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“I don’t mean him,” said his cavalier.
You tossed her the hand bones and she caught them on reflex. You grasped your sword and stood, and, before she could prevent you, you walked around the side of the bizarre shuttle. There was some manner of open cargo-delivery hatch, or means of entrance, with the door hoisted up on a jack so that fresh air could circulate within the shuttle. You stood in the blinking sunlight before this open door, on the flattened grass, and you looked inside. The three inhabitants stared back at you.
The first was Captain Deuteros, a woman whose stretched-out corpse you had last seen riddled with bullets. She was sitting, not in her Cohort whites, but in a drab long-sleeved shirt of indeterminate colour, and dark trousers. She looked like a shell of the crisp adept you had seen back at Canaan House, and less robust even than her corpse. She had lost significant weight from her already fragile necromancer’s build, her cheeks were dark hollows, and she clasped two crutches in her lap.
Another woman sat close beside her, wearing her own shabby shirt of indeterminate colour, but as though it had been designed for her royal use: a woman you had last seen calmly falling to her death. Ianthe Tridentarius’s features stared out of Coronabeth’s face—an aurora of a face, with deep lustrous skin and burnished hair, and eyes of genuine violet, like plums. Both women were seated in the back of the poorly furnished shuttle, amid crude engines set in oil-reeking array beneath a thin metal grille, and a mess of boxes piled in every corner. Yet the Crown Princess of Ida, missing and presumed dead, filled up that space like a mass of flowers on a midden. She was in as blooming good health as could be, as vigorous as Deuteros was frail.
The third staring inhabitant was not a person. It was an enormous flimsy poster in a chipped frame, the only sign of decoration in that untidy little shuttle. A head-and-shoulders photograph of an unsmiling, adamant person, in all assumption a woman, stared fixedly at you as though calculating how much effort it would take to snap your neck. She was dressed in black to the chin, and her red hair curled thickly about her neck and shoulders. Thick, itchy streams of blood began to ooze down your sinuses.
That portrait frightened you more than anything you had seen since becoming a Lyctor; it scared the irresolute piss from your body. Yet you had never seen the face before in your life.
The Second House captain said, somewhat hoarsely: “Ninth?”
You wiped your face before your hands flew to your exoskeleton again. It disgorged one of the twenty-two with ease, and you pulled open the letter marked: To open if you meet Judith Deuteros.
You translated without conscious thought:
ADDRESSING THE LADY HARROWHARK NONAGESIMUS, KNOWN AS THE REVEREND DAUGHTER BY HER OWN DESIRE, NOW HARROWHARK THE FIRST, FROM THE SAME, NOW DEAD.
LETTER #12 OF 24.
If you meet Judith Deuteros, silence her. Kill her if necessary.
The bones of Deuteros’s jaw fused shut; you glued her bottom molars to her top molars immediately, and cleaved her tongue to her palate. She said, “Nnnngh?”
You took out a second letter to be sure, although this one was in plain script, and you had read it already:
ADDRESSING THE LADY HARROWHARK NONAGESIMUS, KNOWN AS THE REVEREND DAUGHTER BY HER OWN DESIRE, NOW HARROWHARK THE FIRST, FROM THE SAME, NOW DEAD.
LETTER #5 OF 24.
Protect Coronabeth Tridentarius at all costs, even if this endangers your life. The work is forfeit if you contribute to her death by direct or indirect action. In the interests of the work, you may silence her, so long as this causes her no significant pain.
In different handwriting:
P.S. Or any pain at all.
In yours:
P.P.S. I cannot guarantee a total absence of pain.
The first amender:
P.P.P.S. There must be a total absence of pain actually.
In yours again:
P.P.P.P.S. We have jointly agreed on “as little pain as may be achieved via the fullness of necromantic effort.”
And in the first:
P.P.P.P.P.S. xoxoxoxo
Coronabeth Tridentarius had already leapt to her feet and unsheathed a rapier you knew very well, and which froze you to the core to behold. It was a Ninth House rapier. The blade was black metal, with a plain guard and a hilt of the same colour. She stood before the mute shell that now constituted Deuteros, neatly at the ready with the rapier brandished and her left arm tucked behind her back. It was so like looking at Ianthe that you were differently bewildered; but you had already done the same to her—the tongue to the roof of the mouth, the teeth to the teeth—and so all she could say was, “Nnnngh!”
You drew your two-handed sword.
“Stop it.” The Sixth cavalier had joined this shitty tableau; she narrowed her eyes to slits in the sunshine. “I warned them already.”
“I do this on a greater authority than your own.”
“Balls,” said Hect succinctly. “Let them go.” Then: “Why is that sword gummed up, and who taught you to hold it like that?”
“I refuse to— What?”
“Your hands are too close together. Put your left hand at the bottom of the pommel, tuck in the arm close to the chest. Right hand high on the hilt, close to the cross guard, up a bit with your thumb—yeah—that’s more like it.” You did all this, and she said: “Good … not like you have the muscle for a rising strike. Okay. Now let Coronabeth and Judith go.”
Your grip adjusted, you found it significantly less difficult to hold the sword pointed down than previously. You asked, “Why are you here? Why are you all alive? Why are you on the other side of the universe—in your own shuttle—innumerable years away from the Nine Houses? Why were your bodies not found at Canaan House?”
With her mouth a gruesome, stuck-together distortion, Deuteros had stood with a crutch shakily clutched beneath one arm, and was now hauling herself toward you with an uprightness of posture that belied her physical weakness. It was still the Cohort captain who silently approached, her dark eyes cold and level; you kept your bone-sheathed sword steady, though you would not in any case use it to kill her if you have to. The captain shouldered past an obviously reluctant Coronabeth—their eyes met, and Judith shook her head in a minute no—and she stopped about a step before you.
Then she grabbed a fistful of mother-of-pearl robes. You did not flinch. She said, “Nnnnngh—mmmmf—nghaaaagh,” as though sheer force of desperation could wrench coherent sound from a fused mouth. Camilla flew to her left side and Corona to her right, but she swung her crutch at them. Her grasp was surprisingly strong, and as she said, “Nnnghhh!” you unfused lips, tongue and teeth. You always were too curious for your own good.
“Ngghyaaar—warn him, Lyctor! He has been infiltrated, damn it, and I can do nothing! I am a prisoner of war! If you love him, tell the Emperor that the traitor has already—Nghhhyughh—”
This last nghhhyugh was nothing to do with you. Coronabeth, face set, had clasped her hand over the Second House’s mouth and manhandled her backward, which was very easy for someone of the Third’s stature to do to someone of the Second’s. Ianthe’s twin was stone-eyed, and the expression she and the captain gave each other was antagonistic, to say the least. Judith was humiliatingly bundled back within the confines of the shuttle—Coronabeth kicked a lever close to the door—the great shady overhead hatch started whining down, and you watched the darkness claim her and the furious dignity of the downed soldier beneath the cold gaze of that too-familiar portrait. Judith was signing something to you, but you could not make out Cohort signals. You’d never bothered yourself with the military.
Camilla was picking up the crutch. She said, restlessly, “Look, we should go. We weren’t meant to be here.”
You said, “You are a fool if you think I will let you leave like—”
“I evoke the rock that is never rolled away,” she said instantly. She was a quick study. “Let us leave. Tell no one we were here. Don’t ask any more questions. We’re not on the same side anymore, Ninth. I owe you. I owe you everything. But—things have changed.”
It was your turn for your tongue to cleave to the roof of your mouth. The once-cavalier of the Sixth House looked at you impassively, and she said: “I’m sorry, if that helps.”
You said, “It doesn’t.”
“Fair.”
“Let me ask one thing,” you said. “One single question—just the one—for the sake of what I have just done for you, and for the Master Warden of the Sixth House.”
Camilla looked at you distantly, and eventually said: “Ask. I’m not going to promise that I can answer.”
You said, “Who took you away from Canaan House? Who are you with, Hect?”
“You call them Blood of Eden,” she said.
* * *
