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As God, Mercymorn, and Augustine looked over the incinerator, they left you alone, sitting in the filtration room with Ortus. You did not often trust instinct, but you were not afraid of him then, seeing him sit on an upturned box the same way you were sitting, wiry, and empty-faced, and defeated. You were just angry.
“You saw what you saw,” you said. “You must have seen her stab you. The blow was from the front, with your own spear.”
Ortus said, “I don’t know.”
“You were conscious. You spoke to me.”
He said, “I don’t know.”
“We had a conversation. I want to know what it meant.”
He said, “I don’t remember.”
You looked into his clear green eyes; his expression had not changed, and neither had his voice. You could not keep the disbelieving contempt from yours when you said, “You don’t remember?”
The Saint of Duty turned his body toward you. He was clutching his rapier; but it was idle, in the crook of his elbow, in more the manner of an abandoned broom than of a weapon ready for war. His eyebrows were very slightly drawn together, a sort of exhausted crinkle. He looked at you, and he said in a voice you had known since you were eight years old: “I sometimes—forget.”
It was the tone—clinical, enamelled, half-defensive, half-endangered—the tone of someone admitting a final frailty. It was familiar because you had used it yourself. Understand I am insane.
Later on, when the Mithraeum was searched, Cytherea’s body was no longer on its altar; and God said he could not detect it anywhere on the station at all.
* * *
When you were back in your rooms—your now-familiar, almost-welcome, neat and empty rooms—you opened a vein and set about replacing all your bone wards with blood. It took you hours. You did not fully ward the plex outside, which would have needed complex and careful remote construct work, but you placed an extra skein of wards around the interior windows, and hoped the quick fix would do for one quiet night. You were standing in your little foyer blowing a fine grit of bone dust over a wet blood ward when you heard footsteps outside your rooms.
You stood very still, and you listened.
“I hope you’re happy.”
“Not a bit.”
“What a farce … what a grotesque, awful, miserable farce.”
“Well, for goodness’ sake, how was I to know they’d trip the incineration alarm? God, it’s always the one you don’t turn off.”
“As though I meant that.”
“If you mean the other—you were in serious danger of overegging the pudding. Nobody would ever believe you would get that drunk accidentally.”
“Piss off,” came the response. “I nearly slapped you. Don’t you dare use her as a lever, ever again. Bringing her into it … and your nincompoop brother with her … almost isn’t worth the payment.”
“She should be so lucky as to be any kind of use, as she wasn’t any in life. Damned proud of my straight face. Oh, Cristabel, all is forgiven! Good night, Mercy; my lips are sealed, but if you’re going to make deals with the devil, do ask to see the goods beforehand. I hope you choke before I regret it, and I hope you know that one day I’ll wrench Cristabel’s rotten ghost from your corpse, and eat her … Where did you stash Cytherea?”
More footsteps. A voice rose: “I told you once and I’ll tell you again: I haven’t touched her, you vile, condescending son of a bitch…” And then—nothing. You ducked back into your room.
At last you were able to wrench off the scarf that posed as a dress, and button yourself into a nightgown of your own, and you were able to brush your hair, and scrape off your paint, and wash off the blood from where Ianthe kissed you, and you were able to lie in the silence of the night with your sword beside you and the evening behind you.
Next to you, the Body said quietly, “The water is risen. So is the sun. We will endure.”
ACT FOUR
32
TWO MONTHS BEFORE THE EMPEROR’S MURDER
THE FOURTEENTH PLANET YOU were sent to kill was the thriving, thalergenic satellite of a hot little star. It was lush and terrestrial, with a thick carpet of vegetation and plenty of animal life, and nobody particularly wanted to be responsible for taking it out. Unfortunately, it was right in the current path of Number Seven; and Number Seven, as Teacher put it, would view such a planet like a hot pie. You were the youngest. It was left to you, and to Mercymorn.
Cytherea’s body had never been found. An attempt was made, in those first few days, to search for it, but it seemed that the only one still anxious about it was the Emperor. You knew that Augustine suspected Mercymorn, though you did not know why; Ianthe suspected Ortus of squirrelling her away, no matter your doubts. (“You know,” she persisted in saying, “for … sex reasons.”)
She had not blamed you for failing to murder him. Surprisingly, nor did the Saint of Patience, who had allusively apologised for his failure to account for the incinerator alarms. You had not seen any great changes between him and Mercy—except that they were fractionally more short-tempered with each other—or between him and God or her and God. There was no embarrassment, nor any pause when they met at breakfast, or in the corridor, and clasped arms with the same warmth or lack thereof that they had always shown. The total absence of appropriate shame made you suspect that this had happened between them before, a thought that made you want to give yourself a lobotomy.
And, despite the overwhelming disappointment of God, the Saint of Duty had tried to kill you twice since then. But even he seemed to be weary of it. And your wards had held.
At the start of your latest excursion your teacher surprised you: when you landed on the planet’s surface and confirmed that the atmosphere was breathable (“Keep an eye on what you’re breathing in anyway,” said the Saint of Joy. “Planets are dirty.”), she had given you a pack, and a water canister and a beeper, and told you to go away. There had been no room to land the shuttle at the planet’s lush and forested pole, and so you were faced with a short hike.
“You can do it by yourself,” said Mercymorn. She was snappish and fretful, but Mercymorn was always snappish and fretful. She had not become any less snappish and fretful in the last handful of weeks: simply abstracted, as though her eyes already looked to the River. “I’m going to go do the moonlet next door. It’ll be covered in reflected thalergy. Time yourself—don’t let it get away—most of the life on this thing is in the ocean, but if I’ve made a mistake, don’t get eaten by some sort of creature while you’re under.”
You said, “Sister, how am I meant to protect myself when I go under?”
“I’m not the genius two-year-old, am I,” she barked. There were red rings about those hurricane eyes, and she kept wringing her hands together and looking down through her lashes when she spoke. “I’ll be back in about six hours. Goodbye!”
It was the first time you had been left alone on a foreign planet. The earth beneath your feet reeked of moisture, and little worms and beetles moved within it. The foliage was a violent effusion of greens—fresh, lemony greens, and dull dark piney greens, and in-the-middle dun greens, and a rustling, bristling canopy of leaves. The air was hot and wet, like the inside of a mouth. The sun beat down on your head in gouts of ultraviolet radiation—your eyes squinted against the light—and the sweat made your hair start to curl thickly about your neck. It very badly wanted cutting now.
Two days ago God had taken you into his little sitting room and given you a glass of water, which showed that he had learned, and a biscuit, which showed that he lived in optimism. And the Emperor of the Nine Houses had said, “Harrowhark, when the door comes down behind me, I want you in that room.”
You had said, “No.”
“Harrow, there has been no progress. That’s fine. I understand. But I want to give you more time … I want you to have a future.”
You had said, “Augustine the First has trained me in the River. My necromancy there is nonpareil, and has been since the first. When the Beast comes, I will be ready to meet it, on its turf.”
God had looked at you, and he had quirked his mouth in something like a smile, and said: “You’re even stubborner than I am. I thought I’d cornered the market.”
