The stranger wore the Lyctoral robe of office slung over his shoulders rather than enveloping him, and it was a shabby thing with a ragged hem that did not look very well cared for. He strode down the centre aisle too swiftly for you to see his eyes. In that brief glimpse you beheld a blunt brown face, skin too close to the skull, all shabby defeated features with its lineaments more temporalis muscle than anything else. His skull was a bumpy, knobbled, close-capped thing, hair shaven nearly to the bone. This hair gleamed a dull and unappealing russet, like a vague and bloody shadow on his head.

The Emperor had risen to stand with his arms open in offered embrace. The muscle man walked into it briefly—enough to let God press one hand familiarly to his back, enough for him to clasp God round the shoulders—then pulled roughly away and directed his gaze to the figure lying bookended by Mercy and Augustine.

“She’s dead?” said the stranger. When the Emperor nodded, he closed his eyes, very briefly. Then he opened them and said bluntly: “So are we. Number Seven’s at the rim.”

At this statement Augustine suddenly leant heavily against the altar. He looked as though he might fall over, like a drunk. Mercy’s lips turned to snow. They became an exaggerated painting of tragedy: a lithograph of the moment before shirts were rent and hair was torn and blood rain pattered over the scene.

The Emperor had turned his terrible eyes on the stranger, and they looked like dead planets in the pitch of space, and the white ring was like dying. He was no longer human. He was immortal again.

“It can’t move that fast,” he said. “It never has. You must have seen a Herald, or a pseudo-Beast. Look, don’t scare the children. Come into my quarters and let’s talk this out, all three of you.”

The new arrival was immovable.

“It’s Number Seven,” said the stranger. “Run, or fight?”

Mercy said, “But we reckoned it at five years, just a year ago.”

“It caught up with us,” said the stranger. “The brain is already in the River. If we drop through the waters we’ll run into it no matter what direction we go. The corpus will be here in just under ten months, and it will be full of Heralds. Run, or fight?”

“We need to think about—”

“No thinking,” said the stranger, cutting Augustine off without hesitation. “Run? Two of us take the Emperor and hike to the nearest stele. The one left stays as a distraction, then leads it away. Or fight: we all make a stand. John, I am your servant. Tell me to stay and die, and I’ll stay.”