nearly infinite mass—making their way through the dark waters.
Time and space works differently in the River no matter how you enter, my chicks, Augustine had warned. Anchor yourself as you’re leaving the old meat robes behind, and as you wade through the waters. Attach to worldly geography; be aware of your body; let it be your harbour, unless you’re dying to be pulled somewhere you don’t want to go.
You used the skull as your geography instead. The water was very cold when it closed over your head. It felt thick and slippery as oil. Augustine had ducked you and Ianthe in the River, to train you for this—to get you used to a River teeming with the mad, the insane, and the ravenous—and you knew what to expect. You would be in filthy water, with the teeth, and the rotten flesh, and the bloody, unseeing eyes. You might, if you were lucky, look down upon the mad ghost of the skull. You could discharge your duty by confirming that he had long ago drifted away, and that Hect might drift away from the buttoned-up primal grief a ghost story had frozen in place. You prepared for the ice, and the initial panic of ghosts exploding outward from your body, that safe predatory entry of your brain—the cloudy water, foggy with old blood—
—and you were standing in a room. Your wet robes were dripping onto a scrubbed wooden floor.
The room was penitent-sized, big enough for a bed and a table. Less penitential, the bed was strewn with pillows and cushions and comforters; the table was similarly scattered with preparations, little paper packets, and a stained enamel bowl. An old chair was pushed close to the bed, its back re-stapled to its frame and some of the stuffing coming out in square, foaming chunks of yellow. Above the bed, a dirty little window that had resisted someone’s attempts to clean it looked down upon a dying courtyard where a thick array of salt-choked vines were the only greenish things among an array of spindly leafless trees. A shelf held a few desiccated books, one standing out like a fleshy corpse among skeletons. Your eyes fell upon the title: The Necromancer’s Marriage Season.
“It’s a historical,” said a voice behind you. “Abella Trine, inevitably of Ida, is considered a poor prospect on the marriage market because she’s too skinny, her tract-specialist flesh magic is too good, and she wears her thick chestnut hair in an unflattering bun, which is mentioned at least twice a chapter.”
You turned around.
A man stood in the doorway to the tiny room. He was taller than you. His dull robes lapped around a body of starvation thinness. He was toying with a pair of glasses, and he stared at you with naked eyes of exquisite, pellucid grey: the softness of charcoal burnt nearly white, with the glass clarity of quartz.
He continued, “There’re a few suitors vying for her affections, though Abella’s such a pain in the arse I’ve got no idea why. There’s a spoiled swordswoman I’m quite fond of, but the narrative doesn’t like her because she goes to sexy parties every night, which I’d regard as a blameless enough hobby—and then Abella meets an insanely tedious widower from the outskirts of Tisis, whose saintly husband ate a grenade in the war. After two massive misunderstandings, they hook up, and then there’s a time skip to their adorable baby, who talks with a phonetically impossible lisp and can already form a kidney. The whole is unspeakably sordid.” He slid the glasses back on to that beaky nose. “Long time no see, Reverend Daughter.”
Then he did a very terrible thing. He stepped forward, and he pulled you into a wild embrace—the hold of a man drowning in deep water who cannot help but drag his rescuer down to the bottom with him. He dug his fingers into you in a way you were a little familiar with: tight against the chance that the person in front of you might be a cloud, or a mirage. He lifted you off the ground in his impatient, overfamiliar eagerness, and then he set you down again and saw your face.
“Excuse me,” you said, with sodden asperity.
“Oh. Apologies,” said Palamedes Sextus. “Misread the moment. Let’s call it cabin fever. Nonagesimus, is Camilla—”
“She sent me,” you said, wringing out your wet hem. “She is alive and well and living.”
He whistled a sigh.
“Oh, thank God,” he said a little unsteadily. “Thank God for that mad, stubborn,