“An absolute bombshell,” said God. He looked deeply into Augustine’s eyes, took another slug of wine, and then said in graveyard tones: “Though maybe not quite such a bombshell as your mother.”

It destroyed some cavern of your reverence to watch Augustine punch the Prince Undying on the arm, and to watch the Prince Undying gamely cuff him back. Part of your brain temporarily calcified into atheism. You had not thought it would be like this. From the day the letter arrived in Drearburh, you’d thought that your Lyctoral days would be spent in prayer, training, and the beauty of necromantic mysteries. You did not think any part of it would be spent honestly quite drunk, wearing a piece of material no larger than a towel, and with Ianthe Tridentarius’s fingers idly caressing the hair at the nape of your neck. For a moment, you wondered wildly if you had hit your head quite hard entering the shuttle out of Drearburh, and had hallucinated everything subsequent.

Mercymorn said peevishly: “I always thought Nigella was prettier,” and both men assured her, “You’re not wrong,” “Good choice, et cetera,” until Augustine said gloomily: “Try getting a look-in with Cassy around, though.”

You turned your head and muttered into Ianthe’s ear, knowing your desperation was naked: “When do we leave?”

“The time has not yet come,” she murmured. You looked into her shining brown-flecked eyes and were stricken with panic that the time might never come.

Mercymorn finished off another glass of wine—Teacher removed her wineglass, and then, thoughtfully, removed the bottle closest to her, and then removed any bottles of wine within her reach—and she placed her tranquil oval of a face into her slender hand, and she said: “You’re wrong, Augustine. You still hate Cristabel … you hated my cavalier long before what she did.”

He was arrested in the process of refilling his glass. You had no idea how anyone could drink as much as the Saint of Patience had and remain coherent. He put down the bottle and said, “Do I?”

God said, “This isn’t a conversation either of you have to have. Not now. Especially not after five glasses of wine.”

“Lot more than five. No. No, it’s fine. Judge ye not. Let her dig him up again,” said Augustine, though now he sounded a trifle unsteady. “Do I, Mercy? God help me, I don’t think I do.”

She said, “Look me in the eyes and say that.”

Augustine stood, with nary a tremble. He wiped his mouth carefully with his handkerchief again, and although God had half-risen too, again—put his hand on Augustine’s arm, and looked at him, and whatever passed between them was too swift to classify—he moved next to the Saint of Joy’s chair. He crouched a little so that they were eye to eye—in the candlelight you could not tell whether you thought they looked appallingly old, or no older than Ianthe—and he said, “Joy, what’s done is done. They’re dead. The crime is punished. I don’t hate Cristabel.”

Her face was savage and smooth and implacable. “Say it again,” she said.

“I don’t hate Cristabel,” he said lowly. “Dear, I barely hate you.”

For a moment you thought you were about to see a replay of what had happened in his rooms, and that the distraction would consist of a battle between two Lyctors that you would have been somewhat sorry to miss.

It did not. Wild eyed, tumultuous, unbalanced, Mercy leaned in and kissed him.

An alarm crescendo of horror went off in your head. She did not kiss him placidly—he responded immediately and without restraint. The Lyctors kissed each other in the manner of two people who either held a decided passion for one another or were attempting to slide a hidden object mouth to mouth. The Saints of Joy and Patience kissed each other with a fervid, drunken familiarity, without preamble, or frankly any shame.

God was trying to say something. Augustine parted from Mercymorn with a noise vaguely like a vacuum hoovering up mincemeat, and—with no crash of unholy thunder, and without the rent of the universe in twain, and without his skin melting from his unworthy bones—he turned and also kissed the Emperor of the Nine Houses.

You were glued to your seat. You were hot from your temples all the way down to the top of your ribcage, with outrage and mortification vying for top place within you. You were frozen as Augustine carefully, thoughtfully, and with a great deal of intent, put his mouth on God’s mouth. As though this were not fodder enough for the coming apocalypse, Mercymorn stood, swaying; one thin dress strap was sliding precariously off her shoulder. When Augustine detached from the Emperor’s solemn mouth, Mercy reached up, grabbed great fistfuls of his shirt, and kissed God too.

It took Ianthe two attempts to get your attention. Eventually she stood you up wholesale, and with absolutely nobody paying attention to either of you, she propelled you out of the room. You looked over your shoulder as she opened the door—God had just picked up the Saint of Joy bodily and sat her at the edge of the table, and the Saint of Patience had his mouth at God’s neck, which was horrible—and Ianthe hustled you through as though escaping from a fire. You had never seen three people get their hands on one another before—you had never seen two people get their hands on each other before. Ianthe closed the door just as Augustine’s fingers reached the buttons of the Emperor’s shirt, and you had never been so grateful to her in your entire life.

31

“THAT WAS THE CUE?” Your voice sounded humiliatingly high-pitched.

“Harry,” said Ianthe, thankfully also a trifle strangled, “when three people start kissing, it is always a cue. A cue to leave.”

You said, “I feel unwell.”

“Yes. Yes, me too,” she said heatedly, in unexpected accord. “That was disgusting, to say the least. Old people should be shot.”

The underfloor lights glowed their cool blue, trying to soothe you into circadian sleep. A Cohort officer with grey tags at their sleeves lay enshrined in a niche opposite, an eyeless steel mask laid heavily on their face. Both you and Ianthe were breathing as though you had run a footrace, laboured and loud. Ianthe’s hair was in long margarine tangles down her neck, and her mascara was smudged beneath her eyes, and her ribs were heaving as though she were in an asthmatic fit. She carried her high-heeled shoes in her gilded skeleton hand, and they made for a strange juxtaposition. The breath-soft lavender gauze had a tiny violet stain on the front, and her mouth was red: she had been chewing her lips, and they had broken, and split. You realised with an uneasy start that you were both, in fact, quite drunk.

Ianthe ran a tongue across those wounded lips and said, “I suppose this is it.”

You said, “I appreciate your part in this, Tridentarius,” but before you could stop her, she drew you close with her living arm, and she bent her head to yours. You understood this inevitability only a second before it happened. Perhaps there was a dark universe in which you reached for her; in another you exploded her heart in her chest. In this one, as she lowered her mouth, you turned your face away, and her kiss fell on the side of your jaw. Both of you reeked of alcohol. Minute traces of blood smudged your cheek with tiny perfume blots of thalergy as she brushed her broken mouth across it with unanticipated tenderness. There was a rigid trembling somewhere in your sternum. When she raised her head again her gaze was cool and mocking, as though your inability to receive a kiss was yet more proof of limitation.

Your mouth was very dry when you said: “My affections lie buried in the Locked Tomb.”

“And let them lie,” she said, laughingly, and not very kindly. “Somebody might even exhume them for you. Good luck, Harry … try not to die.”

She walked off swinging her dancing shoes in her dead arm, and she even hummed tunelessly beneath her breath, before she disappeared down the corridor: a lone wax figure in pale purple chiffon, tall and colourless—except in the greasy metal of her bone arm, which the lights rendered all the colours of the rainbow. You could hear her carefree humming even after she disappeared, as you stood outside the dining room stock-still and frozen.

When it died away, you turned to your assassination.