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.

Now Gabriel, who had healed her and knew her aethereal and outward self, looked at her and saw how clearly her ordeal in Harndon had marked her. In the aethereal, she still wore the form that she had had a year ago in the real. But pregnancy and torment had put crow’s feet at the edges of her eyes and a different colour in her face. She had more gravity—more presence—than she had a year ago. But he would never have noticed the difference until he saw her golden form in the aethereal.

She did not smile. But nor did she wince, or stumble.

“I have faced Ash,” she said quietly.

The aethereal was still.

“It was not a straight contest of powers. In which I would have been bested instantly. And I think—if I may pre-empt Master Harmodius—that he dwells in the aethereal and that our ‘real’ is very difficult for him. But for the battle of will—will, with ops as a weapon, to use your university terms—I built this.”

Memories can be very difficult in the aethereal —the memory palace lives only in the user’s mind, and the weakness of memory can make anything fluctuate. Living memory—actual events—can be subject to an infinite number of seductions and degradations, as every hermeticist knows—delusions of success or defeat, failures of will, troubles of image.

But for most casters, memories of direct manipulations of hermetical power have themselves a glow of solid experience, and the Queen’s memory of the climaxes of Ash’s assault on her wall were vivid, complex, and so fraught with emotion that Mogon groaned and Gabriel found himself weeping.

But when she was done, each of them built, under her instruction, one of the golden bricks—Mogon’s were a magnificent, lurid green.

“I made no attempt to strike him. I wished only to protect my unborn child.” She smiled. “Now, I wonder what was Ash and what was Ghause.”

Harmodius had seen the shadow of another in her memory. “And what was Tar,” he said.

“The Virgin would only protect me,” the Queen said quickly.

Harmodius frowned. “They only see us as slaves and soldiers,” he said. He looked pointedly at Gabriel.