“Harrow,” he said doggedly, “I would become cavalier secondary in the veriest heartbeat. How honourable still, to be a cavalier secondary of Drearburh! And to stay at home and look faithfully after the family, and not go out into the unkind arms of space, and to foreign houses! But even if I said, Yes, I acknowledge Harrow Nova as my better, your—the Reverend Mother and Father would not accept it. You would have to kill me before they would consider you. And it is the least of my desires, to be killed.”

“You are right,” said Harrow.

His relief was palpable. His shoulders sagged forward, though that was possibly due to the panniers hastening his scoliosis. Aiglamene was always scolding him about posture. Look at Harrow. She stands like a monument, she would say. You stand like a damned fishhook. Ortus leant heavily against the pews with a sigh of relief, and he said: “Thank you. Good. I am glad.”

“And I consider it a salient point,” continued Harrow.

She took the sword from her chest, and slung her chain from over her shoulder, and seized one weighted end between her gloved fingers. The welter of fury inside her resolved into a wet rush, like metal poured into a mould, and as it always had, the sword became an extension of her arm. “Prepare to die, Ortus Nigenad. Commit your soul to the Locked Tomb, and to the rock, and to the chains, and hope it floats high on the River.”

“For God’s sake, Harrow, please.”

Their voices had carried. The little sacristy door flew open; Marshal Crux emerged, hoary, wearing his most formal mouldering leathers, his raddled face aghast and his liver-spotted hands trembling with indignation.

“Swords drawn!” he cried. “Swords drawn in the narthex—before the altar, and before the vesting tables, and with the icons watching! You besmirch us. You sully us. You debase this place.”

“Forgive me, Marshal,” said Harrow.

“I do not speak to you,” croaked Crux, with solemn dignities. Crux was the only reliable source of sympathy in Harrow’s life; sympathy always delivered in such a way as to be horribly unfair to everyone else, but sympathy all the same, and as unpopular as it made her she would not have swapped it for—anyone else’s tenderness. “I speak to the cavalier primary. Ortus the Ninth, fool that you are, you ought to know better.”

“Forgive me, Marshal,” said Ortus humbly, as was his wont, as though he had any part in it. Sometimes Harrow hated him for that.

“I will not,” said Crux indignantly. “Go rush to your cuckoo’s side. They are nearly done with the arrangements.”

The cavalier primary stiffened, and with the faintest note of reproach he murmured something. The tone of his murmur did not quite make it to defensive; Ortus, even being well over thirty, could not do anything but mumble before the marshal.