face before your hands flew to your exoskeleton again. It disgorged one of the twenty-two with ease, and you pulled open the letter marked: To open if you meet Judith Deuteros.
You translated without conscious thought:
ADDRESSING THE LADY HARROWHARK NONAGESIMUS, KNOWN AS THE REVEREND DAUGHTER BY HER OWN DESIRE, NOW HARROWHARK THE FIRST, FROM THE SAME, NOW DEAD.
LETTER #12 OF 24.
If you meet Judith Deuteros, silence her. Kill her if necessary.
The bones of Deuteros’s jaw fused shut; you glued her bottom molars to her top molars immediately, and cleaved her tongue to her palate. She said, “Nnnngh?”
You took out a second letter to be sure, although this one was in plain script, and you had read it already:
ADDRESSING THE LADY HARROWHARK NONAGESIMUS, KNOWN AS THE REVEREND DAUGHTER BY HER OWN DESIRE, NOW HARROWHARK THE FIRST, FROM THE SAME, NOW DEAD.
LETTER #5 OF 24.
Protect Coronabeth Tridentarius at all costs, even if this endangers your life. The work is forfeit if you contribute to her death by direct or indirect action. In the interests of the work, you may silence her, so long as this causes her no significant pain.
In different handwriting:
P.S. Or any pain at all.
In yours:
P.P.S. I cannot guarantee a total absence of pain.
The first amender:
P.P.P.S. There must be a total absence of pain actually.
In yours again:
P.P.P.P.S. We have jointly agreed on “as little pain as may be achieved via the fullness of necromantic effort.”
And in the first:
P.P.P.P.P.S. xoxoxoxo
Coronabeth Tridentarius had already leapt to her feet and unsheathed a rapier you knew very well, and which froze you to the core to behold. It was a Ninth House rapier. The blade was black metal, with a plain guard and a hilt of the same colour. She stood before the mute shell that now constituted Deuteros, neatly at the ready with the rapier brandished and her left arm tucked behind her back. It was so like looking at Ianthe that you were differently bewildered; but you had already done the same to her—the tongue to the roof of the mouth, the teeth to the teeth—and so all she could say was, “Nnnngh!”
You drew your two-handed sword.
“Stop it.” The Sixth cavalier had joined this shitty tableau; she narrowed her eyes to slits in the sunshine. “I warned them already.”
“I do this on a greater authority than your own.”
“Balls,” said Hect succinctly. “Let them go.” Then: “Why is that sword gummed up, and who taught you to hold it like that?”
“I refuse to— What?”
“Your hands are too close together. Put your left hand at the bottom of the pommel, tuck in the arm close to the chest. Right hand high on the hilt, close to the cross guard, up a bit with your thumb—yeah—that’s more like it.” You did all this, and she said: “Good … not like you have the muscle for a rising strike. Okay. Now let Coronabeth and Judith go.”
Your grip adjusted, you found it significantly less difficult to hold the sword pointed down than previously. You asked, “Why are you here? Why are you all alive? Why are you on the other side of the universe—in your own shuttle—innumerable years away from the Nine Houses? Why were your bodies not found at Canaan House?”
With her mouth a gruesome, stuck-together distortion, Deuteros had stood with a crutch shakily clutched beneath one arm, and was now hauling herself toward you with an uprightness of posture that belied her physical weakness. It was still the Cohort captain who silently approached, her dark eyes cold and level; you kept your bone-sheathed sword steady, though you would not in any case use it to kill her if you have to. The captain shouldered past an obviously reluctant Coronabeth—their eyes met, and Judith shook her head in a minute no—and she stopped about a step before you.
Then she grabbed a fistful of mother-of-pearl robes. You did not flinch. She said, “Nnnnngh—mmmmf—nghaaaagh,” as though sheer force of desperation could wrench coherent sound from a fused mouth. Camilla flew to her left side and Corona to her right, but she swung her crutch at them. Her grasp was surprisingly strong, and as she said, “Nnnghhh!” you unfused lips, tongue and teeth. You always were too curious for your own good.
“Ngghyaaar—warn him, Lyctor! He has been infiltrated, damn it, and I can do nothing! I am a prisoner of war! If you love him, tell the Emperor that the traitor has already—Nghhhyughh—”
This last nghhhyugh was nothing to do with you. Coronabeth, face set, had clasped her hand over the