happy ones. And that was the time before Lyctors.”
He took a sip of his tea, sighed briefly in pleasure, and continued: “They were disciples, to begin with. Ten normal human beings of the Resurrection, though half were blessed already with necromantic gifts. But necromancy alone does not confer eternal life. Our Lord, the First Reborn, kept those ten devotees young and alive through his sheer might, but it was a shadow of living … They had to stay tucked near the Emperor’s feet so as not to strain his powers. They desired to spend their lives in service of him, not the other way around. They realised in the first hundred years how difficult their situation was, even as necromancy spread through the Nine Houses, and even as other disciples joined their number. Some of them took up the sword and became the first cavaliers, in the hope that their strength of arms might prove useful; the adepts honed their master’s craft, trying to break the rigors of deep space. And there was so much still to be done, and new necromancers being born, and ruins to reclaim. What a time to be alive.”
He sighed again, this time more nostalgically, and then he said: “Necessarily a great research had to begin, into how best to serve alongside our Lord without needing him to confer immortality—this search for what would become Lyctorhood. And it took place here.”
He pointed downward. Everyone looked at the floor beneath his feet, seeking out the origins of Lyctorhood in a few square inches of rotting carpet. “Below our feet. The laboratories. The original body of the building—a place steeped in the death of ages—the quietude of the last sacrifice … that is where Lyctorhood was begun, and that is where Lyctorhood was finished. You will see it. You will see where they threw down their tools and left the building like a palimpsest, unknowing, for you; where they left their blueprints to those who may yet have the strength of body and spirit to walk their path. This place was meant to be a palace, and they have left it as a road in the wilderness.”
Someone spoke up—the Fifth woman—and she said, fearlessly and amiably: “Then the path to Lyctorhood is independent research? Gosh! And it isn’t even my birthday.”
One of the young people sitting close to the Fifth made a sound like an exhausted balloon squeal.
“Part of the path is independent research, Lady Abigail,” said Teacher, smiling. “The other part, the greater part, is the silence … is the care. You are not alone in the facility. In its heart lies the Sleeper, and how long that creature has lain there I do not know; but I do know that they are your greatest threat, for although they lie in sleep … in that sleep, they walk.”
Here he trailed off. He stared into the middle distance, still grasping his cup of tea, as though seeing visions the assembled scions and cavaliers were not privy to. The pause stumbled execrably, fell down the stairs, and lay in a tangle at the bottom in full view of all listeners, who had to watch it bleed out in embarrassment. One of the grotesquely young pair of the Fourth actually tried to fill it in, and bleated: “There’s a—monster in a research laboratory? And we’ve got to—fight it?”
“No, no!” said Teacher impatiently. “Lord Over the River have mercy! The Sleeper cannot die. I doubt they can be wounded; they certainly cannot be killed. The greatest advantage we have is that the Sleeper sleeps deeply! The second threat to your work is if the Sleeper wakes—it has never happened, though I know the Sleeper yearns to escape its incognizant state and pick up where they left off—for if they wake, none of us will live. If the Sleeper meets you on their unconscious peregrinations, your weapon should be stealth; if through unholy means you wake them, there will be no other weapons left. We are reliant on a communal soundlessness. Travel in groups; tread softly; go where I durst not go: because I love my life, and I love noise, also.”
There was no pause here, just a perfect babel:
“—isn’t how it—”
“How much sound is—”
“—doesn’t make any—”
“—what kind of cack-handed—”
“I do not know the answers to any of these questions,” said Teacher calmly. “Only that, already, you are being too loud.”
The babel froze, in midair, on everyone’s lips. Harrowhark, who had never spoken, and Ortus, who had only sweated, almost audibly,