head back. The other hand pressed a knife against the smaller woman’s throat. This would have been a commanding position, except that the knife blade was quivering in place. Its edge creased the pale skin, but it hadn’t drawn blood, even though Camilla seemed to be leaning on it as hard as she could. Whatever terrible force was holding the knife at bay was also slowly peeling the skin from the cavalier of the Sixth’s hand.
“You’re a nice girl,” the Lyctor said. “I had a nice girl as a cavalier too … once. She died for me. What can you do?”
Camilla said nothing. Her face was slick with sweat and blood. Her crop of dark, blunt-cut hair was powdered grey with bone. Cytherea looked faintly amused by the blade that was a finger’s breadth away from being buried in her jugular. She drawled, “Is this meant to kill me?”
“Give me time,” said Camilla, through gritted teeth.
Cytherea gave this due consideration. “I’d rather not,” she said.
Gideon saw, as Camilla could not, the tentacle of bone that wound silently upward from the mess behind the cavalier, tipped with a vicious point the length of a duellist’s dagger. Even if she’d had a pristine knee and no necro to haul, Gideon was too far away to save her. The barb drew back, like a poised stinger, and Gideon yelled, “Cam!”
Perhaps it was the yell; perhaps it was Camilla’s extraordinary instincts. The Sixth cav twisted sideways, and the hook that should have punched through her spine drove into the meat of her shoulder instead. Her eyes went wide with shock, and the knife fell from her half-flayed hand. Cytherea took the opportunity to shove her contemptuously in the chest, and Camilla toppled backward onto the ground, the sharpened bone still buried in her flesh.
Cytherea took up her rapier. In a panic, Gideon began trying to kick her futile way through a jungle of yellow bone, but putting her weight on her bad leg made her stagger and almost drop. Camilla was struggling herself free of the bone skewer, but another tendril had snaked up across her thighs, trapping her against the floor. The Lyctor stood above her with her green sword gleaming in the light.
“You can’t hurt me,” said Cytherea, almost despairingly. “Nothing can hurt me anymore, cavalier.”
The sword glittered. Gideon thrashed through a mesh of bones that her adept could have parted mid-yawn. As the Lyctor drew back her arm for a clean thrust into Camilla’s heart, four inches of bloodied steel emerged from her belly.
Camilla stared up at her as though trying to work out why everything hadn’t gone black. A red stain was spreading across the thin bedsheet. The Lyctor’s face didn’t change, but she turned her head slightly. A pale head was now nearly pillowed on her shoulder, peeking over, as though to make sure the sword had hit home. Colourless fair hair spilled over Cytherea’s collarbone like a waterfall: the figure behind her smiled.
“Spoke too soon, old news,” said Ianthe.
“Oh,” said Cytherea, “oh, my! A baby Lyctor.”
The construct was stuck fast in the trap that Harrowhark had laid for it, and behind them Gideon could hear its central bulk straining to see what had pained its mistress, like a great skull swivelling in its web. It was held fast, but it still had range, and it lifted its spines to even the fight.
Ianthe ran her free hand over the blood trickling down Cytherea’s hip. She flicked hot drops over her shoulder, where they hung in the air, sizzling. They ran together like quicksilver—spread out, widened and flattened into a shimmering, transparent pink sheet. Ianthe narrowed her watercolour eyes and pointed her free hand upward. The sheet tightened, a wide, watery disc of blood, separating the two Lyctors from the construct.
A barbed bone stinger drove straight at Ianthe’s head, hit the shimmering disc, and dissolved. Gideon bodychecked her way clear, hauling herself to a corner of the room as far away from the construct as possible. She wasn’t thrilled about approaching the embracing Lyctors, but if she played her cards right, she could still get Harrowhark and Camilla out of here. Another stinger, then another, hurtled into the blood disc and evaporated. Despite herself, she turned to watch: the construct stiffened a dozen of its tendrils, two dozen, aiming them like javelins at Ianthe’s tiny form, and Gideon remembered Isaac Tettares, impaled on fifty spines at once.
As Gideon passed it, Ianthe’s blood pool spun even wider, an aegis, a shield.