“Christ, are you sure you ain’t related to Tom Lachlan?” she said. “But aye. I like a scrap. No doubt we’ll find one. An’ since we’re coverin’ the road and not pushin’ north, Daniel, why don’t you take some of the lads an’ lasses and fetch us the Patriarch?”

“If the Patriarch is . . . roughly handled . . .” Simone said carefully. He fingered his elegant beard. There was blood under his nails. “It could . . . have consequences.”

“I would like to go with the party to catch him,” the duchess said.

Sauce looked at her and shrugged. “On your head be it,” she said. “I need you here. Or I’d rather you were here. Kronmir should never have been where he could be caught, and that was my fault. Now I’m not happy to let you go, but you’re the duchess and I can’t stop you.” She turned to Simone. “I was no great friend to Kronmir but he was one of mine. The Patriarch . . .” She smiled in a way that made her ugly.

She thought of a man who had done her a wrong, long ago. And Cully’s hands on hers, and the blood. “I cover my debts. So does the duchess. The Patriarch will pay . . .” She gave a small shrug.

Daniel Favour nodded.

“They say you’ll go to hell if you kill the Patriarch,” the duchess said, as if contemplating the words.

“Oh,” Sauce said with a shrug. “I doubt God’s that stupid.”

“‘Vengeance is m-m-mine,’ s-s-saith the Lord,” quoted Father Davide. “B-b-but I agree that G-G-God is in f-fact not a f-fool.” The thin man wore only a robe and sandals and would not wear even a dagger. He was very different from Father Arnauld, and yet many already accepted him despite his stutter.

“I will share my vengeance with him,” said the duchess.

Sauce smiled. She rose. They all rose. She was human enough to savour her moment; triumph and power over others, love and respect.

A life she’d never even imagined having. She thought of them: the tormentors, the evil ones. The right bastards and the casual bastards, and how she had once felt. She looked at Giselle, and had a glimmer of what was in her head.

She smiled at Giselle. “Fuck it then. Go get him,” she said. “But I need you here, and it seems to me, sister, that you don’t actually need to get him in person.”

As they filed out of her pavilion, Father Davide remained. “Rev-v-venge is ugly,” he said.

Sauce shrugged. “We’re not choir boys, Padre,” she said.

He shook his head. “C-c-choir b-boys are not c-c-choir boys, C-C-Captain.”