The Porphyrogenetrix, Irene, caught her breath. “Oh my God,” she said simply.

By her side, Gavin Muriens burst into a grin. “He’d like that,” Gavin said.

“When Adrian is done,” Mortirmir said in his most pedantic voice, “I’ll add a level of enhancement, and then make the whole ceiling an artifact; with its own hermetical lighting and protections . . .”

“Thank you, Morgon,” Blanche said. She was still lying back, looking at the wonder of the depiction above her. “Are we all there?” she asked. “I mean . . .”

Goldsmith laughed. “I’ve done seven hundred portraits,” he said. “1Exrech is the only baron I have yet to do; I’m going west when the thaw comes. I got Duchess Mogon this morning, and Looks-at-Clouds.”

Blanche looked at the hermetical sketch. “We have been asked if this work is not . . . too frivolous for such a brutal winter,” she said. “But we say, no man would cancel Christmas Day because he had a bad harvest. Let us remember our hour of triumph, even as we roll up our sleeves to work. What matters is not Gabriel and his . . . death.” She paused, and commanded herself. “What is important is that we, together, triumphed.”

“That is what I am painting,” Goldsmith said.

Irene glanced at Gavin.

He was trying not to cry.

The next day, Christmas Day, as part of Christmas Mass, Tom Lachlan and Sukey were married in the great hall of the palace of Liviapolis. Sukey had insisted that they be married amid the rebuilding and the repairs. And Sukey generally got her way.

The bride was given away by the new Earl of Towbray, who had only just been invested with his new lands and title by the Queen of Alba. His father had died suddenly, in an accident, while hunting. The queen stood by Earl Michael on this occasion, Kaitlin being a step behind. And Tom Lachlan, whose family was dead, was supported by Ser Alison Audley, known to almost everyone as Sauce, who was now also the Marquesa of Albin; and by her stood Donald Dhu, for the Hills.

The vast hall was packed; every man and woman who could get a ticket was there; the front rows had most of the nobility of the Nova Terra and a surprising number of nobles of the Antica Terra, too. The gates remained open; the soldiers of the empire kept the road clear; grain from Etrusca was feeding the farmers of Alba in the worst winter anyone could remember. The snow fell, and fell; the cold deepened. But the grain rolled through four worlds, and the farmers of Alba had other allies; allies who left a bag of nuts by a cottage door, or a basket of dried berries on a front step.

Regardless, at the wedding, everyone wore their best and tried to forget the snow, the press of business, the alliances, the betrayals, and the dead, and the succession crisis of the empire. Because some stories end, and other stories begin; and even as it is foolish to forget the past, so it is foolish to cling to it.