“They run better companies?” the Faery Knight suggested.

“Just so,” the Red Knight agreed, and they shared a brief smile. “I only mean this, Harmodius. You want to destroy a race of gods so that we can be free. I say—a pox on it. I serve the Queen and the Emperor and my own interest—everyone serves someone. Let our lords be just and generous, and we prosper.”

Harmodius growled. “There speaks an aristocrat who has never known the lash.”

Gabriel spat. “You lie.”

“You—you, of all creatures, will forfeit your freedom?” Harmodius shook his head. “I think it is you who lies.”

“I say, fight one battle at a time and do not rule out any ally.” Gabriel put a hand to his head—a familiar headache.

“I say, they are false allies and will enslave us, generation after generation and you mortgage the future to win a battle today.” Harmodius was adamant. “They are all equally our enemies.”

Desiderata sat wrapped in thought. Gabriel could guess what had cut her. The others considered, each in their own way.

Gabriel took a deep aethereal breath. A meaningless symbol of a breath—a conversational habit.

“There must be other Powers,” he said.

Harmodius nodded. “The Necromancer is one. The being Rashidi identifies as Rot is another. Who I suspect is leading the assault in Galle. Or managing it.”

“Dragons?” Krevak asked.

“Not all Powers are dragons,” Exrech said. “At least one Kraal still bloats the earth.”

“Thorn seeks to become a Power.” Gabriel raised an eyebrow.

Harmodius nodded heavily. “And Sister Amicia is on the very verge of becoming one.”

“Like the dragons?” Gabriel asked.

“I don’t actually know,” Harmodius admitted slowly. “Al Rashidi doesn’t know either.”

Desiderata raised her head. “This is too deep for me,” she said. She looked at the Bishop of Albinkirk.

He smiled. “That God’s will and love extends to every level of the cosmos comes as no surprise to me,” he said. “Beyond that, I would not comment, except to say that to plot the death of a creature, however powerful, who has done you no harm is awfully like murder, however you may see the consequences for future generations. But then, I am but a priest, and I fear that even violence in the defence of the weak is—sin. Murder.”

The Faery Knight looked at him in wonder. “Are there other children of men who think as you do?” he asked.

The bishop nodded. “A few. We call ourselves Christians.”

The Faery Knight laughed.

Even Gabriel had to laugh.

Harmodius nodded like a man waking from sleep. “Your grace—I know this will be painful. But my sense—from stories I have heard, and your very presence—is that you have already faced our foe. Directly. In the aethereal.”

Desiderata appeared as she always had in the aethereal, as a beautiful young woman in a kirtle of gold, barefoot, with a ring of daisies in her hair and a belt of them around her waist. In the aethereal, she seemed both wanton and matronly, the very embodiment of woman’s power.