she had, unsurprisingly, ragged you for it. “Relax,” she had said. “I haven’t invited you to an orgy, Harrow.”
From this lying-down angle, the painting of the nude and obstreperously beautiful woman was in full sightline. You had murmured, “I believe you … albeit many wouldn’t.”
“This is why I cultivate you, Harrowhark,” she had remarked, “the suspicion that you might possess a sense of humour.”
You had said, “I’m not so gullible to think that your only reason.”
“Of course I want something from you. But it’s not personal,” Ianthe had said. “Understand me, Harry. I always take the smartest option first … burn any bridges that need to be burned … try to get in before anyone else can. It was the first thing I ever admired about you, back at—well, I promised not to talk about that … I’m very good at seeing the big picture. And your being alive is, right now, part of my big picture.”
Both of you had stared, in the bedtime silence of blankets and darkness, at the big picture in front of you.
“They’re all self-portraits, you know,” she had said gloomily. “Cyrus the First and his cavalier constantly painted portraits of themselves and each other in the nude, hung them up everywhere, and gave them out to people for their birthdays. Augustine said Cyrus had them all brought over from Canaan House.”
“Why do you keep them around?”
“It is the type of energy I wish to take into my future,” Ianthe had said.
You both lay now in the low blue habitation light of the sleeping hours, not so close that you could semantically be said to be lying together. You were very aware of her nonetheless: of her skimmed-milk hair and discontented mouth, and of the amber satin she wore that made her arm so gold and her veins so green.
“The Saint of Duty is killable,” she said. “You’ve shown that you’re capable of killing him, even if you’re not a genuine Lyctor. So if it were up to me, he’d be dead already.” (You did not remotely believe this.) “The real problem is Teacher. I’m not sure you can kill Ortus quickly enough to avoid Teacher bursting through the wall with a merry, ‘Not on my watch!’ and bringing him back from a deathblow.”
You said, “Then what do you propose? Distracting God?”
“That is exactly what I propose,” said Ianthe. At the sound you made, she continued eagerly: “I mean it. Augustine says he’ll do it … I asked him as a favour to me, and he said yes.”
“Augustine said yes? Augustine agreed to the murder of his brother Lyctor?”
“There are very complex power dynamics on this station,” said your sister Lyctor, with whom you had a very complex power dynamic. “I told him the whole story—don’t make that face, Harry, it’ll stick that way—and he said Ortus was on too long a leash and what he thought he was doing Augustine didn’t know, but that gunning for you was stupid when you’re just going to be eaten by Heralds anyway … Sorry, direct quote.”
You said flatly, “I appreciate the sentiment.”
“In any case, he said they can get by with just three Lyctors to take down Number Seven, so if I can step into Ortus’s shoes now that I’m not ‘problematic’—you can see I took my lumps, Nonagesimus—he can buy you an hour, after dinner.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“How?”
“Didn’t say—but it’s Augustine the First, my child. He’s the first and oldest Lyctor. These three are all the oldest—and the last—that’s why they’re Patience, Joy, and Duty … three virtues. If Augustine is going to distract God, that means he’s going to distract God. He’s very old, and I hate to admit it, but he’s enormously quick … and sophisticated … and devious. Anyway, I’ve taken care of him, and he’ll take care of Teacher, and you’ll take care of Duty.”
“You’ve really—ensured this?”
“Fight him and win, Harry. Call it payment for the arm … You sound surprised.”
You found yourself murmuring, almost more surprised with yourself than with her: “Warrior proud of the Third House! Ride forth now as my sister.”
There was a rustle from her side of the bed, and you saw that she had sat up a little, her exposed and metal-skinned humerus garishly propped on the covers.
“Was that poetry?” she demanded.
“Debatably,” you said, and she lay back down. Then you said: “I accept your help. I am forced to admit that I cannot do this alone.”
“I live for your forced admissions,” said Ianthe. “It would have been a pain if