heard her diffident Oh, you—like she’d never faked to your fucking face like she couldn’t see a corpse that was obviously there—like she’d never messed you up or messed around with you, like she’d never seen you vulnerable and smacked her pallid mummified lips—like she’d never put her hands on you, never made you want her, and never imagined there’d ever be a reckoning.
There would be a goddamn reckoning. Nonagesimus, I was going to reck her.
I said: “Do you want your ass kicked now, or do you want your ass kicked later, or both?”
“Please, let’s address this like gentlewomen,” said Ianthe, without much hope.
“Hell, no! I’m going to pull your whole ass off,” I said. “You want that? You want Harrow to grow you a new bone ass where I pulled off the old one? Let’s dance, Tridentarius.”
“This can’t be happening.”
“She’s not even into you, okay? It’s just the bones. She’s into bones.”
“One of the many aspects I possess that you now tragically lack.”
“Get down here,” I insisted. “Fight me.”
“Perhaps I should have guessed that the moment your footstep cursed this universe again, you would issue me these comedy challenges,” she said wearily. “What was your name again? Goblin? Gonad? Help me out here.”
“Your cavalier knew my name,” I said. “Corona knew my name. You know my name.”
She fell silent.
I said: “Gonad was pretty good. Mildly amusing.”
“Thanks.”
“Goblin wasn’t.”
“I haven’t had a good day. I’m very stressed right now. Give me a break.”
“You have three minutes of me being reasonable, and then I’m going to beat you so badly that you look like a Fourth House flag,” I said, and lowered my sword. “Is it over? Did you do the thing, you know, fight the whatever?”
“The Resurrection Beast?” she said. “No, if you must know. We engaged it for a while. Mercymorn went AWOL—nobody expected that. Then Harrowhark dropped. We had expected that, though I’d hoped … Things got difficult. After Augustine dropped out I was not about to stay down there with a two-person team. That creature is … large. I surfaced. And here I am. And here you are.”
“If you’re talking about the sour-faced donkey’s ass with the net,” I said (“Yes, Mercy,” said Ianthe instantly), “she put a sword through Nonagesimus’s back. Last I saw, she was thrashing around in a puddle.”
That white face in the darkness sharpened. I heard her indrawn breath. “You’re certain that Mercy tried to kill Harrow?” she said, after a moment.
“Yeah.”
“But that doesn’t— Why would she—?”
“Do not fucking ask me for information. I could not be more lost right now.”
“Help me down, Ninth,” she demanded. “I cannot walk on these things without succumbing to a strong desire to scream and loose my bladder, and we have to talk, you and I.”
I kicked a path for her—rolling some of the bees clear with your arms, shouldering them out the way until a thin aisle was cleared for Ianthe to walk through, shuddering all the while. When we made it out into the hallway, she took a few moments, leaning against the wall, framed against the unbelievably tacky bone decor—all the skeletons in their little outfits, and the mummified busts in niches, and the fanned-out rings of arms holding jewels or swords or whatever. That place was like a party where everyone was dead. She froze when we heard that infernal buzzing, from down the corridor. It was followed by a shout.
“Stay here,” I said.
“Get fucked,” she said thickly. “I absolutely did not become the eighth saint to serve the King Undying so Gideon Nav could play hero for me.”
“Why did you ascend to be a Lyctor?”
“Ultimate power—and posters of my face.”
Fair.
The end of the corridor opened into a wider hallway, obviously meant to showcase that same King Undying’s every grotty little trophy. The hall was lined with pillars of bone sweating in the heat—runnels of moisture trickled down the pale carvings—and I readied my sword, but I was too late. The bees were already dead. They were strung up neatly from the ceilings in strangling nets of tendon, squeezed to death, thick streams of green slime dripping from their bodies all over the black-and-white tiles. Some of the lamps had been smashed in the chaos, and even now swung dangerously from the ceiling, strobing over these hideous parcels.
A figure stood in the hallway, breathing hard into the crook of his elbow. He hadn’t even drawn his rapier, though somebody obviously had at some point, as piles of dead bees lay in the corner segmented