“I, um, apprehend your position,” Remora said, rejoining her. “If one does not expect obedience, one will not, ah, be obeyed. Memorized it in schola, all of us did. Still, if he were to depart? Decamp. Our, um, withdrawal to the city could be hazardous, hey? Laborious, likewise.”

“That’s not the question.” She forgot for a moment that Remora was the second highest dignitary of the Chapter. “The question is whether the enemy’s back. There are no bodies.”

“These, ah—”

“These taluses. It would take ten yoke of oxen to drag them away, I suppose. No dead bios or chems.”

“The, ah, Army, eh? To the Calde. So I understood.”

“Some soldiers went over to him, yes. Others who hadn’t heard about him didn’t, and were fighting their comrades here.”

Remora nodded. “Unfortunate. Um, tragic.”

“When this man Blood’s bodyguards learned Calde Silk had killed him, some attacked him and his soldiers. That’s when Generalissimo Oosik and General Saba stormed the house.”

“Lovely, hum?” Remora harbored a sneaking admiration for architecture as others cherish a vice. “Even, ah, despoiled. Pity. Pity. More so, possibly. No pretensions now. No more vulgar display. Wreckage more — um — romantic? Poetic.” He favored Blood’s torn lawns with a toothy smile.

Maytera Mint drew her soiled habit more tightly about her and for the hundredth time wished for her coif. “If we were to walk a little faster, Your Eminence, we could get out of this wind, whether the Ayuntamiento’s come back or not.”

“Of course, of course.”

“And though I don’t concede that Bison—”