Out on the open veranda on the other side of the palace, Helen walked alone.
She had left her shoes somewhere. Her bare feet came down on stone so cold it burned, and she barely noticed. She took hold of the railing with both hands.
"Barbarian," she said. "That barbarian woman."
Keep our holy people out of politics. Keep them clean. She had stood on the balcony and heard a foreigner in gold thread explain, in front of the Emperor of Nyx, what a concubine was and what she did to the sanctity of a temple, and everyone in earshot had smiled politely at it.
A blue light gathered around her as she stared into the dark. Her fist closed on the rail, and closed harder, and the nails went through the skin.
What could a barbarian possibly know, she thought, and smiled a small horrible smile. Her hand began to shine. This was hers; this had come to her out of the sky in the mud at Quidd because she had wanted something more fiercely than anyone around her, and God had noticed. That was what divine power was for.
She looked down, surprised, at the blood running out of her own hand.
Then she looked up, and saw a figure walking away along the lower path.
Gold trim. Long dark hair.
She was down the steps before she had decided anything. He heard her and turned, and there was a flicker of concern on his face when he saw the state of her.
"Wait — a moment, please wait." She caught his arm with her clean hand. Poor thing, she thought. Sold by his own brother, in front of a hall full of strangers, to a woman twice his age in spirit if not in body. Anyone would want rescuing from that.
She held up her other hand, palm out, the blood running down her wrist.
"I've hurt myself," she said. "Could you help me stop it? Please — I don't want to make a scene, not tonight, not after—"
Her knees folded. She went into his arms very neatly.
He caught her.
"I'm so sorry," she said weakly, looking up at him from against his chest. "I'm sorry. I'm not strong. I've been anaemic since I was a child, and I've hardly eaten today—"
His eyes narrowed.
"I had heard," he said, "that the Saint of the Holy Empire was something out of the ordinary."
Then he shoved her off him, hard enough that she staggered.
"You're as vulgar as the rest of them."
She stared at him. He turned his hand over: there was a sun emblem in his palm, worked in gold, and the light of it was still on her skin where he had held her.
"I have no reason to bandage a wound that closed thirty seconds ago," he said. "Look at your own hand."
She looked. The cut was gone.
"Wag your tail for your master," he said. "Not for me."
He turned his back on her and walked away.
"You—" She could not get the rest of it out. She stumbled backward until the wall stopped her, with her mind going round and round the same three words.
Wag my tail. He said that to me. He said that to me.
She stood in the dark with her chest heaving and put herself back together the way she always did. I am the Saint. There is not a soul in this Empire whose love I do not already own — the Emperor's, the temple's, the poor's, all of it, mine, monopolised.
Below the veranda, a servant looked up at the pale figure standing alone against the balustrade.
Two more servants were on the path with an ornate box between them, arguing in whispers.
"Well, what do we do with it now? He's been given away. Do we give the box away as well?"
"Put it somewhere. Put it anywhere."
In the darkness a hand came to rest on the abandoned gift, and the light from the hall below threw a red glow up across the face above it.
Helen smiled.
Oh, she thought. Yes. I could use that. That would do it beautifully.
In the winter garden the Empress and Cassandra said their goodnights and parted, both of them meaning it when they said they hoped to meet again soon.
Alone in the corridor, the Empress put a hand against the wall.
The energy she had taken earlier was not going to hold. She could feel it running out of her, the way water runs out of cupped hands, and the edges of the corridor had begun to swim.
Then somebody in front of her retched, and dropped, and hit the marble.