centre has mashed together. Some Lyctors have seen them as insectoid. They’re monstrous, and deadly, and there are often hundreds of them—thousands.”
Once upon a time you might have asked questions: good, interesting, thorny questions, the difficult ones that showed you knew something and could be relied upon to run where you were directed, blindfolded. This time, you kept blessedly quiet.
“And they only halfway matter,” said the Emperor, vindicating your choice. “Certainly they’re dangerous. If you are devoured by the Heralds I cannot bring you back. But you can destroy them easily enough, if you’ve a blade and the facility to use it … or necromancy. But as a Lyctor, of course, your necromancy is needed elsewhere.”
“Would you like to teach this one, John,” said Augustine, patiently.
“No—sorry—keep going.”
“I mean, I love the tack you’re taking. I hadn’t thought to scare the living wee out of them with, They’ll eat you alive, starting with your feet.”
“Sorry! Sorry. Go on.”
Briefly smiling at God, Augustine pointed at the diagram. “The part of the Resurrection Beast that we can destroy squats in the River, ladies,” he said. “Just as the most important part of the revenant is where the soul is, the most important part of the Resurrection Beast is sitting over here. You’ll leave your bodies, which protect you nonetheless—your good old cav’s right there in your neurons and amygdala, ready to come out for exactly such a happenstance—and they’ll fight it much better than you can because they’re immune to Herald fear. I have lived for a very long time, and when I see a Herald, I still get the most appalling whim-whams. My cavalier doesn’t care. I removed the part of him that did when I became a Lyctor … That’s his main advantage. Your body can’t, and won’t, use necromancy without you. The power doesn’t flow both ways.”
Ianthe said, “But if we’re in the River, then the ghosts—”
“You’re a projection. They can’t hurt you,” said the King Undying. “And you won’t even see them. No ghost will approach a Beast submerged.”
He sat back in his chair. God had a quiet, ambling posture, an upright if slightly stoop-shouldered gait; he was mobile and alive. He was always somehow more alive than everyone else around him, and yet dislocated from what you considered living. A man-shaped eclipse. “And there we fight it,” he said simply. “Much like fighting anything else.”
Augustine said, “You ward against it. You hack up whatever it points in your direction. You wither its false flesh. It has form as we have form in the River, and it’s vulnerable the same way we are. You get a good tight grip on its soul and you pull the damn thing to pieces. In the end, if you wear it down, you exorcise it altogether. It is a revenant … a revenant of a specific hell.”
The Emperor said, “Once defeated, it can be forced down into the abyss, and from there it will not return.”
“We hope,” said Augustine. “Oh, Lord, do we ever hope.”
17
MERCYMORN (WHILOM???) THE FIRST, SAINT OF JOY (IRONY?)
Not forthcoming.
When you had asked Mercymorn outright for her House name, she had simply stared at you with disgusted astonishment, as though you were a turd who had learned to dance, and then said, “Go away!”
Unfortunately, Augustine had been no more forthcoming than Mercymorn. He did not recall Mercy’s House name, would not remember if he could, and had most likely forgotten the information immediately to make room for something more worthwhile, i.e., anything else.
Poor relationship with Augustine.
“She might not have even had one,” he said, shaking out an ancient sheet of flimsy newsprint. “Do keep in mind that our holy resurrections were staggered, and it took generations for our merry band to assemble. Alfred and I were there early enough to found the Koniortos Court on the Fifth, but Lyctors like Cyth wouldn’t be born for years and years, and she spent her whole life suffering Seventh House woo-woo theories regarding the value of hereditary cancer … whereas Mercy is the oldest lag except for me, and she was out hammering at the Eighth House before the paint was even dry on the Resurrection.”
Contentious cavalier.
When you asked God why she was the Saint of Joy, he simply said: “I really intended those titles to describe the cavalier, Harrowhark, not the Lyctor. Alfred for patience; Pyrrha for duty; Cristabel for joy. Mercy would be the first to tell you that Cristabel Oct was a delight.” He paused and said, “Maybe don’t mention