“Lord! Don’t tell me that,” said his Lyctor, faintly smiling. “I have built an entire myriad on the idea that I could’ve made him come around, given five minutes.”

His sister-saint said nothing to this. She flicked her eyes down to her own glass, instead, and he quickly filled up the awkward pause with, “Anyway, let’s drink to a woman who never divided opinion. Here’s to Pyrrha Dve.”

All eyes trailed fatally down the table to the Saint of Duty. Your gaze was among them. You grasped the stem of your wineglass in your hand, and you looked at the face of the man who had been necromancer once to a woman called Pyrrha: the inscrutable lack of expression that had greeted you in the bathtub, and the first time he’d walked into the Mithraeum’s chapel.

He said flatly, with a note of warning: “Augustine.”

“I mean it. Don’t you think that’s astonishing, after all this time? Even Mercy doesn’t have a bad thing to say about her.” (“Why am I constantly painted as a critical person,” came the inevitable critique.) “I say, here’s to Pyrrha, the woman I cultivated a smoking habit to impress—the cavalier, the legend, the stone-cold fox … John, please stop joggling my elbow, I have heard stone-cold fox from your own holy lips.”

The Emperor protested, “Respectfully! Respectfully.”

Ortus said, “Another topic.”

“Right,” said Augustine. He took another gulp of wine as though to fortify himself, and Ianthe suggested: “To our enemies, older brother.”

“Yes! Great,” he agreed heartily. “A classic. This is why you are my chosen apprentice, chick. To our enemies—the enemies of the Empire—to those safely in the River, that is. I won’t drink to enemies alive, but let’s drink to enemies fallen, as we can afford to be gracious. Let’s drink to the dried-up Blood of Eden.”

Both the Emperor and Mercy said, immediately: “They’re not gone.”

“Fine, pedants—I drink to the best of them, gone for absolute certain … not the remnant kooks, idiots, and zealots who think a nuclear missile could give us pause. The commander would never have settled for a nuclear missile … Lord, that was a merry dance she led us. It deserves something. Perhaps it’s a toast.”

Across the table, you noticed that the Saint of Duty’s knuckles had clenched, just slightly. You had a good sense for knuckles. The Emperor mistook your focus for puzzlement: “It was before you were born, Harrowhark.” (“Long before you were born,” added Mercy owlishly, “because you are three years old.”) “This isn’t really a story that deserves to be told after … three glasses of wine.”

“That was never three glasses of wine,” said the man to his left.