had the trick of it, let alone the will to do so. In the room off the kitchen, in the chilly little morgue that doubled as a pantry, their breath hung in diamond clouds midair. She found herself watching their process: dressing the eyeballs in spirits, supporting the jaw with a bandage tied neatly behind the dark head, doing up the shining copper buttons of the no-longer-white Cohort jacket. Harrow had questioned this, but Abigail said that once they had extracted the projectiles from the wounds, Captain Deuteros might be decently arranged. Harrow was astonished that decent arrangement could still be constructed: the body had been in poor condition.
There were eight bullets in all. On flimsy, Harrow had calculated the trajectories and forces needed to compromise the axial skeleton in such a way. Lady Pent had assisted. Her thick brown hair was pinned up high on her crown and supported her first pair of glasses, swapped out for another, apparently totally different pair of glasses while she leaved through an ancient gloss-pulp book, with gloves on to protect the fragile pages from her sweat. Harrow had sworn to avoid Pent at all costs, but the corpse in front of them had rendered that impossible.
Harrowhark said: “The first projectile caused enormous trauma to the heart, and would have been fatal. The second hit the clavicle. The third passed through the abdomen and lodged in the spine—and so on. The important note here is the first bullet. It accurately destroyed both atria.”
Abigail turned another page and said, openly baffled: “So why keep shooting?”
“Panic,” suggested her husband, straightening up from the corpse.
Ortus was still busy dabbing blood away from a popping bruise on the body’s temple, but said, “Anger, perhaps. I have often heard that anger may carry one beyond the initial act of murder.”
Abigail said, “Ah. Here’s the puppy. Reverend Daughter, look at this.”
Harrowhark stood and crowded in at the Fifth adept’s shoulder. She was being urged to look at a diagram of a bullet. Harrow reached over to take one of the less-crumpled projectiles between thumb and forefinger, to hold it close to the picture and compare, and she beheld the drawing opposite: a long stock, an immense barrel, a jumble of triggers and mechanics and protrusions that she did not understand. Carbine rifle, read the key. For a moment she pitied Judith Deuteros’s last seconds. To be killed with this ancient piece of grave goods! It would have been like being set upon by a ghost out of time.
A brief skim of the blueprint showed her the problem immediately. “This weapon can only fire six projectiles before needing to be replenished,” she said. (“Reloaded,” added Abigail helpfully.) “The assailant fired eight.”
“And must’ve known that poor Judith had no hope after the first hit. So reloading is odd, to say the least. Did anyone get anything pertinent out of the lieutenant?”
Magnus said soberly, “She’s waiting outside. I offered to wait with her, but she turned me down. Don’t know Dyas very well and didn’t want to push … It’s a bloody business.”
When Lady Pent went to the kitchens, Harrowhark accompanied her. They found Lieutenant Dyas not sitting down, or even leaning against the wall as anyone else would have spent the full hour or so they had been with the body, but standing ramrod-straight to attention. Her crisp white jacket appeared all the crisper and whiter after the wreck of her necromancer’s. Her scarlet necktie looked redder too—by the time they’d gotten hold of Judith Deuteros the blood had dried hers nearly black. Ortus had sponged it, and was attempting to dry it over a stove. At their approach, Dyas drew herself up to her full height, and she looked at Harrowhark, not at Abigail.
She said, with uncharacteristic frenzy: “Why am I here?”
Pent said, “Just to answer questions, Lieutenant Dyas.”
The lieutenant said, “I want to know—I just want to know—”
“What you know is of vastly more importance,” said Abigail. “Please, if you can, tell us exactly what you saw down there.”
Marta Dyas looked at her. There was no woe on her face, only a deep, almost thirsty terror, an enormous anticipation, which animated what was usually a schooled Cohort mask. “I was in the chamber when it happened,” she said, “already engaged with the target construct. The room was closed off from the adjoining chamber where—the captain was.” (There had been a brief pause. Harrow wondered if the pause had meant to contain Judith.) “I didn’t hear a shot. The target