bad day. She so rarely mentioned her cavalier. “Augustine is critical, I take it.”
“Augustine told me they might as well smother me along with you.”
You were only astonished that you had any ego left to bruise. She took another spoonful of soup and said, her whey-coloured face dissatisfied: “He says the same thing you do … psychological … says I persist in being damaged for my own enjoyment.”
Still cold and very weary, you laid your sword at your feet and sat yourself down in a high-backed armchair with a frill around the bottom, done up in citrine stripes. Ianthe’s rooms were undoubtedly more luxurious than yours, and more interestingly appointed, having belonged for centuries to a long-dead Lyctor with time enough to come back every so often and furnish them to taste: but that long-dead Lyctor still seemed to sit in all the chairs and lie in the bed and shave by the water-pump sink, and you were relieved that your rooms contained no ghosts but your own.
You said, “There’s nothing wrong with the arm.”
“It’s not mine,” Ianthe said vehemently.
“Then cut it off.”
“So typically Ninth—”
“Let your vaunted Lyctoral abilities kick in,” you said. “See if it regrows.”
“It won’t,” she said, taking you quite seriously. “Teacher said Lyctors don’t survive decapitation, and that a lost limb would heal as a stump. And I know that if I try to make myself a new arm I’ll leave something out. If it’s not perfect it won’t work, and I won’t want it.”
The once-Princess of Ida did not say this petulantly, but used the resigned, rather furrowed tones of someone mildly aggrieved by self-understanding. You suggested, “So get the Saint of Joy to do it. She can be relied upon for physiological perfection.”
“Oh, you crack-up,” said Ianthe, not lifting her eyes from her soup.
“I personally would not let our eldest sister regrow any of my limbs,” you said, “but if perfection is what you desire—”
“Boo to that,” said Ianthe.
You grew bored. “Teacher, then.”
“He’d tell me how wonderful it would be to do it myself. We’re not all Teacher’s sweet little darlings for whom he would do anything,” she remarked. “I have never been good at attracting indulgent fathers.”
You bristled, but had no adequate comeback. You were busy massaging your itching fingertips, which were still red and sore: the cellular degradation was subtle enough that you were healing one layer at a time, to ensure you’d got everything. Not for you the smooth stump of a regenerated Lyctor: you had to do everything yourself. Yet you also would not turn to God, who might heal you in one blinding, soul-nauseating instant, flensing you utterly from the bones upward, and who might also awkwardly pat you on the shoulder, or look at you with that solemn, half-troubled smile that you both craved and hated.
“Then I do not know what to tell you,” you remarked, “except that if you persist in asking for my opinion, at least pretend that you want it.”
Ianthe pushed away her empty soup bowl and sat up, looking at you, stolen eyes narrowing with a sudden spurt of inspiration. Her paste-blond hair fell lankly over a face that should have been beautiful and over shoulders that should have been exquisite, but only contributed to the general impression of a wax figure in a pink dolly dress. You had never been given the option to play with dolls, but given hindsight you could not see yourself ever volunteering to have done so.
“But you might do it,” she said, softly. You saw her looking at the necklet of bone that peeked out from the collar of your shirt, the top of your homebrew exoskeleton. “You could do it, Harrowhark. And maybe I’d even let you, seeing as we’re comrades-in-arms. Seeing as we’re intimates.”
You stood up, more than a little repulsed, and your exoskeleton creaked as you bent to pick up the two-handed sword. “I am not perfection yet, when it comes to meat,” you said. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t be close … but you want something I can’t give. Nor is it something I’m prepared to give. Being honest, I am mildly disgusted you asked. Is there soup left in the kitchen?”
“Oh, heaps,” said Ianthe, who appeared not to have taken offence at your rejection. It was so impossible to tell, with Ianthe. “I made it. It’s vile.”
Were there less likely bedfellows now than you and she, the daughters of mystical Drearburh and self-regarding Ida? It was not a connection formed of any mutual