decorative arches on the east-most side of the room. You had by now investigated each arch carefully. The brown floor tiles were inlaid halfway up the walls in these arches, and then became glass of every different colour, and in the centre of each polychromatic sweep was a sword-bracket. Some of the brackets were empty, and some held rapiers. One in particular always drew you back to it: a black rapier with a basket hilt formed of ebon wires. At the termination of each wire was a single canine tooth, and the end—pommel!—was a soft, worn knob of black-dyed bone.
The side room they put Cytherea in was not so decorated. The door was always open to reveal her laid out on a stretcher, with candles all around her that never seemed to go out or melt down, covered by those chubby blush rosebuds that also never seemed to open or rot. In these two miracles you detected the hand of the Emperor Divine. Every so often you saw him in there, having a quiet conversation with the body in the same way one would talk to a sleeping child; sometimes Augustine was there, and once Mercy. You never saw the other. You had ventured in there yourself often, even though it was gauche, even though you had done enough damage. Something about her troubled you, and you thought it was the paranoid madness, but you couldn’t be sure. Your brain told you that the arms so chastely crossed over that skewered chest had been moved a little. Your brain told you that the lips were a little too parted. When you had told Teacher of your worries—you little imbecile—he had grimaced, and worried his forehead with his thumb momentarily, and said:
“Nobody would touch her, Harrow. I haven’t.”
“I know, I just—”
“Augustine wouldn’t, out of love,” he said. “Mercy wouldn’t, out of superstition. And Ortus…” He looked at you carefully, as always when he mentioned the other; the name always came awkwardly to his lips. “Ortus wouldn’t out of respect, believe me. He wouldn’t even think of such a thing. Doesn’t sound Ianthe’s style either.”
“But I thought…”
“I think perhaps you should try to avoid that room,” he had suggested, sympathetically.
You had burned: you had been molten with shame and resentment: you had been reduced entirely to flame. Yet for all that you now walked devoutly past the doorway where lay the peaceful corpse of Cytherea the First, you entered that doorway in your waking nightmares: watched, lost in the hallucination of your mind’s eye, as those frozen fingers twitched into arcane formations, as each bare toe on each chilly foot shivered as though the corpse had been touched with an electrified wire.
Your mistake was the time you stopped just outside the room, arrested by muffled creaks at the edges of your hearing; tortured past any shame, you turned to Ianthe and said:
“Do you perceive any sound from within the mortuary chapel?”
She said, “Do you try to sound as portentous as possible, or does it just sort of happen naturally?”
“Answer the damn question, Tridentarius!”
You did not call her Tridentarius outside of a locked room; so she looked at you queerly, and said, “No,” and then, as though more enlightened by what she saw in your face, gently: “No, I don’t, crazycakes.”
And you did not ask her again.
There was so much more you might have written: Eyes have not reverted to lilac since the River. Arm is continued weak point. Still cries at night. Cannot actually be anaemic considering diet primarily red meat and apples. Regularly undersleeps. Begrudges my relationship with Teacher. Knows too much.
Your other sections were more substantial:
AUGUSTINE (WHILOM QUINQUE) THE FIRST, SAINT OF PATIENCE (WHY?)
The name had been easy to get. You had simply found him at his midafternoon cup of tea and cigarette—the Saint of Patience was as regular as a worm, and had no apparent fear of fire, or having to regrow his own taste buds—and asked him outright.
“Ah! Finally, my biographer,” he had said, rubbing his hands together in a show of deep satisfaction. “I’ve been waiting for this, Harrowhark. A, U, G, U, S, T, I, N, E, Augustine; height six feet; visage can be described as attractive but grave; eyes can be cinereous; and if you’re appreciative of poor little Cyth’s tradition—” She was always poor little Cyth, while he smiled, and looked directly at you.”It’s Augustine Alfred. Alfred was five foot ten—let’s get that down for posterity. He was my other half—get that down too,