warmed up—which in context, I realise, is not the best word choice.”
Ortus said, “I will go with you,” and instantly, Protesilaus said: “So will I.”
“Ortus,” said Harrowhark, “no. You have no idea what you’re speaking of. The Beast in the River is the soul of a dead planet, come to destroy the Emperor. If there’s only one Lyctor standing against it—he’s dead, Nigenad.”
She could not have said anything worse. His eyes shone as he said, “I have lived so much of my life in fear, my Lady Harrowhark. I will not waste my death in it. I now find that I am no longer afraid of anything … of death … of laws … of monsters. I will advance before I can change my mind and become, again, a coward. Even if I cannot do anything more than watch, let me go.” In the face of her stupefaction, he added gently: “What else is there for me, Harrow?”
And she knew that it was useless to hold him. Fearful, Ortus had proved enormously stubborn; it was inevitable that he would be even worse in bravery. She did not know what to say. Should she thank him? Thank him now? Cordially request he not go and waste his ghostly adrenaline on a creature he could not hope to understand?
But Pent, more tactfully, was already speaking: “I genuinely believe the River can be crossed, Nigenad. Come with me and Magnus. We could use your help in finding Jeannemary and Isaac…”
“If there is a way through, you will undoubtedly find it,” he said calmly. “I am relieved that, in my unworthy death, I was able to meet you. I will still write The Pentiad. It may just have to be a shorter poem … very short, if what Harrow says is right. My heart is set to go with the hero of my own House and the hero of the Seventh.”
“I shall be glad to stand beside you, Ortus Nigenad; never again will I doubt the will of the Ninth,” said the unbelievably tedious hero of the Seventh, who then cleared his throat and said:
“In the storm, the tree is glad of the root,
Not of the branch.”
“Well expressed,” said Ortus.
“It’s from a longer work of my own,” admitted Protesilaus.
From behind them, Lieutenant Dyas said, “I’m going too.”
They all turned to look at her. Her injured hand was stoically clutching her rapier; Harrow noticed that she had tied the hilt to her glove with a length of wire, so that it could not fall out of her grip. She was bloody, smeared, and untidy, but perfectly calm. “I’m going,” she repeated. And she shrugged. “Cohort rules.”
“‘Chickenshits don’t get beer,’” Dyas said. And, after a pause: “Might not be the official wording, but that’s how I’ve always heard it.”
Magnus said, more than slightly delighted, “I have never heard that one.”
“As it happens, I have,” said Matthias Nonius.
They all looked to Harrow, as though on fatal cue: legends, soldiers, poets, Magnus.
“Nonius. Nigenad. I cannot in good faith hold you,” she said, finally. “You have both served your House ably, and I thank you both. Nonius, if you owe something to the Saint of Duty, he could probably use your help. Go now. I have to get back as soon as possible myself.”
He stepped back and bowed to her. It was an unpretentious, entirely modest movement. In The Noniad it might have taken half a page. There was no time for him to make any kind of speech, but despite over twelve books of Ortus celebrating his verbosity, he did not seem the type of man to make one; all he said was, “Many thanks, and farewell. Spirit-guide of the Fifth, can you send us four to the shore’s edge?”
“Easily,” Abigail said. She stepped forward and put one hand on Protesilaus’s and Ortus’s shoulders, and she peered through her thick glasses at them, and said quickly: “Are you—”
“For the Seventh,” said Protesilaus.
“For the Second,” said Marta.
“For the Ninth,” said Ortus.
The candles flared up again, that black flame threatening to scorch the ceiling, and Canaan House seemed to rock again as though with some earthquake—the electric lights overhead flickered and died briefly—and all four cavaliers were gone, back into the River. Harrow found herself imagining them in her mind’s eye: rising out of those turbid waters before the Saint of Duty with his spear and his sword, something looming behind him, bigger than the eye could comprehend. Bluer than death; unimaginable, advancing to