hate us, and my work is not yet done. I cannot behold that apocalypse, Harrow. I think you are one of the only Lyctors who can really and truly understand apocalypse … It is not a death of fire. It’s not showy. You and I would almost prefer the end, if it came as a supernova. It is the inexorable setting of the sun, without another hope of morning.”
Both of you fell into silence.
“If I fought the Resurrection Beast I’d leave my Houses to die,” he said. “If I fought the Heralds, I might well go mad, which would be the same thing. So I’m shut in here—walled in, really—to prevent the Nine Houses becoming none House, with left grief.”
He looked very tired. He looked very rueful. He said, “Once again. You’re not the only one with limitations.”
“May I ask you a question, Teacher?”
“You’re not sick of them yet?”
You said, “Who was A.L.?”
His eyes flew open. God sat up straight in his chair, looked at you in open astonishment, and he said, “Are you sure you want to go with—that one? Let’s go through all the other, less awkward ones first. How is a baby made? I can do that, easy. I mean, I don’t want to, but I’m ready. I have this little book about babies, bodies, friends, and family. Are you and Ianthe being safe?”
It was your turn to sit up straight in your chair and intone, constructing each syllable with the same rigid emphasis you might give to a skeleton: “We—are not—intimate.”
“Sorry—I mean, you’re about the same age, I don’t really know how this goes anymore, we’ve all been alive for too long…”
“Neither are we romantic—neither are we, frankly, platonic—”
“Sorry! Sorry. Sorry,” he added, “I should not assume these things.”
If your paint could have baked upon your face and crumbled off like clay, it would have. If you could have willed the Saint of Duty to burst through the door, skewer you through, and parade your gored body around the room, you would have. You began to get up. “If I have overstepped, Teacher, forgive me. I withdraw the question.”
“No,” he said. “Let’s talk about her. Let’s talk about my bodyguard.”
Carefully, you sat back down.
God said, “You’ve been listening to Augustine and Mercymorn.”
“Yes.”
“It wouldn’t be Ortus. Poor Augustine. Poor Mercy. They still feel badly … they still carry their apportioned blame. I think, yes, that it’s time for you to know about A.L.”
He pronounced her name, as both his wayward saints had, as two clearly separate letters: you could hear the A and the L. He said, “It stood for a couple of things. A joke, mostly. I often called her Annabel Lee. Annie Laurie. When I first met her I just called her First, One. She had a real name, but I buried it with her, and nobody says it anymore.
“She has been dead for nearly ten thousand years, but she keeps her vigil with me, as a memory, if nothing else … Annabel Lee was my—what do I call her? Guide? Friend? I’d hoped so…”
You did not know how to respond to this. He did not seem to need a response. God said, “She was the first Resurrection. She was my Adam. As the dust settled and I beheld what was left and what was gone, I was entirely alone. The world had been ended, Harrowhark. One moment I was a man, and then the next moment I was the Necrolord Prime, the first necromancer, and more importantly, a landlord with no tenants.”
You said, “Teacher, what destroyed the House of the First?”
“Not much,” said the Emperor, and he tried to smile. It was awful. “Rising sea levels and a massive nuclear fission chain reaction … it all went downhill from there.”
This quiet admission provided the first details you had ever heard of the pre-Resurrection extinction. As mythologies went, it felt distant and unreal. He continued, “It wasn’t gorgeous dust to be left in, Harrow. I was dazed … I was bewildered … and she was my defender and my sole companion, and my colleague in the scholarship of learning how to live again. It was bloody difficult. I had never been God.”
He trailed off here. Then he said: “She lived to see what happened at Canaan House. Not that she took much interest. My first Resurrection was not a normal human being, Harrow, and she struggled to pretend. Anger was her besetting sin. We had that in common. And when the cost of Lyctorhood was