“Lady,” said Ortus, and, sorrowfully: “Forgive me. Nonius has heroic standing among the priests and anchorites of our House,” he added to the others. “Perhaps I do him wrong by making poesy of the sacred mysteries.”
“I never realised that Nonius had passed into cult worship,” said Pent.
“He has not,” said Harrowhark shortly, and then was forced to admit: “Or, at least, the idea is passé.”
“Heroes are passé, you see,” explained Ortus with heavy sadness.
She did not murder him. It was a very near thing. Sir Magnus Quinn, that perambulating white-toothed smile, intervened quickly: “Have you made use of this space yet, Reverend Daughter? We prefer it for the moment to the idea of going downstairs. We’re taking up the biggest table, I am afraid—my wife found an annotated copy of The New Necromancer—my only contribution was that in the gentleman’s restroom, I found what is almost certainly an ancient theoretical epigram. That is how we got Ortus the Ninth onto the subject.”
“An epigram?”
He hesitated. Pent said mildly, “Magnus is being amusing. It reads as a dialogue between magicians from the schools of flesh, spirit, and bone magic, the punchline being: Yes, but my bone expands when I touch it, which at least proves that joke is as old as the Nine Houses themselves.” Before Harrowhark could take this prompt to make a hasty exit, the necromancer of the Fifth said without transition: “Are you interested in Lyctoral materials?”
This was an introduction, or a probe, or something different altogether. Scrutiny into the Ninth’s affairs might be deflected. She was more intrigued by the idea of an introduction.
“If you are asking whether or not we have any within my House,” said Harrow slowly, “I will not answer that question.”
“What a shame! I understand,” said Pent, who did not appear to be discomfited by refusals, or by the sacramental paint. “It was more to gauge your interest though. This library is stuffed. The books, now, the books are interesting—but the Lyctoral traces—phwoar.”
Abigail Pent had not seemed the type of woman to articulate phwoar. She said it very boyishly. On any other day Harrowhark would have been pushed beyond measure hearing phwoar after bone-related jokes and made her exit. But she was aware that priggishness was not a virtue. She was also aware that winnowing the secrets of Canaan House was going to take more than the skeletons she could construct and the diary she was documenting. She was very tired. She was being offered something. Wary of offering herself in return, she took it.
Harrow crossed around the table to see what was spread out in front of the adept of the Fifth. It was a curious assortment of the high and the low—a warped automatic pen with a thin inner cylinder of ink and a plex casing, rather more antiquated than one with an ink cartridge; reassembled scraps everywhere, like someone cleaning confetti up in an overly orderly fashion after a parade. A strand of hair. An open book with black ink still clear in the corner: This is nonsense.
“The books come from a later period, so I gather,” said Abigail. “The notes are priceless.”
She had reassembled a torn half page of flimsy that read:
After that cut into cubes, fry in the butter or oil, turn it occasionally until it is crispy. Cut up the pickle so there are no big chunks and mix it into the pan before taking off the heat.
M told us yesterday that Nigella “eats like a child,” so I
Harrowhark said, “This proves by itself that antiquity does not give an object automatic value.”
“I disagree. With this,” said Abigail smilingly, “some blood—positive identification—perhaps a few more examples—I will be able to call the writer’s ghost.”
Then she added again, “Phwoar.”
“She can, you know,” said Magnus, reading disbelief in Harrow’s carefully schooled expression. In fact, she was cursing inwardly; she felt cold and thoughtful. “Though I have, er, asked her not to.”
“You would need something for it to feast on,” said Harrowhark, and not to Magnus.
“Yes.”
“A ghost that old—the feeding—”
“It would be unprecedented,” said Pent. She was talking a little bit too much, too fast. “I mean, there’s the issue of whether the Lyctor in question is even dead. That’s the first thing to consider. As a speaker to the dead, I really am at my best when people are not alive … If they are in the River, whatever the depth, I can only hope that a handful of minor relics and