and less coherent than what you had seen pass between the Emperor of the Nine Houses and her, that lifetime ago leaving the Erebos; but at the end, her hand fluttered around her mouth, and she halfway wailed:

“I’m not wearing the right dress.”

“It’s perfect. You look like a melon.”

“But I hate this,” she said, quite genuinely, and Augustine looked at her with his insubstantial eyes and said: “I understand. Buck up, Joy; it won’t kill you.”

Your gaze met Ianthe’s. She had followed the whole thing in rank fascination; now she quirked her own eyebrows at you in what you had come to understand was, Who knows? For a moment you worried that, come another myriad, you and she might be able to carry on such a conversation: that you would know her intent by the twist of her mouth and her exhalation, to the point where you could speak without dialogue.

In the end, Mercymorn said, “Blech!” and turned on one heel and stalked out. She flung open the door, said anxiously, “White wine!” and with that cryptic epigram, disappeared.

The Saint of Patience said, “That went significantly better than I thought it might,” without a glance at his sink of bloodied teeth. “Come on—I want one of you on each of my arms on this battlefront. On my right, Ianthe. I’m not clutching that bone; I never did like ’em skinny—Harrowhark, you really didn’t get any height, did you? Lord! Imagine being crystallized a teenager, forever! Whatever you see tonight,” he added, suddenly serious as the grave, “do not get involved.”

Behind his back—as you walked down the corridor—the Princess of Ida mouthed at you smugly: Quick! Sophisticated! Devious!

30

IT TURNED OUT THAT AUGUSTINE THE FIRST—Saint of Patience, founder of the court of Koniortos, genius of the River—ten thousand years old and oldest among saints, quick and sophisticated and devious—had a shrewd plan to assist you in the murder of his dutiful brother. His shrewd plan: to get everyone profoundly drunk.