Archive of Our Own

1. THE NIGHT OF THE EMPEROR’S MURDER: THE SEQUEL

You died. I woke up and then I died, too.

I’d sworn to keep your body safe, but I couldn’t even look after it for three hours. I tried, I really tried. I killed those insect things, I fought a Lyctor, I witnessed the death of God and I fell into the River. There was no up or down in there, nothing but the darkness around us, and when I couldn’t help it anymore I breathed in and water went inside your lungs—it burned, Harrow, it hurt so much. It was so cold. And I thought, Oh shit I really did a sucky job. Even Ortus would’ve done better. And I went out.

And then I woke up and I thought: what the fuck?

Your rapier was all the way through you, again. All the way through us. I rolled us around and extracted half a metre of steel blade from your entrails, and the wound closed up again like it was never there. It was a horrible sensation and way too familiar, and I thought, again: what the fuck. Because I had been here before, Harrow. I’d woken up inside you once already—sorry, that’ll never get old—and then all that clusterfuck happened, with the ghost inside Cytherea and the Lyctors and Ianthe and God, who’d looked at me and said: You’re my kid. Yikes.

Which had been insane even while it was happening, so I was all too ready to happily chalk it up to a hallucination. But if it had been a hallucination, it was a really fucking accurate one, because I woke up just as I remembered from the last time. The same hallway full of bones, the same loud alarms and the slippery blood on the floor. The same disgusting crab… insect… wasp… thing, snapping its gross jaws in our direction. Harrow, and I’d thought Crux was ugly.

It was, once again, a shitshow. I was great with a sword but only averagely awesome with a rapier, and that was back when I had been in my own rocking bod. You were a stick-thin twig with no muscles to speak of, and maybe if you had been you, you could’ve done something about it—necromanced your biceps into existence or something. As it was, I was furiously beating off that thing with a stick. I legged it; I survived. I burst into your room, grabbed the sword and killed that thing with it, cutting it in half right as it vomited green poison all over me. It reeked.

I met my eyes in the mirror. Your face, my eyes; I had been here before. I remembered that acrid stench in your nostrils, the paint dripping from your face, that heat in the air that was making me sweat under your weird bone armour. Your hair, longer than I’d ever seen it, prickling at your neck. There was no way I could’ve hallucinated all of this; my imagination was never this twisted. Even my nightmares had always been predictable: disgusting but solidly comforting, just like a bowl of Ninth House gruel.

So, I hadn’t made it up. I’d died and come back, same place and same time, a creepy reset with nightmarish implications. If I hadn’t made up any of that…

I said, out loud, “I’m the daughter of God.”

Nothing happened. I figured, if anything would’ve shocked you enough to come back, some heresy might do it, but our face remained the same—my confused frown on your pointy features, your dark brows all scrunched up. Whatever; it had been worth a try. If you weren’t deigning to come back yet I’d just figure it out on my own.

I thought about what I had to work with. Dad: God, not a great guy; check. Mum: a pissed-off ghost, stalking the halls with a big fucking gun, possessing the body of a woman I thought I might have a shot with before she’d turned out to be evil—also check. Maybe I’d get to talk to her, this time.

Then I remembered: angry Lyctors; check. They would try to kill us as soon as they got a look at my eyes, and we couldn’t have that. I didn’t want to die, I didn’t want you to die, especially not on my watch, and if anyone should get to kill us it sure wouldn’t be the sour-faced lady who called me a heresy—because that was rude, and because she’d fucking stabbed you.

So, I resolved to avoid the stabby Lyctor lady. Maybe I’d go out there and track down Wake before she got herself shot in the head, just to ask: Why? And: Do you remember me talking to the sword? and, if I was feeling extra pathetic, maybe I’d even ask: Was it worth it?

But before I could do any of these things there was a horrible pounding noise—a thump! thump! at the door, and beneath it a loud buzzing and the two-toned gnashing of too-sharp teeth, and I’d just tightened my hold on the hilt when the door came completely off the hinges.

Harrow, there were so many. More than last time—I’d been in here longer, just staring at our dumb angry face in the mirror and daydreaming about my mum the vengeful ghost and my dad who would never have come looking for me on the Ninth, and good thing he hadn’t because he was an asshole. I’d gotten distracted and now I was surrounded; there were so many of those things, oddly-shapen limbs that looked like they’d gone through a shredder, deformed skulls with so many mandibles. Harrow, one was spitting acid from the eyeballs.

Look, I’m sorry. I fought so hard. You know I did my best—you have to know. But they were so many and the bones around your ribcage were cutting into your waist, an unwieldy broken armour. I could barely move. I was too slow.

One of those things got us in the nape of the neck. I fell.

I wish I could say it was fast.

2.EMPEROR 2 MURDER

I woke up. I was in your body, impaled on your dumb useless sword. I’d died, again; this made it three times, and in two of those I’d taken you with me.

“Oh, fuck this shit.”

I rolled off the sword and I cleaned up the hilt with a scrap of your sleeve so I could hold it better. This time, I made it inside ahead of those skull-faced insectoids and got my two-hander right away. I took off your stupid bone armour and went back in the corridor, and had an absolutely horrible time killing off the monsters. The loud alarms made it harder to hear them coming, and the air was so hot it was like breathing near an incinerator. Your eyes prickled.

This time, I decided, I wasn’t going to change a thing. I couldn’t risk us, and I especially couldn’t risk you. So I presented myself to the motherfucking Saint of Joy—well, the fatherfucking Saint of Joy, as I’d learned; the mum-fucker Lyctor was that other one. Nonagesimus, I couldn’t fucking believe that I was having to deal with all of these disgusting revelations and you weren’t even around to suffer with me.

Mercymorn was screaming like she'd had the last time. I watched her fight knowing I’d be next; she was good even with her eyes closed, stabbing her rapier with rage-driven ferocity. She used that weighed net to trap the monsters, and then she’d reach out her hand and they just… melted. I’d seen her do that to God. I swallowed and considered leaving, hiding out until Wake was just right behind the corner, but it was too late. The monsters were all dead; she opened her eyes and saw us.

She blanched. Her mouth opened without words, gasping like we were out in space and she was trying to breathe, her lips moving soundlessly until she finally croaked out, “You?”

Mercymorn looked, like, forty at the oldest—a very hot forty, I must admit—but in that moment she sounded so fucking old. So old and so tired, like the weight of the entire universe rested on her slender shoulders instead of that ugly cloak.

“Hate to disappoint, but no.” Her eyes narrowed, and her angry mouth got even sharper. “The corpse bimbo is in the grave. But you know, lady, I’m fucking pissed at you. You stabbed my necromancer in the back.”

“I did her a kindness, you foolish child!” She even sounded like she meant it, Dad bless. “She didn’t feel a thing—it would have been clean, nothing like being eaten alive when you can feel it happening… she just had to stay there and go to sleep.”

“Oh, she did.” Even to our ears, I sounded pissed off. Well, good. “But she didn’t fucking ask for your kindness, did she? She went with you to fight that thing, and you stabbed her in the back? Really, fuck you.”

Her thin mouth opened in a small round O. “Who are you?”

I didn’t tell her, of course; I needed to buy time. I’d barely survived the first time around and I had no idea how long I’d kept her talking for, how long I had to keep us alive before my mum would roll around with a Lyctor-killing gun.

So I let her talk at us, putting the pieces together, and this time I kind of enjoyed seeing the confusion and furious anger on her face. She called me a ‘failed abomination’ again—got to hand it to her; her insults had a certain flair—and then, of course, she tried to kill us.

I held my own well enough. I mean, I sucked, and I wouldn’t have had a chance in hell of winning in a protracted fight, but I only had to hold on, until…

Yeah. There it was.

The bullet blew up Mercymorn’s chest. I turned around and saw Cytherea’s body—Cytherea’s face, just as lovely as I’d seen her when she was alive, now with dark eyes and a big-ass gun.

I looked at the woman behind those eyes. She looked at us.

“Wake?”

Harrow, I made your voice sound like a scared kid’s. That was embarrassing; sorry.

Wake looked at us and did something with the gun—it made another click sound, and I thought she might just shoot us, too. But she saw my eyes and her face went… she wasn’t sad, not exactly. But she looked as though all the fight had been squeezed out of her; she looked tired and weary, like the old revenant she was.

“I have a job to do,” she said. “Goodbye.”

And she walked away. We didn’t follow.

So that was Mum, take two. Well, she had her mission and she was sticking to it, and I had mine. That was fine. She’d go try to kill God with a big gun, and I’d go find Ianthe.

Ugh. Harrow, look, you’ve always liked creepy things, dead things, and Crux. But… Ianthe Tridentarius? Ianthe “I’m creepy about my twin, and I ate Babs.” That Ianthe? You really must have been desperate. Yes, I bet that losing the pleasure of my company must have been heartbreaking, but still. Ianthe. You owed me so big. I let Ianthe find me; I let Augustine get a good look at my eyes and then run like the fucking tongues of hell were on his tail—just you wait, friend—and then I got your letter and my shades, way too late to be of any use, and I let Ianthe talk me into going to surprise God.

At that point, I knew everything was about to go tits-up. First, it’d be Wake, then it’d be Mercy and Augustine and the Lyctor-who-wasn’t-a-Lyctor, and then a whole lot of murder.

I didn’t care about any of those people. Yes, the sun going off sounded kind of bad—okay, it sounded really fucking bad—and I had to admit that it’d had been gross to watch Mercy’s heart get ripped out right in front of me, the hole in Cytherea’s skull that had killed off my mum for good. But they could all have gone to hell for all I cared, as long as I kept you alive.

I considered and discarded half a dozen plans as I followed Ianthe’s steps through the hallways, to the unobtrusive door that brought to the inner sanctum of the Emperor of the Nine Houses—who was, like, definitely not a good guy, but still probably our best bet for fixing whatever it was that you’d done to yourself.

We crept past the door and hid under that robe hanging in the foyer; your nose was right in Ianthe’s hair—and, yes, it was as horrible as it sounds—and Cytherea’s body was tied to the chair. My mum was in that body. Those were my parents, meeting for the first time, and one was a ghost and the other was a scary God—and they were still not half as creepy as your parents had been, Harrowhark. Just saying.

This time, I actually listened. Bombs, cleansing, the Ninth House. The fucking Tomb. Mercymorn came in, and Augustine, both of them so shaken they looked like they were about to break. Growing up on the Ninth I’d gotten familiar with despair, but I’d never in my life seen anything like the black hole of hopelessness in those myriad-old faces. Bitter and so incredulous, like they’d just witnessed the worst thing in the universe—and it had just been my eyes in your face.

Then I remembered that Mercymorn had stabbed you and Augustine had dropped your body, minus necromancy, to drown in the River and be torn apart by ghosts, and I stopped feeling sorry. That settled it, I decided there and then. No River for us if I could help it.

Gideon the Lesser joined us, or at least his body did. He—they?—shot my mum out of Cytherea’s now-ruined corpse, and I felt a bit sad about it even though it was probably the best thing for her. The Emperor raged, but quietly; I got the sense he did that a lot, very subdued until he wasn’t. They talked about killing a baby on the Tomb of your lost love, and it wasn’t any less unsettling this time around. Harrow, in that moment, I think I understood how you’d always felt. You’d been brought into the world as an instrument of death and it apparently so had I, and it sucked so hard to know it, even though in my case the only death had been supposed to be mine.

“It didn’t die,” Mercymorn was saying, her voice trembling and brittle. That was my cue.

We stepped out of the shadows.

“I’m not fucking dead,” I said, lying. And then I told Mercy, “I’m not an ‘it’, fuck you. That’s twice you’ve tried to kill Harrow.” And then, because I was on a roll, I turned to look at God—Dad—and I said, “And fuck you, too, by the way. I know you’ve ordered that guy to beat up Harrow, and that’s just mean. She’s the only person here who actually likes you, fuck knows why.”

And then I ran out of steam. I just stood there, in the middle of the room surrounded by all those ancient bitter immortals, and I didn’t know what to do.

They all looked at my eyes. They talked about my eyes a lot; how they weren’t at all like the Emperor’s eyes but they were, apparently, a dead ringer for those of your monstrous girlfriend, who was possibly not human and clearly scared Augustine shitless. They all talked about their cavaliers—who were dead, and it was God’s fault—and about God’s cavalier, who was alive when she should have been dead; and it was once again God’s fault. Wicked guy, my dad.

They all looked wretched. Mercy was smoking furiously, gnawing on that cigarette like it had personally harmed her and she was now taking revenge. God was slumped on the chair, and Augustine looked miserable. The Saint of Duty—another cavalier who’d failed to die—was sitting very, very still.

I probably had to do something, didn’t I? Mercy was about to put out Dominicus like a stubbed-out cigarette and get her chest blown out for her troubles, and then we were all ending up in the River. I couldn’t afford that.

So, you know. I tried. Which in hindsight was very stupid; it wasn’t like any of these people gave a fuck about us. But Mercy was sobbing about forgiveness, and the worst thing was, it really sounded like she meant it. God beheld her as if he’d never seen anything so beautiful, a vision and a wonder and an impossible dream all at once, and Augustine slumped to the floor like a puppet on broken strings, a man awaiting the end. He looked, I thought, like someone about to watch two people he loved kill each other in front of his eyes.

It was all so dramatic, Harrow. Like a Fifth House tragedy. So I cleared your throat and said, “Hey! Wait.”

They didn’t listen. I don’t know what the fuck I was expecting, really. John held Mercy’s hands in his own; they were staring at each other as though nobody else existed in the universe. So, like the biggest fool in the world, I walked up to that nice tableau of devotion and tapped Mercy on the shoulder.

“Look.” She turned around, and her face was completely distraught. She looked so sad that I nearly recoiled. I swallowed, and said, “Listen. Are you sure you really want to do this?”

With the corner of our eye, I caught God looking at me like I was a very fascinating small animal who’d suddenly learned how to talk. He was still holding Mercymorn’s hands.

She drew up to her full height, which wasn’t much but still taller than you. “Excuse me. You—pest—”

“I get it. He’s a dick,” I spoke very quickly. “I really, really get it. I didn’t want Harrow to die, either, and I’d be furious if—I’d be heartbroken—but I don’t think you really want to…”

God said, “Mercy.”

He wasn’t stupid. He’d taken a step back; he was no longer touching her. He ran his hand over his face, and when he took it away I saw that he looked nearly as sorrowful as Mercy did.

“Oh, Mercy.” He shook his head. “Mercy, that wouldn’t work. Do you really…”

He was interrupted by the sound of tears, a loud furious sob that made me feel sorry for every single person in that miserable room.

“What the fuck would you know?” Her angry eyes were reddened with tears. “You miserable—you lousy…” And then she remembered I was here, less than a step away. Her face went blank; her eyes narrowed. She turned to us.

“You wrecked, ruinous abomination,” she hissed. Her rage was so immense, it was glacial.

I didn’t step back in time.

3. HERE WE GO AGAIN

You know the drill by now. I died, times four. I killed you, times three. I woke up to a foot of sharp steel sprouting from your entrails, which was never fun. Time to try something different.

If there was a lesson I’d picked up from my innumerable escape attempts, it was to never try the same bad plan more than once. If you must fail, do it in a multitude of spectacular ways—at best it’ll work; and if it doesn’t it’ll still make Crux pretty furious.

I decided to stay the fuck away from Mercymorn. She had something of Cytherea in her, that unpredictable murderous grief, and she was even less my type, on account of having fucked my dad. This time, after I got the two-hander and killed a bunch of disgusting monsters on my way out of your rooms, I went straight for Ianthe’s. I allowed myself a good five seconds to stare reverently at the painting of the cavalier with the melon—those thighs, by the way, Nonagesimus? That’s what you get when you do squats—and then I poked around until I found the envelope with your stupid rude note and my very cool glasses, which looked marginally less cool on your pointy little face.

Then I went looking for my mum.

Look, I knew that it wasn’t the wisest plan. She was a pissed-off revenant with a big gun that left Lyctors writhing on the floor, but she was still my mother, the person I’d spent all my sad lonely childhood talking to. I used to think that mum would be proud of how cool I was with a sword, wherever she was, and I was sure that she would hate you even more than I did just for being such an annoying little shit. Guess I was right about that one, at least.

I knew where Mercy was, which was, coincidentally, where I absolutely did not want to be. I tiptoed past that corridor as fast as I could; she was screaming her throat raw, which made her an easy target to avoid. I knew which direction Wake had come from both times I’d seen her, and I retraced her steps through those rainbow-laden corridors filled with old skulls. I fought so many of those disgusting Heralds and lost a whole sleeve to the acid bile, then I nearly lost a hand to a giant mandible with three rows of teeth and multiple tongues. I’d just finished cleaving that thing in two with extreme prejudice when I found myself face-to-face with my mum.

For the first time, it was her and me, alone. Well, her and us, but you’d gone and left me so you didn’t count just then. Cytherea’s eyes had been a hypnotic electric blue, so big and cold and shiny; Wake’s eyes were a rich brown, and I wished I’d ever seen my mother’s eyes in my mother’s face, brightening up with the hint of a smile.

The gun clicked. She shot.

Harrow, my mum fucking shot me. Well, she shot us; I had my glasses on and all she saw was Harrowhark Nonagesimus, baby Lyctor and insufferable pain in my ass, just the kind of girl to inspire such violent fantasies. But that bullet slammed in your abdomen and blew through us, ripping through flesh and ribs and various bits of organs that were never meant to see the outside of a human body.

It hurt like hell—for like, all of ten seconds. It was gross, don’t get me wrong, but your body was juiced up; blood vessels and muscles and bone and your entire fucking spleen knitted back together under brown intact skin without even a scratch.

“What are you?”

I scrambled up. I’d fallen to the floor, thrown on your back by the force of the impact, and now I hurriedly got up on your elbows. The glasses were askew on your face.

“Wait. Wait, I’m not… I’m not Harrow.” Suddenly, I didn’t know what to say. I’m your daughter? A ghost, just like you? And then I saw her face. She filled our whole field of vision; that gun was even bigger from close up. Cytherea’s pretty features were all twisted up in anger, but it wasn’t just that. She looked terrified.

“You shouldn’t—how could you heal that?”

The gun clicked again. Close-point shot, to the brain.

Yeah.

4. IN WHICH THE EMPEROR FAILS TO GET MURDERED. YES, AGAIN

The next time I came to, I was fucking pissed. Dying had sucked enough the first time; now I kept getting pulled up into your body only to die time and time again? Fuck that.

I rolled off the sword. I legged it to your room to find my cooler, much better sword, that you’d nearly reduced to a pile of rust with a hilt. Then I cut in two that ugly Herald, and the one after that and all the others, and I cleaved our bloody way towards the one person on this station who had a known proclivity for not letting people stay dead. It was kind of the job description. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought about it earlier, but I had been busy dying over and over.

This time, the door was closed. There was a solid slab over it, a shutter of some unknown metal; I slammed bodily against it and it barely trembled on its hinges. I grabbed the hilt of the sword with both hands and slammed the pommel against it, a loud THUD. THUD. THUD that was annoying enough to make itself heard even over the alarms. I kept at it. THUD. THUD. THUD. I could’ve gone on all night. Open the fucking door, Pops.

He opened the fucking door.

It took about thirty seconds on his end, if not longer; there was a series of noises, chains and locks and cursing uttered loudly enough that I heard it from the other side. Then the shutter rolled up to about neck height, and the door opened behind it.

“What on… Harrowhark?” He looked past us and into the corridor like he expected to see a whole swarm of those things pressing at our heels. There were only a couple, both hacked to pieces. They’d barely slowed us down.

I barged my way in. He moved aside to let us pass, but he clasped a hand on your shoulder and that made me wince. I couldn’t help it; I’d seen what those hands could do.

“Harrow, what is going on?” He closed the door and turned to look at us, his hand still on our shoulder. We were standing so still in that little foyer, and I looked into his fucked-up eyes, and he saw mine.

“You’re not Harrow.”

“No shit,” I said. “Are you doing this?”

“You’re Harrow’s cavalier.” It wasn’t a question. “Fascinating, what that girl came up with. What happened?”

“Answer me. Are you sending me back? How are you doing it?”

In that moment, the Emperor of the Nine Houses reminded me, absurdly, of Palamedes Sextus. It was something in the intrigued frown of his brow and the twist of the mouth, the fascinated look he gave us, long and lingering. Something about that look gave the impression that he ought to wear reading glasses so that he might take them off and polish the lenses one at the time, giving him time to think.

“I’m not sure I follow… Gideon. It is Gideon, right?”

“Yeah.”

Your throat was dry; our voice sounded off. I wasn’t sure I believed him, but he turned his back on us like didn’t have a care in the word and said, “Well, come on in. Can I get you some tea?”

“Harrow doesn’t like tea.”

I don’t know why I said that. It was stupid. God’s shoulders slumped at the reminder. “Yes, well. Sit down.”

I sat down on the same chair he’d tied up Wake to, all the other times I’d been here. I watched the Emperor of the Nine Houses fill up a jug with water and put it inside an antique-looking contraption, a small grey box with a glass door. He closed the box and pressed a pad on the door; it went beep. Inside the box, the jug started to spin.

“So. Harrow’s cavalier.” He peered at me with those creepy black eyes. “You came pounding on my door like Hell itself was chasing you, you accused me of doing something I haven’t a clue about. What happened to Harrow… what is happening out there?”

I knew this by now: God lied, a lot. He was a huge, massive liar and all his friends wanted him dead because of it, but he really didn’t look like he was lying just then. I wasn’t sure I could trust him; I wasn’t sure I could trust him with you. But this night had gone on forever and I wasn’t any closer to getting you back. Harrow, I had to start somewhere.

So I said, “I died. I mean, I’m already dead, but after Harrow got stabbed and I woke up here, I died again, in Harrow’s body. And I woke up again, same place and same time. I’ve died a couple of times and I always wake up back at the same moment.”

There was a loud beep. I almost flinched. It was the box with the spinning plate inside it; the Emperor opened the box and took out the jug, steaming with vapour. He gathered two small round plates and two cups, putting something inside them.

He walked to the table slowly, carrying all of it. “Don’t drink that right away,” he instructed, pouring the steaming water into each of the cups. It tinged a warm brown, like a curl of smoke blooming inside the water.

“So you woke up in Harrow’s body, and you died.” His voice was completely flat, cold as the grave. “Multiple times, you say. You keep coming to in the same moment, and you’re absolutely sure you’re not having me on.”

I didn’t like his tone. “What, you think I’m having fun with this? I woke up skewered on a blade five times. I’m surrounded by those Herald things, and they suck. If I find out you’re the one doing this, I’m going to take this big, rusty sword and shove it up your guts.”

I finished the sentence all winded up with anger, half-expecting that you’d reappear out of sheer outrage and kick my ass into next week for committing blasphemy with your lips. But nothing happened, except that God looked faintly amused. He brought his cup of tea to his mouth.

“You can drink now, but it’s hot.” He’d pulled out the string thing from the cup, which ended in a metal ball that held something brownish inside. I copied him; the brownish things looked like sodden leaves. Harrow, had God been offering you leaf water this whole time, and you turned him down? Leaf water sounded right up your alley.

“Sugar? Lemon?” The sugar was in a pretty little bowl, brown and grainy; the lemon was a real lemon, bright yellow and cut into slices. I’d only seen those in pictures. “I can’t manipulate time like that. Believe me, things would be much easier if I could.”

Fucking no thanks. I didn’t even want to imagine it. “What, you believe me?” If I sounded suspicious, well, I was; it sounded almost too good to be true. So, naturally, he ruined it.

“I believe that you believe you experienced it,” he said, which was a twisty fucking way to mean: no. “But we are nearly in the River, here and now… Harrow’s soul was just in the River. Your perception of reality could be altered.”

“Yeah, no.” I studied him. He looked way more composed than the other times I’d seen him, maybe because he wasn’t being confronted with the realisation that his Lyctors had conspired against him. And so, because I was feeling spiteful, I leapt on that reminder. “Did you fuck Mercymorn and Augustine twenty years ago?”

Harrow, I was a dick just then. I’d waited until he had tea in his mouth; he didn’t exactly spit it out, but it was close. I drank in the glorious sight of the King Undying sputtering all over his teacup, coughing because some of it had gone down the wrong way. It was, maybe, ten seconds before he got himself under control, but those ten seconds were beautiful.

“I learned that the first time around. How’s that for proof?” And then, because it was going to come out at some point and I might as well have had fun with it, I said, “That’s where my eyes come from.”

He looked at us then, really looked. Your face, my eyes, and whatever combination of your features and my fuck-off anger that made it clear I wasn’t kidding around.

In a strange rough voice, he said, “And how old are you, then?”

“Nineteen. Well, I’ve been dead for like a year by now. But I was born nineteen years ago.” And then, in case he hadn’t gotten it yet, “You’re fifty percent of my DNA. Trust me, I couldn’t make that up if I tried.”

There was a long, silent moment; it lasted an eternity. Then he cleared his throat. “I imagine you couldn’t.” And then, “Gideon. Gideon. Uh.” It was a very different voice from how he’d said my name the first time, like he was trying it on. He sounded almost like a real person just then, and I thought, holy shit, I broke God.

It didn’t last, though. He frowned—he had a spectacular frown, nearly as good at pissed off as you get, Harrow—and he said, “Mercy?” And, “Augustine?” And then again, in a choked-off voice, “Mercy?”

“No, ew. No. I mean, yes, but no, she’s not—”

I wasn’t sure how I was going to explain it, but it turned out I didn’t have to. There was a noise at the door, which we’d left open, footsteps and a familiar click, and I turned around just in time to catch the angry brown eyes on Cytherea’s face. I wanted to laugh; I was getting hysterical. The universe’s worst family reunion: two angry dead women walking around other people’s bodies, and the Emperor drinking tea. I must have stood up. Your feet carried me halfway through the room.

She was looking at us. No shades this time; there was no way she could have missed my eyes. But she’d seen him, too, and the hate on Cytherea’s face was so raw and burning-hot that I almost recoiled.

Then she looked at me, again.

Harrow, it was the worst thing ever. It wasn’t fear, it wasn’t even hatred. It was just pure, unbridled disgust, like waking up to find a gross bug on your pillow and realising it could’ve crawled inside your mouth as you slept. I didn’t like it.

“I’m not Harrow,” I said, stupidly. But she knew, right? She’d seen my eyes. She knew who I was and she knew who I was to her and who I was to him; she’d walked into the room of the person she hated most in the universe and found us having tea with each other, and whatever went through her mind at that moment, it was terrifying to look at.

Mercymorn had called me an abomination. My mum was a woman of fewer words.

She just shot.

5. GIDEON. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SLEPT?

Oh, you know. Same as always.

I came to, I was alive, and it hurt a lot. I was angry, and it was nothing like the anger I’d felt before. That anger had made me resolute and pissed off in a cool way, and it looked pretty hot on us—this anger was wet and just plain embarrassing. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream, so I did just that.

I threw back your head and let out the scariest howl to ever pass your lips. An unholy fucking yell. Your throat ached with it, your chest vibrated; the scream echoed in those bone-studded corridors, badass and terrifying, and a perfectly obvious beacon for any Herald that happened to pass by. My bad.

Harrow, they swarmed us. I’d just put your body back together and killed the usual monster, the one with the wings and the skull—yes, they all had wings and skulls but, believe me, I knew this one by now—I was standing next to a pool of your blood, my hand slippery around the hilt of your rapier. I watched that disgusting wave of horrible-looking things and I knew there was no way I could fight them all off, or even fight off enough of them so I could slip away and grab the sword. I’d doomed us again because I needed to yell and let it out, and the worst thing was that I didn’t even regret it. Sure, I was about to die again, but so what? I would’ve died anyway. It was all I was good for, it seemed.

The things were on us. I lunged on your scrawny legs and got the first one right in the mandible and through the brain, and jumped quickly out of the way of a long poison stinger. Another one got us in the leg; I healed, and I wounded two more. Then one got close enough to bite—it ripped off a chunk of your shoulder and I howled, reaching blindly around with the rapier. I stuck something, but whatever it was kept moving. Another wrapped a mangled limb around your foot and I kicked it off, but they were so many. One snapped off three of your fingers, spat poison into your long fucking hair.

I was about to get eaten alive, again. All those creepy insects, feasting on your flesh as it regrew under their mandibles. I’d been there once already; it would be horrible. Harrow, it was going to suck. Nobody deserved that, not even Mercymorn, and certainly not you.

Then they all ran the fuck away.

It was sudden. One moment they were all on us, snapping and gnashing and buzzing, chitin and claws and pure mindless hunger; the next they fled.

I stood right there, bloodied and dazed, catching a glimpse of winged backs, misshapen limbs twisting into even uglier shapes, lights gleaming off bone carapaces. I blinked off the sweat from your eyes, marvelling at the simple pleasure of being alive and uneaten. I held my breath as I tiptoed into your room, stopping just long enough to ditch the rapier and the bones and grab the sword, and then I went off to do some exploring.

There were dead Heralds lining the halls, and nothing else moved. I saw Mercymorn and jumped out of the way before she could see us—except it wasn’t Mercymorn at all, just her empty body pacing the length of the corridor, rapier held high, patrolling empty corridors. Some of the monsters were still alive and kicking, out there in the distance—I heard them screeching and stomping against the metal bulk of the station, and caught a couple still scurrying across the halls. But most of them were gone, and eventually I wised up to the fact that they’d all gone off in a specific direction. As if something at the very heart of the Mithraeum had sent off a beacon, and every single Herald within that radius had come running.

Well, not something. Someone.

The closest I got to the Emperor’s rooms the more crowded it got. The corridor was a pile of monstrous bodies, all crawling over each other in their rush to get to the thick of the action, where death awaited. There was a smell in that corridor like burnt hair and cooked meat, and it was so hot that I had to walk with my sleeve pressed over your nose just to breathe normally. The hilt of my sword slipped in your sweaty hand; I tightened our grip around it but I barely had to use it. We were surrounded by those things and not one of them gave a single fuck about us.

Of course, most of them were dead. The bones had done the brunt of the work; you would’ve liked that. All those osseous remains of long-dead heroes had been repurposed into brutally efficient killing machines: skulls stretched into crushing mandibles, sharp-toothed and taller than you were; femurs lengthened into blades, ribs into knives. Vertebrae had become thanergy bombs so devastating that a Fourth House adept would weep at the sight. Some of the Heralds had been burned in their carapaces, their mangled limbs blackened, their gross eyes cooked into gelatine.

It looked like a nightmare. It smelled like one, too; and between the blaring alarms and the furious buzzing I could barely hear the sound of our footsteps. I had to grip the sword with both hands and cleave a path through enemies that were mostly dead, just because there were so many of them. And at the end of it, half-hidden behind a veritable barricade of bodies—there were so many, Harrow, dozens—was the Emperor of the Nine Houses. He was absolutely covered in gross bloody bits and green poisonous bile, and when he saw us he waved with a certain urgency to the door.

“You said you weren’t doing this.”

“I’m not.”

He waited until we’d gone in to jump inside and lock the door behind us; there was a whirring noise as the shutter went down again. “It’s a thanergy signature shield,” he said, conversationally. “If I’m behind it, they can’t sense me. If they do…” He didn’t have to say anything else; there was a bit of death wasp on his eyebrow. “I went out and put up a ward—used some blood for it, I figured you’d need the break. There were, oh, a dozen drops of blood if that and they all ran for it. They’re like sharks, aren’t they?”

I said, “What’s a shark?”

“Right. Sorry.” He was looking at me—not at us, at me, Gideon Nav—with such intent eyes. I couldn’t deal with it.

“If you aren’t doing this...” I really stretched that if. “How… what happened the last time? She shot me, and I woke up here. Do you—do you remember that?”

“She did shoot you. Then it all went white. I think I got caught up in whatever is going on for you… you know, this has never happened to me before.” He sounded pleasantly surprised by that, and I almost felt well-disposed towards him until he said, “So, who’s walking Cytherea around, and why are they pissed off at you?”

I didn’t want to answer that. I didn’t want to talk about my angry homicidal mum to my possibly even-more-homicidal dad, and I really didn’t want to relive the part about Mum shooting me in the head. So I drew myself up to your full height—which wasn’t much—and said, “That massacre out there. Could you do that all along?”

I didn’t let him speak; I knew the answer. “Why the fuck do you stay locked up in here when everyone out there is fighting for you? Harrow got killed. I got eaten. And you could’ve just done that the whole time?” And then I remembered the other reason why I’d wanted to punch him in the face. “And you set off that guy on her because she wasn’t good enough. He tried to kill her for months. God, you really fucking suck.”

God, who really fucking sucked, had the good grace to look the tiniest bit ashamed. “No one’s gone off on me like that since Cassiopeia died.”

He looked nearly awed. Heated, I said, “What, you killed her for it?”

That pissed him off. His face darkened. “Okay, kid, I’ll allow you some teenage angst because you’ve had a long fucking day and you deserve it, but don’t talk about things you don’t understand. She was a friend, she died fighting for me. You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

I knew enough. “Did she die fighting those things that can’t actually kill you?” I said. “After you lied to her so she’d eat her cavalier?”

That sent him from angry to downright shaken, the mundanely human expression of a man near the edge. He looked away; his long exhale felt very deliberate. “So a lot happened for you, I assume.”

“Why’d you set that guy on Harrow?”

He seemed to get I wasn’t going to back off. He sighed. “Because I wanted her to finish the integration. She needed to. She wasn’t healing, she couldn’t fight.” His mouth twitched at the corner; he gestured at us and said, “Maybe it’s a good thing she didn’t, I’ll give her that. But I needed her at full power. I couldn’t risk her getting herself killed.”

We were still standing in the foyer, barely two steps from the door. I’d curled your hands into fists as he spoke, and I was itching to smash them against something. “This is the stupidest fucking justification I ever heard.”

“I offered Harrow to shelter her body while she fought in the River,” he said. “Multiple times. She always turned me down.”

He sounded so familiar talking about you, Harrow—so fondly exasperated, cautiously impressed. Ugh, I recognised myself in that voice. I didn’t want to relate to a guy who’d ordered you killed, so I just stalked off into the sitting room and sprawled on the same chair as before, crossing your arms over your chest.

“What are you going to tell your Lyctors when they come back and see you killed all those things they’re protecting you from?”

“It’s not like that.”

I looked at him.

“It’s not quite like that,” he amended. “I think we’ll all have a lot of explanations to give to each other, won’t we?”

Sitting there, I felt all the steam draining out of me. I didn’t know what to do. The only thing I wanted was to get you back; my best chance to do that was to stick with the guy in front of me, who was the Emperor, and ruthless and also, hey, my dad, and had looked sincerely disappointed that you never liked his tea. But I’d seen him respawn himself from bloody mist and rip out Mercymorn’s heart—let’s be clear, I hated Mercy for stabbing you, but she’d had her reasons to be angry—and then there was the part where none of it had even happened yet, and probably never would.

I didn’t want to take sides. I didn’t want to tell God—Dad?—about any of it, but I’d said too much already. And I was so damn tired, Harrow. I’d died so many times.

“You didn’t… we didn’t really get to talk, the last time.” He sounded so fucking awkward, even more than I felt. I turned around and peered at him—leaning on the doorjamb, hands in his pockets, shirt all spattered poison-green.

“Can you get Harrow back? That’s all I care about.”

“Probably.” At my look, he said, “Most likely. What happened?”

“Mercymorn stabbed her in the back. Something about making sure she died quickly and cleanly.” I said, “Hey, maybe it wouldn’t have happened if they had known you could take on all those fucking insect things on your own.”

He shuffled where he stood. “Okay. My bad. And you came to the surface? Where have you been all this time?” And then, “Mercy? I wasn’t expecting that. I thought it may have been… Harrow told me Cytherea’s body was walking. I didn’t believe her.”

I didn’t say a word; I hoped he was feeling bad. But then he made a face like he was putting many things together all at once—eyes narrowed staring at a point in the distance, a frown between his brows, mouth twisting in sudden understanding. “Harrow did open the Locked Tomb.” It wasn’t a question. “Who’s your other parent?”

He grimaced as soon as he said it, like it had been as weird for him to say it as it was for me to hear it. I said, “Can we get back to Harrow, please?”

He was muttering half to himself. “But why would Mercy want the tomb open? She hated A.L.”

“Maybe because you lied to her?”

He peered at me. “You know, I have the impression we’ve gotten off the wrong foot. I’ve only just met you, and you don’t seem to like me very much.”

It was half a question; the question was God asking if I liked him. Harrow, I never could have imagined this in a million years; our voice came out rusty and weird. Rather stupidly, I said, “Why do you care?”

“You’re my kid,” he said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Of course I’m going to care.”

That he’d found out two hours ago didn’t seem relevant. I wondered for a fleeting moment if he was fucking with me, but he really didn’t sound like it. Then I remembered he lived in a bone castle at the end of the universe and he only had, like, three friends, and they were all like that, and maybe it made sense.

Like an offering, I said, “Harrow likes you, for what it’s worth.” And then, because he fucking deserved it, “Even if you tried to have her killed.”

He closed his eyes and sighed, which I took as a personal victory. “Okay. I’m going to check what’s up in there.” He straightened up from his slouch against the door and walked towards us, putting his hand on your forehead. I hadn’t been expecting it—I jerked away out of instinct, which was all kinds of awkward.

“I need to touch you for this.”

I fought the stupid urge to say, sorry. “Yeah. Okay.”

Nothing happened. I don’t know what I was expecting—flashes and explosions, or tingles of power—but there was just a hand on your forehead, large and kind of warm. I looked up and, listen, this is stupid, but maybe I was searching for traces of my face in his own. I couldn’t find any but, then again, it wasn’t like I’d spent much time looking at my face in the mirror, and I had barely the vaguest idea of what my mum had looked like.

He stepped back, and I knew he’d noticed me staring.

“Harrow’s not in there,” he said. “Her thanergy signature is very… distinct, and you don’t carry it. The good news is that whatever she’s done to her brain healed over.”

I didn’t give a fuck about your brain if you weren’t in it. “If she’s not here—where’s she?”

“Do you know anything about revenant theory?” he asked, like he was about to teach a lesson. I didn’t like the word revenant. Revenant implied death. “When a soul is forcibly removed from a body—”

“It becomes a big angry ghost, yes.” I’d seen my mum.

“The soul is expelled from the body and thrown elsewhere. Most often, somewhere it’s got a thanergy link to. She’s not on the Mithraeum…” I didn’t ask how he knew this; he seemed pretty sure. “My best guess would be wherever your body is. My second guess would be the Ninth.”

“What, at Canaan House?”

“I don’t know,” said God, the last person in the universe one would expect to admit to ignorance. “The Cohort couldn’t find your body at Canaan House. We’ve lost track of it.”

“What?”

“Clearly we should have investigated this more…”

“No shit, Pops.”

“...But it’s not an issue now.” To my obvious confusion, he said, “You are fifty per cent of my DNA. I can find it.”

As he said those words, he made a face that was, unfortunately, exactly like the face I would’ve made if I’d had to say something like that. It was deeply unsettling. “That’s still fucking weird to consider,” I said, a peace offering. “No offence.”

“I think it’s weirder on my end, kid. Not to go into the logistics, but I really wasn’t expecting anything I’d done to result in a kid at any point this century.” And then, under his breath, “Or five.”

That was entirely too much information and, also, he was so wrong. “Are you kidding? You only found out you had a secret kid—you’re old as balls, that was bound to happen at some point. I died, and then I found out my dad is God.”

God, my dad, made a face. He said, tentatively, “You know, my name is John.”

And then, even more atrociously awkward, “What… what do you look like?”

I was torn between flattered and mortified. Harrow, when I’d walked in—I hadn’t liked this man; I didn’t want to like him. He’d lied to everyone and done absolutely horrible things. I still could remember my mum’s ghost saying the words “ten billion” and how he hadn’t even denied it, just sighed wearily like it was so much history. The face he’d made, blank and emotionless, when he’d asked Augustine to swear his loyalty with Mercymorn’s blood and body between them.

But he was also standing there, asking me to call him John and looking like he really, truly cared what I had to say, and it was more care than anyone in the universe ever offered me.

I filled your lungs with air. Then I said, “I have red hair.”

“Really.” He frowned like he was trying to visualise it. “Red hair, like Gideon?” He gave a small half-smile. “Other Gideon.”

Other Gideon, the fucker who’d tried to kill you. If he made it out alive, I was going to kick his ass. “Lighter,” I said. “More ginger. And I’m taller than this.” I thought about it. “About your height.”

I thought in a strange flash that I must have gotten the hair and the height from my mum, and then I felt achingly sad—she’d saved our life twice and then she’d gone and killed me, and none of it was fair. I really wished I could have talked to her.

“Cytherea’s body, the revenant,” I said. “She should’ve come around by now.”

Was the scowl that crossed his face familiar? I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure of anything. “I put a ghost ward outside—not that they could get here, with that mess in the hallway. They’re pretty angry, whoever that is… I thought I’d look into it tomorrow,” he said. “Once we’d all made it through the night.”

I wanted to say: that’s my mum. I wanted to ask: did you really kill ten billion people? But I was so tired, Harrow. I hadn’t died in hours and my terrible dad was a smudge less terrible than I’d thought and I didn’t know what to do about it.

I couldn’t bear staying still any longer. I stood up and found myself pacing around in your tiny body, looking through the plex window that showed only the inside of a thick metal hulk. I hadn’t seen the stars in months.

The room was the size of the armoury back home, large enough for several people to squeeze in for tea, or a chat, or for multiple murders. There were rows of bookshelves and a cabinet, that antiquated small box that must be an ancient oven, and a framed lithograph on the wall that reminded me of the ones I’d seen at Canaan House. A console next to the wall held a cluttered disarray of pens and styluses, and below it on the floor there was one of those ancient contraptions I’d seen in the kitchen, humming away softly. Then there was the desk, of course, and three chairs, and another antique-looking armchair by the shuttered window; and on it sat the Emperor of the Nine Houses, who’d told me awkwardly to call him John. He was looking at me.

“What?”

“That door.” He nodded to the foyer. “It’s going to stay locked until everyone gets back. Nothing can get in. If that thing…” he gestured vaguely. “If whatever has been happening to you is triggered when you die in Harrow’s body… that’s not going to happen.”

I didn’t mean to snort—okay, no, I totally did. “Sure,” I said, “What do you think it’s going to happen when everyone gets back? After all your friends have had a good look at me?”

The gleam in his eyes got very sharp. “That happened the other times?”

“Look, I don’t care if you have it out with your Lyctors over who lied first or who did what to whom. I only care that you get me to Harrow.”

“I can do that.”

“Right away? Because I’ve seen it happen. You argued, you fought each other—”

“Did we?” His voice left me chilled. I jutted out your chin and stared up at God from your five-foot-nothing height.

“You did. And I couldn’t care less about any of it except that I and Harrow got caught in the middle of it.”

He looked at us like he was seeing us both; not just you or just me, but the sum of us at once. He inclined his head to the side. “To be clear,” he said, “are you asking me—in a very roundabout way, mind you—to fix Harrow before I do any housekeeping?”

“Yes.” And then very grudgingly I said, “Please.”

That gained me a very lopsided grin. “Holy shit, I ranked a ‘please.’ Look, kid, I’ll make you a deal. I’m taking you to Harrow as soon as the alarms stop blaring.” He thought about it. “I might have to bring Gideon along—”

“That bastard? No way.”

“Shut up, kid,” he said pleasantly. “I’ll see what I can do. I’ll take you right away to find Harrow before I have a chat with Mercy, but I want to know everything you aren’t telling me right now. I know there’s a lot of it.”

He wasn’t wrong, but it still felt too good to be true. “How can I know…”

“Oh, I’ll go first. You can tell me later.” He said it in the magnanimous tone of a man who could afford to be trustful because no one would be such an enormous fool as to lie to him. “That all right?”

“Yeah,” I hurried to say. “Sure, okay. Whatever.”

“Whatever,” he said, blatantly amused. Then he scrunched up his brows and said, “Hey, maybe you should sleep.”

What, I thought. Out loud, I said, “What?”

“Sleep. Harrow never got enough—I bet that body is tired to begin with, and you have been hopping around in it… how long?”

Honestly, I’d lost count.

“Look, bedroom is that way,” he said, as if he’d read my mind. “Take a nap, get out of the way. If anyone comes by, I can just say I found poor Harrowhark pounding at my door and took her in, and she’s recovering. It’s better if you’re not here.”

That sounded like a decent plan. I went; the bedroom was utterly unfamiliar.

In all of your memories, the door had always been locked. The room beyond it was large, and the dim half-light of the Mithraeum night cycle cast it full of shadows. I might have snooped around on any other occasion, but I just couldn’t then—I was too exhausted, too overwhelmed, too scared. I hadn’t gotten a chance to be alone with my thoughts since I’d woken up for the first time with your organs healing wrong along a sharp steel blade; there had always been a new monster to fight, a new nightmare to survive. Now I flopped on your back over the covers; it was a wide soft bed, nothing like anything we’d had in Drearburh, and I was probably getting green poison stains everywhere but fuck it, he’d offered.

Harrow, it had been such a weird day. Hazy, falling asleep, I thought how glad I was that it was over.

And then I woke up on the floor out in the corridor near your room, the rapier sticking out from your belly.

6. IN WHICH JOHN ATTEMPTS THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

We were flat on your back, pinned to the floor like a bug. I looked at the ceiling. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

This time, I was almost glad to see that first Herald. It fucking had it coming, and I deserved the catharsis of cutting something into pieces. I’d done everything right: I had looked after your body, we’d made it through the night, and I even got you to sleep. And now, this.

Nonagesimus, you owed me so big. Not only you’d spat on my gift of a perfectly good soul, not only you’d trapped me in the back of your head like a bad dream to be forgotten and brought me back to fight disgusting bloody wasps, but now I was stuck in a nightmare whirl of the worst fucking night of my life. Which, you know, I grew up in Drearburh and then I died, so that’s really saying something.

I had this routine down perfectly. Ditch bad sword, get cool sword, ditch ribcage corset. Avoid Mercymorn, do not get eaten, pound on the thanergy shield shutter or whatever that was. Glare at God.

He’d been waiting for us. “So, that didn’t work, clearly.” He didn’t look especially put off. “Fascinating.”

“You’re not even bothered,” I said accusingly. “Are you sure—”

“I told you, I’m not doing this. I wasn’t even aware of it until you told me it was happening. Almost as if you’re carrying around your own singularity… born of soul magic. Augustine would love to have a look at you.”

At least one of us was having fun. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, even though I got the drift. “Can you get me out of it?”

I thought it was just a rhetorical question. I thought of course he could do it—the Resurrector, the First Reborn. He powered the fucking sun. But he crossed his arms over his chest and said, “No.”

“What do you mean ‘no’,” I said, incredulous. “You’re God.”

“I mean, no,” he said. “I don’t fuck with space-time. I’m not good at it… to be frank, I’ve never cared enough to try. I might end up unmaking the fabric of reality, and this isn’t the time to experiment with it. I think we’re better off rolling with it.”

Harrow, he was having the time of his life. I guess when you’ve lived as long as God, anything out of the ordinary is a pleasant change, even if it means being trapped reliving the same night over and over. Which, again, it’s probably what every day feels like when you’re a myriad fucking years old. And he liked showing off and dispensing obscure pearls of knowledge by the drop; he liked it that we were stuck there, a captive audience. If I’d paid more attention to your interactions with him I’d have clocked it sooner: my dad was extremely fucking annoying.

“When you say ‘rolling with it’,” I said, just to be sure, “you mean… wait it out?”

“That’s not going to work, but sure. Wait it out, experiment a bit. You know it resets when you die, it resets when you fall asleep, try seeing how long it lasts when you’re awake. Once you know that, you can try getting the radius of the event horizon—that’d be tricky with Number Seven on us, but I don’t think it’s involved…”

He was getting into it. He was having so much fun.

“Oh, shit,” I said, “you’re a nerd.”

He actually laughed, which was all sorts of weird. “Yeah,” he said, “yes, I guess. I was a scientist, uh, before. Observation, hypothesis, testing—that doesn’t always work when soul shit is involved, but you know. It’s always a good first step.”

I didn’t know; I was in over my fucking head. “Sure,” I said. “So, I just stay awake as long as I can and see what happens?”

“Why not.”

Why not, indeed.

Harrow, we played cards. That took half an hour as he looked for the cards—which he hadn’t taken out in a couple of centuries, he said, but were in decent condition. No mould on the Mithraeum; every object and piece of furniture in those rooms looked newer than anything on the Ninth, even though they were all veritable antiques. Anyway, I lost; I only knew two games—Aiglamene taught me when I’d been fifteen, in an attempt to keep me out of trouble, but that had only lasted three weeks and I hadn’t had a chance to play since.

“You’re really bad at this,” he said unperturbed, scooping up a Four of Flesh and Six of Souls with his Emperor, who had bone-white hair and didn’t look a thing like him—I’d asked; he’d said that made it less weird. “Do you want to see my cards? I think you could use the advantage.”

“Fuck you,” I said heartedly. “This is like my fifth time playing, ever.”

Too casually he said, “Not a popular game on the Ninth?”

“No games on the Ninth, period,” I said. “You know everyone there was geriatric.”

“I get the census charts, yes. And Harrow told me what her parents did.”

That was bait if I’d ever heard one; I didn’t take it. I lost another game—I got a better score this time, though—and I said yes when he asked if I wanted a biscuit. It tasted like nothing I’d had before: sweet and slightly spicy, sort of wood-y; when I asked he said it was cinnamon. It was so fucking good. Harrow, you would’ve hated it.

It had been three hours since I’d shown up, nearly as long as I’d made it the first time. There was a definite lack of murder for now; I’d even kept your clothes free of poison and splatter. I’d learned random nonsense facts about God—who was getting harder and harder to think of as God, given that he kept calling me kid and made weird things with his eyebrows when he spoke. He asked if Gideon was a popular name on the Ninth, knowing very well that it wasn’t; I was still avoiding anything to do with my mum, so I said that the nuns had named me that.

At one point, he looked at us oddly and said, “Harrow asked me to bring you back. It was the first thing she said when I met her. I said the soul had been absorbed but, clearly…” Lamely, he said, “I just think you should know.”

“Great. I was just dying to know.”

I didn’t want to talk about you—I was so angry still—but he was merciless. He said, “So, are you and Harrow…” And there he made a gesture that made me wish I could pop out my eyes so I didn’t have to see it.

“What the fuck.”

“Look, I’m just asking. I like Harrow!”

“You’re serious,” I was horrified; he was serious. “You’re so fucking wrong. Harrow is a fucking necrophiliac.” He wasn’t getting it, so I said, “She’s into dead people.”

He frowned—he still wasn’t getting it—and I nearly spilled the whole story about your ice bimbo crush, except he’d been the one to lock her in there so it would’ve been sort of awkward. You owe me, Harrow. As it was, he just made a very confused face and said, “Not to be crass, but aren’t you dead?” and I said, “Oh, shit.”

“Shit,” I said, again. Shit. Of course I was dead. “I’ve been dead a year.”

“Yes?”

“If Harrow is in my body, wouldn’t it… I mean, I’ve seen dead bodies. They don’t look good after a year.” There was a reason the Ninth boiled bodies before preparing them for the rotation. And my body had been pretty great—I’d worked hard at it, okay!—and the idea that you might haunt it at its worst was sort of sad.

“They don’t,” he agreed, unperturbed. “That’s actually not a bad thing.”

“What do you mean it’s not a bad thing?” I was already feeling sorry for you, trapped in a rotting body that had once been hot.

“I mean, it’d have limited mobility. If Harrow is in there she’ll mostly stay put. That’s not a bad thing.”

“This is so gross.” For the first time, I sort of understood the Seventh House—there was some small comfort in being a beautiful corpse, if you had to be a corpse at all. “Oh shit, I feel like I should apologise to Harrow.”

“Nah, don’t worry. That’s just rot—I can fix it right up.”

“Oh, yuck.” I’d forgotten who I was talking to. Still kind of gross; you’d always preferred clean bones to meat in any state of decay.

There was a sound at the door. I jumped.

“Is that Cytherea?”

“There’s a ghost ward just outside. It’s not.”

Sure enough, a man’s voice called out, “John?”

“Right.” He stood up. “Get in the bedroom, close the door.”

I got in the bedroom and closed the door, and pressed your ear against it. There was an array of sounds: the front door unlocked, the shield whirring down, footsteps and muffled sighs.

“Augustine.” He sounded genuinely fond; the other voice, Augustine, was sombre. “I’m afraid we’ve lost Harrowhark. She dropped… not that long into it but she made it longer than I’d expected, I have to say—” Then the voice descended into a murmur too low to hear. “Oh, no, she made it. It was really ugly for a while, with Gideon…”

“No, Harrowhark is fine.” That was John again. “Not fine, sorry. I think she will recover… yes, she came here—” and Augustine, annoyed, “What do you mean here, we needed her in the River and she came here? She could’ve brought the Heralds to your door.”

“It wasn’t as bad as that.” There was some more muttering; then John’s raised voice. “What the fuck? Where’s she? Oh, I’ll come with you right away…”

The door closed.

I was alone; I went back to the outer room to look at the clockwork on the desk. Almost five hours since I’d been here. Longer than I’d ever made it any other time; long enough that the alarms had stopped and I could no longer hear the sound of monster claws scraping against the bulkhead. I stood there in front of the window looking as the shields went up—slowly, centimetre by centimetre, and behind it was the empty darkness of space. There was a big white star burning up in the distance, smaller ones all around it like flowers in a field—not that I’d ever seen one of those. I blinked your eyes against the bright light. Harrow, I hadn’t seen real light in so long; it was beautiful.

Then it got brighter, and brighter. Way too fucking bright, actually.

I thought, Oh.

7. GUESS WHICH NIGHT IT IS. GUESS

Maybe there was something to be said for the scientific approach. I knew I had about five hours; I knew that, no matter what I did, nothing would stick. I knew that no one else would remember unless I told them, in which case they’d just get stuck along with me. That last one was more of a guess, but I had no intention of testing it.

I thought about everything I’d always wanted to do if I’d known for a fact I would face no consequences. It was a long, delicious list, which became much shorter once I cut it down to “everything I might want to do, stuck in Harrow’s body, on a desert space station full of old people and bones.” Really, there were only two things. One was to beat up Ianthe. The other was talking to my mum.

Not to sound like a sentimental moron, Nonagesimus, but I’d sort of been having fun with John. It had been painfully awkward, and it would never stop being weird, but… I’d gone hours without anyone killing me, and he’d asked things about myself that didn’t sound like I was being put on the spot for an interrogation. It was a big step up from nearly any other conversation I could remember having. Which was pathetic when you thought about it for too long, so I didn’t.

I focused on feeling optimistic instead. Maybe my mum would be sort of fun, too—and even if she wasn’t, it could hardly get worse than the time she’d shot me. (Yes, it had been two times, but only one really counted. I couldn’t, in good conscience, resent anyone who thought they’d been shooting at you.) I got my sword and my shades—that painting in Ianthe’s room would never get old—and set off exploring.

I’d never been in the Mithraeum chapel, but I could remember faintly your memories of it, and your feet carried us there with only minimal hesitation. It was near the centre of the station, one level below John’s rooms; there were fewer Heralds down here and a lot more bones. The door was behind an archway made of wood—real wood, exquisitely carved and polished to a shine. I wonder who did the polishing; I hadn’t seen any constructs roaming the halls of the Mithraeum.

Like the archway, the door was also wood, all gorgeous carvings and glass panelling. It was unlocked; beyond were three short rows of pews and dozens and dozens of candles, and a veritable wreath of bones. Like, an enormous amount of bones, more than I’d ever seen even on the Ninth; they were all painted over and arranged beautifully, an absolute wealth in thanergy storage for people who didn’t even need it. There was an altar, on which Cytherea’s body no longer lay, and what must have been a hundred roses in bloom.

I looked around the room and thought about my mum haunting this place as she’d once haunted her catacomb on the Ninth and my two-hander—before you’d left to rust for nearly a year. I wonder if she’d liked the flowers; they were as lush up close as they looked from afar, forever beautiful and fresh. They smelled rich and sweet—they’d have given you a headache—and I knew I would’ve loved them before Canaan House. Now they just reminded me of Cytherea.

I left the chapel, sword in hand. I paced up and down the corridors, heading vaguely in the direction I could remember Wake had been the other times. I walked past Mercymorn’s discarded body—a soulless creature roaming the halls, a machine moving on pure instinct. I saw the Lyctor called Gideon, who was surrounded by a plethora of dead Heralds, and I wondered for a fleeting moment if I was really looking at the cavalier named Pyrrha. Whoever it was didn’t see us; I walked past the Lyctor down to the kitchens, large and ancient and empty except for more Heralds, and then up into a huge training room with a shiny wooden floor splattered with blood and entrails—and there she was.

She spun around when she heard me, gun raised. I took off my shades and raised your hands in the air, dropping the sword to the floor with a clang.

“Wait, wait. Please, don’t shoot.” It came out fast, a garbled prayer. “I’m not Harrow. I’m, uh. Fuck. I think I’m your daughter.”

The good thing was, she lowered the gun. The bad thing was her face, utterly expressionless. Then, in a tone that wasn’t Cytherea’s at all, she said, “You survived.”

“Yes.” We were breathless. “I mean, sort of.”

Cytherea’s lips, so pale in death, stretched in a grimace that could’ve almost been a smile. I’d spent half my life wishing I could ever see my mum smile at me.

“They named me Gideon,” I said, fast. “Because… well, they called your ghost, and you were screaming it. And I think—I think I look like you. Not right now, obviously but, you know.”

She looked at us with those eyes that weren’t Cytherea’s—my mother’s eyes, the only thing I knew for sure I hadn’t gotten from her. “There are worse names,” she conceded. “He killed me, but he made it quick. Others wouldn’t have.”

I looked down; to the magnificent floor, to my sword. “Were you… I mean, in here?” And then, like a child, “Do you remember me?”

“Yeah, I was in that rusty piece of shit,” she said, “I remember some of it. Fucking awful place. I’m sorry I left you to be raised in that wizard cave.”

And she meant it: I could read it perfectly, even through Cytherea’s dead features and her harsh unfamiliar tones. From what little I knew of my mum she’d given birth to me expecting I wouldn’t live long enough to be raised by anybody—she’d been prepared to slit my throat herself—but, to someone like her, growing up on the Ninth was worse than never growing up at all. She really did look pleased to see me, though. I held on to that.

“No. Yes, I mean… it was fucking horrible but… I’m glad.” I was sounding legitimately dumb now, probably. I hurried to get out, “I used to dream you were there and you could listen to me. I’m glad it was true.”

Cytherea’s features did something odd; her gorgeous mouth twisted with something almost like regret. “Girl, I hope you understand this: I’m not a mother. I am a soldier on a mission. Your birth was… I’m glad that you survived after my failure even in that fucking shithole, but I can’t regret what brought me there.”

“Opening the Tomb?”

She hadn’t been expecting me to know; Cytherea’s mouth opened and closed. “How’d you know that?”

“My blood can break through the wards, right?”

She nodded. “I was told it was the only way. The wizards—the fucking Lyctors, the woman and the man—”

“Augustine and Mercy, I know all of that,” I said. “But I know nothing about you. I thought…”

“What I am is Blood of Eden. There’s nothing else to it, girl. I’m who I have to be. Humanity’s weapon against wizards and their filth. And after so many years in that shithole… there isn’t much left of me. Only revenge.”

Well, that was fucking depressing. Those foreign eyes burned in Cytherea’s face, hungry and cold. “What do you want? In Cytherea’s body, on this station. Can I—”

“I’m going to kill John Gaius.”

She said it without a shadow of hesitation or any fear. Only pure determination, relentless hatred. This was a woman who’d died and survived nearly two decades as a revenant, who had hidden all the way to God’s inner sanctum, who was out for Lyctor’s blood and would feast on it.

“Good fucking luck with that. That gun you have? It works on Lyctors but it won’t work on him. He’s immortal.”

“The bullets—”

“He’s really fucking immortal, I’ve seen it.” Then I said, “If you killed him, even if you could. The sun’d go out. Dominicus. All the people in the Houses…”

“Necromancers and their minions.”

“I grew up in the Houses,” I said, uselessly. I wanted to say: don’t you care? She stared with something like pity.

“The Houses have killed billions. Zombies and their scum.”

And, look, I didn’t know what to say there. Had we? The Cohort fought battles, people died in those. But I couldn’t even conceive of that many dead. Your mouth was parched. “Billions… do you mean the Houses,” I said slowly, “or—him?”

“There is no difference.” She didn’t even hesitate. “They were born of him—he corrupted humanity to spread his disease, and they all carry it. And maybe you’re right, maybe I won’t be able to kill him, but I have to try. I can take out his people.” Then she looked at me, intent. “Will you stop me?”

“You want to kill Mercymorn? Be my fucking guest,” I said. “She stabbed Harrow in the back.”

“I would’ve killed your Harrowhark, too. Believe me, girl, I tried. If I get another chance, I will.”

There wasn’t much to say to that. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

“I’m not,” said my mum. “But I’m not sorry you were spared that pain. I know what is like to care for one of them. It never ends well.”

“Harrow opened the Locked Tomb,” I don’t know why I said that. Maybe it was because I wanted to tell that bitter ghost of a woman who was almost my mother that she hadn’t died in vain.

There was a smile on those stern features; for a moment she looked almost lively. It was a real smile, a ray of hope, and I nearly cried like a big fucking baby.

I didn’t, though. She asked, “Is the monster free?”

“No,” I said. “Not yet, but she will be.” I don’t know why I said that either, I felt it in my bones, dead as they were. Maybe I felt it in my soul. She nodded, slowly; I nodded back.

Then she said, “Goodbye,” like she had the very first time, and I knew this was goodbye for real. I didn’t say a word as she marched off and left me there, alone.

8. THE NIGHT OF SOMEONE’S MURDER. NOT THE EMPEROR'S, THOUGH

I opened your eyes, and I was almost at peace.

I mean, there was still the stupid sword sticking from your guts, but I’d gotten used to that. The last time, after my mum had left, I’d wasted a few hours taking on Heralds in the shiny training room, turning it into an absolute wreck. I’d fought in there until the remaining Heralds all dropped dead, like constructs when the juice ran off; then the alarms had gone out and the sudden silence was almost overwhelming. Then there had been footsteps somewhere, and voices—just chatter at first, distant echoes in those endless halls—and then a long piercing scream.

It was Mercymorn, I thought; but she didn’t sound scared or in pain—she’d sounded furious. I heard more hurried footsteps, a distant echo of “John, John!” and I’d decided to stay out of the fucking way. A handful of minutes later I felt the distant noises of the outer shield slowly going up; and then a white light.

And then, you know, the sword. I might be getting used to it, but it still hurt.

I got up slowly—that first Herald around the corner never had a chance—and I thought about maybe popping down to the kitchens because, look, I could count on your fingers the number of times I’d eaten food that had actually tasted good. You probably wouldn’t have liked it, but fuck it. I wanted an apple. I couldn’t remember ever eating an apple in my life.

I had to kill, like, eight Heralds to go to the kitchen and back, which made it feel like a prize. I was getting super good at taking those out, and I wasn’t even losing any fingers anymore—Harrow, you would’ve made such a badass Lyctor if you’d done with my soul what you had been supposed to, just saying—but the downside was that it was all starting to feel kind of boring. I was running out of things to do on the Mithraeum, and the sooner I figured out how to get away from this weirdness and how to get you back, the better.

I went to John; the door was unlocked like it had been the very first time, and I hoped and dreaded finding my mother inside. Instead, it was just him, sprawled on the armchair and with the biggest scowl I’d ever seen on the face of anyone not named Harrowhark Nonagesimus.

He said, “Where were you?”

“In the kitchen? I wanted a snack.”

“I meant yesterday,” he said, impatient. “The last time… whatever.”

I shrugged. “Walking around.”

“Walking around,” he repeated, like Sister Canace when she was trying to make a point—whatever that point was supposed to be.

“Yes. Walking around. Fighting Heralds. Being badass. It’s been a year since the last time I walked around in a body. And I wanted to explore the place,” I said. “Sick décor. That chapel is like if a rainbow threw up on the Ninth House. You have more bones here than I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’ve seen so many fucking bones. What even do you do with them?”

“We don’t do anything with them. That’s kind of the point of being entombed in the Mithraeum,” he said. “Their bones are at rest.”

I thought about every time Crux had threatened me with having my body broken down for parts after death, to serve the most menial tasks in the House I loathed. Sure, someone had to do the dirty work—someone’s remains, that was it—but it was only the least favoured members of the Ninth whose remains got repurposed for the really sucky tasks, and the most devout who got to be made into cool necromantic accessories and reliquaries. And the heroes of the Ninth went in the Anastasian, mostly untouched—a grand reward for the worthiest.

“Okay, fair enough,” I said. “Anyway—what, are you getting ansty in here? You can’t go walking around, can you.”

“Wouldn’t be wise,” he agreed. “The Heralds would pile up—like, really pile up, and I can’t do anything to them from a distance. I need to be close.”

That was such necromancer bullshit. “Yeah, wait until you learn about how normal people fight. You have to be close and have weapons. And sometimes your necromancer lugs around your sword for a year and never sharpens it, and it’s absolute shit—”

He cut me off. “Is that all you did last time?”

Cautious, I asked, “Why?”

“So you did something else.”

I didn’t answer. He sighed.

“Kid, look, something is going on here. Something else. It’s dangerous, and—”

“And what, you got worried? I’m dead. I’m so much deader than dead, I’ve died so many times, I think I’m the deadest person you’ve ever met.”

Which, when you thought about it, was kind of a badge of honour. Not the way I’d ever have wanted to be remembered—but, hey, anyone can die; it takes a whole lot of shitty luck to die multiple times.

My dad, the Death Guy, wasn’t looking impressed. He rubbed at the side of his head; he made a face. “Look, last time, something killed Augustine. Not the RB, something within the Mithraeum, and not a Herald either. It all reset before I could do any investigating, but something lopped his head off. The time before that, Mercy nearly died…”

He trailed off. “You knew.”

“I didn’t!” I said. “I didn’t know. Not the details. But yes, there’s that ghost around and it wants you all killed—so what?”

He looked at us, curious. “That revenant shot you too, not that long ago. I saw it happen.”

“Didn’t stick, I’m over it.” And then, because he was looking too interested, I shrugged and said, “It’s not me she wants dead, it’s Lyctors. And you. I don’t care about any of it.”

I’d been thinking about Wake, after our talk. She was a miserable, bitter thing—a bloodthirsty afterimage, the shadow of a person. If someone put her to rest, I thought, it could only be a good thing. But I didn’t want John to do it and I didn’t want his Lyctors to do it; it wouldn’t be fair.

Of course, John wouldn’t kill her if he knew who she was. He’d tie her with tendons to a chair and carve a ward into Cytherea’s skin, and never let her go.

“Here’s the thing,” he said. “I think I know how to get away from—whatever this is. I have an idea, it’s a bit involved but it should work. But I’d have to come with you and I’m not leaving if a murderous revenant is killing my people.”

“You said you’d—”

“Well, I was missing some crucial information!”

I’d seen him and his friends totally slaughter each other on my very first go; I should’ve found it harder to believe he cared so much if my mum cut Augustine’s head off. I didn’t, though—I absolutely believed that he cared; they all did. But they were all so fucking twisted about it. Harrow, remember when you didn’t want Crux to beat me without your explicit say-so? It was like that but, like, a thousand times worse.

I couldn’t wait to stop this—thing and leave; I couldn’t wait to get out of here. I didn’t even care what would happen if I got you back and you told me to fuck off to my face.

I asked, “How do we get away?”

“Oh, that’s easy. We just leave.”

“Just like that?” That sounded so simple that I almost refused to believe it.

“Leave the Mithraeum. Whatever it’s going on—some kind of singularity—it’s keyed to the moment of your soul surfacing in Harrow’s body, and tied to your spacetime coordinates… I think. I’m making this up as we go and pretending it’s a real thing. It’s mostly just vibes.” Which sounded totally scientific and rigorous of him, and also made way more sense than any time you’ve tried to explain theorems to me.

“Call it a hunch, but I think that if you’re half a universe away, that’s way out of the event horizon radius. We’d need to leave before your time is up but after Number Seven is gone—that’s a short window, and I guess there are the Heralds. But yes, just like that.” Then he said, “And that revenant. If someone dies and we leave, and I’m not around to do something about it… I can’t do that to them.”

That was such absolute bullshit, Harrow. I stood up, I stretched—your shoulders and neck were fucked, by the way—and I went to the window. The shields were down, obscuring the stars.

It was kind of unfair that John had decided now was the time to care if any of his equally terrible friends lived or died, and I couldn’t be outside somewhere looking for you right now. It was unfair that I’d just met my mother and she wasn’t even a person, just the bitter fragments of one, and she still deserved better to be blown apart like so much trash. It was deeply, massively unfair that I was standing here in the cool bone space castle you must have loved and you were inside my rotting body somewhere, probably having an even worse time than I was.

I bit your lip. Then I said, “Okay, how about this. I know where she is—the ghost. I’ll take care of it, but I want your word that we’re leaving right after. Right after.”

I almost said ‘please,’ but fuck that; he owed us for setting that guy on you. And for telling me I had to kill my mum, even though he didn’t even know that, and like hell I was letting him do it. So I said, “Are we clear?”

He looked at us very, very intently. Then he said, “As soon as it’s safe to leave. I promise.”

“Good. Then I’m going now. How do we leave?”

“There’s a shuttle bay. Second level down, below the chapel. Really, now?”

“Why, you want to wait?”

He let out a short, surprised laugh. “Not really, no. I’ll see you there.” And then he said, “Good luck, kid,” and, Harrow, I think our face did something weird there, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t know what to say. So I straightened your tiny shoulders and grabbed my very cool sword, and I left with a new spring in our steps to finally get something done.

I didn’t have to look far. I knew this: for as much as my mum might content herself with shooting Lyctors for lack of a better alternative, it was really John that she wanted. She’d be coming here soon enough, as she had every night. I didn’t want to fight her, but I wanted anyone else in this place to fight her even less. A part of me wanted to step aside and let Wake inflict as much damage as she could—maybe I didn’t understand my mum, but I understood rage.

Only, you’d probably get mad at me—and other, less important reasons—so I held on to the sword and went on. I ran into her two corridors down; she had her gun. I took out the shades and looked at her with my own eyes for the very last time. She wasn’t like Cytherea at all: I could see it from the way she held herself, the sharp angle of her head. I watched it all and tried to imagine what it might have been like if we’d ever met in the flesh, reconstructing my mother from her mannerisms on a dead woman’s face.

“Hello,” I said, like a sucker. “Do you know who I am?”

She hadn’t lowered the gun, but she wasn’t shooting. I hadn’t lowered the sword either; she nodded slowly, eyes sharp. “You’re the girl.”

“They named me Gideon,” I said, like I had the last time. “I used to think it was what you wanted to call me… but now I guess you were just cursing him out.”

Again there was that sharp, unfamiliar twist of the mouth on Cytherea’s delicate features. I pictured how it might look on a different mouth, with teeth crooked like mine, a savage grin.

“You’re Wake.” I remembered that her full name was much longer than that. “Awake… Memory of the Dead?” I tried, clumsily. “Sorry, I don’t know it all.”

The sharp smile remained. “You wouldn’t. Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity.” And then, “It’s an Edenite name.”

“What does it mean?”

Cytherea’s head shook with impatience. “It doesn’t matter what it means. What matters is where it comes from. I’m named for three Edenites, who were named for three others each—a chain stretching back to the dawn of humanity.”

I thought about the Ninth’s stern worship of Anastasia and their love for old verses, the reverential regard they bestowed on everything that was old as balls. My mum wouldn’t have appreciated the comparison—she really, really wouldn’t have—but I knew you’d get it, Harrow. Memory binds us together.

“I’ll try to remember that,” I said. It was so fucking long—but it had to be written down somewhere, right? John had known it, and he certainly hadn’t heard it from Wake.

“I used to call you mum. When I used to—I used to talk to your niche. I don’t know if you remember that. I used to think you’d be proud if you could see me with a sword. I’m pretty good at it.”

“It’s a stupid fucking weapon,” she said, warmer than I’d ever heard her speak. “But good for you.”

“Thanks.” I tightened the grip on the hilt. “I’m sorry. For everything. I wish we could have had more time. If I’d known you were around back on the Ninth…”

She cut me off. “Girl, are you going to fight me?” A tilt of the head, marble-faced assertiveness. She hadn’t expected this; it wouldn’t stop her from trying to kick my ass.

“Look, he knows you’re here, okay? You can’t kill him—you really can’t. I don’t want him to get you. I don’t want any of them, not even…” I tried the name, “Not even Pyrrha should do it. If someone has to send you off, it should be me.”

She nodded slowly, solemnly. Then she said, “Do you think I’ll go easily?”

“I’ve got no fucking idea, do I? I don’t know you.”

“Fair enough.”

The gun clicked.

We were close, about five three or four steps. I knew it would hurt like hell, and probably take out a chunk of your ribcage—sorry, Nonagesimus—and I knew that those bullets did something fucked to the Lyctors, and she had no idea they wouldn’t work the same on me.

So, you know. I lunged; she shot; we screamed. The momentum carried me forward, close enough that I could sweep at her legs with a sword arm that barely worked anymore; your body put itself back together beautifully. I was clumsy as hell getting back up on your feet—squats, Nonagesimus!—but I got up at record speed, ready the sword to strike. I took her by surprise; the blade cut deep into Cytherea’s side. She kicked us—she tried to get us in the shoulder—and I deflected with the hilt of the blade. It was too close quarters to lunge easily; I struck with the back of the sword and smashed the pommel against her shoulder. That was one of Aiglamene’s favourite lessons: a long blade is useless if you don’t know how to brawl with it.

The gun fell from her fingers, and I kicked it away. I didn’t stop to think; I just had to go for it. I rammed the sword just above the clavicle with all the weight of your frail little body behind it and it tore through skin and muscle and cartilage, pinning her through the neck. Harrow; I’m not a necromancer, I didn’t know how to send away a ghost. I had to cut her head. My mum’s head—she was still there, the eyes were brown.

“Listen,” I panted, even though I wasn’t sure she could hear. “The tomb was opened. That’s what you wanted, right? Why you brought me to the Ninth—it worked.”

And then I wrenched out the sword and swung it again, a cutting blow to the side of the neck.

I wish I could say it was clean. It wasn’t, not with your tiny triceps and your useless delts behind the blow. I swung two times, three—and then Cytherea’s body was only mostly attached to the head—the body fell when I kicked it down to the floor. I swung again, and the head rolled. I looked at it. The eyes were blue now.

I wanted to say something else, but I didn’t know what—but there was a ferocious buzzing behind me and I had to turn around right away and cleave two Heralds before they could kill me when mum couldn’t.

After some hesitation, I picked up the gun. I’d never held one of those things before and I was worried it’d go off if I stuck it to your belt, so I just held it in our off hand with the barrel pointing towards the door, and every time I turned a corner to find more fucking wasps I had to drop it so I could fight with both hands on the hilt. Still, I didn’t want to leave it behind. It seemed like the right thing to do, taking it with us.

It didn’t take me that long to find the shuttle bay. It was one of the few spots on the Mithraeum I hadn’t yet found my way to, and it was nearly empty; all the breaches were on the upper level, and the large bay contained only three shuttles and, like, barely six wasps. I killed the fuckers, then looked at the ships. They were all about the same, and I couldn’t identify the models—you had always tried very hard to keep me away from any space-faring vehicle in Drearburh, and I always figured the Cohort would give me training if I ever made it.

I sat and waited, and then I paced and waited, and then I sat again, half-wishing I’d thought to take a clockwork. Two more Heralds wandered in, which was sort of fun—I’d gotten so good at killing those things that it barely took any effort—and I got back to waiting. Then I heard growing sounds in the distance: a loud fucking buzzing getting louder and louder, and a clipped noise like a hundred mandibles snapping at once—and I do mean a hundred, at least. It was enough to make me queasy, and I’d been killing those shits for days.

The bay closed off from the rest of the Mithraeum with a pressure-tight door, and the corridor leading to it was narrow enough that you couldn’t swing a two-hander around. And it was filled to the brink with dozens of nearly-human mangled ghoulish insects, all fucked up limbs and ugly wings and misshapen skulls—and amid that buzzing hive was John, more fucked up than I’d ever seen him, like he’d taken a dip in a pool filled with Herald bits. It was scary. He’d touch the things and they dropped dead, just like that—except for the teeth and the poison stingers, which apparently didn’t count. They were biting chunks off him, fleshy bits dripping with blood that healed up in half a heartbeat, and he had what looked like one of the rapiers that had been in the chapel, which in the absolute crush of that corridor he was using more like a dagger. Aiglamene would have wept.

He saw me; he saw the door. He did something with one of the old bones that had adorned the hilt of the rapier, and it turned into a giant fucking tooth large enough to plug the whole corridor and rip apart the things that got caught in the crunch. A handful made it through—only, like, five, and we could take them easily—but they were vicious, way more than any other Heralds I’d ever encountered.

“They really fucking hate you.” I nearly had to tell over the buzzing from the corridor, insufferably loud even through that tooth-shield and the sealed bay door. “Can they breach through?”

“Probably not,” he said, not reassuring at all. “Once they stop buzzing… that means Number Seven is gone and we can leave, but not a second sooner—trust me on that.” He said it so emphatically that I decided not to bother with questions. “The shields will still be down, I’m going to have to override that manually. Just pick a shuttle and let’s get ready. How about that one?”

He’d pointed to a slate-grey shuttle that was approximately the same size as both others. I shrugged. “Why not.”

“What, no opinion?”

“On shuttles? I know jack shit about those—I’ve only been once.” And then because he was looking weird—like he was thinking, oh, how sad, this girl never left the Ninth and then she died, and fuck that—I said, “I have opinions on swords though, and you’re really shit at it. Like, not Harrow-bad, but… extremely fucking mediocre.”

“Mediocre.” He shock his head. He wasn’t even offended; he looked weird, like, almost pleased it was something I cared enough to talk shit about. And then he said, “Well, yes, I don’t usually have to get close to things to kill them,” which made me roll my eyes in your skull.

“So that shuttle. Fine. Can I bring this?”

I still held the gun; he looked at it. “Where did you get—”

“From… you know,” I said. “Look, I’m not asking your permission, I just want to know if it’ll go off if I take it in there.”

A long pause. Then, “If you turn on the safety it won’t. The safety—that lever… yes, that one.” The gun made a noise. “Now it won’t shoot. I really fucking hate guns,” he said conversationally, which sounded pretty weird for a guy who could kill people with a thought.

Later, in the shuttle—which had been nice and clean before we got blood all over the seats—he dug out a tablet, which had badly cracked in one corner.

“As soon as the alarms go out—as soon as those things are gone—I’m going to override the shield and depart. I can shield your soul.” He said it like I would have any idea what that meant. “But it’s going to be really unpleasant, sorry for that. Try to anchor yourself to Harrow’s body.”

“That means?”

“In non-necromantic terms, you should try to maintain an awareness within yourself of Harrowhark’s body.” He had a way of explaining things that made him sound like a schoolteacher. An annoying one, because he just had to add, “Not that it should be difficult for you, I think,” with a stupid meaningful look. “And fasten the safety belt, please.”

“You know I’m dead, right?”

“If you slam against the window and knock Harrow’s teeth out while I’m submerging, we might end up fuck knows where. Belt.”

I buckled up the fucking belt. The alarms went out not long after; beyond the door, all the buzzing went quiet.

I saw John messing around with the controls on his tablet, fingers tapping lightly over those spiderweb cracks coated in green grime. The bay door fell open; beyond it was the gleaming metal shield, slowly folding back on itself, metre by metre—and, in the distance, the open sky.

“Fucking finally.” Then I had a horrible thought. “What if it doesn’t work?”

The engine rumbled to life; the shuttle began to lift. “If it doesn’t, I might have to end up fucking with spacetime. But it should work, don’t worry about it. It’s just the next bit that it’s tricky.”

Harrow, the next bit was horrible. One moment we were out in space: stars like gleaming teeth on dark cloth, constellations I’d never seen before. Then the lights began to flicker and the black of the sky moved like waves, and it was so cold; I bundled up in your silly little cloak but it did nothing, and someone was screaming. We were in the fucking River again—the River was around us, waves climbing around your feet, up your legs.

“Kick your legs if you have to,” John said unexpectedly. “Harrow’s legs—whatever. It’s her body, but you’re driving it. Stick with it.”

Weirdly enough, that helped. I thought of all the times I’d awoken inside your frail scrawny body—no jokes now—all the times I’d gotten you hurt even though I’d tried so very hard not to, the sweet bloom of victory when I felt your body heal. The way we’d absolutely kicked ass together. Maybe it hadn’t been that bad, I thought, and then the waters withdrew and the stars outside had changed, and your body was still safely harnessed to the seat with me inside it.

(Sorry. Couldn’t resist.)

I looked down. Your boots were wet.

“Where are we?”

“One obelisk out of Dominicus. I thought it was far enough. If we’re still here in let’s say… ten minutes, then we’re probably out of it and good to go.”

Ten minutes. I’d waited so long that it should feel like nothing, but I found I couldn’t stay still; your skin itched with it. Your annoyingly long hair was in your face, all caked up with sweat and other disgusting things. My eyes fell on the blade of my sword, secured to the floor.

“Harrow let it get ruined. I told her to keep it sharp, she didn’t, and she made it rust.”

“She carried it around everywhere, you know. Really, everywhere.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I turned to fiddling with the edge of your sleeves, which were absolutely filthy with blood. Your nails were ruined, and I’d lost half of your usual collection of bone jewellery; there was grime dirtying the edges of your cloak, caked into the ridges of the gun I’d taken from Wake.

“Do you want—I can get someone to teach you how to use that, if you want to keep it.” He nodded to the gun. “Gideon uses firearms sometimes.”

I thought about it for a long moment. Then, very deliberately, I said, “Did he pick that up from my mum?”

I was looking down at your reddened nailbeds. He said, “What?”

“She was a big fan of guns,” I said, lightly—Harrow, I didn’t feel light at all. “I mean, so I’ve heard. This one was hers.”

I don’t know what I’d been expecting; there was just a long, drawn-out sigh. “Was it?”

“Yeah? I’m not heartbroken or anything, you know. She was completely unhinged. She wanted all of you dead and I don’t blame her for it, but if she hadn’t died in the first place she would’ve killed me at birth. To open the fucking Tomb.”

“Wake?”

I shrugged. That actually hurt—your stupid fucking hair got all tangled up against the headrest; I’m begging you, Harrow, get a haircut—and I got a terrible glimpse of God looking like he was trying to think of something nice to say.

“I’ve had the most fucked up week,” I said quickly, instead of what I was really thinking, which was: I can’t decide which one of you is the more fucked up parent. “Or however long it’s been.”

Mercifully, he got it. “Less than two days, I think.”

“You can’t be fucking serious.” Then I did the maths and—okay, yes, but it had felt like a week. Maybe that was because I hadn’t had a nap since I’d been alive. “How long have we been here? We’re clear, aren’t we?”

“Pretty much. A bit over ten minutes.”

Fuck yes. I pumped your tiny fist in the air, which must have looked ridiculous, but you weren’t here to be mortified. Weren’t here yet, I thought, suddenly filled with tentative vague optimism.

I waited a bit longer, just to be sure, fiddling with your belt, wiggling your toes inside your boots—they were dry now, just like that; the River was extremely fucking weird. I held my breath but there was no white light, no bright burst, no rapier sticking painfully from your guts.

“Oh, thanks fuck,” I breathed. I thought: Harrow, I’m coming.

Which, you know. That’s what she said.