you were relieved. Part of you was afraid that this was just another complex part of the hallucination; that you would wake up again, and soon, back in a world where you were not part of your own master plan—a plan you resented, as you resented any peremptory order and any attempt to keep things secret from you, but a plan that nonetheless existed. You could follow any blind precept, if the alternative was madness.
“If it is all the same to you, I would like to be alone now,” you said. “I have a great deal to think about.”
Ianthe said, “How politely expressed!”
She drew her skirts around her and curtseyed to you—a beautiful, thoughtless movement, prismatic breadths clutched in her fingers, and it was somehow also mockery. When she looked up at you, you saw her eyes had changed yet again. They were both that bleached lavender now, but freckled with light brown like a constellation of little pupils.
“Take your time,” she said. “I would have thought time was the last thing we had at the moment … but who am I to judge the King Undying, the God of the Nine Houses?”
You said, because again you could see no reason not to: “You should have disciplined Tern better, if he’s still fighting you this way.”
Ianthe considered this. She nudged the confection basket hilt of the rapier at her hip aside, and took out a long knife that, again, ran a hot rill of pain down your temporal bone. It was—though you had never bothered to learn—Tern’s main-gauche, his trident knife, a long blade from which two other blades would spring at the press of some hidden mechanism; she flicked that mechanism now, and with a snickt they burst out like a firework, two hard points of gleaming steel. She flicked it again, and the blades went snickt back into their housing.
She placed her palm before you, outstretched. Without a moment’s hesitation, or sign of pain, or even much give, she thrust the knife through the meat of her palm. It must have done enormous damage—to flexor muscles, to the nest of carpal bones—and ruby drops of blood splattered the sleeves of her shimmering robe.
As she withdrew it, the wound knitted together as though it were nothing. She simply withdrew, and the skin closed up—the meat bounded back on itself, elastic—the hole sizzled to a close, leaving her palm whole and unblemished except for a few wet drops of crimson red. These she shook off, and they disappeared into powder. For the first time, when you looked at her, Ianthe gleamed with thanergy as a coal gleamed red with heat.
“Hold out your hand,” she commanded.
You did, knowing full well what was to happen—you did it without hesitation, as she had done it without hesitation. Ianthe held your hand gently, by the wrist, considered the angle, and thrust the blade home.
Every fibre in your being bent toward not throwing up. The delicate tendons in your palm snapped under the razor-sharp blade; the steel juddered against a metacarpal—chips went flying into the muscle bed—your blood sprayed promiscuously against your face, a hot, salty thickness of it against your lips, your nose, your right cheek. Your eyes rolled back in your head in an ecstasy of suffering. The world rocked. You saw the Body, pressed against the back wall, her hands clasped together as though in prayer; you looked at the blade sunk deep into your hand and looked at Ianthe, and for a moment understood that she was about to press the mechanism and rend your hand utterly—leave your palm a smoking ruin of gore and muscle, of whiteness of bone—that you were being punished both, perhaps, for the kiss, and for something you could not even recall doing.
She pulled the blade clear. This was also agony. Now you understood the object lesson: there was no sewing-up for you. Your meat was left ripped bare and vulnerable, a gaping, heinous hole in your hand, your skin a pitiful red-and-pink mess of shredded dermis. You grasped the wrist she was also grasping with your free hand; you poured thalergy in with embarrassing torrents, a hot, shameless gush of it, flicking free chips of bone and wending muscle back into muscle. This took effort and thought. You refilled the blood; grew new shiny spans of skin; left your palm as whole as before, your nerves screaming, shaking with the memory of pain.
“Harrow,” said Ianthe gently, “don’t fuck with me. I’m not here for your