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After the Necrolord Prime’s Fist and Gesture the Saint of Joy, Mercymorn the First, finished setting the obelisk she left as quickly as she could. The stele was mostly installed, a Fourth House necromancer and two assistants putting the finishing touches on the pipelines and drainage system. Mercymorn strode through the station, shedding particles of dried blood onto the polished floor like mud in a freshly mopped kitchen. She could have made it disappear, but she took pleasure in knowing that someone somewhere was going to have to sweep them up.
As she approached the shuttle bay she was already looking forward to the journey back, which she intended to stretch out longer than necessary to enjoy some peace and quiet before her next assignment. She froze in the doorway at the sight of a second shuttle docked next to her own - one which was all too familiar.
“Leaving already, Joy?” said a languid figure, gesticulating with a cigarette.
“You,” she hissed.
“The very same,” Augustine said agreeably.
“What are you doing here? I’ve already done the obelisk, beautifully I might add, so you’re too late to muscle in and take over.”
“Actually, I thought we could get some dinner. I heard the locals do an excellent lab-grown steak.”
“How could you possibly -”
“It’s just this way,” Augustine continued implacably, linking arms with her and whisking her down the corridor. “Rather humble setting, so don’t worry about not being dressed for dinner.”
“Get your hand off me,” Mercymorn snapped, yanking her arm free. “How dare you comment on my appearance!!”
“Never mind, you look lovely. That burgundy sweater matches your cheeks. Makes me feel quite parched for a glass of wine - which I imagine you are too, after all that hard work. Messy business, isn’t it? How did you get on with the platelet storage?”
“Perfectly straightforward once the source stopped wriggling, which is as it should be given I developed this technology. What is this about, you awful man?”
“I’ll tell you over a drink,” he winked, opening a door and ushering her inside.
He was as ghastly, and as stimulating, as usual. She followed him into an unassuming eating establishment, schooling her face to show frustration rather than curiosity. They were the only customers. The menus were all in the local language, which she naturally hadn’t bothered to learn, but the Saint of Patience managed to order for both of them via a great deal of oafish pointing and eyebrow waggling which put Mercy altogether off the idea of food. She glared past him at the plex windows covered in unintelligible posters, and wondered what Cytherea was doing. Something far more delicious than this, no doubt.
“Does John know you’re here?” she asked.
“As far as John’s concerned, I’m in the Hadals.”
Mercy sniffed, affecting boredom.
Their wine arrived, although the server didn’t offer to let them taste it first - it wasn’t that sort of place. Mercy took a fortifying sip regardless. “Cheers,” Augustine said, raising his glass and pointedly clinking hers before sampling his. He winced. “Ah well. This place will be on the up in no time now we’ve got the stele in place.”
“Is there a point to all this, or do you just delight in wasting my time?”
“Can’t a chap take a lady out to dinner without raising suspicion?” Augustine protested.
“Suspicion is the only coherent response to the likes of you.”
“Ah yes, I’m a cad and a bounder, all the pretty boys say so.”
Mercy only just managed to turn her laugh into a scoff.
The food was not quite as bad as the wine, but still awful: seared slabs of brown and pink lab meat served with peppery sauce and steamed hydroponic vegetables. Augustine tucked into his with every appearance of enjoyment. Mercymorn nibbled a slender green stem. The puddle of blood oozing out from the middle of the steak reminded her unappetisingly of the stele.
“Have you heard from Cassie lately?” he asked. “Last I heard she was out in the Araxian sector with the Cohort, but that was fifteen years ago.”
“Helping them refine the power transference process, yes. She wouldn’t shut up about it. The heat shields they use disrupt the thalergetic resonance - but try explaining mathematics to military generals! She said she’d increased efficiency by thirty percent, but it sounded slapdash to me. I’d be surprised if the gains were reliable. I asked to see the theorem but she wouldn’t show it to me.”
“Wouldn’t she?”
“Don’t act surprised. She never lets you critique her work either.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. We were collaborating quite closely on working our how to draw the corpus of the Beast into the epirhoic layer for a while. But that all got dropped after Number Eight."
They fell into a glum silence.
The Saint of Patience was working on his second glass of wine when he suddenly said, “Do you remember anything from before?”
“Before you barged millions of lightyears out of your lane in order to personally vex me? Yes, some of the loveliest days of my existence.”
“No, before the Resurrection.”
Mercy blanched. She squeezed her lips together, battling the sudden impulse to flick pepper sauce into his eyes. “It’s sacrilegious to even mention it, as you are well aware! On the Eighth you would be flogged.”
“Very naughty of me, you’re quite right. If only those tight-arses realised what a decadent house you founded.” Augustine rolled his neck, which made wet popping noises. Mercy itched to get a finger on it. Maybe she could stop him talking in the bargain. “I’m serious though. You were one of the first, so you must have been born before, like I was. What do you remember?”
“The grace of our most holy Lord God,” the Saint of Joy replied primly.
“Of course, of course,” said Augustine impatiently, “But is there anything else? We all had some skill, didn’t we? Some remembered aptitudes … we weren’t babies.”
“Some of us still are,” muttered Mercymorn.
“I do, I think,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “It’s a bit like waking up and knowing you just had a very interesting dream, but it’s slipped out of your grasp.”
“Thank goodness for that! I’ve never been less interested in anything than your dreams.”
“But it is interesting,” said Augustine, leaning forward with his elbows on the table, all intent. “Isn’t it convenient that John is the only one of us who remembers? And AL of course, not that she would let any of us in on the secret. Do you know, I couldn’t wait for her to go, and now I miss her, in a strange way. John has been gloomy ever since. I think he’s lonely. He keeps trying to have these dreadful conversations with me.”
“I cannot possibly imagine,” said Mercymorn icily.
“I visited the Ninth House installation, you know. Well, the orbital satellite, anyway. Depressing place. Did you know that Anastasia founded a cult?”
“I heard. I’m surprised John hasn’t wiped it out already. I offered to -”
“No sign of her,” Augustine interrupted. “I don’t know what I was expecting - perhaps a part of me hoped she was somehow still going down there, but of course after what happened - and with John so far away - she couldn’t have been expected to last this long. Doesn’t that concern you? Wouldn’t it have been better if a full Lyctor had been assigned to guard the Tomb?”
“John set the wards himself,” Mercy said, watching the large serrated leaves on a pot plant by the wall flutter in the artificial air currents. “They can only be opened by him.”
“I don’t know, the whole thing just feels off to me. I never did buy John’s explanation of what happened with Samael -”
“Don’t say his name.” Her knuckles were white. “I hate it when you say their names!!”
“Whose? Samael’s? Cristabel’s?”
“Get her name off your lips,” she seethed, fighting to keep the hand gripping her steak knife from shaking, “or I shall cut them off.”
“Oh, leave off it,” Augustine exclaimed. “You have no right to act aggrieved. That whole thing was her doing and you know it - she always had such a high sense of herself, the stuck-up, self-martyring bitch -"
“You insolent, vile little man,” Mercymorn cried, standing up all at once. The knife clattered to the floor. “You rag, you remnant. I did not come here to listen to this! I am doing the Lord’s work, and you are trespassing into this sector for the sole purpose of provoking me. I will not be dragged into your paranoid little dramas. I hope it's a hundred years before I see you again!" She picked up her plate and flung it. The cold slab of bloody meat left a pink trail as it slid slowly down Augustine's face before slumping to the the floor. Mercymorn swept out, leaving broken ceramic and spattered pepper sauce behind her.
The Saint of Patience dabbed his lips with a napkin, and asked for the bill.