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Then you went under to make war on Hell.
Hell spat you back out. Fair enough.
“I need you to hide my infirmity,” said Harrowhark. “You see, I am insane.
You were just a necromancer, and it was just a sword.
Something flickered in your nervous system that was a bit like an emotion, but it struggled and died, much to your relief.
“Which indelible sin?” “The one you committed when you became a Lyctor,” said the Emperor.
THE REVEREND DAUGHTER Harrowhark Nonagesimus ought to have been the 311th Reverend Mother of her line. She was the eighty-seventh Nona of her House; she was the first Harrowhark.
“Falling” was not the right term, precisely. It was a long process. She more correctly climbed down into love, picked its locks, opened its gates, and breached its inner chamber.
But Harrowhark—Harrow, who was two hundred dead children; Harrow, who loved something that had not been alive for ten thousand years—Harrowhark Nonagesimus had always so badly wanted to live. She had cost too much to die.
Harrow was furious that she was doing something so—so pedestrian as to pubesce.
Her cavalier had given himself to her with a numb readiness that still burnt her to ash with shame. Even with that readiness, she had committed the indelible sin halfway; she had gathered up the matter of Ortus Nigenad’s soul and not been able to choke him all the way down.
There had been another girl who grew up alongside Harrow—but she had died before Harrow was born.
Ianthe Tridentarius.
It was written in your blood. When you touched the smooth, plex-rendered surface, you could see in your mind’s eye the pen nib, the soft bite of the metal into the inside of your lip.
The letter was written in Ninth House crypt-script; your own cipher, based off that of your parents and developed when you were seven years old. It was unbreakable to anyone who lacked your rosary, Marshal Crux, and a hundred or so years to spare.
Harrowhark who was handed the first genuine choice of our lives; the only choice ever given where we had free will to say, No, and free will to say, Yes. Accept that in this instance I have chosen to say, No.
You leant down and—holy shit—kissed her squarely on the mouth. This, at least, she hadn’t expected—how could she, what the fuck—and her mouth froze against yours, which gave you time to work.
As she withdrew it, the wound knitted together as though it were nothing. She simply withdrew, and the skin closed up—the meat bounded back on itself, elastic—the hole sizzled to a close, leaving her palm whole and unblemished except for a few wet drops of crimson red.
You staggered over to the Body, standing so quiet by the wall, and you buried your face in her thighs.
“Nigenad, what would be the tragedy in living for a myriad? Ten thousand years to learn everything there is to know—to read everything that has ever been written … to study without fear of premature end or reckoning. What is the tragedy of time?”
“Time can render one impotent beyond meaning,” said Ortus unexpectedly.
Thankfully, you no longer felt shame. Pride was swiftly becoming a planet you had travelled to once but no longer remembered in detail.
“We are about to travel forty billion light years, to where we first ran …
The water seeped around your neck and started trickling into your ear canals. This did not fill you with the rigid terror it apparently produced in Ianthe: as a child you had been plunged into water by your mother and father, so the sensation was old and familiar, if wretched.
“You don’t need to breathe.”
A rubber-bodied toddler with a painted face and very red hair lay dead beside your knee and for some reason it was this that destroyed you, it was this that kindled within you something you had no hope of defending against. You howled in a purity of fright.
there was a huge and overwhelming sound like some vast machine backfiring, and you kept thinking, Five? but then there was nothing left of you.
“They were disciples, to begin with. Ten normal human beings of the Resurrection, though half were blessed already with necromantic gifts. But necromancy alone does not confer eternal life.
Just—coming back here, and not seeing him—it gave me the heebie-jeebies, to be perfectly honest with you. I can’t quite shake the feeling that something’s wrong.”
It took long years of self-discipline not to kill the woman then and there; or at least make the attempt.
AND FOR THAT I’LL MAKE YOU BOTH SUFFER UNTIL YOU NO LONGER UNDERSTAND THE MEANING OF THAT GODDAMNED WORD
I am so confused...
Your two-handed sword was thrust through Cytherea’s breast for the second time.
drove a killing lance of thanergy right into the planet’s heart.
As a necromancer she was a genius, though you thought she relied too much on shortcuts and circumventions. She had an exceptionally fine mind. She was not afraid of rigour.
“Harrowhark, nobody has the right to know,” he said fiercely. “Nobody has the right to blame you. Nobody can judge. What has happened, has happened, and there’s no putting it back in the box. They wouldn’t understand. They don’t have to. I officially relieve you from living in fear. Nobody has to know.”
“What does BOE stand for?” “Blood of Eden,” he’d said, slowly. “Who is Eden?” “Someone they left to die,”
once you turn your back on something, you have no more right to act as though you own it.”
“Tonight I am afraid to die.” “That is the same fear as failure,” she said once. “You don’t fear dying. You can tolerate pain. You are afraid that your life has incurred a debt that your death will not pay. You see death as a mistake.”
Your section on Ianthe was very short: IANTHE (WHILOM TRIDENTARIUS) THE FIRST Unworthy of trust. Suspects me mad.
“Do you try to sound as portentous as possible, or does it just sort of happen naturally?”
Do you need me to write this down for you, so you can read it to yourself each night? You—are—unnecessary—to—him. Worse still, you’ve become an embarrassment. I wouldn’t set myself up as his replacement A.L. He doesn’t need another bodyguard, and even she was significantly more lucid than you are.”
“When you look at a revenant on this side, what you’re seeing is the thanergy mass that it’s gathered. Usually revenants can only inhabit things connected to them in life—the best and most desirable would be its own corpse or skeleton, or planet if you’re an RB: you’ve formed a bond with that thing through habit and genetics, it’s your soul’s preferred housing.
“This is how the RBs got on, having scarpered away from the Dominicus system. Resurrection Beasts add to their corpus anything they’ve done a good solid murder to. They eat planets; they suck up the thanergy, then add bits of the planet to themselves, getting bigger and meaner each time.
God had a quiet, ambling posture, an upright if slightly stoop-shouldered gait; he was mobile and alive. He was always somehow more alive than everyone else around him, and yet dislocated from what you considered living. A man-shaped eclipse.
Looked at objectively, there were really only two things wrong with your life. One was that you were not a normal Lyctor. The other was even less complicated. ORTUS??? (WHILOM???) THE FIRST, SAINT OF DUTY Wants me dead.
“One,” she said crisply. “The Sleeper can move from its coffin. Two, the Sleeper can pass through necromantic wards. Three, Teacher told us not to wake it. I don’t know what does. Noise doesn’t.
One more thing—I’m not saying this with absolute certainty. I only got a glance before the lid closed and the plex fogged up again. But there’s something else in the coffin. The Sleeper’s lying on it.”
you were still numb; you were tired, you were hungry, and you sat down at the countertop to eat your tepid supper, and had gotten through maybe five spoonfuls before the sword emerged from the middle of your chest.
“Is she dead?—Stay there, you idiot! Hands where I can see them! What were you thinking? Oh, he’s going to be furious! You egg!”
“Oh. Then he just wants you dead,” she said, with perfect unconcern. “Good luck! Not!! That man is Teacher’s attack dog … If he thinks you’re a threat then I would advise you to settle your affairs.”
