Every so often you would look over the table at the man you intended to kill. The Saint of Duty had drunk just as much as Augustine, but had an expression like stone, with not a button out of place. He had more than once shared a glance with you that you were very afraid was solidarity. You weren’t sure. You were drinking water. You were drinking a great deal of water.

“To absent friends,” said Augustine suddenly, and raised his glass.

And everyone said, “Absent friends,” and raised their glasses, and drank. That was the invention of torture; you had no doubt that either the Third or the Fifth House had come up with the damned rule that whenever you raised your glass and proposed a sentimental toast, everyone had to drink with you. You sipped. You did not have any absent friends.

“And to our cavaliers,” said the Saint of Joy, quite suddenly, after everyone had drunk.

Augustine raised his glass again. “I’ll drink to that. To cavaliers—we didn’t deserve ’em … and they didn’t deserve us, as I always say. To Alfred—Cristabel—Pyrrha—Loveday—Naberius—to them all.”

You saw the Emperor darting an impassive glance at the increasingly disarranged saint at his right, but she did not greet this toast with anger. She simply said, “To Cristabel,” and drained her glass in one single, violent motion. When God briefly pressed the tips of his fingers to the tips of her fingers, she said instantly: “I’m not drunk!!”

“I’d never think it,” he said.

You watched Ianthe take another swig of the pale, apple-yellow liquid in her glass. She leaned over to you and murmured, breathlessly: “This is the greatest night of my life.”

“I’ve drunk enough to Alfred over the years, so let me drink to Cristabel,” said the Saint of Patience, and he drank, and then he swirled the contents of his glass meditatively. “Here’s to Cristabel.”

Mercy said, with less rancour: “You never liked Cristabel, even before what happened.”

“Bullshit I didn’t like Cristabel,” he said instantly, with the careful, measured reasonableness of a man you had personally seen get through two bottles of wine. “You know what I feel … you know I don’t think she was the best influence on Alfred … you know I thought they brought out the worst in each other, and I don’t think you disagree.”

God said, “They were very similar people.”

“No,” said Augustine. “They weren’t, John. She was a fanatic and an idiot—yes, she was, Mercy—and he … was a man who regretted that he wasn’t. It took surprisingly little to lead my brother astray.”

“Nobody could lead him where he didn’t want to go,” said God, and his patience took a solemn edge. “You know that.”