thanergy-irradiated desert while Nonius mused aloud on the nature of fate all the way into Book Twelve. You fell asleep.
* * *
By the next afternoon, an envelope had been slipped under Ianthe’s door. It was paper of a deep, creamy brown, and sealed with wax. When Ianthe broke it open, you peered over her elbow at the contents. A single page—also real paper, also dyed a creamy tan colour, lettered artistically in flawless handwriting and deep blue ink:
AUGUSTINE THE FIRST, LYCTOR OF THE GREAT RESURRECTION, FOUNDER OF THE COURT OF KONIORTOS, FIRST SAINT TO SERVE THE KING UNDYING
REQUESTS THE HONOUR OF THE PRESENCE OF HIS YOUNGEST SISTERS
IANTHE THE FIRST, EIGHTH SAINT TO SERVE THE KING UNDYING
&
HARROWHARK THE FIRST, NINTH SAINT TO SERVE THE KING UNDYING
DINNER WILL BE SERVED AT HALF AN HOUR PAST EVENING COMMENCEMENT
ATTIRE: FORMAL OR CEREMONIAL DRESS
Your head pounded with a tedious recognition.
“No,” you said.
Ianthe tapped your shoulder with the invitation in her usual parody of playfulness, which was a little like being batted around by a predator while still alive. “This is the plan, Harrowhark. Just sit back and watch my teacher work.”
You said, “I do not understand the faith you place in that man.”
It was no good. You would have preferred a time that was not hours hence; you would have preferred a plan that did not involve a formal invitation, a dress code, or dinner. The last dinner you had attended had not gone exactly to plan, and you thought another dinner in poor taste. But you had not reckoned on your roommate, who—as a princess of the Third House—thought of dinners the way you thought of morning orison.
“I still have my robes of office,” you said as she tore apart her wardrobe, fingering each article therein before tossing it aside.
“It’s no longer your office. No—no.”
“It’s technically correct.”
“Not this time, my child. I’m sick of being associated with a half-snapped stick of liquorice, dressed in a tent— No—hideous—not even Corona would wear that. No—no.”
“My shirt and trousers will suffice, then. Beneath my Canaanite whites.”
“Even worse,” said Ianthe, and wrestled from its housing what appeared to be a full tulle skirt in midnight purple; skirt and woman scuffled momentarily before she heaved it across the room. “No—yes, for a different and much better party—no—no. Sometimes I think the Emperor of the Nine Houses favours you because you’ve got the same taste in clothes. God, what’s this? That’s a bit risqué—”
You grew desperate. “Let me pick.”
Ianthe looked at you; her blue-and-brown eyes were beatific. “Harry,” she said, and she said it tenderly, “have you never read a trashy novel in which the hero gets a life-affirming change of clothes and some makeup, and then goes to the party and everyone says things like, ‘By the Emperor’s bones! But you’re beautiful,’ or, ‘This is the first time I have ever truly seen you,’ and if the hero’s a necromancer it’ll be described like, ‘His frailty made his unearthly handsomeness all the more ephemeral,’ et cetera, et cetera, the word mewled fifteen pages later, the word nipple one page after that?”
You said emphatically: “No.”
“Then we have no shared point of reference. Thankfully, however, this is not that part,” she said. “Not even one of the Emperor’s fists and gestures could give Harrowhark Nonagesimus a sexy makeover. Sometimes I think you look like a twig’s funeral. In the right light though— Oh, this might do, it’s even your colour. Come here.”
She was holding a mass of black fabric, but no black such as ever existed in the House of the Locked Tomb. You approached with naked horror. Ianthe shook out a long piece of starry sable stuff and held it against you; it appeared to be some sort of—enormous handkerchief. It was not a dress.
When you pointed this out she said, with some asperity: “Valancy Trinit was my height, weighed more than both of us put together, and—judging by her portraits—had a body that did not quit. Your body, by comparison, gave up at the starting line. Take off your clothes.”
Take off your clothes was an imperative you never thought you would obey. You did not take off all your clothes, but you consented to strip down to your shirtsleeves, because the shirt was long. The exoskeleton provided some coverage, though not remotely enough for comfort. You stood there with your chin thrust out, expecting a steady flow of crude japery, but all she said was: “Will you take off that grotesque skeleton corset?”