the elders and laypeople who had blushed to kiss your knucklebone prayer beads. You felt you actually had valuable information in this instance, but Ianthe’s secrets were not held in common, for you to spill so thoughtlessly. “Then that is your downfall,” you said.
“You are Anastasia come again.”
In a perfect world, Augustine’s cool would have warmed Mercymorn toward you. She did cultivate a distaste for Ianthe, but did not become any less shrill, acid, or contemptuous in your direction. Naturally a large portion of your education fell to her—with Augustine busy, there was nobody left for you—but she more than once expressed her view that Augustine had nabbed the “working baby” on purpose, and left her the dregs to spite her.
Once when you were tired you had said to Ianthe, “Doesn’t it chafe, carrying on after him the way you do? Picking up his things? Smiling with your teeth showing?”
“My teeth are extremely white and I brush assiduously, so I see no problem showing them off,” said Ianthe.
“Lighting his cigarettes and cooing, ‘That is so fascinating, elder brother.’”
“I intend to take on the habit myself,” said Ianthe. “Cigarettes! On a space station! What a power play.”
“Do you ever wake up and think to yourself, When did the Princess of Ida become this grovelling slime?”
She smiled at you, with those teeth so brushed and white. The eyes that had once been chill lavender were now blue, pattered with brown flecks, and as mocking as ever. “Most days,” she said. “Oh, for crying out loud, Harrowhark, smiling and listening to some quite interesting stories about his ten thousand years is no hardship. Especially not when it may make him think twice about leaving me to be eaten by a Resurrection Beast. Carrying off Corona’s con for over twenty years taught me that shame is a privilege. We’re puppies, you and I: I with my lame paw, and you with three legs missing insisting you can make it on your own. And God help us both, because we are surrounded by wolves.”
Ianthe ended this startling speech by chucking you under the chin. You were too outraged and befuddled to dodge her. She said, “Show your endearing side, Harry. It may save your life.”
Spirit magician.
Another terrible understatement. Augustine was a spirit magician like the Mithraeum was a box with some bones. You did not begrudge him this expertise. Spirit magic had never been your forte. He had a Lyctor’s power, and a myriad’s refinement: he taught to a curriculum you had barely known existed. The dead Harrowhark of your letters had told you to take instruction: and so did God, shepherding you and Ianthe both to take lessons from the Mithraeum’s resident expert in Resurrection Beasts.
“It’s not my primary wheelhouse,” Augustine explained. “But since our last expert vanished into a large intestine, unravelled by a troop of ghosts, I’m the last spirit adept standing.”
“He’s being modest,” said God. “The barriers between us and the River are Augustine’s. He could plunge half a city into it, if he wanted.”
“What a gorgeously futile idea,” said Augustine warmly. “I should chuck things in there more often. There’s no way that could come back to haunt me. No, my Lord, I am not Cassiopeia; I am a spirit generalist, and happy with my lot.”
“So we’re talking about ghosts, and liminal spaces, and hell,” Ianthe said. Ianthe always wanted everything brought back to liminal spaces and hell, as though her rooms were not enough. You could not deny an interest yourself.
The Saint of Patience never took this bait. “Dear one, I need the right moment to go to hell. But ghosts and spirits are as good a place as any to begin. You might say I like to follow energy trails back to their source. Revenants in particular are fun that way. Resurrection Beasts feed like revenants: they find thalergenic planets and guzzle them up wholesale, crack them open like clams, and take the soul for meat. Then they turn all that remnant thalergy into what we call the corpus, or the hive, and the thanergy—the dead clam itself—for armour. You can ask the Saint of Duty about the thanergy transfer.” (You did not think this would be viable.) “When you look at a revenant on this side, what you’re seeing is the thanergy mass that it’s gathered. Usually revenants can only inhabit things connected to them in life—the best and most desirable would be its own corpse or skeleton, or planet if you’re an RB: you’ve formed a