“You could resurrect them,” you said, without bothering to filter much between thought and speech. “You alone are capable of it. But you won’t. Why?” “For the same reason that I haven’t for ten thousand years,” he said. “For the same reason that I cannot come back to the Nine Houses. The cost is too great.” You swayed a little. Maybe you fell. The metal grille was beneath your knees, making red sore marks in your flesh, the air through the grate reeking of antistatic pastes. You said into the panels, “Teach me, Lord, how to count that cost.”
