not account for context. Ortus doesn’t come from a Lyctoral tradition. But what if hers did? What if we named her, accidentally, for him?”
But what could that mean? Mercymorn had said their names were considered sacred and forgotten, except for Anastasia’s, who had never attained Lyctorhood. Why would a necromantic saint’s name be evoked in such a way?
The page fell over her thumb. On the second page—much fresher—Harrow read:
THE ONLY THING OUR CIVILISATION CAN EVER LEARN FROM YOURS IS THAT WHEN OUR BACKS ARE TO THE WALL AND OUR TOWERS ARE FALLING ALL AROUND US AND WE ARE WATCHING OURSELVES BURN
WE RARELY BECOME HEROES.
She opened her mouth to ask her dead second cavalier a question about her dead first cavalier—a pattern that was starting to look less like tragedy and more like carelessness—but downstairs, Abigail was saying:
“Harrowhark? Ortus? If you are ready, we might want to move. Dulcie’s found some good-quality candles of animal fat—there’s no hope of blood, of course—but ‘fire and words’ were scourging enough with the children…”
Both Fifth adept and cavalier had the happy, quasi-contented faces of people about to embark on a favourite activity, like a hike or a game of chess, and the cavalier of the Second House had two guns slung over her back and the pressed expression of a Cohort soldier about to embark on her least favourite activity. Harrow knew with a sinking bone magician’s heart what everyone was about to do before she asked the question, but asked it anyway.
“What is the plan, Pent?”
“Why, to let ghosts bury ghosts,” she said. “With everyone’s help, I am going to exorcise the Sleeper.”
46
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE EMPEROR’S MURDER
LOOK, I HAD THE best of intentions for your body. I was very aware that I was walking around in borrowed clothes, and I did not want to scuff them, mangle them, spindle them, or otherwise do long-lasting damage. All of the moral high ground I got by falling on a spike for you would have been undone immediately if you came back to one arm, half a foot, and a disfigured ass.
But the reality was this: it took me five nightmare bees to learn how to deal with your grip, your core strength, your arm strength, your thigh muscles, and your height, and the operating thing I had to deal with in all cases was lack thereof. Even if you’d ever toned a muscle, you weighed half of me. They tossed me around like one of your skeletons, and I died three times in that buzzing, filthy, hot bedroom.
The only thing that stopped them from coming at you all at once was a lack of space: they moved as one coordinated, buzzing, snapping posse. To win, they only had to swarm us and they knew it. I played for space and position, kept the two-hander low on the hip because I needed whatever cover I could get you—locked three of them at bay with big cross strikes, and then I overcompensated because the weight of my sword pulled you with it, and one of the death bees did a little jiggly skull dance to the right and planted that massive stinger right in my side.
It went in all the way—a hand wide at the base, leaking acid all over your insides. I slammed the guard down and it snapped off inside you, which hadn’t been what I wanted—the creature fell back, and I staggered and slashed blindly, and the stinger worked its way out with a pop. The sword I had to hold overhead in one hand as I used the other to keep everything inside you; stuff was coming out, Harrow, I don’t know precisely what stuff because I’m not a goddamn necromancer. Let’s call it some small intestine. Whatever it was should’ve stayed safely tucked away in your abdomen but was making a pretty serious bid for escape. We should have keeled over and died saying sadly, Oops.
We didn’t. The slippery coils went in when I pressed, and I had to get your hand out of the way of the skin growing back over your fingers. I got us to the bathroom doorway and tried to narrow the field; I shattered the skull of one scuttling toward me and severed its gross black eye stalks—and they were all different; each one had a different skull, and one traded mandible saws for a mouth ringed entirely in poison stingers, which it pumped like darts into every surface, and after a while I didn’t even