Misery is grouchy from bad sleep. Her night was punctuated by a slew of bizarro dreams, each one ejecting her from rest at some point in the night. The one that juts most from her banks of memory is notable because it’s about Pyrex Imogen. Or about a figure Misery’s unconscious mind presents as Pyrex Imogen, even though they bear no resemblance to the Archbishop. Just a saint with the same sort of hair, same color and tint, but long and straight as a waterfall, spilling over the shoulder and back in a lustrous swell. In the dream Misery played the role of mythically willowy figure, combing their ridiculously smooth hair while they talk to their onscreen lover. A soldier-type butch, handsome-jawed, summer-straw hair shorn in hedgerows. Dark-eyed, with heavy bags. She doesn’t look like anyone Misery can place, and is also not her type as far as Misery knows. Her subconscious surprises her sometimes. Anyway, Saint-Misery was sad, because apparently she can’t find joy even in her fantasies, and her lover was also sad, which made the whole enterprise even gloomier. What did they talk about? She can’t remember. Something melancholy, probably. Depressing fucking dream. Shit-tier as far as wet dreams go. No wonder she’s in a mood.

She should be grateful. At least it wasn’t nightmares. It could so easily be nightmares.

The holy charade finally ends and Misery lets her silent chaperones take her up a silver flight of stairs into a room of holy jade dark as the void, some kind of multiuse space where the deadmarble petals of chairs and tables huddle in conference. A glass-topped tray of food waits before one of those seats, and next to it stands to the Church-grunt Bridge from yesterday. “I hope you find this acceptable,” zie says.

It’s more than acceptable. The tray bears real food, with real textures and aromas so complex they make her dizzy. Spices thicken a stew full of tender cuts. Fruit slices crunch and burst with sugars. There’s a sausage, wholesome and bright with fat, whose skin resists the blade of her knife until it splits with a satisfying noise. Juices run out. Misery eats like one starved a thousand years. Sure, the food on the Duke’s ship was decadent, and unbearably so, but it is also a starship, with all the limitations that come with. There are things you need a full-service agrisector for. Not even Rootsdown’s City Hall had one. She’s never eaten like this before, and she doesn’t know if she will again. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Between pyroclastic mouthfuls it occurs to Misery that Bridge didn’t attend the morning Mass. Was zie not required to? Or did non-saints attend different services? In which case, she’d been sent to attend the saints’ Mass, despite not being one. Irregular, no?