had seen you do it before. He did not anticipate you throwing yourself at him with the only biddable bone you had left, which was your own. Great spurs burst through the heels of your hands from your carpal bones, and you slashed, wildly, at his chest, at his face, at the arm holding the crimson-ribboned rapier. You had extended your curved, bloodied talons of trapezoid and capitate into him, through the fabric of his shabby shirt, into the meat of his pectoral muscles, before he bounced your head back against the doorjamb. The back of your skull smashed into the steel casing, but he was falling back, and he was taking you with him. As Ortus staggered over the threshold into the bedroom you had a split second’s perception of your broken wards lying in heaps and desiccated clumps by the door, your regenerating ash all dried up on the threshold like so many ancient clags.
He dropped his sword to wrench your claws out of his chest, and you understood what he had done. He took your bloody spurs between his fingers, and the blood fell away into powder as he stripped away the thanergy. He did not absorb it or try to turn it back on you; he simply undid it, with the dismissive ease of upending a jug of water over a drain. The spikes of living bone, freshly grown from your own body, faded in seconds into brittle twigs. They snapped off in his hands and he tossed them aside.
You were dazed. You were horrified. The sword was in his hand again, vaulted neatly back into his grip by the blood streaming down his arm. He was too close to bring the blade to bear, so he simply swung the butt hard into the side of your face. Your cheek staved in; you felt your jaw splinter, and a couple of teeth tumbled loose in your mouth like ragged little dice. You staggered away with the force of the blow—he stepped clear and sliced inward and down, opening you somewhere under the ribs—and you spat in his face. The blood sprayed feebly from your lips and spattered to the floor.
The teeth, on the other hand, hung in the air for a moment, blossoming into perfect four-pronged flowers of sharp enamel, each one angled toward a verdant eye. You shot those teeth forward like bullets. They flew as you fell sideways, your balance lost. You could feel the depression fracture at the back of your skull; you could feel your brachial arteries spraying, panicked.
Your collapse against the wall meant you did not see what happened next. Neither, however, did he. There was an unpleasant, wet sound as tooth met eye.
Ortus did not cry out in pain. You might have respected that, once. He merely turned away—his sword in his hand and the spear dragging behind him—and exploded back out through your ravished front door, your untidy, ward-strewn foyer. You were left slick with bathwater, wet with blood, half-dead and dismayed on the floor outside your bathroom.
The injuries could be seen to. Arteries could be stanched, then snapped back together. Meat could be sewn up and skin made whole. Dentine was easily reconstructed, and so was enamel, though you might have to re-form your jaw a few times before your bite was correct. Nothing cracked in your skull had driven itself into your brain, and the bleeding could be corrected. But your peace was gone, forever.
The Saint of Duty could bypass your wards at any time. The Saint of Duty was a thanergy void. The Saint of Duty was the ultimate nemesis of a bone adept. You would never be able to sleep again.
It was at this point that someone, obviously drawn by the noise from down the corridor, tiptoed over the mess at your front door and peered inside. You did not have to feel her presence to know it was her: you knew the sound of her shoes.
“Harrow?” Ianthe ventured, from somewhere near the door. Then she obviously stopped and saw you naked, bloodied, flayed in your own anguish, with soapsuds still on your feet. You hallucinated that you could smell her: sweat, musk, vetiver.
You saw your probable future clearly. You had not until that point understood the danger.
If Ianthe Tridentarius knelt beside you then, no matter with what sugary contempt or filigreed Third condescension, you would press your diminished bloody terror into her; you would creep naked into her lap, shamelessly, and weep. You would