had arrived for party times. Palamedes had sent for all the survivors, though considering their current group-wide interest in killing one another the fact that they had bothered coming was nothing short of a miracle. The Second stood against the wall, their jackets less creased than their faces; Ianthe and Coronabeth sat fussily crowded up on each other’s knees, with their cavalier close behind. Silas stood inside the door, Colum stood just behind him, and if anyone had wanted to take them all out then and there it would have been as simple as shutting the door and letting them all asphyxiate on Naberius Tern’s pomade. It seemed so strange that this was now all of them.
The necromancer of the Seventh House was propped up on a bundle of fat cushions, looking calm and transparent. With every stridorous breath her shoulders shook, but her hair was perfectly brushed and her nightgown nightmarishly frilly. She had in her lap the box that contained Protesilaus’s head, and when she drew it gently out—wholly unspoiled as if he were still alive—there were several indrawn breaths. Hers was not among them.
“My poor boy,” she said, sincerely. “I’ll never be able to put him back together now. Who took him apart? He’s a wreck.”
Palamedes steepled his fingers and leaned forward, greyly intent.
“Lady Septimus, Duchess of Rhodes,” he said, very formally, “I put to you before everyone here—that this man was dead before you arrived, by shuttle, at the First House, and appeared alive only through deep flesh magic.”
There was an immediate hubbub, uncalmed by his impatient be quiet gestures and the shoving of his spectacles up his nose. Among the collective mutters, Ianthe Tridentarius’s acid drawl was loudest: “Well, this is the only interesting thing she’s ever done.”
Nearly as piercing was Captain Deuteros: “Impossible. He’s been with us for weeks.”
“It’s not impossible at all,” said Dulcinea herself. She had been gravely meeting Protesilaus’s murky stare, as though trying to find something out, and now she settled the head on her lap. “The Seventh House have been perfecting the way of the beguiling corpse for years and years and years. It’s just—not entirely allowed.”
“It is unholy,” said Silas, flatly.
“So is soul siphoning, my child,” she said, in tones of deliberately celestial sweetness. “And it’s not unholy—it’s entirely useful and blameless; just not when you do it like this, which is the very old way. The Seventh aren’t just soul-stoppers and mummifiers. Yes, Pro was dead before we even landed.”
Gideon said, just as flatly as Silas: “Why?”
Those enormous flower-blue eyes turned to Gideon as though she were the only person in the room. There was no laughter in them, or else Gideon might have started to yell. Suddenly, the dying necromancer seemed enormously old; not with wrinkles, but with the sheer dignity and quiet with which she sat there, totally serene.
“This competition caught out my House,” she said baldly. “Let me tell you the story. Dulcinea Septimus was never intended to be here, Gideon the Ninth … they would have preferred she be laid up at home and have another six months wrung out of her. It’s an old story of the House. But there wasn’t another necromantic heir. And there was a very good cavalier primary … so even if the necromantic heir was one bad cold away from full lung collapse … it was thought that he might even the odds. But then he had an accident.”
Dulcinea fretted the dull hair of the head with her fingertips, then smoothed it out as if it were a doll’s. “Hypothetically. If you were the Seventh House, and all your fortunes were now represented in two dead bodies, one breathing a little bit more than the other, wouldn’t you consider something far-fetched? Let’s say, by utilizing the way of the beguiling corpse, and hoping that nobody noticed that your House was DOA? I’m sorry for deceiving you, but I’m not sorry I came.”
“That doesn’t add up.”
Harrow was stiff as concrete. Her eyes were huge and dark, and though only Gideon could tell, very agitated. “The spell you’re talking about is not within the range of a normal necromancer, Septimus. Impossible for a necromancer in their prime, let alone a dying woman.”
“A dying woman is the perfect necromancer,” said Ianthe.
“I wish I could get rid of that idea. Maybe for the final ten minutes,” said Palamedes. “The technical fact that dying enhances your necromancy is vitiated considerably by the fact that you can’t make any use of it. You