Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

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THE FIRST HOUSE

Necromancer Divine, King of the Nine Renewals, The Unsleeping Lord, our Saviour and Ultimate Resurrector, the Necrolord Prime, He Of The Open Eyes!

THE EMPEROR

HIS LYCTORS

AND THE PRIESTHOOD  OF CANAAN HOUSE

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THE SECOND HOUSE

The Emperor’s Strength, House of the Crimson Shield, the Centurion’s House

General Matilda Duodecimo  - Heir to the House of the Second, Ranked General of the Cohort.

Lieutenant Aramis Zwei  - Cavalier Primary to the Heir, Ranked First Lieutenant of the Cohort.

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THE THIRD HOUSE

Mouth of the Emperor, the Procession, House of the Shining Dead

Delilah Dreifach  - Heir to the House of the Third, Crown Princess of Ida.

Grigori Tris  - Cavalier Primary to the House of the Third.

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THE FOURTH HOUSE

Hope of the Emperor, the Emperor’s Sword

Remus Tetradrachmus - Heir to the House of the Fourth, Duke of Onnuria.

Roman Tetradrachmus - Cavalier Primary to the Heir, Prince of Onnuria.

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THE FIFTH HOUSE

Heart of the Emperor, Watchers over the River

Patton Pentralis - Heir to the House of the Fifth, Viceroy of Oiktirmos Court.

Virgil Cinque - Cavalier Primary to the Heir, Seneschal of Oiktirmos Court.

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THE SIXTH HOUSE

The Emperor’s Reason, the Master Wardens

Logan Senarius - Heir to the House of the Sixth, Master Warden of the Library.

Cinna Hexyl  - Cavalier Primary to the Heir, Warden’s Hand of the Library.

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THE SEVENTH HOUSE

Joy of the Emperor, the Rose Unblown

Thomas Sanders - Heir to the House of the Seventh.

Nico Heptacodium  - Cavalier Primary to the Heir.

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THE EIGHTH HOUSE

Keepers of the Tome, the Forgiving House

Jephthah Octane  - Heir to the House of the Eighth, Master Templar of the Bound Sight.

Iphigen  Ogdoad  - Cavalier Primary to the Heir, Templar of the Bound Sight.

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THE NINTH HOUSE

Keepers of the Locked Tomb, House of the Sewn Tongue, the Black Vestals

Philinnion Enneagesimus  - Heir to the House of the Ninth, Reverend Daughter of Drearburh.

Janus Novena - Cavalier Primary to the Heir.

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Two for order, Three for show

Four for fealty - quick to grow

Five for culture, Six for truth

Seven’s beauty dies with youth

Eight for secrets to atone

Nine lies dark in dust and bone

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you said: i wish we weren't doing this

and i said: well tough, kid

now  shut up. and don't make me lobotomize you again

and you just sighed and shut your eyes against the murders

there was a certain gentle terror to the softness of your face

and i'm sure anyone else would have felt bad for you, little boy lost

but i’ve never had much sympathy for the jobs i have to do

i’m smart that way

so i set the trap and set the fire and didn’t regret a thing

and when we started to fall the world screamed like it was dying at me

even before my eyes started bleeding i knew i wouldn’t make it this time

and you just lay there bleeding right back at me

it was here that you apologized for letting me die

and i think you may have even meant it

and i said, why do you remain firm in your integrity? curse God, and die!

and you said, God, who’s that? I don’t even know you are

and i said, you’re one of the lucky ones, kid

just remember: i may be dying now but He’s going next

and you said: all right but of course you didn’t understand at all

and you watched me shrivel out into nothing and i was gone

later, i watched you take in the sunlight for the very first time

and all i wanted to do was

SCREAM.

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Chapter Text

ACT ONE

(the Many Merry Murder Attempts of Remus Tetradrachmus • Panic! At The House of the First • Virgil Has a Bad Day • Logan Has a Worse One • Five Iron Rings • the Midnight Corpse Party • Dealing With Intrusive Thots • What the Body Said • Five Months Before the Emperor's Return.)

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CHAPTER ONE

“Remus the Fourth”

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In the myriadic year of our Lord—the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the Emperor Unsleeping, Merciful Savior Of Us All!—Remus Tetradrachmus raised his hand high to the hallowed marbled ceilings of the Fourth, and prepared once more to murder his brother.

The fool himself was sitting out on the palace’s gilded balcony, completely unaware of his impending door. His rapier was thoroughly sheathed, and more than that, he was half-sitting on it; the shining polished gleam of the scabbard crushed into the couch cushions as he sprawled, languid, upon them. A new shipment of his dreadful romance fiction had arrived only the day before, and Roman was—as always—hooked like a dead-eyed fish on tales of swashbuckling heroism and cavaliers spouting lengthy, flowery, disgustingly soppy love confessions to their swooning necromancers.

Holding his breath, Remus rotated theorems in his head and thought about teeth and nails as he crept closer to the gleaming glass doors overlooking the city. An optimal position was the most important thing before he got started. Too close and he might only succeed in an embarrassing overshoot when he did burst out the double-doors; too far away and Roman might make it to his rapier in time. Neither seemed optimal! Timing was everything. Fortunately, Remus wasn’t on a schedule or anything, pfft, no, nothing so boring. He could start this caper at any which time he pleased, right now or in an hour, tomorrow or never! But also he was absolutely going to start this right motherfucking now, because why wait?

Jittery with nervous delight, Remus wiggled his still-outstretched fingers in a frenetic flutter, realized that wasn’t nearly enough wiggling, and danced a little in place—a nearly-silent tip-tap-slide of boots on the floor. He wondered briefly if he should think over the consequences of his imminent murder attempt, then dismissed doing so as entirely too boring. Fratricide with forethought was the most boring sort of fratricide, any idiot would be able to tell you that. Even Roman, dumb idiot baby brother that he was, might even agree.

Enough pondering! To work! To murder!

Remus flexed his fingers, laid them stiff and flat in the air, and got on with it.

He’d been working on the trick for a good few weeks now, and had managed to bite his tongue from bragging about it to his brother, which he’d considered to be impressive considering just how absolutely bitching of a trick it was. Trick wasn’t the right word for it, it was a downright innovation and marvel of necromancy. He was a developmental genius. A prodigy. The best of them all. It wasn’t that redirecting a living subject’s thalergy was that difficult or unresearched of a discipline, oh no—Remus had read all the lore, he knew all the dirty deets, he’d been building off that research.

No, the real trick was forcing the thalergy of a living body down and through the fingers without the subject noticing.

Out on the balcony, Roman hummed a sweet little snatch of nothing-music to himself as he reached out to turn the page of a brand-new copy of the celebrated classic nec-romance novel, Just Like Seven. Remus was now close enough to see the little colored tabs of flimsy scattered all throughout the already thoroughly-dog-eared pages, and the little pad of scribbled nonsense laid out on the couch right next to it. Probably planning some soppy recursive fiction about Mark Septalo and his stupid sexy ghost-cavalier. God knew their bedroom was half-full of the damn stuff—the other half being filled with his own, obviously superior erotica of the same source material.

They were each others’ copy editors, and each hated the job with a fierce professional passion.

Remus squinted his eyes, and flipped the logistics of flesh and bone back and forth in his head like a cat playfully batting around its squealing prey, and his brother’s fingernails began to grow. Slowly at first, as the thalergy flow pushed an establishing pathway through to the destination keratin, but then exponentially, and Remus watched it unfold with no small delight. He’d practiced on himself, of course, but there was just something incredibly magical about seeing new theories come to life on someone else. Roman was, as always, his favorite necromantic test subject, now and forever and ever and ever.

At one inch long, Roman frowned and bit his lip and pressed his forehead closer to the page, as if in bullheaded insistence that nothing was happening and he just needed to read his book a little bit harder to make certain that nothing continued to happen. This was a dumb idiot move from a dumb idiot man whose brain was smoother and shinier than the hilt of his ruby-capped sword, and Remus loved him all the more fiercely for it.

At two inches long, Roman frowned deeper, and reached up to scratch the nape of his neck. His too-long nails made contact, and he froze and the frown got deeper, like a deep-sea trench caving under pressure. He whipped his hands out front, stared at them, then hollered, “Remus!”

Drat and blast; Emperor’s tits, he’d been blown! But not really, it wasn’t the hardest mystery to crack even if your brain had been worn thin by too many Cohort romance novels, and anyway Remus wasn’t even halfway done yet. The nails kept on growing, despite Roman’s hurried frantic attempts to buff them into stillness against the couch cushions, and subsequent even more frantic attempts to bite them off with his teeth. Now they were sprouting at a truly ridiculous rate, curling and creaking all over the place, looking more like long strands of extruded stone than actual bits of human body. Three inches; four. Remus was delighted. His brother was less delighted. He couldn’t possibly imagine why.

“Remus!” Roman exclaimed again, horror mixing with fury in an exciting cocktail of emotions, better than any secondhand drug high. “For the love of the Emperor, stop messing with my natural bodily functions! Face me on equal footing, brother mine, and stop being a dick about it!”

Remus did not stop messing with his twin’s natural bodily functions, and he sure as hell wasn’t about to stop being a dick about it. Being a dick was his natural state and divine right as Duke of Onnuria and radiant heir to the Fourth House’s necromantic throne—as he so frequently proclaimed at important council meetings (to everyone’s eternal exasperation). Instead, he increased the rate of growth, and waited for the inevitable to happen.

At six full inches long, the inevitable did happen. Roman went for his sword, and couldn’t manage to get his fingers around the hilt, his fingernails being long and curled and unwieldy and really stupid-looking. Remus took a moment to laugh and point at him, before pelting forward at a dead sprint and launching himself right at the sparkling shining glass that separated them. It didn’t shatter, because it was well-made glass and they had spent good money on it, but upon his impact the doors burst outwards and he whirled like a dervish into the pale starlight of a muted Fourth morning.

His brother was on his feet now, letting out a string of elaborate curses that were not so much creative as just plain old boring. Hardly even curses at all, not enough actual curse words! Sufficiently enraged by this typical show of Roman Tetra-drear-mus being especially Tetra-dreary, Remus decided to go for the legs. He dropped to the ground, slid with a swish all across the marble ground, and seized his brother’s ankles with a cackle.

He dug his fingers in, sharp-ish, and Roman promptly kicked him squarely in the chest—he bounced back against the railing. It rattled in unhappy protest. “You’re the worst! Oh, you’re just the worst, you green-spangled excuse for a Cohort candidate! You made me lose my page, and I was just getting to the good bit, too—”

“Oh boo hoo-hoo-hoo, and many additional hoos besides,” Remus said merrily, his head ringing pleasantly as his brother’s nails continued to grow and grow and grow. “Let me play you the saddest of dirges on the world’s smallest xylobone.”

It was at this that Roman snapped twice in quick succession—first, all of his sword-hand’s nails off at once, dashing them against the ground with fierce frustration, and secondly aloud, “Ahh! You mold-dappered dolt, I just had those painted! How dare you make me chip a nail!” So saying, his now-freed hand went to his sword and with the loveliest of steel-on-steel shrieks, out it came, along with a challenging glare and a furrowed brow. “You were saying only last night how thoroughly beneath you my swordswork is—aren’t I too lowly for your attentions?”

Remus raised his hand once more, and now the pockets of secreted fat he had prepared long in advance came rolling up from beneath his sleeves to spin around his fist in whirling globby clouds of sickly off-white, like a grotesque goopy solar system around an immensely fisty star.

“Nobody is too lowly! I’ll kick anyone’s ass!” he declared, with great conviction and not a small amount of bloodlust. “I’ll kick your ass. I’ll kick the Emperor’s ass. I’ll kick my own ass if I have to! But I really must get you down in the dirt before any further ass-kicking can commence. Have at thee, coward!”

Roman sprinted at him with a snarl and Remus braced in breathless anticipation, and for a brief, glorious moment—they clashed. Roman’s ruby rapier came up in a flicker of shining silver, meeting in perfect harmony with the writhing globs of fat and tissue that spun and thrashed around his brother’s hand, and they stuck fast and held, and it was wonderful, and Remus could have stayed in that moment forever.

And then Roman brought his rapier sideways, shredding through fat and reconstituted muscle with a delicious squirm-and-squelch, and the moment and standstill both were broken. It sent the two of them staggering backwards a step, and Roman took the opportunity to trim the nails of his offhand with a quick rough swipe. Remus took the opportunity to stop stimulating the thalergical growth of said nails, because it wasn’t nearly as funny as it had been at the start, and he said, “Well?”

“To the touch,” Roman replied, eyes gleaming. “Clavicle to os coxae, and no flesh-sculpting. You’re a Fourth House scion, act like it!”

And Remus knew, then, that he would not kill his brother today. Not while the glint of proper enjoyment rang so bright and true in those shining gold-dusted dark eyes, not while he had laid the rules out like that just-like-that. Roman so enjoyed playing by the rules, having their combats set up and set out all by the book so that when there was a winner to any of their conflicts everyone would know exactly who it was. It didn’t even seem to matter that half of the time he lost spectacularly, as long as he lost by the rules. Remus would never understand this, never ever, not a single bit of it, but he’d play along anyway until he got bored.

Roman in a proper fight was never truly boring. And it was the game they knew best.

“To the touch, you absolute basic bitch,” Remus agreed, and off they went—scrapping and dueling their way along the balcony with sprightly steps and greatest of aplomb, steel against fat—casting skittering sparks and splattering globs of viscous bodily fluids all the way. At the far end, Roman found himself cornered by some exceptionally well-planned footwork from Remus, and sprang up to balance on the railing; a grinning red-sashed bird, brandishing his sword downwards for a moment before dashing with sure-placed feet to the roof of the palace.

Remus’s arms were sickeningly weak—necromancy took its sad atrophic toll, as ever—and so he let out a huff of anticipation before summarily sprouting great lengths of extraneous flesh from his wrists. Boneless, they flopped and writhed outwards, gooey skin-wrapped worms that took their sweet time to slither their way up to the rooftop and wrap around a set of ornamental spikes. He was hauled upwards like a fish on a string, flopped his noodle-armed way to a seated position, and dismissed the skin worms, severing them from his arms with a pleased little shudder.

And Roman was already there, relentless as the rain, bearing down on him with a swift downwards strike. Remus rolled sideways, deflected with a swipe of gleaming fat that sent the rapier’s tip skimming to strike the roofing. Bloodsweat trickled down his forehead but he smeared it away impatiently and lurched to his feet, hands already rising to defense. And they were upon each other once more.

High above the city, they fenced their way back and forth across the staggered gleaming roof tiles, and Roman did not stop complaining about Remus’s necromantic proclivities, not once. God only knew how he had the breath in his body to maintain conversation in the middle of a heated rooftop fight—Remus would have gasped to death in minutes. Probably a cavalier thing.

Remus raised the surface temperature of his brother’s eyeballs a degree and a half, just enough to make him blink and stumble, and even as he darted in close to press a fat-sticky finger to an exposed forearm, he was already parrying with blind fervor, and yelling at Remus to just stick to blowing up corpses like a normal necromancer.

Not that he was going to listen to his brother on that front, no more than anyone else!

Their mothers had frequently attempted to impress upon him the importance of internalizing and properly utilizing the Fourth’s necromantic methods of choice, but it had never stuck. Not properly, because he’d found his way into some much more interesting lore, and when Remus got his mind wrapped around something special, it tended to stay and fester there, like a wickedly smart tumor. Yes, of course Remus thought corpse bombs were, well, the bomb—who wouldn’t? Turning corpses into death traps was definitely one of the better magical products of their House’s lengthy military research—but also, flesh magic was where it was at. It was his jam, bread, and butter. And infinitely more useful for tormenting his brother. Some days he wished he’d been born Third.

Eventually, they spilled down off the roof—sliding down the gutters, landing knee-deep in the brown crackling grass—and fought their way through the gardens. They were spinning through rows of sad stunted shrubbery and towering marble statues, they were yelling and cackling and shouting like their lungs would never give out. But even though the fire remained, their exhaustion was mounting and endurance was quickly fading. It was Roman who landed the final touch, a glancing blow just below the curve of his collarbone that stung and bled to high hell. Remus couldn’t even be mad. It had been a good fight, and a good hit, and he was starting to run out of pocket fat anyway.

And so it was that the twins of Onnuria found themselves propped up against the great double-gates of their palace—panting heavily, feeling their muscles burn and adrenaline bubble. Passers-by, common-folk residents of the Fourth House, they were casting glances of distinct curiosity at the pair, and fair enough! For it was not every day that you saw the twin scions of the Fourth half-dead at the palace gates at each other’s hands—no, it was more like every second day, or occasionally every third. Remus had to spend some time plotting new and exciting murder attempts. Fratricide didn’t grow on trees, after all.

Roman had regained his breath much sooner than Remus, but he still remained flat on his back, gleaming eyes fixed on the sky and sweat slicking back his wild head of hair. (People often said that Remus had his brother’s eyes. Remus objected to this, because Roman was so very clearly the copycat, and a terrible thief to boot. He was the older twin, after all. Roman didn’t get his good looks from nowhere.)

“Oh yeah,” said Remus, when he’d regained his breath and stemmed the thin flow of delicious blood from his upper chest. “Nearly forgot! We’ve got mail.”

At this, Roman’s eyes brightened even further, and he turned to look at Remus. “Mail? Well, why didn’t you say before? I would have finished this much quicker—a prince must always attend to his fanmail promptly, which is what I assume this is.”

“Probably not fanmail, unless the Emperor secretly has the hots for you,” Remus said, picking at his ragged fingernails.

Roman froze and made the most hilarious of choking-on-his-own-spit noises. If he had been holding his precious sword at that moment, it would have dropped and clattered. “The Emperor? A missive from the First House?”

“A direct missive. Handwritten, I think! The House’s own ink—I chewed on some of it, wasn’t like any other House ink I’ve ever eaten.”

“You ate a missive from the First House?” Roman’s voice rose in pitch, eyes wide and fingers trembling as he sat bolt upright. “Remus—”

“Well, not all of it, just a corner. And it was paper, real paper.” Remus wilted in something like wistful fervor. “Can you imagine? I almost didn’t want to touch it at first! But I ripped it open, obviously, and read it all before you could. It’s in the drawing room, if you don’t want to hear me recite it from memory.”

Roman was now on his feet, looking visibly torn between making a mad sprint for the drawing room just to cradle a bit of the Emperor’s correspondence in his trembling fingers, and hearing every sordid bit and detail for himself right there and then. “Oh, cut the caginess, why don’t you just cut to the chase instead?—the First House! What could they want with us? Are we being recruited? Are they sending us reinforcements? Do they need—do they want—are we—?”

“Nothing boring like that. Nope, God’s giving us a booty call!” Remus said, before Roman could venture too far into the realms of utmost stupidity.

Roman’s mouth went open in scandalized outrage, then closed, then opened once more for a doubly-scandalized screech: “Remus!”

“No, really. God’s giving us a booty call. The Emperor wants new Lyctors,” Remus said, and flung himself down against the palace gates one more so he could watch every shadow dapple its way across his brother’s face as Roman’s expression froze in disbelief, astonishment—and, most importantly—pure joy. And then a flicker of suspicion, to which Remus quickly said: “Not joking! No jokes, not even the slightest hint of goof or japery! Swear on your life! He wants Lyctors, and we’ve been invited to the First House to make it happen. You know what that means?”

“It means—Remus! Of course I know what it means!” Roman scrambled to his knees, the joy overtaking him in a great gross wave. “It means we finally have a chance! It means we’re going to be recognized, it means we can finally raise the Fourth to equal footing—this is perfect!” He couldn’t seem to stop babbling, like a stupid idiot baby, the words flowing even faster than they had in the throes of combat. “This couldn’t be greater! The Cohort will finally take us, if they know we have the Emperor’s approval—”

“What? No, not that. Fuck the Cohort! I couldn’t care less about the Cohort anymore. Weren’t you paying attention? The Emperor wants Lyctors.” Remus closed his eyes in pure ecstasy, and flung his chin up to the stars, smile threatening to split his face. “It means I’m going to live fucking forever.”

*

They went inside after that, and Remus went to blast the blood away with a quick sonic shower, and Roman went to drool over the Emperor’s black-inked handwriting, which was neatly penned but not as neat as you’d expect from God himself. When Remus entered the drawing room half an hour later, shaking a furred blue robe over his bare shoulders and wondering where his matching slippers had walked off to, Roman was seated at the head of the table with his fingers pressed reverently to the dark marks of the handwritten summons. He was tracing the opening lines, the part that said, GRACIOUS GREETINGS TO THE HOUSE OF THE FOURTH, ITS REVERED LORD DUKE OF ONNURIA REMUS TETRADRACHMUS AND ITS HONORED PRIMARY CAVALIER, THE LORD PRINCE ROMAN TETRADRACHMUS, and carefully ignoring the part where Remus had ripped out a chunk of his own name and stuffed it into his mouth for the vitally important taste-testing bit of receiving any letter.

By all rights, the letter should have been addressed to their mothers, but both of them had made the mistake of going to Reston, and were therefore several months dead and so thoroughly blown to shreds that not even the Emperor himself could bring them back. Remus had gotten over this turn of events much quicker than Roman had. Roman had spent weeks sobbing to himself in his bedroom over it, and probably writing sad diary entries about it too.

“He wants us!” Roman muttered in ascending joy; the tone of one who had repeated it many times already and was no closer to believing it anyway. “He really does want us!”

“Literally already told you that,” Remus replied, folding himself into the chair opposite. “Go on, read it.”

“I’ve pored over it half a million times, are you really telling me to read it again—?”

“Read it aloud. I want to hear you stuttering over all the tricky words.”

A testament to just how star-struck and rapturous Roman was in that moment: he didn’t complain, not even a jot. Almost breathless with excitement and only a little bit tongue-tied, he proclaimed aloud:

“GRACIOUS GREETINGS TO THE HOUSE OF THE FOURTH, ITS REVERED LORD DUKE OF ONNURIA REMUS TETRADRACHMUS (insert blasphemous bite-mark here, thank you, Remus) AND ITS HONORED PRIMARY CAVALIER, THE LORD PRINCE ROMAN TETRADRACHMUS!

“Salutations upon your house, and may the marbled spires and star-drowned gardens of your palace be everlasting, your sacrifices crackling with the purest of thalergical blessings as we humbly ask for the offering of your dual services.

“The Emperor’s Hands lie outstretched before you, beseeching you to answer his loveliest of calls: a myriad years his eight Lyctors have served his humble grace, and in those passing years those eight have dwindled, and many of them lie beneath the waters of the River. He calls now out  to you, you new beautiful eight! Fresh blood is needed, as are fresh minds and fresh bodies and willing hands, and the path to Lyctorhood, after so long closed and silent, is once more open. Your Emperor Unsleeping requires you, and indeed, there is no greater honor. The first of your House we call; the first and their cavalier are called to come and kneel at the marbled steps of the Emperor’s own House to attend the finest study of all… to follow in the Emperor’s steps, to trace the lines he once drew in the sand, to walk in his willowing wake.

“Eight once stood at the foot of his House, eight once joined together with their cavaliers, and eight once ascended to the glory of the Emperor’s side; and now eight more must rise to the task. May the Necrolord Highest bless them in their quest—may they ascend to that highest honor! And if no success is to be had, he will honor them anyway, for there is no greater glory than having tried and only fallen short.

“As he loves you, may your eyes be bright.”

It was not signed, of course, but it did not need to be.

After a moment of silence, Roman said, “Well! This is all endlessly exciting, I think I’m about to vibrate myself to death with how much I am buzzing, good God.”

“I’ll put you back together,” Remus said cheerfully, reaching to take the letter back. He knew it all by heart already, but he wanted to check something. “I might do it wrong, though.”

Roman flipped him off, equally cheerfully. “I’m going to speedwalk around the palace now, and I might sprint in places, and I will break out into glorious song at random intervals as I go. Consider this your warning. I have never been happier!”

Remus limited himself to a single derisive eye roll, and as Roman took off at a delighted trot—right out the doors, fingers fluttering as he began a maniac round of the grounds—reread the Emperor’s summons once more, and then once again, and nodded. One cavalier and one necromancer from each house, it looked like, and since they’d all be setting off down the ‘path to Lyctorhood’... where were those record tablets, again?

“What are you doing?” Roman said, poking his head around the corner a short while later. He was still flushed with delight and rapturous joyful energy. The sound of him loudly trilling out a series of increasingly saccharine House showtunes could have been heard from the other side of the Fourth. “We should be training, you know! Not sitting around like a pair of benched first-weekers and staring at books and letters!”—coming from the man who’d been hooked by unrealistic romance only an hour before, and practically making out with a handwritten note mere minutes ago. Roman could always be counted on to be a delightful hypocrite when it counted.

“I know. I’m checking the records of the current other House heirs first,” Remus said, and then added, quite passionately, “I would like to know whose ass I’ll need to beat!”

“You and your asses,” Roman said, and collapsed dramatically into the chair besides Remus.

“I only have the one,” Remus said, “and it is a perfect, perfect ass, I will have you know.”

To which Roman snorted, and said, “Fourth necromancers don’t have booty or beauty, and I can’t believe you made me say that out loud. Oh, forget it. Who else is coming?”

Remus didn’t miss the way his brother’s fingers—nails meticulously trimmed back to shining neatness in the past half-hour—found their way to his wrist, a familiar nervous tic. For nearly as long as Roman had known how to read and write, there had been two bright banded loops of colored string twined around his offhand wrist. They hadn’t been battered and faded at first, but a decade and a half of wear and tear had reduced them to pale shadows of their former glory. Even so, he wore them near-religiously, and if he ever lost them Remus was fairly sure Roman would start sobbing like the stupid sentimental baby he often was.

“Yes,” Remus said with all the patience he could manage, which wasn’t a lot, “your idiot friends will be there, I can’t imagine they wouldn’t be on the list of other necromantic idiots.” He stuck his tongue out, rattled off a noisy raspberry and skimmed his finger down a short list of names as if he couldn’t care less. Remus didn’t have friendship bracelets with any of the other House heirs, not that he’d want them. They’d get all stained with fat and blood and ooze and decompose into sad stringy mush within hours. “What was it—Fifth and Sixth?”

Roman snatched the tablet from Remus’s hands with stupid lightning-fast cavalier reflexes, and found the appropriate listing with the speed of unnecessary affection for other people. “Specs for Parsecs, and Heart and Soul both, splendid, splendid!—oh, and his cav too, I suppose.”

Remus lounged sideways, head tilting towards the floor. “I thought you liked the Head Bore-den’s cav.”

“Only I’m allowed to call him that, and his cavalier is just fine; I’m talking about the other one. He cheats.”

“With other necromancers? Scandalous! Wonder if he’d cheat with me?”

“I mean in combat.” Roman’s frown lingered, and for a second, he leaned back in his chair, arms bound tightly over his chest. “His offhand is a dagger. I think he’d use two daggers if he was allowed. Sneaky and creepy…”

“What’s the matter with daggers?” said Remus, who didn’t have an opinion on daggers apart from his general opinion on all sharp pointy objects, which was an obvious hell yeah. “I like a dagger. Why not use two?”

“It’s not honorable,” Roman sniffed. “Coward’s weapon. God knows why my favorite Fifth trusts him to watch his back; he’d drive both of them right into that beautiful soft puffball’s beautiful soft spine given half the chance! He needs a better cavalier. Someone like my own good self, now that I think about it…”

“You’re not leaving me,” Remus said immediately. “Don’t you dare.”

“Of course I’m not,” Roman replied, just as immediate and a little bit wounded to boot (good, yes, that was how it should be). “I’m just saying, he could do so much better—”

Remus considered saying something nice and placating about how much the Fifth cav sucked balls and how Roman could beat him in combat with both hands and legs tied behind his back, somehow, whatever—but immediately shrugged it off. Skimmed the letter one more time, looking for hints he’d missed, any clue to what the Lyctorhood process might actually hold. It was maddeningly vague in that regard. Roman might not like cheating, but Remus adored it, and if there was any way at all he could get a leg-up on the competition before even arriving, he was going to seize it fiercely with both hands and squeeze.

“Ugh, Tris is coming,” Roman said suddenly, making the most exquisite face of outright disgust. “And Dreifach too, gross—”

Remus was immediately thrilled by this, and yanked the tablet back to check, having somehow managed to miss them on the list of names. “Stop grumbling about that, you damp fuckpuddle, it’s the perfect chance to whoop his ass!”

“You and your asses!” Roman swatted his arm, annoyed. “Curse you for making me talk about them so often. And no, it’s not a perfect chance, because he’s a frankly abominable swordsman, not even worth my time. By the many magnificent moons of the Fifth—why would the Emperor want either of them?”

“Hey, less competition for me if they both suck bones at Lyctor-ing,” chirped Remus, who had quite enjoyed sloppily making out in the bathroom with Grigori Tris, the awful Third House cavalier, at past inter-House diplomacy balls, and was quite looking forward to doing so again in the very near future. Abominable swordsman he may have been, but not a bad kisser, not at all. “Let’s see—Second House, boring, they’re going to want to play it all by the book and take charge of us like usual… oh, heard anything about the Seventh recently?”

Roman blew an annoyed huff of air with a hearty puff of both cheeks. “You know I haven’t.”

“That last necromancer of theirs, Ophelia What’s-Her-Name—”

Roman knew full well that Remus had stopped paying attention to what he considered to be the boring attendants of the inter-House meetings they had been forced to attend for the majority of their heir-etical youth, and he said, long-sufferingly but obligingly, “Septem. And no, she stopped attending when we were—what was it, it must have been sixteen?”

“The year I stabbed Logie-Bear in the forehead with a throwing star,” Remus recalled, with great fondness. “He was that close to ripping my eyes out and strangling me with my own optic nerve, do you remember? Oh, good times!”

“The year you were banned from messing with my weapons until the end of eternity, yes,” Roman said, strained. He sighed. “She didn’t look entirely well that year, poor girl—not that the Seventh ever looks well, but such a way to go. Blessings be upon her noble name, may the River treat her kindly, may she sail off sweetly into the dark and power us for years to come… Quite a duchess, such a lady. Such a terrible shame.”

“Oh, she’s totes uber dead,” Remus agrees. “Not the point, though. If she’s kicked the bucket and spilled her thalergical existence-cum all over the place—” (“Remus! Show some respect!—”) “—no, fuck you—then who’s taking her place for the trials? Have they even found a replacement?”

Roman took a moment to swallow his dumb outrage, and then frowned. “Yes. Yes, actually! They must have! Strange of them not to announce it…”

A quick glance through the other House heirs revealed a pair of Eighth names that neither of them recognized, which meant they were new blood or just not especially memorable, and…

“...Not a word from the Ninth,” Roman concluded, finger halting at the bottom of the page, where a notable absence of names lingered.

“How mysterious and sexy of them,” Remus agreed, and it was. It was so very mysterious and sexy. At least people came in and out of the Seventh House, they had a booming tourism bureau for crying out loud!—it wasn’t a completely closed book except for where the heir was concerned. But nobody had heard any word from the Ninth in nearly a decade. It was as tightly-locked as the proverbial tomb. “Forget the Seventh, I wanna see some bone cultists. Do you think they’re even going to send one?”

“God, I hope not.” Roman shuddered, because he was easily frightened by objectively cool things. “I’ve seen pictures, and those faces… they give me the creeps, the absolute heebie-jeebies. Not to mention all that black they drown themselves in! It’s so unbecoming—I could never be a Niner Nun. I mean, can you picture this beautiful, beautiful face being covered by a lace veil, and greasepaint?”

“I don’t know, it might be an improvement,” Remus said musingly, and cackled, pushing his chair swiftly back as Roman furiously drew his sword. “Round two? Bring it!”

*

Round two was swift and sweet; head-to-toe this time. Remus managed to nearly take his brother’s pinky-tip off with a well-placed blast of thanergical lightning and claim victory in his name in one fell swoop. When they were done, they arranged a quick lunch on the balcony wherein Remus tried to throw Just Like Seven off into the depths of the gardens while Roman did his furious best to stop him. The food was quite honestly an afterthought.

After Roman had retrieved his book and sat on it for safekeeping, he said, “All this aside, what do you think he wants from us? The Emperor, I mean.”

Remus scoffed. “He wants Lyctors, you ditch-faced day-school dropout.”

“But what do you suppose that means?” Roman pressed. “Attend the finest study… oh, I hope it’s not a nerd thing, that would be so disappointing; the worst. The Emperor can’t be a nerd, can he?”

“Bet he’s the biggest nerd,” Remus said, just to watch Roman’s face twist up in unhappy confusion. “He brought all of us ungrateful serfs back with pure math, that’s just pure dorkhood, he can’t be anything but!—you can ask him yourself, when you see him, and we’ll both know I’m right.”

“My god,” Roman gasped, and caught himself on the railing. “You’re not wrong, we’re—well, we’re going to meet God, aren’t we? We must be, that’s what all of this is for!” Suddenly he turned and said, quite sternly, “Do not screw this up for us. If you so much as say the word tits in his divine presence—”

“Tits, titties, boobs-boobs-penis,” Remus sang, flicking screwed up pages he’d torn out of Just Like Seven at Roman’s nose.

Roman swatted them away. “I have never been more serious.”

“Neither have I. I’m always serious about tits.” Remus took a moment to give Roman’s initial question some proper consideration—it wasn’t a half-bad thing to wonder about—idly tearing the depressingly vanilla sex scene in Chapter Eight up as he went. “Hmmgh. Hm. Well, hey, it can’t be all books and studying. Lyctors defend His Almighty Unsleeping Self against… all sorts of things, you know, whatever the hell a guy like that needs defense against. There’s got to be fighting, right?”

“Right,” said Roman, looking cautiously cheered.

“Bet we need to fight a manticore,” Remus said. “Big ol’ bone manticore with a big ol’ bone manticore boner, ‘cause it’s horny for blood.”

“Flesh chimera,” suggested Roman, eyes wide with anticipation. “Or maybe both. Maybe a—a mantichimera. Made of flesh and bone.”

Remus flicked more screwed-up pages in his direction. “That’s just a chimera twice.”

This only served to excite Roman further. “So twice the blood, twice the bones, twice the glory.”

“Remember, you go for the legs—”

“—and you crush its brain, yes!” At which point, Roman made a face and added, “I’m supposed to be the one delivering the killing blow, you know. It’s the whole point of this.”

“The point of this is that we work together, shitdick,” Remus said, and threw the last remains of the awful sex scene right at his brother’s stupid empty head, where it bounced off and fell sadly to the floor. “Can’t do this without you, and even the Emperor agrees—didn’t you read what it says? They want both of us.”

Roman’s teeth shone in the starlight, and his breath crystalized into swirling afternoon mist as he breathed out and then in, then said, “One flesh, one end.”

“One flesh, one end,” Remus agreed, and they clasped their hands together over the table in one of those brief shows of cavalier-necromancer affection that Roman was so keen on. And now Remus could feel every pulse and pump of blood running through his brother’s veins, could measure the push and pull of life as it rushed through his body in unending waves—and that, more than the oath, more than anything else in the Systems; that reassured him. And he smiled back.

It had always been the plan to leave and prove their worth elsewhere, even though the universe seemed hell-bent on keeping them solidly on Fourth-House soil for the rest of their lives. They’d first enlisted to the Cohort at thirteen, but the Cohort never did like heirs signing up, and had brandished all number of excuses to keep them away over the years. And then their mothers had gone all kaput and blammo and after that it was all administration and House maintenance and keeping things in line, which was completely the worst.

But no House bureaucracy could stand in the way of the Emperor himself, and Remus knew it, and Roman knew it, and once they starting flaunting this letter around the rest of the Fourth, everyone and their cavalier would know it too. The ultimate deus ex machina, the perfect escape.

“Three months until the Emperor comes and whisks us away to immortality!” Roman exclaimed, releasing his grip on Remus’s, and he rocked back in his chair, delighted. “So far away, and yet—not so very far at all!”

Three months was plenty of time to perfect the nail-growing trick, Remus decided. There was absolutely no question of him achieving Lyctorhood the moment he knew what it entailed, but other things were far less certain. And if his brother hated the Fifth cavalier that much, well—the least he could do was make that guy’s potential butt-scratching just a bit more dangerous.

The game was soon to be afoot—and when it came to games, Remus always won.

*

Chapter Text

CHAPTER TWO

“Roman the Fourth”

*

Roman Tetradrachmus could safely and fairly state with utmost certainty: the most annoying sound in all of the Nine Houses was his brother on a shuttle.

It had started with the complaining stage. It always started with the complaining phase. Remus was an unparalleled master of complaining, he did it all the time, but in space he took it to a fine art. He complained in the manner of one composing the finest of masterpieces, each curse and insult against the universe as a whole another brushstroke in his portrait of misery. Five minutes after the shuttle departed the Fourth, literally only five minutes in the air and blasting through the planet’s stratosphere, and he was already lying flat on his back and making his unhappiness vocally clear. He was composing sonnets about how much he hated interplanetary travel, composing them in iambic tetrameter. The meter and rhyme of it all was technically perfect, but that didn’t stop it from being awful, awful poetry.

He had been fine when they’d first departed. They had loaded all of their belongings onto the shuttle bright and early, the moment it had arrived. Roman had (of course) packed well in advance, but it was astounding the amount of things you would remember you’d forgotten to pack at the last minute, so there was a lot of panicked yelling and running back and forth on his part.

Remus, on the other hand, had left it all to the last minute. When Roman had yelled at him that it was time to leave, he’d only stuffed a bunch of body parts and miscellaneous viscera into one satchel, stuffed a bunch of clothes and miscellaneous possessions into another, hiked one across each shoulder, and declared himself ready to go. He’d even looked eager at the prospect, which only went to show that his memory for things that made him unhappy was shorter than his capacity for expressing genuine affection.

And now he was where he always was during these trips; curled up in the provided pile of planetary dirt in the corner of the lounge, and inventing many new creative slurs to be directed at the engineers who’d built the shuttle in the first place. Because all necromancers had one unfortunate universal built-in weakness: scoop them off a planet, take them into space, and they weren’t necromancers anymore. They were just skinny sacks of nothing with more bone atrophy and muscular decay than you could shake a gem-encrusted sword at, and they didn’t even have the power over life and death to make up for it.

Roman couldn’t imagine how it must feel to be that powerless. Even when he didn’t have his sword at his side, which was practically never, he kept well enough in shape and knew enough self-defense that he could hold his own in even the most undignified and un-princely of schoolyard scraps. The mere thought of having that innate, natural ability taken away from him… he could hardly imagine it, and his imagination was very, very good.

And although his brother’s moaning and mumbling and complaining over a complete lack of necromantic ability was, yes, indescribably annoying and the sort of thing that got old, fast… within an hour, it had faded away into a pale, shaky almost-silence, where the words Remus were saying were few and far between, and still utterly filthy but devoid of any actual enthusiasm. He looked sick and he looked wrong, and he looked like if he could reach out and physically drag a planet closer so he could sink into its comforting deathly gravitational pull for the rest of his life, he absolutely would.

Remus rarely ever admitted weakness, and hardly ever showed it outwardly. The last time Roman had seen him anywhere near to how he looked now was when they’d received the news of their mothers’ deaths. Seeing him like this always did something awful to his insides, made them go all twisty and squirming like Remus had been poking around within his stomach again. It made him want to go huddle next to his brother in the dirt, throw an arm around him—squeeze him close and tell him that everything was going to be all right; one flesh one end, cross his heart and hope to explode in a corpse bomb on the glorious fields of battle.

Remus wouldn’t appreciate that, though, not even a little. So Roman kept quiet against the foul indistinct mutterings of his brother, and watched the planets of the Nine Houses slide by in a series of brightly-strung jewels against the inky blanket of the void.

It wasn’t the first time that they’d taken a shuttle to another House, not the second time, nor even the twentieth. He and Remus, as House Heirs—Heir and Cavalier Primary, fine—frequently attended lavish parties and gatherings where the company was leagues better than the food and they finally had a chance to wear their proper house uniform, in glorious stripes of white and blue. It was always a treat and almost always a delight.

Admittedly, they’d never gone as far as the House of the First. Usually it was a ten-minute jaunt a planet or two over, to spend time in the dusty Fifth or occasionally the Third. Roman had never so much as seen the First House, although he’d read many descriptions of it, lush and glowing. Apparently it was primarily water, and such beautiful water, too—Roman only ever had the palace swimming pool to splash around in as a child, which was only as big as the relatively tiny room it was crammed into. An entire planet of swimming pool was nearly beyond belief! But it was so far away—and, Roman was beginning to realize, an entire planet of water might not be enough to make up for the several hours the trip had so far taken.

No wonder Remus wanted to be a Lyctor so badly—that was one thing, among many, that Lyctors had going for them. They didn’t need to worry about space stripping them of their talent. No-one had seen or heard from the Emperor’s chosen hands and gestures for hundreds of years, and their names were thoroughly lost to time, but the rumors and tales remained. Legendary endurance, regeneration without a second’s thought about it, not to mention the awesome necromantic feats that they were rumored to have pulled off, back in the days when the Emperor’s enemies were myriad and the System was constantly under attack.

It was almost beyond belief that the time had come for more Lyctors to rise. It was almost completely, absolutely and totally beyond belief that Remus had been called to the task, and Roman along with him! These were the days that legends were made of. He was jittery with nerves and glittery with delight, and kept furiously flip-flopping between standing with his hands pressed to the shuttle external window, and pacing excited loops around the small passenger cabin.

“Do you know, I actually do hope it won’t be all monster-slaying and skeleton-summoning,” he said, about halfway through the trip. “I know, I know, hard to imagine! But imagine further, this is the first time any of us will be together without ceremony to dictate us! We can just… talk! And spar, and wander, and perhaps even take a gentle nap in each others’ presence, if the fancy takes us—”

“Yes, yes, you love your stupid little friends,” Remus groaned into the little patch of Fourth dirt he’d been half-burying himself in for the duration of the journey so far. “You want to mutter sweet nothings into their stupid little ears, you want to have their stupid little babies all night long. I get it. Go find another planet to do it on, the First is fuckin’ mine.”

“Don’t be crass,” Roman sniffed, drawing a hand to his chest. “Although I will freely admit that they are both deeply attractive—not as attractive as my good self, granted, but certainly up there—I would only kiss them if they asked me to.”

Remus’s eye-roll was audible even though his face was quite firmly planted in the soil. “Warden Witless doesn’t know what kissing is. The only making-out he’s doing is making out the shapes of ancient forgotten runes—”

Roman aimed a kick at his back, too far away to actually make contact. Remus began to make muted kissy-kissy noises into the ground that Roman supposed were meant to represent the noises that one might make if engaged in amorous dalliance with a pile of flimsy documents. They were surprisingly recognizable noises, and unsurprisingly disgusting.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t entirely wrong. Logan was a notorious workaholic, and wouldn’t recognize a romantic overture if it barged into his office and slammed a sixty-scroll treatise on the nature of romantic overtures onto his desk. And although Roman could easily see Patton being happy to exchange tender touches and gentle kisses all night long, his dreaded black-clad cavalier would take that as an invitation to start stabbing. More’s the pity, he thought, and rolled his eyes.

They’d known each other forever; since Roman could barely lift a sword, so long that Roman couldn’t recall with clarity the first time they’d actually met. Probably some Cohort gala, if he had to guess—that was how most of his inter-House meetings went. Roman and Patton had got on like a House on fire from the very start. Logan had been utterly infuriated by the two of them at first, but quickly realized that every other frequent attendant of these galas was even worse. Wary tolerance had given way to a gradual acceptance, and then a long period of handwritten correspondence over many forms of literature and poetry. (Roman had challenged Logan to a poetry battle once. Just once. And once was enough.)

Lately, most of their interactions had been through letters. As it turned out, growing up and becoming entrenched in the position of House Heir brought with it all sorts of delightful benefits, such as ‘no more inter-House birthday parties’ and ‘no more weekend trips to the Fifth’ and ‘responsibilities’. And Roman missed his friends. He wasn’t so needy and desperate as to be completely useless and listless without them, but spending all of his time training was gruelling, and even tussling with his brother all throughout the empty palace of the Fourth was beginning to become a bore.

Only a few short letters had been exchanged between them since the invitation to the First—in the case of Patton, short but excited, confirming that he was indeed coming, although he wasn’t sure how much use he’d be as a Lyctor. He’d also mentioned that his cavalier said hi and was excited to see all of them too, which Roman knew was blatantly untrue.

In the strange case of Dr Heckled and Mr Scribe, Roman had been the beleaguered recipient of a massive speculative dissertation essay on the possible paths to Lyctorhood. It was a deeply enthusiastic but completely incomprehensible work of academia. Roman had made it about two pages in before his eyes had begun to glaze over. He’d ripped the middle section in half, skipped to the last page, and hoped hard that there wouldn’t be a pop quiz in the middle of the Lyctorhood trials.

Roman was so thoroughly lost in ponderance of letters, essays, and nostalgic gala romps that he only belatedly realized what was now clearly in sight, as their shuttle swung around to file its way into planetary orbit. For a second, he was lost for words—and then he cleared his throat, looking over at his brother.

“You’ll want to see this,” Roman said, and meant it.

Remus—cursing and moaning and growling up a furiously pathetic storm—rose shakily from his dirt-patch, and staggered his rumpled way to the viewing window. He collided loudly with the wall, made appropriately questionable noises, used it to brace himself upwards, and glared out at the view ahead.

Roman saw out of the corner of his eye that the glare slowly softened into something that was unmistakably wonder, but he didn’t spend too much thought on it. He was fairly busy gazing in wonder himself.

The First House defied every lush and glowing description Roman’s books had seen fit to bestow upon it, and put all other planets to shame. Wreathed in candyfloss strings of silky white cloud cover, it hung there in the brightness of far-off Dominicus—a gleaming stone of marbled blue-and-green that seemed so perfectly formed that it was a wonder nobody had palmed it gently, slipped it into their pocket, and cleanly made off with it.

Remus’s eyes were watery when Roman looked to see his reaction, and he hurriedly dragged his dirt-stained fingers against them, muttering, “Too fuckin’ bright, someone go and kill the light already.”

Roman was teary-eyed too, and not just because of the proximity to Dominicus—although the proximity was definitely a part of it. The Fourth was light years from its warmth, and the sudden increase in light intensity was both startling and mildly terrifying. “Remus, this is where it all started. This is where we came from.”

Remus smudged his eyelids with dirt again, and scoffed. “We were born in a vat of chemical slop about a million million miles yay direction, try again.”

“Oh, come on. Cynicism is so Eighth of you, would just a spoonful of optimism hurt you that much?” Roman’s eyes were still streaming from the brightness, but he narrowed his eyes against it and forced himself to keep looking. Now, he could see the rest of the shuttles beginning to swarm into formation. There were seven of them within sight now, the last of them falling into alignment with a smooth little shifting of trajectory, and once they were all arrayed along the curve of the First’s horizon, they hung there—waiting for the external command to enter the atmosphere and descend into the bright silky streaks of cloud.

They were all identical—the same sleek, sturdily efficient build as their own; quite possibly newly-manufactured on the Emperor’s orders for this very task! And because they were all identical, it was impossible to tell which was which. Roman squinted, straining his eyesight, and tried to make out figures behind the far off gray-tinted windows. He couldn’t even manage to see into the closest of the shuttles. His friends were there somewhere, nearenough that if they were on solid ground he could sprint across to meet them within a matter of minutes. But as it was, he was stuck in this damnable shuttle, trapped like a ghost in a stalling tin can until they were allowed down to the planet’s surface!

He fancied that the latest-arriving ship was Patton’s—the heir of the Fifth had a tendency to show up late to parties, down to a combination of endearing forgetfulness and his cavalier’s less-endearing habit of double, triple and quadruple-checking every possible and impossible disaster scenario before even allowing him to step through a building’s front doors—but he had no way of knowing for sure. He’d just have to wait, and Roman had never been a huge fan of delayed gratification.

He hummed to himself, tapping out a rhythmic little beat against the plex glass, and continued to gently vibrate in endless excitement. Eight ships! Meaning that either Houses Two-through-to-Nine were all present, or someone was missing and the Emperor himself had decided to show up! Roman could not for the life of him decide which was more exciting.

“Stop tapping on the glass or I’m going to rewire your fingers so you can only flip people off with them,” Remus groaned, once again face-down in the dirt patch.

Roman very nearly flipped Remus off reflexively before realizing that would be proving some sort of point that he definitely didn’t want to prove. He cast another glance to the silent-and-still shuttles outside. “Well, we should be heading down soon. They’re probably just… running last-minute checks! Making sure our shuttle is the first down. Preparing the red carpet for our glorious arrival—that sort of thing. Don’t worry!”

“Who’s worried? I’m not worried,” Remus scoffed, though he sounded exhausted and thoroughly wrung-out. “I’m counting down the seconds until I can strangle you with your own eyelashes. It’ll be any second now, and then I’m going to be down there—” A vague gesture in the direction of the First House. “—and I will spring the fuck out of the shuttle, passionately make out with the sweet sweet dirt of home sweet necromantic home, and then you’re gonna become Eyelash Rapunzel unless you stab me quick enough.”

Roman knew his brother backwards and forwards, and this was an entirely serious threat. He wouldn’t have minded but for the very real possibility that God Himself might be there to witness all of it. He cleared his throat, reluctantly began to turn away from the viewing window, and said, “All right. Remus. Now that we’re almost there, I think we should talk—”

Remus had raised a hand to mimic a mouth and already commenced making mocking little myah nya nya noises along with Roman’s pre-planned speech, when the fourth shuttle along from theirs suddenly and unceremoniously exploded.

Roman was half-facing away, so he only caught it out of the corner of his eye—but the sudden intensity of it was enough to nearly blind him. It was certainly enough to shut both him and Remus up abruptly, and in the scant few seconds between seeing and processing, the shockwave had already begun to travel outwards.

“Ohh shit,” Remus breathed, in the process of scrambling to his feet—

And then the blast hit, and everything flipped.

For a weightless eternity, it was chaos, and Roman couldn’t for the life of him work out what was happening. And then his mind cleared, and he realized that the blast or the debris or something had struck their shuttle, and smoke was thick in the air, and they were currently in the process of traveling downwards, not that down had much of a meaning around here, very very fast, which meant that—

Through the viewing window, the curve of the First House’s gorgeous blue-dappled horizon loomed. And it was looming closer and closer with each passing second.

These shuttles were unpiloted—it was just the two of them onboard. All of the navigation was either pre-programmed or remotely-operated, and whichever of the two it happened to be, it was struggling pitifully with the unexpected course change. A ferocious jolt, and Remus’s dirt patch went scattering all over, kicking up clouds of gray that made Roman cough and splutter. And there wasn’t even any time to worry about that. In the next second, the two of them were thrown flat against the glass window, pressed awkwardly against its quickly-heating surface—then the shuttle rolled, and they were flung towards the other end of the ship. Alarms started wailing, metal-on-metal howls cascading over each other, over the sound of the engine running overtime, over the sound of everything not tied down slamming from one side of the shuttle to the other as they dipped and wove and flipped end-over-end.

“What the fuck?! What the fuck!” Remus was shrieking at the top of his lungs, helping matters not a jot. “Did you see that? Did you see that? It just, shit, it just went up! Whose ship was that?”

“Does it matter!” Roman was making a valiant attempt to claw his way up to the small comms system at the front of the cabin, but the acceleration was making him dizzy, the force dragging him back against the far wall with relentlessly insistent fingers. “Controls! A shuttle like this, it must have secondary controls, in case of an emergency—”

“Dumbass!” Remus roared. The smoke was quickly growing too thick to see through, but in flashes Roman made out the stick-figure heap of his brother, sprawled painfully out on the floor—or maybe a wall or a ceiling, not that any of that mattered right now. “You don’t know how to pilot a shuttle!”

“Well, what is the alternative!” Roman howled back, and there was no speaking after that as he threw himself up the length of the cabin with a mighty heave and a smoke-choked gasp of exertion. His grip found its place on something, and as Roman dragged himself up by his fingertips, he realized it was a chair, a fixed-in-place seat for someone facing the small control panel that he’d been reaching for.

He was being flicked furiously this way and that, and he felt entirely like their twelfth-birthday pinata, the one that he had hacked to shreds with his shiny new sword before their mothers had explained they were meant to take turns. It seemed it would be only seconds until he’d come apart entirely, and he couldn’t afford to let it happen. Remus was in the back of the shuttle, pressed miserably against the floor without a drop of power in his body, and he was completely and utterly reliant on Roman. He’d made the oath for his brother, taken it once and repeated it over and over, until it burned deeper in his body and his bones than his very soul. He sure as hell wasn’t going to start letting Remus down now, when he needed it most.

Hand-over-hand, agonizingly slow and warp-speed both at once, and Roman was in the seat, trying to steady and brace himself as the ship whirled and flipped sickeningly around him and he choked on increasingly foul air. Through the haze, he tried to find his way around the comms panel.

The comms system itself wasn’t working—or maybe it was, but it was rendered inaudible by the cacophony of the crashing shuttle, so, useless either way. There were secondary controls, but he didn’t understand any of them—no simple wheel, no reins to pull this way and that. Roman slammed his hand down on buttons that did nothing, and then on buttons that made the alarms blare louder, and he cried out, “Please! Please! Please, just—” and he didn’t even know who he was yelling out to. There was no space or stars left in sight, just the wide expanse of the First as they carved a violent slash through the hazy atmosphere and soft streaky clouds, all the way down to their deaths.

Far behind him, Roman realized that his brother was praying, which was something he hadn’t heard for a long time. That holy litany was unmistakable, even garbled, and as Roman pawed pointlessly at a set of secondary controls that were utterly alien to him, he found himself whispering the words alongside him. A prayer to the King Undying, to the ransomer and scourge and vindicator of death. May our deaths be good and just, may every soul serve the adept divine even when their passing has passed—

The weight of the oncoming impact was dragging at the skin of his face, forcing his eyes closed and his teeth solidly into each other. He could not speak the words anymore and could not hear Remus praying, but they were ringing in his brain even so.

The world outside the shuttle window was smoke and fire and endless amounts of blue. So much blue; rich and deep, stretching out so far and so wide that the mind refused to comprehend. For a second, that long, long second before final impact, Roman stopped struggling so hard to live. He forgot to pray. He forgot the absolute grief that Remus would never make it to be a Lyctor and he would never make it to stand by his brother’s side—that he’d never write another letter to his very best friends or receive one in return, and he would never again raise his most splendid of swords high to the stars and proclaim an overwhelming victory. None of that mattered, because Roman had never seen a blue like that before, and he was thoroughly overcome.

He just sat there with his fingers pressed bone-white to the controls and his eyes glued to the window, and he looked at the water. And he thought, that’s what an ocean is meant to look like? And he considered this for a long moment, and realized that it was beautiful, one of the best things he’d ever seen, and he thought, all right, then. A fine place to die. I’m content.

There was one last thought—I’m glad Remus is with me. I wouldn’t want to do this alone.

And then the shuttle crushed itself into the ocean, and the impact tore itself through his body like fingers ripping their way through his corpse, and Roman was gone.

*

And then Roman was drowning. The shuttle was in pieces around him, cracked apart and splintering in the tide like a dropped teacup, and he was sinking, his uniform soaked through and brined and dragging him all the way to the bottom. His eyes were open, and they stung, and he wanted to shut them but he loved the blue so fiercely he couldn’t bear to.

The water was hot. He was sinking. He almost drew in breath, but his brain started screaming at him, insisting that he should absolutely not do that, which seemed strange enough that he started to strain himself back towards reasonable conscious thought. It was almost impossible; his head was weightless and wooly, the pressure was crushing his ears, and the light far above him was retreating, giving way to solemn soft blueness.

And then, through blurry eyes, he saw the unmistakable bedraggled figure of his brother, paddling his way through the water with his necromantic robes clumping and bunching all around him. There was some kind of long tube extending all the way from his mouth, trailing upwards to the overwhelming light. His fingers were grasping outwards towards Roman, and behind the tube he was mouthing something furious and no doubt horribly explicit.

Everything clicked back into focus.

His lungs were burning, but taking a breath would be the last mistake he’d ever make. He clasped a hand to his side—his sword was there, good —and kicked upwards, legs shakier than expected, following Remus’s flailing, inelegant path. It was grueling, to say the least. Several times he thought he might give up and finish up the job of drowning for real, but then he remembered that his brother was higher in the water than he was. A competitive second wind promptly kicked in and gave him the strength to power through, casting broad furious strokes through the water in Remus’s wake.

They breached the surface, almost at the exact same time, and the sudden absence of underwater silence was like a scream to his ears. There were crashing waves, and there were wailing alarms somewhere in the distance, and far away someone was yelling, and none of that mattered over the sound of his own breathing as he furiously gasped in air.

“—going to just lie there and drown?” was the first thing he heard from Remus’s mouth as he ripped that fleshy tube away from his face and flung it into the water. “What kind of useless-ass cavalier do you think you are; you’re supposed to be the one saving me!”

The wreckage of their shuttle was far beneath them, drifting into inky blue unreachable void—all of Roman’s clothes and journals and all of his very favorite boots, gone forever—but he couldn’t think about that. His throat was rough, the air was wet and sour around them, and the water was thoroughly boiled with the heat of the crash, too hot on his overheated skin. His mind was racing and his heart was pounding and he wasn’t sure how much longer either of them could tread water, but first things first—“Was that a trachea? That had better not be yours!”

“It’s someone else’s!” Remus snapped, uncharacteristically unhappy about it. “I don’t know whose!”

“How do you not know whose—”

“There’s, like, five dead people all around here, one floated up right next to me and what else was I going to do with the body; I had to get to you!”

Roman’s complaints cut off. “Five?”

“Yeah—oh, shit, I don’t know, maybe more?—at least five, I felt them go—Ro, that was all of the shuttles. They all crashed!”

Complete terror gripped Roman’s soul, and he scanned the surroundings wildly, taking it all in for the first time. There were the bodies that Remus had mentioned, the two closest drifting through the water in glorious Second House red-and-white. Beyond them, a shuttle smoked and steamed, bubbling as it sank beneath the waves. Beyond that, yet another was so fractured, bits of its debris floating wildly across the rocking tide, that it was almost unrecognizable. Remus was right. This wasn’t just one freak accident of a shuttle mishap, a comparatively small tragedy that took out a single House’s heir. This was all of them.

Beyond the chaos, Roman could see the capitol island of the First rising from the thrashing waves—a gleaming white iridescent spire of floors on top of floors, twisting up in layers of terraces teeming with overgrown ivy. It was a sight for sore eyes, it was even more glorious than the Palace of the Fourth, it was an architectural wonder! It was within reach. It was just far enough away that Roman wasn’t sure his brother would be able to make it—and, shamefully, he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to carry Remus and swim.

Smoke was rising from the lowest of the terraces, the one that seemed flush with the ocean. Quite a lot of smoke. Maybe all wasn’t starshine and roses on the First’s capitol palace either—but getting there was a better option than staying here and treading water, that was for sure.

Remus had already begun to make drowning-animal progress towards the island, but he was clearly struggling. Even as Roman regretfully shed his outer coats, heaving an arm under his brother to keep him afloat, he was nearly certain that they weren’t going to make it.

There were figures on the lowest terrace, many of them—all moving around at rapid pace, partially obscured by the smoke and flame. He coughed and waved, and yelled, “Here! Anyone care to lend a prince a hand? I would not be opposed to some assistance!”

The indistinct figures seemed to take notice. As Roman kept on watching, he saw one of them shed their long overcoat and take a running dive into the water, immediately resurfacing and making a surprisingly swift beeline right for the two of them.

“About goddamned time,” Remus wheezed, flopping around like an oiled-up eel against the roiling tides. “Since apparently we have to be rescued like a pair of stupid drowning babies, babies soaked in brine, pickled babies—”

The indistinct figure was no longer indistinct, and was in fact quite close to the two of them. He surfaced right by them with a huff and a splash, and spat out, “Stop talking about pickled babies.”

“But they’re the tastiest sort,” cooed Remus.

His dark hair was plastered over his face, giving his perpetual furiously surly expression a bonus hint of Wet and Pathetic, although he always looked a bit Angrily Pathetic anyway. He was a man of anger and patheticness, and Roman knew this because the two of them had been at furious odds ever since Patton had taken him on as a cavalier.

“I can’t believe I’m actually happy to see you, emo nightmare,” Roman gasped, surrendering half of Remus’s dead weight to their unexpected savior—small and slight, but deceptively so. For nearly everything about the Fifth cavalier was untrustworthy like that, even his appearance. Not that Roman was speaking ill of the man currently preventing them from drowning! Totally not, that would be completely uncalled for. It was just that, well…

“I’m saving you and you’re insulting me?” snapped Virgil Cinque, who seemed just as unhappy about the situation as he always was. He wrenched Remus’s arm over his shoulder. “Fucking typical. Shut up and swim.”

*

Chapter Text

CHAPTER THREE

“Virgil the Fifth"

*

On one hand, the opportunity to become a Lyctor was unmatched in prestige and likely the highest honor Virgil Cinque’s best friend would ever achieve. Even if he didn’t pass the tests or trials or whatever dumb necromancy crap they were planning on putting him through, it’d be enough renown and glory to ensure they didn’t need to worry about anything for the rest of their respective lives. Patton could retire early from the daycare, stop chatting with murderous ghosts on the regular, and stop being so stressed all the time. They could share a nice cozy apartment on the outskirts of Oiktirmos Court, only occasionally clashing opinions over things like the color of the wallpaper. This could be their big break into normalcy.

On the other hand, Virgil had been entirely fucking correct when he’d suggested that the two of them just stay home, forget about the whole thing, and not even think about going anywhere near the absolute deathtrap that was a bunch of necromancers competing for immortality. There was no other way this could have gone, and now everyone was completely fucking dead. Go figure!

Their shuttle had been furthest away from the explosion, so they hadn’t gone too far off course, but it had still clipped the edge of the landing dock when they’d come down. Virgil had been forced to fight a frantic battle with the door to get his necromancer out of the gradually-sinking shuttle before it had all gone up in fire and flames. And now the two of them were sprawled out on cool white tiles, being sprayed with a fine salty sea mist, and Virgil was trying not to lose his goddamned mind. This was the sort of thing he was always worried about happening, regardless of the odds. But the sorts of things he worried about weren’t supposed to actually happen. Right next to him, Patton murmured something soft and horrified about his favorite stuffed animal, and Virgil fought the urge to grab his shoulders and yell at him about how losing his possessions was the least important part of this, they could have died.

“All of the shuttles went down,” he said instead, and cupped a hand over his eyes, rolling onto his back and glaring out towards the horizon. It was so much brighter here than on the Fifth, and he generally preferred the dark and gloom anyway. His eyes were going to burn right out of their sockets before he got anything done. He had way too much to get done. “I think I see—most of them hit the water? Pat, can you see—”

Patton was shaking his head, pressing himself to his feet. “I can’t see anyone. Oh no, do you think we might be the only survivors-?”

Virgil didn’t want to think about that. “Let’s… up to the house, let’s get up there, weren’t there supposed to be staff to welcome us?”

Patton stumbled to a halt upon the shining white dock, and breathed out, “Oh gosh.”

Whether this oh gosh was down to the downright ethereal beauty of the huge-ass mansion they had crashed in front of, or the fact that two—two, count them—shuttles had driven two massive smoking craters right in the middle of the gorgeously-tiled bottom terrace, and were currently in the process of bursting into flames and exploding… Well, it was hard to tell. Sometimes Patton’s priorities weren’t as in-place as they should be.

At nearly that exact moment, a tall man in opalescent robes that glinted rainbow-white hurried down the shining marble steps of the mansion house and towards them. His face was quite pale, and was formed in a way that seemed ripe for smiling—although he was not smiling at all right now. In fact, he seemed quite distressed as he said, “Lord above, are you quite all right?”

“Does it look like it?” Virgil snapped, over Patton’s muttered, half-shocked, oh, we’re fine, actually, but do you think—“All of the House shuttles crashed—do you have a boat or something? We should get out and see who’s still alive. If anyone’s still alive.”

“No, no transport,” said the robe-clad man, whose appearance rang the vaguest of distant bells in Virgil’s head as some sort of First priest, although it was super not the time to be wondering about that. “The constructs may be able to help, I’ll gather them.”

“Do that,” Virgil said, his heart hammering. His thoughts were going in every direction. He wanted to shove Patton in the direction of the steps and tell him to get inside the house, away from any potential explosions—but he knew from experience that his necromancer wasn’t likely to listen. “The shuttles on the dock, we’ve got to put them out—ah, shit, um, uh—extinguishers, do you have any extinguishers? Some sort of hose?”

“Virge, c’mon, breathe,” Patton muttered, hand finding its way to Virgil’s sopping-wet sleeve. “It’s not gonna do us any good if you pass out, right?”

“Right. Right.” Virgil vaguely recalled some breathing exercises he’d read about once, tried to put them into practice, and almost instantly gave up. He could work through the choking adrenaline. He did his best work while having panic attacks. “Get the constructs. Go get them. Do it. Can they swim?”

“Well, they don’t need to breathe,” said the priest thoughtfully.

“You know what; good enough,” said Virgil, and sprinted up the steps to get to a higher vantage point. Everything seemed to blur into action around him. The pale priest scurried back into the shining white building, and moments later re-emerged with a large cohort of walking skeletons clattering to attention all around him—carrying buckets, fire extinguishers, nets, long lengths of rope, the like. Virgil would normally spare a moment to shudder at the sight of so many bone constructs in one place, but he was pretty sufficiently distracted as he noticed two struggling figures bobbing some distance away—waving and yelling.

The bone constructs were beginning to put out the burning shuttles, dragging up great bucketfuls of water and clambering up its side to douse the smoking fuselage.

Patton said, “Roman, I think that’s Roman! Doesn’t that look like Roman, him and his brother?” He seized Virgil’s arm pleadingly, and added, “I think they might be in trouble—”

Virgil growled, shook off the hand, and tore off his coat, unbuckling his sheath and throwing it and his dagger down alongside it. Sometimes he hated how much he cared about Patton. “Fine! I’ll go save Princey. He’d better be grateful about it or I swear to god—”

“I’ll make him write you a thank-you note,” Patton said, and somehow managed to make it sound like the least-sarcastic promise Virgil had ever heard. He added, “There’s someone in the water over there, I’m going to get help, try and drag them out! Good luck swimming, don’t have a stroke, okay?”

“Wait, don’t—” But Patton was already gone, leaving his godawful pun hanging in the air behind him, and Virgil didn’t have the time to argue with him and rescue Prince Pratface and his bonehead brother. So he just turned and dove into the water, hoping to get this over with as soon as possible.

As it turned out, Roman himself wasn’t seriously hurt—it was his brother busy playing the dead weight here, which made sense. Remus Tetradrachmus was a professional nuisance, and wouldn’t allow himself to be dragged along through the water quietly, oh no. He was a bastard and a brat about it, and multiple times Virgil considered leaving him to drown and also laughing about it. The catharsis would be incredible, he thought, even if the guilt might heartily outweigh it later.

The only consolation about this situation was that Roman seemed just as irritated with his brother as Virgil was. Remus finally shut up when Roman threatened full manicures on him (every day, for a month), and allowed himself to be towed through the water back to the dock without another word.

Virgil managed to squirm his way back up onto the terrace, a horribly undignified full-body-flop accompanied by a wet squelch. At least Roman had to do the same, with no more dignity than him. They each seized one of Remus’s hands, and succeeded in yanking him all the way up. There was a livid bruise forming over the scraggly necromancer’s right eye, and he almost immediately began coughing viciously. He didn’t look great—Roman didn’t seem much better—but at least they were still alive, and Virgil’s favor to Patton was officially fulfilled and complete. Next time he’d let the twin idiots drown together.

Virgil took a moment to fall back, lie flat on the ground, and regret his life choices. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Patton, accompanied by a trio of skeletal constructs, had flung a rope far out into the water, and was currently heaving at it with a vengeance. A mess of tangled black robes was busy drowning in the roiling waves, and seemed to be clinging to the end of the rope for dear life.

The skeletons were doing most of the physical work—Patton had no physical strength to speak of, claiming he saved all of his limited endurance for giving exceptionally great hugs—but he seemed determined to provide assistance for the person clinging to the other end of the rope anyway; yelling encouragement and digging his heels into the marble as he heaved his weight backwards.

Virgil sat up, reluctantly. Patton and his makeshift skeleton crew finally managed to tug their burden the last painful lengths, and a dark-gloved hand fumbled its way onto the terrace. Within seconds, multiple bony arms had reached out to assist, and then there was a bedraggled heap of dark clothes spluttering helplessly on the tiles. Patton hurried over to help the heap up, and a head emerged from it. The salt water had melted away the intricate skull-patterned design painted over his olive skin, giving him a ghastly appearance, like his bones were melting over his face.

And now Virgil really did shudder. This wasn’t good news at all. He’d never seen the man before in his life, but the greasepaint, bone-handled sword and the head-to-toe blacks were unmistakable. This was not just a goth with poor timing, or an emo with bad swimming skills. This was an entire soaking-wet nun, in the flesh, but mostly bone.  It seemed that the Ninth House had decided to show their creepy bony faces after all—although at this point it seemed impossible they weren’t deeply regretting it.

This was their cavalier accounted for, but the accompanying necromancer was nowhere to be seen. Virgil couldn’t help but watch, fascinated, as the short nun scrubbed a hand across his face, smearing the skull design even further, sending it dripping down his chin and onto his robes. And what was wrong with his eyes? Virgil wasn’t close enough to see, but the mental alarm bells were going off like cannons.

“Well, shuttle crashes aren’t great, I wouldn’t wreck-ommend them! You don’t look like you were having a good time,” Patton was saying, hovering nervously above the Ninth. “You doing all right there, kiddo?”

“Just peachy,” wheezed the shadow cultist, and Virgil’s skin crawled at the sound of his voice, low and soft and crawling with dust. He said, “That’s what I get for never learning to swim, I suppose,” and Patton laughed at that, and Virgil hurriedly turned away to assist Roman in pounding on his brother’s back. The sudden wave of reflexive fury at the sight of the Ninth cav making Patton laugh felt wrong in his body, and he didn’t have time to get overprotective. He was a professional, damnit, not some trembling hormonal teenager.

“The Second’s dead,” Remus said without hesitation, once he was done hacking up most of a lung’s content of salt water. “Saw their bodies, pretty sure I saw the Eighth’s too, not sure about the rest of them! Really great corpse party today, I’m loving the vibes!”

Virgil wanted to kick him, but refrained in favor of experiencing a brewing panic attack. He glanced around, but apart from the First House staff, the twins, Patton, and the Ninth House cavalier were the only ones there. “What about—oh, fuck, the Warden. The Master Warden; has anyone seen the Sixth?”

The Prince Cavalier of the Fourth was standing now, although he was swaying on his feet slightly. “Logan!” he yelled, voice echoing over the crashing waves. “Cinna!”

If he’d been expecting a response, he wasn’t getting one. Neither the Sixth necromancer nor his ever-present cavalier were anywhere to be seen.

Around them, the smell of acrid smoke was thick in the air. The gaggle of skeletons had finished dousing the shuttles, and now they were only smoking slightly and no longer giving off the impression that they might explode at any time. And now the skeletons had begun to slip into the water, sliding off the edge and sinking into the depths on the trail of the missing arrivals. And god, were they creepy, just as bad as that ghastly Ninth nun. Virgil had seen a bone construct or two before, but never very often, and never at the level of fluidity that these things were exhibiting. They moved like human beings, like there wasn’t someone animating them nearby—and come to think of it, who was animating these things? Not that rainbow-robed priest, certainly?

The Ninth cavalier was leaning on Patton for support, but took a sudden staggering step forward, planting his sheathed sword on the ground to steady himself—Virgil winced, reflexively. He said, firmly, “I’m fine. We should check the shuttles.”

“You’re right, there could be someone still alive in there,” Patton agreed immediately. Virgil majorly doubted it. There was a reason nobody had gone to check in on the shuttles first-thing, and that was because they were completely smashed to ribbons, and ridiculously on fire to boot. Anyone still in there was in pieces, on fire, or an exciting combination of both.

Turning to retort, Virgil didn’t manage to get the words together. He’d finally got a good look at the Ninth’s face, and was actively fighting not to recoil at the sight. Not the skull-mask greasepaint, not really—no, the eyes were the thing. They were horribly mismatched, and the one that was not a splotchy grayed-out wasteland was bright yellow, almost glowing. The pupil was distorted, flattened and compressed into an accusing slit. A small scared child sitting in the back of Virgil’s brain screamed and wailed and demanded he leave this man’s vicinity, effective immediately.

It was completely unfounded, probably. Virgil had a bad habit of judging people on appearances. But he was also distinctly awful at not acting on his instincts. This put him in a terrible position, which swiftly got even more terrible when the Ninth noticed his attention. Kind of hard not to when you’re ogling someone’s eyes, Virgil had to admit, but also massively embarrassing. Especially when he was busy trying to hate the guy.

“Loving the blatant staring, please, keep it up,” the black vestal freakshow muttered. He raised his voice, and said, “Well? Is anyone going to take initiative, or am I going to have to do this all myself?”

“Give me a leg up,” Remus demanded of his brother, and like a circus double-act, the two of them ascended up the side of the less damaged of the smoking shuttles. Virgil couldn’t help the twinge of terror that flared up when they skewed too close to a ruptured portion of outer hull—but they both made it up to the hanging-open door without incident, and quickly disappeared inside.

A second passed, two, and then Roman’s head protruded from the side of the shuttle. He looked down at them all, and shook his head.

“It’s the Third,” he announced grimly. “They’re both dead.”

Remus’s head popped out just above his, and contributed: “Necks both snapped in the crash. Looks like it was quick.” A second of consideration, then, “Shit, they’d have hated that. Greg always wanted to get torn apart in a wild orgy or something.” He blew a kiss over his shoulder, cheerfully irreverent. “RIP In One Singular Piece, you two beautiful morons.”

“Oh no,” said Patton unhappily.

“That’s the Second, Third, Eighth, all gone,” Virgil summarized, a sinking feeling in his stomach taking weight. “Pat and I are here, the twins are…” He watched Roman and Remus descending from the protruding wreck of the first shuttle. “…They’re here, which means…”

“That other shuttle—it’s either Lo’s or the Seventh,” Patton said, and suddenly started forwards as if to climb the unchecked shuttle.

Virgil only just managed to grab the back of his robes and haul him back in time. “No—no. You’re not—no, do not go in there, it’s a deathtrap.”

“But Logan, he could be in there—he might need our help,” Patton said, and Virgil really, really hated how much he cared about Patton, because he wouldn’t be doing this for anyone else.

So against his better instincts, he began to struggle up the side of the shuttle and towards yet another problem.

*

Virgil didn’t ask for help, but the Ninth cav followed him anyway. They pushed past the still-smoldering remains of the door, blasted outwards from the inside. As they entered the back cabin, Virgil instinctively pulled up his still-soaking tunic over his nose to ward off the sharp smell of burning electronics. The Ninth was doing the same, cloak bundled up over his face, and Virgil heard a faint mutter of, “Ew.”

Ew seemed right. There was at least one human-shaped figure on the ground that was more scorch marks and ash than person. The silvery clumped-up remnants of what used to be a sword had melted all along the floor beside those former-people. There were bits of metal and casing falling from the roof, jammed in places they shouldn’t be, forming a patchwork maze of rebar and steel-plate.

“Are we sure there’s anyone still alive in here,” Virgil began through a faceful of fabric, already beginning to retreat back towards the door.

But the Ninth just shook his head, jabbed a surprisingly elegant gloved finger across the room, and said, “There.”

He wasn’t wrong. There was someone’s legs sticking out from a crookedly fallen support beam, so covered in ash as to be initially unrecognizable. Attached to the legs was a body, and on the far side of the support beam the body also had a head, and the head was still breathing, so Virgil knelt down next to that head and tried to get a better look.

It wasn’t Logan. Virgil wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

It was a man, one who Virgil would guess was about his age, maybe a bit older. Under normal circumstances, Virgil would find him quite handsome—the curve of his cheek and the dip of his neck were lovely to look at and he seemed the sort of person who’d have a loud, contagious laugh. But right now, he didn’t look good—not at all. It was hard to ignore that. The burns, for one, were the worst Virgil had ever seen. His brown hair was tangled with blood, plastered all about his pale face, and there was something wrong with the back of his head, something crushed and broken, and even when Virgil poked him and shoved him and hissed angrily in his face, his eyes remained closed.

His clothes weren’t quite burnt to a crisp, but neither he nor the rest of the shuttle had fared particularly well in the blazing fire. Everything was blackened and singed, and any significant items had been whittled down to melted shapes and twisting tar. Including the remains of whoever this guy’s cavalier used to be. They’d failed to protect him, and then died before they could do anything about it.

Virgil swallowed, and turned his attention back to the burned man on the ground. He was still breathing, which was more than could be said for anyone else who’d arrived on this shuttle. He needed medical attention. Virgil could not supply medical attention. He knew how to panic about injuries. He knew how to stick a bandage on someone and give them an awkward pat on the back, and that was about it.

That being said, the Ninth cav was now moving as if to slip an arm around the burned man and help him up, and that didn’t seem right. He remembered seeing a book or a play about this sort of thing. Stories about disasters tended to stick in his mind.

“Pretty sure you’re not meant to move someone when they’re, uh, like this,” he said, biting his lip.

“Oh yes, let’s just leave the injured man inside the shuttle currently leaking its fuel supply all over the First House,” said the Ninth cavalier coolly. “I’m sure he’ll appreciate the stunning view of its destruction when it detonates with him inside. Splendid idea.”

Virgil decided on the spot that he officially didn’t like this guy. There was a kind of smug smoothness to everything he did and said, and it grated on him terribly. The dripping remains of that awful painted skull trailing down his thin cheekbones didn’t exactly inspire trust, either. “You have a better one?”

The Ninth cav rolled up his gauzy dark sleeves with an unnecessary flourish, and crouched down at the man’s side to examine him. After a second, he shrugged his way out of his cloak, tugging it over his head, and draped it over the man’s body in a deliberately careless sort of way. “Yes. You take his head—I don’t care enough to take the majority of his weight—I’ll be at the feet, and we can get him outside. If we give him brain damage, he’ll just have to deal with it, and he can deal with it outside.”

Virgil bit back the instinct to complain, and did as instructed, grabbing the man’s arms as gently as he could and —”Count of three, I think—one, two, upsie-dasies—” they pulled him up off the ground. They were treating him more like a hammock than a human being. Virgil had a feeling it wasn’t the most safe or medically sound of transports, but there wasn’t much in the way of alternatives.

Halfway to the door, the man’s eyes flickered, and he muttered something about dragons—great, finally someone to keep Princey company. But then he moaned, and shifted, and he tried to say something else but was too distressed and burnt-through to get the words out. Poor guy. Poor fucking guy. It almost made Virgil feel less sorry for himself, which was impressive, considering.

“Hey,” said Virgil, trying and failing to sound gentle to the man who was probably dying in his arms. “You’re fine. Well, you’re not fine, everything’s gone to shit and you might be dying, but, uh, we’ve got you. We’re getting you out of here. So just… if you have to panic, only panic a bit? Thanks. Cool.”

“Wonderfully done,” said the Ninth cavalier. “You ought to go into hospice care. Have you considered customer service as a side job? You might make a killing in gift cards offering reassuring platitudes.”

Virgil said, “I really don’t like you.”

The moment they emerged from the gap in the shuttle, the small group still assembled came scrambling over to assist—Patton exclaiming in horror at the state of the man, Roman clamoring forward to assist in laying him down on the tiles. He sprawled there, artless and scorched; shallow gasps of breath all the way.

“You’re necromancers, yes?” the Ninth said, already kneeling besides the man and feeling for a pulse. “I know at least some of you are… Can you do anything for him? Quick as you please, now.”

“Bodies aren’t exactly my dealio,” Patton said nervously, fingers knitting together. “I’m more of a heart and soul guy, you know? Ah, uh, but, Roman’s brother—”

“I know how to take people apart,” Remus said. “Which isn’t a no—you want me to try? I can try. Step aside, I’ll do the thing!”

“Not a good idea,” Roman said hastily, which was maybe the most intelligent thing he’d said in years. “Logan—if only Logan were here! He took a course on this, didn’t he? He took a lot of courses.”

“He wrote a thesis on flesh magic,” Patton said. “He showed me! I didn’t understand any of it, but the writing was very small and confusing, so it must have been good.”

“He’s not here, though,” Virgil said, and then because some part of his brain couldn’t help himself, “He’s out there in the water, all dead and drowned while we were all arguing about what to do and this stupid planet doesn’t have any boats and nobody went to help him or Cinna—”

“Shut up,” said the Ninth sharply. “You’re saying none of you know how to help him?”

Virgil bit his lip bloody and turned away. Remus and Patton, the only necromancers there, exchanged a glance—and both shook their heads.

“Well, good job, team,” said the Ninth cav without a name, that soft, soft voice just dripping with contempt. Up came his gloved hands, and slowly he clapped—once, twice—and then he stalked up the steps and started surveying the horizon with a dreadfully yellow-tinged stare.

Slowly, everything started to move again.

“You must have medical supplies, surely,” Roman was saying to the strange pale priest.

“Of course we do, but my name’s not Shirley,” replied the priest, and Virgil promptly tuned them all out. They were talking too much and not getting anything done. Besides, the guy on the ground was beginning to stir faintly. It was possibly at the coldness of the tiles they’d laid him on, and possibly due to the sudden noise, but either way, the burned man’s eyes now flickered open properly. They were gorgeously normal, a perfectly average shade of warm brown; instantly they fixed on Virgil’s, the only one still kneeling beside him.

He groaned a groan that rattled all the way through his beaten body, and said, “Oh, gosh… sorry.”

“What?” said Virgil, a bit astonished. “What are you apologizing for?”

“I don’t know,” said the man, thoughtfully, slowly; and coughed. “I probably did something. I feel guilty a lot for no reason.”

Virgil, who mainly just felt anxious a lot for no reason with no guilt involved in the equation, nonetheless felt like he could relate. “Just… shit, lie still, all right? Stop talking. You’re… You’re really messed up right now. We’re trying to get someone over to help, but…” He trailed off, biting back whatever nonsense he’d been about to spout, because it definitely wasn’t going to help. He didn’t want to lie to the guy, but it wasn’t looking good.

“He’s awake?” said the Ninth, from behind Virgil, and Virgil suppressed a shudder. In he came, with his dripping dark robes and his awful single slit-eye, and the burned man recoiled at the sight of him. He couldn’t flinch back far, too weak to move much at all. “Oh, calm down, I’m not going to kill you; you’re half-dead already. It wouldn’t be any fun. You’ll be just fine, don’t you worry.”

“Who—” The burned man started to cough, and he did not stop for a while. He still seemed terrified of the two of them but didn’t pull away as the Ninth slid up next to him, and rubbed his back through the worst of it. When he’d calmed down sufficiently, he said, “I don’t know—I’m not sure who—I’m a bit confused,” and his voice was fading as he spoke.

“I’m…” Virgil glanced over at the Ninth cav, who still had not so much as introduced himself. He bit down the instant wave of discomfort, and said, “Virgil Cinque. I’m with the Fifth.”

The burned man coughed again, and said something garbled and indistinct—but he was twitching and his eyes were rolling, the glint of Dominucus’s light giving them the illusion of silvery whiteness, like a corpse’s. It seemed he was half-dead already. After a second, he twitched and lay still again.

Virgil frowned. “You didn’t catch that, did you?”

“Thomas,” said the Ninth cavalier, still leaning over him, hand pressed flat along the curve of the man’s blistering blackened back. His voice was very soft and even. “He said his name was Thomas. Land… no, Sanders, I think.”

“Splendid, excellent, heavenly, we know his name,” Roman said. “Great name, excellent name! Does it actually, you know, help us?”

Virgil took a shaky breath, then despite every inch of his body screaming, nope nope bad idea nope, said, “Maybe we should let Remus have a look at him.”

Roman frowned. “But Logan would be able to—”

“Logan’s not here!” Virgil snapped, breathless with the terror of having just-barely survived a crash and the additional terror of having a dying man inches away from him and not being able to do a thing about it.

He was always terrified about the idea of Patton getting hurt on his watch, but it wasn’t as if they lived the sort of lives where Patton getting anything worse than a papercut was a legitimate threat—not until now. Now, all his fears and worries were being justified at once. And while that was sort of thrilling and satisfying in its own right, mainly it was just awful, completely awful; his entire nervous system was going into absolute overdrive. What if this guy actually died in front of them? What if Patton saw that he’d let some random Seventh guy die and never trusted him ever, ever again? What if the crashed shuttles blew up anyway and they all died?

“Logan’s gone,” Virgil repeated, unable to push off the gradually mounting terror. “Logan’s gone and he drowned like ten minutes ago, or maybe his neck got snapped too, and you just need to accept that, all right? Everyone’s fucking dead except for us, and we just need to deal with that, and if we keep waiting for Logan to show up and fix this, we’re going to be waiting forever and then maybe we’ll all die too in the meantime. So—”

“Falsehood,” came the weakest and softest of voices from far behind them.

Virgil’s desperate monologue crawled to a halt in his throat, and he threw himself around to face the docks so fast he nearly gave himself whiplash. All around him, everyone else was doing the same.

A second passed, then a miserable mess of gray sodden robes heaved itself up over the side of the dock, and Virgil’s brain broke a little in absolute relief. Logan. Logan was alive. The skeleton constructs had found him, and they were in the process of boosting him up from the water, and Logan was alive.

Patton let out a startled cry of delight, and moved faster than Virgil had ever seen him, skidding along to meet him, tugging him away from the water. The Prince of the Fourth was in fast pursuit, and Virgil almost stood up to join them before remembering that he wouldn’t be wanted there.

“I am perfectly operational,” Virgil could hear Logan saying, hoarsely. “The wound to my head is merely superficial, and will be easily mended once I am reaccustomed to the thanergic output of the planet. I am not the concern here—my cavalier. We were separated in the crash. I could not—I couldn’t find—”

“We’ll find Cinna, Specs,” said Roman, reassuring and self-assured. “We’ve already found a lot of people… Look, just come along, here, we’ll get you somewhere to sit down. Sound good? Of course it does. Let’s go this way, all right?”

It was beyond bizarre to see Logan Senarius without his ever-present spectacles. His face looked naked and young without them, and there were watery rivulets of blood trickling down his forehead. With the assistance of Roman, and Patton hovering nervously at one elbow, he stumbled forwards several steps, wincing.

It was also distinctly strange to see Logan without his cavalier several paces behind—with a wide grin and a sword slung carelessly over the shoulder. Cinna Hexyl had never been the most conspicuous or flashy of cavaliers, and had actually made a point of staying still and keeping quiet whenever an inter-House conference or meeting had taken place. But Virgil could appreciate the art of keeping quiet and out of the way, and Cinna hadn’t been uninteresting or boring, not at all. They’d dueled, once—Virgil and the Sixth, when Virgil had been only-just sixteen and very bad at his new job. Cinna had won, but had taken the time to explain exactly where Virgil had gone wrong in defending—and had been so nice and matter-of-fact-helpful about it, that Virgil hadn’t even felt anxious after-the-fact.

Logan without Cinna shadowing him was like… well, shit, it was so wrong that Virgil couldn’t even come up with a clever way of describing how wrong it was. So no wonder Logan seemed a bit out of sorts as he made his shaky way to the rest of the group.

Virgil looked back at Thomas as his breathing shifted again, becoming shaky and just a bit panicked, and nearly missed the Ninth stepping forward to intercept Logan and his little honor guard before they could make it to the steps. When he looked back over, Roman’s face was tightening, clearly unhappy with the interruption.

“They said you were a better flesh magician than him,” said the Ninth, sharply indicating Remus.

Logan blinked weakly and said, in the puzzled tones of an expert being questioned, “Of course I am. That and many other things besides.”

And now the Ninth pointed towards Thomas, still prone on the ground, Virgil crouched nervously beside him—not sure if he should stay put or move back to watch Patton’s back. He saw Logan’s gaze focus on the bloody mass of burns and blackened skin, saw his eyes widen and his mouth tighten.

“Fix him,” said the Ninth.

Virgil had to give him credit—when it came down to it, Logan was a consummate necromantic professional. He was still shaky on his feet as he came forward, but he waved off Roman and Patton both and knelt down by the ruined body that seemed to be constantly teetering on the edge of consciousness. He performed a brief examination that consisted of him running his hands over the air around, and muttering to himself, and then he nodded. “I can do it.”

Patton didn’t look happy about this. “You shouldn’t—you shouldn’t! Not yet. Cinna wouldn’t you—”

“Then go and find Cinna, who will be more than happy to tell me to stop,” Logan said sharply, and ran both hands through his hair. Exhaustion and determination warred on his pale features. “For now… I cannot see properly. Someone will have to guide me—remove his clothing fabric if I begin to heal over it.”

“I—fuck. Yeah.” Virgil scrambled back into range. “Hi, it’s me. Um, it’s Virgil. I can help, I’ll do it.”

“I recognize your voice. I’m visually impaired, not mentally incapacitated,” Logan snapped, and then, “…My apologies, Virgil. I am—under significant stress.”

Virgil nodded, remembered that Logan couldn’t see, and said, “Sure, whatever. What do you need?”

Logan explained, quick and to-the-point—it was something Virgil had always liked about the Master Warden of the Sixth; the way his voice narrowed to a perfect calm when an explanation was really needed, the occasional times the biting superiority gave way to reasonable clarification. Virgil, wonder upon wonders, wasn’t entirely sure he’d be able to manage the task of making sure this guy’s clothes didn’t get horribly fused with his flesh, but hey, it wasn’t as if he could say no at this point?

So he just nodded, and let Logan get to work.

Under Logan’s clever, careful hands, the flesh began to knit back together and regrow to a healthy, warm pink. His fingers danced, inclined, crooked this way and that, and the flow of energy responded in kind.

Virgil did his best to keep debris and scraps out of the way of the slowly-healing flesh, trying not to gag. Flesh magic had never been his favorite, regardless of the skill involved in commanding it. It was clearly a lot of effort, to say the least—Logan’s already-pale face was growing whiter and whiter, and dark veins were beginning to fade to the surface of his wet throat; blood sweat rising to bead at his forehead. He didn’t speak a word, though, as he continued his work.

After what seemed like hours but was honestly just a minute or two, Logan raised his hands, wiped the blood from his face, and said, “That is the best I can do.”

“Nicely done,” said the Ninth, a hint of authenticity entering his voice for maybe the first time—over the sound of Remus muttering, man, I wish he’d would do that to my fractured broken body, and the louder sound of Roman whacking him with the pommel of his sword to shut him up.

And on the tiles of the First, the man named Thomas took a deep, gasping breath—

—and sat up.

*

Chapter Text

CHAPTER FOUR

“Patton the Fifth"

*

The survivors were all sitting inside now. The rainbow-robed priest with the blue eyes had ushered their dripping-wet party of seven up the stairs and into the building, and encouraged them to sit in some kind of lounge room. He threw a hasty, “Be right back! Talk amongst yourselves!” over his shoulder, and skedaddled right out of the room so swiftly he stirred up dust in his wake.

They were provided with towels that were only slightly mothbitten and moldy. A small handful of those skeletal constructs were handing off steaming cups of tea to anyone who wanted it; so far, only Roman had accepted. He had downed all of it in one gurgling gulp, apparently not noticing the heat, and promptly discarded the cup. Now he and his brother were sequestered in the corner, heads down and muttering in inaudible tones.

Patton perched nervously on what had probably once been quite a decadent and comfortable couch, but was now rotten and ragged. ‘Decadent, but now rotten’ was something that could be applied to most of their surroundings, actually—Canaan House had obviously once been beautiful and gleaming, the jewel of the First House. Which wasn’t to say it wasn’t still beautiful; it was! The colors and brightness of it all were straight out of Roman’s most lurid, paint-splattered tales. But it had been abandoned and empty for hundreds of years, if Patton was remembering his history right, and gosh did it show. The tiles were cracked and dusty, the colors of the floor-to-ceiling murals faded with time, and vines were creeping up the walls in every direction.

Virgil was right at his elbow, furiously scrubbing at his damp hair with his provided towel, and glaring around the room occasionally in bursts of random paranoia. He was even more on-edge than usual, which made Patton’s heart ache just a bit. That much anxiety wasn’t doing anyone any good, not least Virgil. Patton honestly suspected that, in some strange inscrutable Virgil-way, his cavalier might actually feel responsible for the shuttle crash, or at the least for all the people he couldn’t manage to help. It was irrational and it was pointless, and it was so very Virgil.

Logan… well, Logan hadn’t said much since he’d finished the job of healing the burned Seventh necromancer. He’d seemed dizzy and dazed, and Patton strongly suspected he’d pushed himself too hard with the healing. Logan was always doing that, pushing himself too hard and passing out on his work despite all of his claims about healthy sleep schedules. Usually in the absence of Patton and Roman to keep an eye on him, Logan’s cavalier would keep him from doing anything too stupid—but Cinna was…

Cinna wasn’t there.

Logan was sitting upright and straight-backed in a wing-armed recliner that refused to recline, positioned exactly where he’d be able to see any newcomers arriving through the door. He was barely blinking. An unhappy frown graced his face. Patton had tried to approach him about it, offer a hug or reassurance or something, anything. He had been gently but firmly brushed away. Logan’s eyes remained fixed on the door, and nothing Patton did or said could change that.

And then the newly-healed man—Thomas, they’d said his name was—had been carefully placed on the longest of the couches, still wrapped in the Ninth’s dark, damp cloak. He’d been awake and aware enough to thank all of them when Logan had finished his work, but his energy had quickly flagged. Now, he was dozing quietly under the Ninth cavalier’s watchful yellow eye, who seemed to have claimed responsibility for him in the absence of anyone else.

And speaking of the Ninth—

Patton caught the slit-pupilled eye of the dark-clad stranger, and waved at him as cheerfully as he could manage; a hopeful little wiggle of the fingers. For a second, the Ninth looked genuinely surprised, and then he raised a hand and waved back. Well, that settled it! That was as good as an invitation, in Patton’s opinion. He nudged Virgil, saying, “I’ll be right back, okay?”

Virgil’s head whipped up. “Where are you going.”

“Just over—” Patton made a vague little gesture, indicating the other side of the room. “—you know, around. I’ll just go and walk over—”

(“You’re not going to talk to the bone cultist. Do not go talk to the bone cultist. I forbid you to talk to the bone cultist.”)

“I’m going to talk to the bone cultist,” Patton said firmly. “He’s not as bad as you think—actually, I think he’s just bone-ly.”

(“No. Stop it. NO.”)

“Are you osteo-racising the poor man? You’d better not, he might have a bone to pick with you.”

“Pat, nooo,” Virgil moaned under his breath, but Patton ignored him in favor of crossing the room to make a new friend.

The bone cultist in question was sitting at the edge of the long couch containing one (1) entire Thomas, and had his rapier out over his lap. He was examining it with a keen eye and an expression of unhappy distaste. Patton only knew swords from what he’d absorbed secondhand from Virgil, Roman, and occasionally Cinna, but he was fairly certain that it had been damaged. A fine mist of rust was trailing down its dull silver edge, and the end of it was curved strangely, warped and bent.

At Patton’s approach he looked up, and nodded in greeting. “Fifth, yes?”

“Yeppers, that’s me,” Patton said, keeping his voice down so as not to disturb Mysterious Mister Thomas. He smiled. “We didn’t get a chance to talk earlier! You don’t mind me saying hi, do you?”

The look of surprise still remained, but he sounded entirely genuine when he said, “Not at all. You hauled me out of the water, I can spare a minute or two for my gallant savior.”

“Aw, shucks, kiddo.” Patton could see that Virgil was still giving the Ninth the evil eye from across the room, but he tried to ignore it. “I didn’t do much, just gave you the ol’ heave-ho.”

“Still.” The Ninth gave his rapier one last sad once-over, and re-sheathed it in a wonderfully smooth motion. “It was… good of you. I get the impression that if it had been up to your delightful cavalier, I would have been left drinking sea water for the rest of my very short life.”

Patton couldn’t help but bite his lip, at that. “Virgil’s really nice, you know. Well—ah—most of the time. Sometimes. He’s just… protective.” He hesitated. “I think your facepaint might have spooked him a bit. Which you shouldn’t take personally, by the way. He screams whenever I manage to accidentally sneak up on him, and I’m the least scary person I know.”

“You’re remarkably non-threatening for a necromancer, I’ve noticed.”

Patton giggled, at that. “Oh, I know. Sometimes I think Virge should’ve been the necromancer, not me. You wouldn’t believe how often I get mistaken for the cavalier, even without a sword. Anyway—oh, gosh, did I not introduce myself to you? I don’t think I did.”

“You did not,” said the Ninth. He had a way of sitting perfectly still that was all at once disturbing and reassuring, like he was paying attention to each and every one of your words and wanted you to know about it. “Introductions were in short supply—we were all too busy panicking.”

“Well, I’m Patton Pentralis,” he said, the remnants of long-drilled in formalities taking over. “Viceroy of Oiktirmos Court. Although, you know, I don’t know if you know where that is… the Ninth is pretty far out, isn’t it?”

“Janus Novena,” replied the Ninth with a little half-bow and a quirk of his mouth, “Viceroy of nothing whatsoever. I’m not even sure what a Viceroy is.”

“Neither do I!” Patton exclaimed, a bit too loudly. Then coughed, and lowered his voice. “Heh, sorry. Janus, huh?” It hadn’t been the name he’d expected, but it suited the man’s features, the solemn and slightly mischievous shape of his face. “Nice to meet’cha. Wish it were under better circumstances, but, y’know, that’s life.”

“This is certainly how I expected my first trip off-planet to go, yes,” agreed Janus dryly. Patton couldn’t help but laugh again—a laugh which bubbled off to nothing when he realized that Janus was sitting besides someone who was not his necromancer, and there had been no other Ninth House members to be seen in their group of survivors.

“Oh, Emperor Undying,” he said, horror dawning, “I didn’t even think. Are you… gosh, are you alright?”

“Likely to catch a cold from all this damp and mildew,” Janus said slowly, brow wrinkling, “and none too happy about the circumstances, obviously, but—yes, I’m relatively fine. And you?”

“No, not that.” Patton stared at Janus, now. “Your… your necromancer. What happened to them? They weren’t with you when we pulled you out, so…?”

Patton could no longer read Janus’s expression. He was sure the blankness was due to the sheer overwhelming grief of losing his adept. After a second, Janus swallowed, looked away, and said, quite softly, “She’s most likely dead.”

Patton almost reached out to hold his hand, or pat him on the shoulder, or… do something, anything, because just imagining Virgil losing him made him want to burst into endless tears. But Janus’s shoulders had gone curled and hunched, and his body language said no no no, so there was no touching or hand holding. He was clearly quite distressed now he was actively thinking about it, and Patton severely regretted being the one to bring it up. “Oh, golly. That’s… are you sure? There’s no chance she might have gotten out somehow, like you did?”

“The blast was violent,” Janus said, shortly. “We weren’t closest, but our shuttle caught a significant portion of the heat. She…” He stalled, mid-sentence, then said, “I was at the other end of the shuttle when it happened. It was a lucky coincidence on my part. I should have pulled her away.” Another hesitation. “I suspect she was immolated in the ensuing fire.”

“I’m so sorry,” Patton said. He was a reflexive crier, and was already beginning to get watery in the eyes. “I’m… oh, I shouldn’t have brought it up. I’m so sorry. That’s so, so, awful, Janus…”

“It’s…” Janus now looked uncomfortable, and those pretty eyes of his, one yellow and one obsidian, were darting this way and that. He cleared his throat. “No, it’s not your… no.”

“What was her name?” Patton whispered, desperate to at least know that. He had stuck his foot in his mouth again, gone clattering through bones he shouldn’t have been anywhere near, and he couldn’t think of any other way to fix this in his mind. If he knew her name, at least, he could apologize to her over and over in his mind, apologize to Janus too. Nobody should have to lose their necromancer. Nobody should have to lose their cavalier.

Janus hesitated one last time, and his gaze was very far away for a long moment. Patton couldn’t begin to guess what he was thinking about, only that when he finally raised his head up and spoke, his words were distinctly careful and measured.

“Her name was Philinnion,” he said—and it was at that point that the pale-robed priest re-entered the room with a clattering of skeleton constructs following noisily in his wake. All conversation immediately stalled as six deeply exhausted pairs of eyes turned their undivided attention to him and waited, breathless, for good news.

“The bone constructs will continue to search the waters,” were the priest’s first words. He did not look happy. The cheerfully-shaped face was not cheerful at all, and he cradled a small chest made of wood (actual wood) to his chest like a precious child. “Bodies have been recovered, but none living. I would not hold out hope.”

Anyone who had not known Logan for over a decade would not have been able to see the miniscule slump of despair in his shoulders. He wasn’t alone. Nobody in the room was pleased at this news, not even Remus. Patton looked at Janus—saw that he had retreated to hover near the wall like a damp shadow—and decided to retreat back to Virgil once more, moving in a sort of nervous shimmy-scurry, so as to not draw attention.

The priest was shaking his head, pacing a circle around the head of the room and shaking his head again. “Your entrance was meant to be a grand thing, an opportunity for celebration, the start of a new era—this is a tragedy. I don’t know what to do with myself, none of us do… I suppose we’ll have to carry on. Just carry on, as always. Very well.”

He stopped pacing, and raised his head to regard the assembled room.

“I welcome you,” he said, “to Canaan House.”

Silence. Complete silence made Patton nervous, so to fill it, he said, loudly, “Aw, thanks! It’s a lovely house.”

The priest frowned briefly, and then said, “You may refer to me as Teacher. I am a keeper of the First House, the Emperor’s most sacred home in his extended absence, and before anything else, I must apologize for the circumstances. But grief aside, you must all know your duties here and what is expected of you. It cannot wait. So I shall briefly pretend as if nothing is wrong as I explain. I hope you will all join along, and not think too little of me for doing so.”

Pretending nothing was wrong? Patton was good at that. He nodded, and around the room, a few other people joined him.

“Righto, then.” Teacher’s eyes darted over to the man on the couch. “The Seventh…”

“He should sleep,” Logan said, from across the room. He drew his head up as if pulling himself from deeply underwater. “The healing was only superficial, skin-deep. He’ll be exhausted for some time. I am not entirely sure I managed to circumvent infection.”

But Thomas’s eyes were open—soft, sweet brown, Patton saw—and his lips bent themselves into a frown before he said, “No, um, I’m awake.”

“Welcome back, friend,” Roman said, waving a jovial hand, and grinning a grin that was more forced than not. “Just in time, too! Do you always sleep in late?”

The attempt at humor was lost on Thomas, who was now attempting to sit up and not doing a very good job of it. “The shuttle crashed,” he murmured. “There was… I was…”

He trailed off, and was silent. His fingers twitched, he was visibly unsteady in his skin. He looked around again, saw Virgil, and gained a look of dawning, distant recognition.

“You saved me?” he said, sounding startled.

Virgil straightened, and Patton watched him make an effort to untense and look less threatening. It was a solid effort, Patton was desperately proud of him. “I, uh, helped carry you out,” he said awkwardly. “It was mostly Lo who did most of the… you know. Good to see you awake. I guess.”

Thomas managed a smile that managed to be that, bewildered, and also a half-grimace all at once. He had a terribly expressive face. “Thank you?”

“You do know why you’re here,” Janus prompted from his position at the nearby wall, gazing down at him inscrutably. “On this planet, in this house?”

Upon catching sight of him, Thomas flinched violently, pressing himself back into the cushions on instinct alone. He seemed to catch himself, though, because he said, voice croaking, “Um. Yeah? Yes. I know.”

“He really should rest,” Logan murmured, although Patton wasn’t sure anyone but him caught it.

“Don’t worry too much about it, Thomas,” Patton said, raising his voice to a cheery chirp that would carry properly across the large room. “Tommy-boy. Thomato-sauce?—Thomas. We’re just getting a headstart on all the boring form-filling and formal bits of this, so we can get on with having a good long nap! Which I’m pretty sure we all want and deserve. You just rest there for a bit, and one of us can catch you up on all the juicy stuff when you’re feeling right as rain again.”

To that, Thomas’s mouth simply hung open, as his gaze traveled all around the room—taking in the unfamiliar people, processing his surroundings. He didn’t seem to know what to say in the face of it all, and after a second, he smiled at Patton. It was a wan, shaky smile, but Patton liked it fiercely all the same. “Thanks? I think I… I’ll do that. Thanks.”

“Lie back down,” Janus demanded, sharply. Thomas gave him another frightened glance—probably down to the remnants of bony greasepaint still smeared about his skin, or actually maybe it was the eyes, the eyes were pretty scary when you weren’t expecting them—and hastily complied, settling himself onto the couch, still casting glances around the room.

After a second, Teacher said, “Now, I would normally invite you all to join me in prayer,” and trailed off.

“Yeah,” was the contribution from Virgil, of all people. He shifted beside Patton, looking a bit surprised that he’d spoked up, and added, “Sounds good. Let’s, uh, do it.”

So Teacher nodded and raised his hands, and together they prayed.

Patton couldn’t help but watch the others as they began to speak through the familiar words of the Lord Undying’s prayer, even though he knew he was supposed to shut his eyes. You could get a lot about a person from watching how they prayed—Remus did it carelessly but with impressive fervor, for example, while his brother spoke each measure with carefully measured accuracy, like he was hoping for a letter of commendation over it. Logan was short and clinical but unendingly precise. Virgil didn’t shut his eyes either; he stared at the opposite wall as he spoke, seeming embarrassed to even be sharing a prayer with everyone else. Thomas still looked more than out of it, but his lips were moving along with the rest of them, which just meant…

His head was tilted downwards, and his eyes cast low. It wasn’t immediately obvious, but Patton realized within seconds that Janus Novena was not speaking a single blessed word.

It was over within minutes, and then Teacher sighed, and said, “Tradition is a wonderful thing. And yet we proceed.” He held aloft the simple wooden box he had brought into the room, with him, and unlatched the lid. Patton watched with interest and confusion as Teacher paused, looking not happy to do this in the least, and reached into the box. He removed a small iron ring, no larger than a small chocolate-chip cookie, and said loudly, “Aramis the Second!”

Silence, all around the room. Patton remembered the distant brightness of the Second House’s scarlet-and-white uniform, drifting in the surf, and swallowed, hard.

“Grigori the Third,” Teacher said with even less enthusiasm, and once again there was no response.

Patton had vague unpleasant recollections of the cavalier of the Third, mainly every party and social shindig, at each of which Grigori Tris had suggested drinking, climbing into a closet, and vigorous mutual body-exploration, not always in that order. Patton hadn’t liked Grigori Tris much and neither had Virgil, but he and Remus had gotten along well—a little too well, really. Still, he couldn’t help but feel a pang at the man’s passing. More than a pang. It wasn’t fair. He hadn’t been nice, but it wasn’t fair.

“Roman the Fourth,” Teacher said after a moment, now looking downright depressed—but thankfully Roman was there. Just as healthy and alive as he’d ever been, too. He drew himself up to his full height, puffed out his chest, and marched forwards with great ceremony to accept the ring that Teacher held out to him. The two of them exchanged relieved little nods, and then Roman returned to go sit by his brother.

Remus immediately snatched the ring, much to Roman’s visible irritation. Over the sound of a scuffle ensuing, a tentative Teacher announced, “Virgil the Fifth!”

Virgil rose to his feet, looking uncomfortable at any amount of attention from the group. He accepted the ring from Teacher swiftly, and then hurried back to his seat. Almost immediately, he shoved it at Patton, muttering, “Here. Whatever it is.”

Patton curiously held it up to eye height, but only got as far as noticing it was a really boring-looking iron ring with a clasp built into it, when Teacher said, “Cinna the Sixth!”

And then dead silence reigned again. Everyone was either looking at Logan or very pointedly not looking at Logan, and Logan seemed to want to look at nobody at all.

After an unbearable second, he stood and said, “I will accept it,” and did so without a hint of emotion. He barely gave the ring a glance, and resumed his position facing the door without another word.

Teacher cleared his throat uncomfortably as he withdrew another ring from the box. “Nico the Seventh,” he said, no doubt mentally counting the amount of people left in the room. He didn’t sound hopeful at all, which was fair. Patton knew the names of everyone in this room, and he’d never met a single Nico, not recently, not ever.

And now everyone was looking at Thomas, whose face had gone distinctly pale. He looked even less well than he had a second ago. After a second, Janus stood and went to fetch the ring for him, tossing it over onto the couch where the battered necromancer lay. Thomas muttered a hazy-sounding ‘thanks’, and went silent again. Patton wanted to cry and also hug him, he and Logan and Janus all at once. None of them deserved this. He couldn’t imagine having to go on without Virgil, and judging by the sudden electric shudder of tension right beside him, Virgil wasn’t too happy thinking about the possibility either.

He hoped Canaan House had a kitchen. These were some kids in desperate need of some good old-fashioned home cooking.

“Iphigen the Eighth,” Teacher said, and then—no Eighth cavalier forthcoming—looked over at the final person in the room. “Which must mean—Janus the Ninth?”

“Who’s she? Never heard of her,” Janus replied, and went to take his ring.

And with that, the little ceremony was complete. Teacher closed the lid of the box, passing it off to a nearby skeleton construct, and rubbed his hands together, still looking quite uncomfortable and not a little upset.

“I had an entire spiel to give,” he said after a moment. “An impressive speech about the lot of you being selected to replace the Emperor’s chosen, the ones who served in his service and then failed—how the necromancers among you must rely on your cavaliers and vice versa, that failure on one’s part is failure on the other’s behalf… But it all seems in rather poor taste now.”

It sounded an awful lot to Patton like the ‘entire spiel’ was being given anyway. Neither he nor anyone else in the room spoke up. The bright-eyed little man was going through a complicated series of emotions very quickly, and it felt only polite to leave him to it.

“We’ll keep it simple, then,” Teacher said. “The path to Lyctorhood is not an assured one, nor an easy one. You’ve all suffered greatly within the last hour… a fact which sorrows me greatly. But if you intend to ascend, I regret that you will need to suffer even more.”

“Is that a threat?” said Remus loudly, sounding quite delighted at the prospect.

“Not at all,” said Teacher, and then, not caring to elaborate in the least, said, “Your every need will be met, to the most of our ability. We can offer clothes, and supplies from storage to make up for the possessions you’ve lost. We will provide food, and space for you to leave, and you have the full run of the place, as they say. What’s ours is yours. The First is at your command.”

Which sounded wonderful, Patton couldn’t wait to find his room and sleep for several days or maybe even weeks. But for some reason, nobody else was happy about this. Virgil was shifting uneasily, and the twins were exchanging glances, and Logan’s mouth had gone even tighter and paler than before.

“Regrettably, no outside communication is permitted until the conclusion of your trials,” Teacher continued, and forestalling the combined intake of breath and inevitable argument, added: “That is not up to me. It is the Emperor’s rule and his will that you should study as penitents do. I have sent word to him of the events of this afternoon, but that is all I can do. I am sure he will pass the information of your fellow adepts’ deaths to their respective Houses.”

This was certainly not met with any amount of happiness, but nobody spoke up to complain.

“No messages, no letters, no visits. You’re here until you succeed, or until we send you home. And now,” Teacher said, suddenly brighter, “the instructions for your Lyctorhood. They are as follows.”

The atmosphere in the room electrified. Despite everything, despite the horrific culling of their numbers and the grimness in the air and the fact that they were all salty and still half-soaked to the skin, despite being bundled up in towels and blankets—everyone was suddenly paying much more attention. Remus’s expression was hungry, he was leaning forward in his seat so far he was in danger of falling off. Logan was looking away from the door at last. Even Thomas seemed interested. Patton silently worried to himself that he wouldn’t understand a word of whatever Teacher was about to say, and would have to go ask Logan to explain it in slower, smaller words later on.

But he shouldn’t have worried at all.

“We ask that you never open a locked door without permission,” said Teacher.

Everyone waited, but Teacher had no more information to add.

After a moment, he helpfully added, “That’s it.”

…And now Patton understood why the room as a whole seemed so uneasy. All this time, he’d been expecting the Lyctor trials to be something complicated and clever that he’d have no hope of understanding or completing—the sort of thing where he’d try for a few minutes before both he and Virgil would agree that it was no use and they could leave the others to get it done. He’d expected to spend most of this time standing on the sidelines and cheering the others on, completely oblivious to whatever complicated necromantic academia was being thrown around by all the smart people.

In a way, it was almost a relief to see that everyone was on the same page as him for once.

Their ragtag group was too tired to erupt into angry murmuring, but there was a lot of muted muttering as most people began to exchange you’ve got to be kidding me glances. Anger was slowly brewing in the House of the First. Even Patton could admit that he was a tiny bit miffed at the lack of specifics.

Logan had snapped out of his hazy stupor through means of sheer scholarly outrage. “You have no further instructions for us?”

“Should I have? I was informed you were the very best of your Houses.” The little priest didn’t seem like he was making fun, or joking at all. He sounded perfectly genuine when he said, “I have faith in your ability to figure it out.”

“You don’t know how to attain Lyctorhood?” Remus said, loudly.

“Of course I don’t,” Teacher said, looking startled. “The only ones who did are far away or long gone, and the Emperor decreed the path to immortality forbidden to speak aloud since that fateful, fateful day. He has no interest in holding your hand through the process. No—no, you’ll have to figure it out for yourself. Unravel the secrets, as the first of the First did. Follow in their hallowed footsteps, to eternal life and to glory!”

And to this, nobody knew what to say. Patton looked down at the iron ring in his hands, the only thing they’d be given, and knew he didn’t understand any of this, not a bit.

“Welcome to Canaan House,” Teacher said. He smiled, but it didn’t meet his eyes. “May everything from now be a vast improvement.”

*

Logan had thought it was best to not leave Thomas alone, at least for now. Although everyone had agreed pretty readily on that front, nobody was eager to invite a stranger into their bedroom except Patton. (Virgil had complained, but only with his eyes and the tightness of his mouth, and he’d relented after Patton had broken out the puppy eyes. It worked every time.)

Thomas had once again descended into being pretty dang out of it by the time that the skeleton constructs had ushered them all up here, and when they’d made it to the Fifth House quarters and bundled him onto the largest of beds, he’d pretty much instantly passed out. Virgil had found the cavalier’s bed nearby—smaller and less lavish, but still acceptably cozy. He’d taken longer to fall asleep. Patton knew the outs and ins of Virgil’s breathing like he knew how to weave a friendship bracelet; the way the breaths folded to and fro each other, like twine over twine. He knew what Virgil sounded like when he was faking sleep. He wasn’t faking it anymore.

So Patton had been the last one left awake. He’d taken a comfortable position on the wide sofa, bundled in spare blankets from the Fifth Quarters storerooms, and made himself all cozy and cuddly in the darkness.

And he’d wanted to sleep, really he had; he was so tired, and so much had happened, but he couldn’t quite manage it. The rooms that he and Virgil had been assigned to—and that they were currently sharing with a deeply unconscious Thomas—were beautiful, and they were draped in all shades of familiar brown and gold, and there was plenty of room for all of them to spread out.

But it was dusty, and it was old, and the entire place carried a sense of abandonment with it, like the previous inhabitants had stood up one day after tidying all the furniture into order, walked out the double-doors, and never come back. Patton didn’t like it. It wasn’t haunted, exactly; he was in the business of talking to ghosts, and there were no ghosts here to speak of or speak to—but he still felt like he was intruding.

He thought it must be how Virgil felt all the time, this constant nagging feeling of something being off, of being somewhere he shouldn’t. Except Virgil clearly wasn’t feeling any of that right now, he had dropped right off without a problem. Well, Patton couldn’t blame him for that! He deserved his rest, after all the action and effort and panic of the day. If Patton had to be the one to bear the weight of endless worrying just for tonight, then so be it.

So he just sat, and tried not to think about who had lived in this room before them, and he wondered what the rest of Canaan House looked like—if there was a garden, if there was a kitchen—but he didn’t move. The darkness shifted softly outside, gave way to dim light and then brighter light.

At five in the morning on the dot, there was the softest knock at his door, and when he went to answer, Logan was there. He hadn’t changed out of his salt-soaked robes, and his glasses were smudged and crooked. He looked kind of awful, truth be told. Patton got the impression he hadn’t slept, either.

He said, “I am sorry to intrude—”

“No, it’s fine, I wasn’t sleeping anyway,” Patton whispered, all in a rush, and leaned in close, conscious of his cavalier and new friend still asleep in the room behind him. “What’s wrong? Is there something wrong? Because that hug I offered you before is absolutely still on the table, buddy, forever and always—”

“I do not need a hug,” Logan cut him off, face pinching briefly in distaste. This was a lie, but Logan would be ready for hugs when he said he was, and Patton wasn’t about to push it. “I require your assistance.”

Which was not something Patton heard every day, not from Logan at least. “Of course,” he said instantly, “whatever you need—what do you need?” He glanced over his shoulder into the room. “Y’know, if this is about clothes, I did find a few things that I thought might fit you. I set them aside. It’s not your usual style, but I think you’d really—”

“No,” said Logan, sharply, “I am not here to play dress-up.”

Patton bit his lip, nervous babbling bubbling off to nothing. “All… all right. Then—?”

“I don’t believe the shuttle crash was entirely accidental,” he said, and met Patton’s gaze for the first time. His eyes were steady, as solemnly stormy-gray as they always were. “I need you to help me perform an autopsy.”

*

Chapter Text

CHAPTER FIVE

“Logan the Sixth"

*

Logan was assigned a room high in the central tower, with large airy windows and many empty, ready bookshelves. He would normally have considered it to be a perfectly adequate workspace and living area, and would have relished the chance to fill every one of those bookcases with all of the texts and tomes he'd packed with him—but all his satchels and cases of flimsy documents were long-gone now, sunk to the bottom of the First House’s ocean along with the shuttle and all of his other worldly possessions.

None of it was irreplaceable. He wasn’t upset by this. Not at all. Not in the least. He was… irritated, certainly, but nothing he couldn’t get over. As for the loss of his cavalier—

Logan sat on the lumpy adept’s bed, and pressed a finger to the bridge of his nose, just beneath his glasses. He thought hard, or tried to. The robes he was wearing were nothing like the familiar gray of his Sixth scholar’s cloak, far too archaic in form, several shades too light, heavier than usual. Some intrigued and distant part of him, too tired to ascertain for certain, suspected that it might be an original Sixth cloak—after all, hadn’t the original occupants of this place founded the Houses in the first place?—and another, similar part of him, recoiled in horror at wearing a historical artifact like this one like nothing more than a set of spare sleeping robes. If they really were a Lyctor’s former clothes, they ought to be locked up in an archive and sufficiently preserved for the rest of eternity.

He had only one set of clothes left, though, and they were drying in a small laundry room downstairs. So he supposed he’d just have to get used to the unfamiliarity, and try not to think too hard about the possible blasphemy of it.

The logical thing to do would be to sleep. On a purely objective basis, he’d gone through a physically traumatic experience today, and had been pushed to his absolute limits in the struggle to stay afloat in the water. And it would hardly do to ruin his carefully-planned sleep schedule on the first night here—he’d drafted up a well-researched proposal for it, knowing that the day-night cycle of the First House would be unfamiliar and whiplash-fast when compared to the much slower rotations of the Sixth. Upon seeing it for the first time, Cinna had said—

No.

Logan remembered that Roman had caught him by the arm, when they’d all been separating for the night, less than an hour ago. His face had been uncharacteristically solemn, face tight with worry, and he’d said, “Look, Specs—do you want to share a room with us? We wouldn’t mind.”

Logan knew Remus well enough to know that this was a distinct untruth. “The Houses are meant to room separately for a reason. I doubt you would have space for an extra person.”

“I’ll lock Remus in the bathroom,” had been Roman’s instant response with not a trace of insincerity. “Or we can share a bed. Please, Lo, just—please, all right? Don’t make me beg you for this. I will if I have to.”

“You won’t have to beg. It won’t be necessary. I will be fine on my own.”

“But all on your own?” Roman looked faintly agonized at the thought. “Oh, you do know you can talk to us—you know that, right?”

“Of course I know I can talk to you,” Logan had replied. “I’m partaking in that activity right now. Roman, your concern is noted and appreciated, but I will be all right. I will see you in the morning.”

The prospect of sharing a bed with Roman Tetradrachmus, of all people, had… not been entirely unpleasant, at least in concept. But Logan didn’t think he could stand being that close to another person right now. Especially since he had no intention of sleeping tonight.

After a sufficient length of time, wherein Logan determined that the majority of the bone constructs had vanished from the corridors outside, he rose to his feet, made sure that his new-ancient robes fell neatly about him, and went to map out the interior of Canaan House.

First, he determined where the private quarters were, since those were most immediately important. Only four were occupied—the Fourth (on a rocky mid-height outlook overhanging the sea), the Fifth (near ground level, easily the most spacious of the quarters, currently also housing the bedraggled wreck of a man that was the Seventh necromancer), the Sixth (his own, of course)—and the Ninth, the very lowest.

When Logan had gone to examine the quarters below the shuttle dock from the outside, the door had been open and spilling dim warm light into the hallway. He stepped into the light to peer inside, dryly curious. From within, the Ninth cavalier raised an eyebrow at him and said, “Good evening, Sixth.”

“Ninth. Good evening,” Logan replied. He'd walked in on Janus the Ninth in the process of sorting through a wide arrangement of weapons and blades, all of which looked to be in various states of disrepair and disarray. He must have found them in the storage room that Teacher had shown them, from which he'd also obtained a set of flowing dark robes that he wore draped carelessly about his person. He wore a veil, but it was pushed back to reveal a round and furrowed face. The awful skull makeup had been carefully reapplied. He now more than ever resembled a sour, bony snake. Logan cleared his throat. “It’s late. You could not sleep?”

“Mm, neither could you. Cup-hilt or pappenheimer, do you think?” Janus was holding up two identical-looking rapiers, that single eyebrow still hovering. He was clearly already aware that Logan had no opinion between the two. “I’d hate to go into whatever-this-is wholly unarmed. You never know when you might need to stab someone in the back… or prevent them from stabbing you.”

Logan blinked. “Is that a threat?”

“Hardly. You’ll know when I’m threatening you.” Janus looked between the two rapiers, and dropped one in favor of the other, with the round shiny handle rippling with rust. He tucked his free arm behind his back, shifting his weight, and extended the blade in front of him in what Logan knew to be impeccable posture. “Splendid. There we are, there we go. I should name it, don’t you think?”

“Swords are inanimate objects, and hardly require you to ascribe nomenclature for them to be any more functional.”

“You’re a cheery one, aren’t you? The Fourth mentioned you.” Janus’s voice took on a subtle mocking cadence as he stepped around to find the appropriate sheath and stash his new weapon away. “So many people were yelling about you before you showed up. Logan Senarius. Everyone’s favorite necromancer. Any particular reason you felt the need to visit me this fine evening? Or were you just… checking in?”

“I would like to develop a functioning mental map of Canaan House,” Logan replied honestly. “And as you said—I did not want to sleep. Exploring seemed a logical course of action.”

“Without your cavalier? Living life on the edge, Master Warden,” Janus said, with something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Well, just don’t forget what Teacher informed us. Locked doors, permission. Who knows what terrible things could happen if you broke that maxim?”

“Your door was not locked,” Logan pointed out. “You’ve left it entirely open.”

“So I have. I should shut it,” said Janus, and then, “Good evening, Warden.”

“Good evening, Janus,” Logan replied, and left the Ninth to clear up the scattered piles of swords all around him. As he made his way back through the corridor leading to the main house, he heard the Ninth’s door click solemnly shut.

Janus was an uncertain factor in this situation, Logan noted to himself. He was not so prejudiced against the Ninth house to distrust the man on grounds of his rather offputting appearance alone—but it was hard to ignore everything else about him. His lack of visible concern over the loss of his necromancer was strange, his general demeanor figuratively screamed something to hide.

Logan filed it all within a figurative box neatly labeled ‘worry about later, but worry HARD’, and went to search the rest of the House.

*

Canaan House was a maze of interlocking rooms linked together like crazy paving, gathering dust and growing vines. There was no rhyme or reason to the way the rooms were laid out—a cleaning supplies cupboard with dried-up chemicals stacked to the ceiling was located right next to a full-scale courtroom, gavel still resting in front of the judge’s seat. Logan moved through garden terraces long since left to overgrow and tangle, training rooms with sagging wooden equipment pushed against the walls, swimming rooms with dried-up pools. He took careful note of each and every location in his mind, and moved on.

It took him a while to work up the nerve to lay hands on any item around him with the intention of elucidating its age. He already suspected he’d know what he would find, even though proper scientific method dictated he should confirm his hypothesis. And sure enough, when he ventured into another small storeroom and picked up one of the many cracked handmade vases that had been piled hastily within, his psychometric senses prickled sharply and informed him that it was stupid old, just so very massively fuck-off old, as Cinna would probably say—

No.

He experimented further, traveling from room to room, choosing objects as randomly as he could manage for an even sample. Nearly everything in Canaan House was so old as to be undateable. In his mind and his senses, it all blurred to one vast ancient monolith, accompanied by vaguest impressions of the people who’d handled them last. He’d never tried to psychometrically analyze anything quite this ancient before, he couldn’t get a handle on it. The faces were blurry, feelings of old scars stretching at his back and unfamiliar fabric against his skin, scattered emotions of joy and remorse. The original Lyctors? He couldn’t imagine otherwise. It was all too frustrating and distant to be remotely satisfying.

He stopped trying to analyze items. He would devise a better psychometric strategy later. He carried on mapping out Canaan House for the moment, moving faster now, stopping only to see the shape of the rooms before moving on.

It was an hour past midnight, no more, when Logan encountered Teacher. He’d been working his way down through the levels of Canaan House, from the uppermost floor moving down to the bottom terrace, where he knew he’d have to conclude his investigation. The pale priest was facing a long tapestry dyed monochrome by the shadows. Logan adjusted his glasses, and saw that it depicted a series of unrealistically-portioned characters gallivanting across a cliffside.

When he came closer, and brushed his hand against it, he discovered that it was older than anything he’d ever touched before. This did not frighten him in the least, of course. He withdrew his hand, and nodded at Teacher, who was now eyeing him with those bright blue eyes.

“The Sixth House, yes?” the priest greeted, maybe a bit too cheerily, turning properly away from the tapestry. He didn’t seem tired in the slightest, even though Logan was nearly certain he hadn’t slept. “A pleasure. I’d always wanted to visit your Library.”

Something about the wistful way he said this made Logan gently uneasy. He cleared his throat, and reached to straighten a nonexistent tie, the one Cinna had made him take off due to it not being a part of standard necromantic regalia for the Master Warden. Cinna had said—

No time for that.

Logan said, “The Library would welcome you. Provided you submitted the proper administrative materials in advance, and passed a background check.”

“Of course, of course, the Sixth and their paperwork. It’s hard to forget!” Teacher laughed, seeming to find this unthinkably hilarious. “I can’t, of course. Never. Never, ever, ever. The First is my home and sworn duty.”

Logan said, “May I ask you a question?”

“You just did!” said Teacher, and laughed again. He had recovered from his shuttle-crash melancholy remarkably quickly, and was in irritatingly cheerful spirits. “I joke. I jest! Go on, ask away.”

Logan withdrew the iron ring that he’d been presented with some several hours ago. To his senses, it was simple, no more than a single year old, and had no complicated history or backstory. It seemed a perfectly ordinary ring with an interlinking mechanism, meant to store a series of keys on. “Explain the purpose of this.”

Teacher said, “It is exactly what it seems.”

“A keychain?”

“The very same.”

“Which must mean there should be a set of keys to accompany it,” Logan inferred.

“You could not be more correct!”

“I see.” Logan resisted the urge to grit his teeth and instead focused on asking more specific questions so this could be over with. “Do you… have any of the keys that would correspond with this ring?”

“I do.”

“Excellent,” said Logan.

There was an expectant sort of silence—expectant on both sides, because Logan was waiting for Teacher to hand the keys over promptly, and Teacher was waiting for… well, he was waiting for something.

“Will you give me the keys?” he tried, irritation bubbling up.

“I may,” Teacher replied.

“When?”

Teacher just smiled and was silent, which meant that Logan had not asked the correct question yet. Logan paced a pensive circle around the darkened corridor, pinching at the bridge of his nose. Under any other circumstances, he would be delighted for the mental exercise. A good lateral thinking puzzle was hard to come by. But he was only a half of the way through exploring Canaan House, and it was over halfway to morning, and he couldn’t spend all that much time on whatever this was supposed to be. The secrets of Lyctorhood were one thing, but they had weeks, perhaps even months or years, to figure those out. His current circumstances were immediate, and time-sensitive.

“You clearly want a specific question,” he said aloud, “or for me to fulfill some hidden requirements, before you give me what I want. By the expectancy of your expression, I have the knowledge I need already. I simply need to assemble it into the right form.”

Teacher smiled and waited.

“The only instructions you have given so far were…” Logan trailed off.

Anyone else would have forgotten the exact wording of Teacher’s instructions from earlier that evening. But Logan’s memory was extraordinarily good—and he’d made a point of writing the spoken instructions down on a pad of flimsy in his newly-assigned quarters, as he did with anything else that he considered unprecedentedly stupid.

“I would like permission to open a locked door,” he said firmly, after only a few second’s thought.

And with a delighted little hum, Teacher reached beneath the shirtline of his robes, removing a keychain of his own—this one clinking and jingling with the weight of eight identical dull-iron keys. He slipped one off, and presented it with cold, pale fingers that left a chill on the metal as Logan wrapped his fist around it.

“And what does this unlock?” he asked, but was not rewarded with an answer.

“Good night, Logan,” Teacher said instead, with a beautiful smile, and set off down the hallway and into the darkness at a strange, ambling lope. He walked the walk of someone whose legs had been previously broken and reset, and was not at all mad about it. As Logan observed him, he swiveled a corner with a funny little stagger-slide, and was gone from view.

Logan thought about this encounter for a second or two, analyzing it over and over in his head. Then he went back to the tapestry and lifted its bottom hem, pulling it up enough so he could duck under and see what Teacher had been so concerned about checking.

His suspicions were immediately rewarded. There was a door there—marked with a series of strange, incomprehensible symbols on a tiny rusted plate set into its side. Logan examined it once, twice, and his curiosity was piqued enough to try the handle. It rattled, but did not click.

The key now fastened to his ring did not unlock it. It was not even the same style. And when Logan brushed fingers along the lock and key in turn, they were separated by hundreds of years from each other in construction. Not remotely compatible.

Of course the first unusually interesting room he had found was locked to him.

He clipped the currently-useless iron key to his keyring, stowed that into his robes, and continued down through the House.

He briefly visited the kitchens on the ground floor, where a veritable army of skeletons were hard at work baking up a figurative storm, and observed them for a time. The smells and sights of food were not appetizing to him, but the bone constructs themselves—Logan could have easily watched them for the remainder of the morning. He dearly wanted to take one of the skeleton constructs apart, find out every detail of how it was animated and what theorems had been used to make its movement so smooth. Bone magic had never been his specialty, but it didn’t have to be for him to know just how difficult this level of animation would be.

Drawing himself away, he forced himself to focus. Outside he went, passing by the now-locked Ninth Quarters—dim light still flickering from beneath the frame—and trailing his way down the spiraling staircase that ran around the outside of the largest tower. There was a basement within sight that begged examination, but the lateness—no, earliness—of the hour was beginning to drag at him, and he knew he’d need his wits about him for the last task on his to-do list tonight.

So he steeled himself, and went to examine the victims of the shuttle crash. He’d overheard Virgil talking to Teacher right after the not-quite ceremony had broken up. Teacher had confirmed in slightly worried tones where all of the bodies would be temporarily stored, once retrieved from the ocean. Logan knew where to go, and knew how to check the bodies over. He took his time doing so, spending several minutes on each corpse. Did everything right, followed all of the procedures—even under such unorthodox circumstances.

And what he found disturbed him.

After he had recollected himself, he went directly to the Fifth’s quarters and found their necromancer helpfully awake already.

“I need you to help me perform an autopsy,” he said—and to Patton’s credit, he only asked what? once before grabbing a blanket from a nearby heap of them, and hurrying in Logan’s wake all the way down to the ground floor.

*

Ten minutes later and they were out on the terrace, Patton with a threadbare blanket around his shoulders and a set of ancient robes that were loose and floppy around the sleeves and waist, even on his larger frame. Logan had lit the external lights to allow them some visibility, and now they were staring at the long row of bodies along its inside perimeter. The bone constructs had gone to the effort of laying them all out neatly, side by side, until they could find a place inside to store them. Leaving them exposed to the elements wasn’t ideal, but clearing out the freezers would take some time—and salt happened to be an excellent preservative.

“Gosh,” said Patton, a bit blankly, and bit his lip. “Well—gosh. Is that all of them?”

“That the bone constructs could retrieve, yes,” Logan said, and once again ran his mind through the numbers. The Second were perfectly recognizable despite some water damage and one suspiciously missing trachea. The Third were less so, but Roman and Remus had positively identified their bodies and the shuttle had been intact enough to corroborate the fact that it was indeed them. The Sixth cavalier was—

Irrelevant.

The Seventh’s cavalier was a mess of melted flesh and warped bone assembled roughly into a barely-human shape, and Logan did not know Thomas at all but still hoped that he’d never have to see the remains. The Eighth were waterlogged, and seemed to have both drowned.

Which just left two bodies remaining.

Logan was an excellent mathematician. And this did not add up.

“So,” said Patton. He was making an admirable attempt to hold himself tall, but Logan didn’t miss the slight tremble to his voice as he spoke. “That must be—Janus’s necromancer. Philinnion.”

“Maybe,” said Logan. “It is impossible to tell. The clothes are unfamiliar, the bodies damaged beyond all recognition. And even if one of them is from the Ninth—that leaves the matter of the other body. There were only meant to be sixteen of us.”

“Oh. Well, haven’t you tried doing your…” Patton wiggled his fingers high in the air, and made a buzzing noise through his teeth. “…Psych-y messy thing?”

“Psychometry. You know what psychometry is. And I have. I did. I examined them thoroughly. I can tell you with confidence that those two—” Logan pointed at the two corpses furthest away. “—are General Matilda Duodecimo and Lieutenant Aramis Zwei of the Second House, and that Zwei died attempting to shield his adept with his own body. The Third did something to prevent my reading of them, even after death, but I am also fairly confident that it is them from context alone. I could do the same for all of the rest, but it wouldn’t matter. The fact of the matter remains that I have no idea whatsoever who these final two are, or which ship they came from. All I can read is fear, rage, and homesickness, and that they are native to the Nine Houses. Hardly indicative of an exact origin point.”

There was silence for a long while, only broken by the distant rushing of the sea around them, and the creaking of rusty Canaan House windows.

“Well, I’m confused,” said Patton eventually.

Logan resisted the urge to say something unkind.

“My current hypothesis is that whoever the additional body is, they are the one who precipitated the shuttle crash,” he said eventually. “I am unsure if their intention was to bring down all of our transport vessels at once, or if it was a targeted assassination attempt that went awry. Either way, it is not a comforting thought.”

“Someone was trying to kill us?” Patton first looked horrified, then at each body in turn. “Well, can’t we… do we know what shuttle they were on, at least? Which one crashed first?”

“No. The bone constructs pulled the bodies out without outside assistance. They cannot speak, and didn’t respond to basic sign language or gestures when I attempted to gain the information through other means.” Logan paused. “Which is why I need you to contact the dead directly.”

Patton often claimed he was a sub-par necromancer—and he objectively was, Logan wasn’t about to begin denying that. His grasp on theorems and bodily processes was severely lacking, and he didn’t have the focus or discipline that most branches of necromancy required. And yet, he was still the heir of the Fifth, and there was good reason for that. Everything else notwithstanding, he was a really fucking good spirit magician.

Patton said, “Oh,” thoughtfully, and was silent.

Logan looked at Patton sideways, and for a second forced himself to brush back the cold focus that had consumed him thus far. He saw that Patton was fiddling with the many colorful loops of string and twine that dangled from his wrists, twisting them to and fro. Logan had a corresponding bracelet, obviously, but he didn’t wear it. It was concealed in an inside pocket within his Warden’s robes. He wondered distantly if it had fallen out or become otherwise dislodged in the crash. Patton would… be upset if that were the case.

“Are you—” He cleared his throat, and said, “You do not have to do this if you don’t want to. I know that this is… difficult, for you. And everyone else. I can access the River myself if need be.”

Patton startled, like he hadn’t been aware he was spacing out. “Oh, me? I’m fine, just fine!” he said, and smiled a big toothy smile, hand dropping away from the bracelets. “And don’t you lie to me, mister, I know your spirit magic is worse than your bone crafting! River conduits aren’t exactly the most mainstream study, you know.”

“Was that a… pun, about the…” Logan rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Never mind. As long as you’re sure, we will proceed.”

“Proceed we shall. Whup, here we go,” said Patton, sitting down cross-legged on the tiles with a little fwump of robes. “All right, all righty, all right-io, um, hm. Who first?”

Logan’s mind alighted briefly upon the Worry About Later box, and he wondered if it was too soon to worry about it. But then again… “You said that you knew the name of the necromancer of the Ninth. That seems a reasonable place to start.”

“Ninth it is!” Patton poked at his glasses for a moment, then took them off entirely. Palms flat on his knees, facing up, biting his lip in concentration as he shut his eyes. Logan stood by and watched. The air sharpened around them, prickling at his skin, and ozone became sharp and apparent. Static electricity took hold of Patton’s messy curly hair, made it spring up and out, frizzing its way to total dishevelment.

Patton always looked more alive than most, animated and brimming over with energy from the inside, but it was at times like these when he was communing with the dead that he looked even more lively than ever. It was quite lovely, in a purely scientific sort of way.

Logan could now feel the thanergy crackling up through the aura of the planet, diverting and streaming all the way to Patton’s outstretched hands where he caught it and twisted it, pulling it over and back upon itself.

Sometimes it was downright infuriating how easy spirit magic came to Patton, especially since he hadn’t studied any of it, not a word. Logan had studied plenty of spirit magic, and it was like pulling teeth to him—which he had also studied, and did not particularly find himself any good at.

Still, he wasn’t fool enough to feel jealousy over superior necromantic performance when he could just as easily witness it, appreciate it, and take copious mental notes.

Even if the method of spirit-summoning was… somewhat unorthodox.

“Philinnion! Come on out, kiddo!” Patton trilled, like a parent trying to coax their child back inside for dinner. “We’ve just got a few questions for you, would’ja mind joining us for a chat?”

His hair continued to crackle and spark, and Logan continued to stand silently, waiting for something—but nothing did. No ghosts formed and there were no hints of the River peeking through to be seen.

Patton cleared his throat awkwardly, and tried again. “Philinnion? Philinnion of the Ninth? I—oh, shoot, I should’ve asked Janus for your last name—why don’t you pull yourself out of the River for me now, all right? Just for a minute or two, then you can dip right back in—sound good?”

The silence lingered like a bad smell. Logan shifted from foot to foot, and lightly cleared his throat.

“Well, love has failed me,” Patton said sadly, dropping his hands and letting the thanergy fade. “I guess she’s just not there! Must have moved on past the River—it happens sometimes, y’know. Not so quickly, usually, but sometimes ya just gotta go with the flow, hey?”

Logan frowned. “All right. That’s all right. You… I’m sure you tried your best. Try the Eighth next.”

Patton straightened his shoulders and acquired a set of determination to his jaw. “Will do, chief.”

“I am not a—fine.”

The process repeated again, this time with Patton reaching out to the cavalier and adept of the Eighth, one by one—and again, there was no response. And again, after a few minutes of trying, Patton dropped the energy flow and announced his failure with a look of honest distress in his eyes.

Logan did not get bad feelings about things, only made logical inferences about the potential future outcomes of situations based on the evidence presented to him. But he was starting to make an unfortunate inference about this particular situation. “…Cinna.” He found it difficult to speak the name, and dispassionately forced it out from between his lips like a stripped bone. “Ask—find Cinna.”

Patton let out an audible gulp, and looked very, very worried. “Are you sure—”

“I am always sure,” Logan growled, and watched as Patton went through the motions again, this time his hands shaking, and when he called up the thanergy flow and directed it out, there was more energy there than ever before. He was putting such concentration and focus into the task, more than Logan had ever seen Patton commit to any task, that it seemed downright inconceivable it wouldn’t succeed.

Patton called out into the early-morning air, voice echoing across the crashing waves, fingers wreathed with the heat-blur haze of active necromancy.

And Cinna Hexyl did not appear.

To this, Logan abandoned all patience and pretense of scientific rigidity. He promptly forced Patton through a whirlwind of increasingly desperate soul-summoning attempts from the very top, each more fruitless and unsuccessful than the last. There was no hint of the Second. None of the Third, either. The Sixth—

The Seventh cavalier wasn’t responding no matter how loudly either of them called to her, no matter how much thanergy they forced up through the ground and into Patton’s outstretched hands. No sign from the Eighth, and not a whisper from the Ninth.

Daylight was starting to break over the shimmering watery horizon, spilling Dominicus’s light like gold, and by then they were both exhausted, sitting on the cracked tiles of the terrace among ten unspeaking corpses—silent in their mutual confusion. It wasn’t uncommon for the occasional ghost to be inaccessible, for it to have passed beyond the grasp of even the most practiced spirit magician. But for each and every one of the shuttle crash victims to be unreachable? That couldn’t just be coincidence, and they both knew it.

On the marbled terraces of the First, there was not a ghost to be found.

*

And so it was evening and it was morning in Canaan House, the first day.

*

Chapter Text

CHAPTER SIX

“Thomas the Seventh"

*

In the dream, it was warm and dark, and he liked it that way; oh how he adored it. When he shut his eyes, he could pretend he was buried or maybe drowning. The darkness was soft around him, a gentle sweep of silent belonging like a lover’s embrace.

And in the dream, someone said that they’d had just about enough of this darkness, and that there ought to be light; light would spice all of this up nicely, wouldn’t it? Yeah, light seemed like the way to go.

And lo, there was light. And he shut his eyes against it all, for he was afraid. It pricked at his eyelids and dug its bright claws into his pale skin until he couldn’t bear it any longer, and he knew he’d have to look eventually.

He opened his eyes—

*

—and Thomas woke to an unfamiliar ceiling, the aftertaste of blood, and the sound of furious pacing and muttering.

For a moment he was afraid—but the bed he was lying in was wonderfully soft, if a little dusty. So things couldn’t really be that bad, could they?

So he lay there and stared upwards and swirled his tongue around in his mouth, trying to get rid of the just-woke-up rasp of iron, and listened to a gradually fading in-and-out monologue of, “Where you go I go my ass… If he thinks I’m going to babysit every random necromancer he gets all soft over I swear I’m going to… Oh god. Oh god, what if he went and died, what if it was that Ninth weirdo, and he came in here while I was sleeping like an idiot and… Why did I sign up for this? Why do I keep on doing this to myself… Idiot. I’m an idiot—I’m getting Logan to rip out my pineal gland, I never want to sleep again—”

None of which made much sense. But it didn’t seem to be directed at him. So maybe it wasn’t that big of a deal?

The ceiling was high and lovely, despite the obvious decay. Molded plaster decals twirled their elaborate meandering way from all corners of the walls up to a peaked roof, and golden sunlight was spilling all the way from the wide-open windows to pool in dusty corners. Over the sound of the pacing stranger listing more and more glands that ‘Logan’ could deactivate to prevent him from ever falling asleep on any job ever for the rest of known time, Thomas realized that he might actually know where he was. It wasn’t completely familiar, this ceiling, but the cracks and the moss and the mold rang a faint, painful bell. Was this the First House? The memories of the flight over were scattered in his mind. The memories of the immediate aftermath were worse. He remembered the crash, the fire, being dragged roughly out, hands passing over his body, and then…

Reaching up, he found that, quite apart from the threadbare covers, he was still thoroughly-covered by a thick dark cloak; slightly damp, wonderfully warm nonetheless. On the bedside table next to him there was a wrought-iron ring. These were the extent of his possessions, because—as he realized upon lifting the cloak and covers—his clothes had been reduced to tatters and ash. He couldn’t remember what clothes he had been wearing before the crash. They were probably nice clothes that hadn’t at all deserved it. He took a moment to quietly mourn their loss.

At this sudden motion, the pacing stopped, and the pacer whirled to face Thomas, who had just started to painfully lever his head up off the pillow. Now they were looking at each other.

There was a brief moment of mutual puzzled startlement.

This was a slashed line of a man, a thin tiny figure wrapped in grim grays and browns with a sheathed sword double-strapped to his side, a furious thicket of dark hair that flopped over his eyes, and shoulders that seemed hunched and slouched as a matter of urgency. His eyes were a lightly furious violet, and Thomas didn’t think he’d ever seen a shade like that before. It made his gaze look pale and baleful when he glared, like lavenders were angry at you.

And he was currently glaring at Thomas. Thomas was still in bed and struggling to get his bearings, let alone sit up, and he still felt the instinct anxious urge to jump to his feet and apologize for—something. Everything about this man screamed ‘I don’t like you and I think you’re doing something wrong’, and it screamed it like a foghorn. “You’re awake,” he said, and it sounded like an accusation.

Thomas swallowed, and found that his throat was apparently made of sandpaper. “Hi?”

The accusatory glare continued. “Do you feel like you’re currently dying?”

Thomas did not. Just a bit achy around the edges. “Not really.”

“Any internal bleeding, or… like, organ damage, or whatever?”

Thomas tried to check himself for organ damage, and came up with nothing, which could have meant anything. “I don’t think so?”

The man nodded, half to himself. “Great,” he said, then: “Virgil Cinque. Cavalier—obviously. I’m with the Fifth. You look like shit.”

Which, weirdly, felt less like an insult and more like a necessary fact to be stated. Thomas definitely felt pretty bad, so it would follow that he also looked it.

“Thomas Sanders,” he said, after grasping around in the shallow depths of his scrambled brain, and mostly getting his hands on one that sounded right. It was a first name, and it was a last name, and someone had most certainly strung the two into order at some point, in reference to him. Therefore, his name. “…Um. Thanks. For saving me.”

“That’s the weirdest House name I’ve ever heard,” Virgil Cinque, Cavalier of the Fifth muttered, and shook his head. “Okay. Um. I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do with you. Pat said we’d look after you—but he disappeared, he just went somewhere with Logan in the middle of the night. He left a note, but that’s not super helpful, I’ve told him about wandering off and just leaving notes. Like, anyone could fake his handwriting, so I can’t trust any of them…”

Thomas got the impression that this little monologue was more for Virgil’s own sake than his, and busied himself by slowly sitting up and testing how his body responded to that. He ached all over, and his skin was raw and just a bit red in that just-short-of-a-sunburn way, but he didn’t feel as awful as he thought he should.

“Don’t you faint on me,” Virgil said, scowling even deeper.

“No, I… I think I’m all right.” Thomas drew the lovely thick cloak about his shoulders and took an experimental step forwards, bare feet on wooden paneling. He wobbled a bit, but his next step was steady, and he said, “Whoops! All right. Taking it slow.”

“You’d better be. I’m not catching you.” Despite his words and tone, Virgil was watching Thomas carefully, violet eyes narrowed and hands tensed by his side, obviously prepared to lunge forward at any moment. After Thomas managed a few more paces to the other side of the room, Virgil looked reluctantly satisfied. “Great. Well, I was about to head down for breakfast. So, if you were going to tag along… Wow. You’re actually doing… not bad, huh?” His eyes were fixed on Thomas as he tread a short path to the windows, and he sounded startled. “You were pretty much on the brink of death last night. And, y’know, I should know what that looks like.”

“Uh, I’m a quick healer,” Thomas said, distracted by the view outside the bay windows. “I guess.” The room was close to ground level, giving a stunning overlook of the rocky cliffs outside, rushing and dripping with thoroughly thrashed sea foam. The ocean waves were anything but still, despite the clear skies and gauzy clouds above. He couldn’t help but press a hand to the dusty glass, and imagine the taste of salt.

“Well, if you’re feeling up to going down… We picked up some clothes for you,” Virgil said, looking tremendously awkward about it. He ducked his head down, away; avoiding eye contact like the plague. “From downstairs—there was, like, a big trunk of old—never mind. Just, don’t be an ass and complain about what I grabbed. If you really want something else, you can go find it yourself later.”

There was, indeed, a small pile of folded clothes sitting on top of a nearby mahogany chest of drawers. Thomas hobbled over, and found that they were soft with age and faded in color, but seemed to be roughly his size and, more than that—he found he instantly loved the look of them. Nearly half of the shirts were embossed with stylized flower designs of all sorts, gently fuzzy through their repeated use. Some of the jeans were embroidered, too, colorful little dots and spots picked out in unraveling thread.

“Oh,” he said, happily surprised. “These are great, thanks!”

“Uh, great,” said Virgil, and gestured out into the hallway. “No problem, I guess. I’ll just be… out here while you get changed. Don’t take too long or I’ll leave without you.”

“Thanks, Virge,” said Thomas.

“Don’t nickname me,” Virgil snapped back, raising a finger. “Don’t you do it. I already get enough of that from Princey, and we are not anywhere close enough for the nicknames.”

So saying, he abruptly stalked out of the room, and Thomas hurried to the bathroom to quickly change. At first the clothes felt strange, unfamiliar fabrics and materials, but then he took a moment to glance at himself in the mirror and run a hand through his hair, and he realized that they’d only been uncomfortable for a minute. He liked how he felt. He liked the look of them; he liked their pastel softness.

He smiled at himself, and thought that he had a nice smile.

A pair of sturdy boots were also included. They looked like they would actively attempt to murder his feet. Thomas briefly considered going about barefoot, before looking around and seeing the state of the ruptured floorboards and tiles. As nice as the cold stone would feel on his bare skin, he kind of wanted to avoid injuring himself even more. Boots it was. The cloak he’d woken with was still faintly damp, but he couldn’t help but tuck it around himself once more. He was already beginning to realize the House of the First was unfairly cold, and he liked the warmth and weight of it.

Thoroughly suited-up, he stepped back into the main room, and then out into the hallway, where Virgil was fidgeting with the handle of his sword. He said, “Damn, I don’t get to ditch you. All right, then.”

Thomas glanced around the hallway, even dustier than the Fifth quarters, and much less brightly-lit. There were many doorways, all of them firmly shut and cast so far in shadow they looked more like dark patches of void. There was a painting hanging just across from him, a portrait done in strokes of pastel pink and sepia. Someone had torn the canvas in half, leaving just the bottom half of an upper torso—hands clasped demurely together, no identifying features beyond the subject’s cheerfully magenta nail polish.

“Thomas? Hey,” said Virgil sharply, and Thomas jumped, catching himself against a wall just before he fell. For a second Virgil looked almost apologetic, and then his expression shifted. “Scared, Sanders?” he said, with a sudden sharp smile.

Thomas’s instinct was to take a step back, but managed to stop himself. The answer was yes. This small, slight man with the baleful glare didn’t seem like he had any interest in hurting Thomas, per se, but there still was something distinctly threatening about him. Maybe it was the sword. The sword was definitely part of it. It looked like a very sharp, very dangerous sword, and Thomas definitely didn’t want it anywhere near him in any situation, unsheathed or otherwise.

Thomas looked at Virgil, and was scared, but could not stop himself from being deeply fascinated too. A mess of contradictions. Angry and soft. Terrified and brave. Small and imposing. It was inescapable and inevitable: Thomas loved Virgil on sight. How could anyone not?

“Just hungry,” he said. “So, where’s breakfast?”

*

They descended two crumbling flights of stairs that most likely were quite grand in their prime, and headed down through a series of equally crumbling corridors towards a variety of breakfast-tinged smells that made Thomas’s nose wrinkle. Every window they passed shone with cracked and dusty stained glass, some with broken-open holes large enough for a person to fit through.

There were remnants of lives lived everywhere you looked—a pile of ancient boots and shoes heaped at one end of the hallway; an out-of-place statue shoved into a doorway as a quick patch to keep it open. Thomas thought it all beautiful in a sad sort of way—if he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine the people who must have lived here, centuries ago. Footsteps echoing through the halls, friendly hands assisting each other in hanging up the art along the corridors and planting the flowers that now wilted their lonely way outside of the windows.

But Virgil seemed unimpressed by every inch of it, and his hand never strayed far from the base of his sword. Despite the perpetual slouch to his shoulders, there was a constant tension to the way he held himself. He seemed to be resigned to some sort of inevitable attack, although Thomas couldn’t begin to guess from where or from whom. He resisted all attempts Thomas made to engage him in small-talk, and eventually Thomas gave up altogether. It wasn’t an especially long walk, anyway—within minutes they had emerged into a glass-roofed dining area, not quite as dusty and ruined as the rest of the place. Tables had already been set out and wiped down, and several people were already here and eating—faces that Thomas only vaguely recognized from the previous night.

“Great, my responsibility ends here,” Virgil said, sounding as if it were the best news he’d had all day. He clapped Thomas on the arm slightly too hard, and slouched off to sit at a corner table, far away from everyone else.

Thomas hovered in the center of the room, still shaky on his feet but unsure of where to sit. Virgil was already accepting a bowl of something hot and steaming from a bone construct, and seemed to radiate a desire for solitude, but there were only three others in the room—not much to choose from. Here was where the social anxiety kicked in, of course.

Immediately, Thomas’s eyes were drawn to the person at the other corner table, as solitary as Virgil, calmly tearing apart bread and dipping it in his breakfast broth with tangible satisfaction, as if it were the best meal he’d ever eaten despite its simplicity. He was draped entirely in black, shoulders to toes, but that wasn’t the worst of it. As Thomas watched him from a distance, he looked up abruptly, apparently sensing the weight of the gaze—and looked right at Thomas.

His face (which Thomas vaguely recalled from last night as being warmly brown, if not exactly friendly in shape or expression) was now painted bone-white with pitch-black highlights in deliberate strokes of greasepaint. He made eye contact with Thomas and smiled. The slash of paint that covered his lips was uneven and crooked. It went too far up his cheek on one side of his face, curling towards his ears with an unsettling grimace. Thomas was afraid of the sunken darkened eyesockets, the oddly snakelike patterning running all the way from his forehead and retreating beneath the collar of his shirt. He was afraid of the single searchlight-yellow eye. And was extremely terrified, mortally so, of the way that the skull-faced man slowly raised a gloved hand, and flexed his fingers in a smooth little wave. It was beautiful and it was terrible. Regrettably, Thomas fell in love immediately.

Trying to ignore this, he pulled the comforting warmth of the cloak around himself, forced a strained smile in return, and forced his gaze away. Thankfully, the two others sitting at the center of the room had noticed him by now, and were now enthusiastically waving him over with identical wide grins. Grateful for the reprieve, he hurried over and sat across from them. “Hi! Hello. Good morning.”

They were clearly brothers and almost certainly twins; the resemblance would have been more than uncanny otherwise. They had the same wild hair, same careless elbow planted on the table as they ate, and the same strikingly dark eyes, glinting with dusty gold as the sunlight from above caught them.

“Greetings and salutations to the House of the Seventh!” exclaimed the one wearing the red-and-white uniform of a Cohort officer, although it looked ragged enough that Thomas could make a wild guess that he wasn’t from the Cohort at all. Probably another thing taken from the storerooms, like Virgil had said earlier.

“‘Sup, loser,” said the other, who was thinner and had a really unfortunate mustache. Whatever he’d snatched from the storerooms barely suited him—a wild combination of styles and clothing types that barely meshed together. “God damn you heal fast. Or maybe Highbrow Hack’s better at fleshwarping than I thought—last night, you were rocking the whole flayed-corpse-chique thing, what happened?”

To which the red-and-white brother elbowed him, exasperated, and said, “By the rapturous roiling of the River, do you ever stop? I’m trying to make a good impression, here!” To Thomas, he added, “My apologies for my dreadful brother, dear Seventh, I assure you that some members of the Fourth House have class.”

“Oh, uh, just Thomas is fine,” said Thomas, unwillingly receiving a bowl of something warm and spiced from a pair of helpful bony hands, and a small platter of assorted breads from another. “Thank you? Thank you,” he added, although both bone constructs were already retreating. He waved helplessly at their retreating skeletal spines, and then sheepishly turned back to the pair of uncanny twins before him. “It’s good to meet you properly. I don’t think I caught your names last night?”

“Prince Roman Tetradrachmus, cavalier primary to the Palace of Onnuria,” said the red-and-white brother with a little hand-flourish upwards, “at your service!”

“Remus,” said his twin, with a sharp little grin and a jerky bow, “the interesting one.”

“Thomas,” said Thomas again, by reflex, and then realized he’d already introduced himself and immediately wanted to go back to being in a burn-induced semi-coma. Thankfully, Roman just laughed and shook his hand over the table, and Remus didn’t seem to care much apart from letting out a loud and wet raspberry at the sight of the handshake.

Thomas immediately liked Roman, whose smile was bright enough to light up a solar system, and whose handshake was firm but gentle. Remus was less likable as a matter of instinct. There was something to the way that he looked at anyone who wasn’t his brother—like Thomas was meat and only that. They were both perfect. Thomas fell in love again twice over, and only half-regretted it.

“I see you’ve made the acquaintance of Mr Gloom, Doom, and Out Of Tune already,” Roman said with a faint little curl to his lip. “And in case you’re wondering—yes, he is that gloomy and grumpy to everyone he meets.”

“Oh, good, I was worried I’d said something wrong,” Thomas said, a little relieved. He poked at his breakfast with a spoon, swishing the lumpy mixture around unenthusiastically, and covered his reluctance with an inquiring, “So, you already know each other?”

“Oh yeah,” Remus said, now going at his own bowl of oatmeal with reckless abandon, not bothering to pause to talk. “Practically grew up in the same underwear, all of us grinding on each other’s dicks. Us and…” He puffed out a cheek with a sound like a balloon being pumped full of slime, and waved a hand inelegantly around before shrugging. “Y’know, most of us.”

“We know most of the survivors,” Roman told Thomas, mood visibly dipping for the first time that morning. “Logan and Patton, and Patton’s cavalier… good grief. There aren’t very many of us left. Oh, I hope the Emperor turns up soon…”

“Yeah, we know everyone except you. And the Ninth,” Remus added, pulling his spoon from his mouth with a wet slurp, and pointing it across the room at the All-Black All-Bone Yellow-Eyed Man. “Janus, right? Ol’ Bony J himself. Loving that face. Did he give a last name? I want to seduce him. Hey, d’you think he finds bones sexy? I bet I can do some sexy, kinky bone shit. I bet he’d like that.”

“Novena, I think,” Roman said, ignoring the latter half of Remus’s little monologue with what seemed to be practiced ease.

Thomas struggled to do the same, and also to say something about Janus that wasn’t ‘he scares me’ or ‘I am getting the impression that this man has killed many people and enjoyed it, not from anything he’s said, but just, like, the general way he holds himself’ or, worst of all, ‘his cheekbones are lovely, though, don’t you love his cheekbones? I know I do’. “He’s… unusual?”

“Ugh, yes,” Roman said. “Him and his creepy… snaky skull face. Hate that.” He paused, thoughtfully, and then added, “He is very kind, though.”

To which Janus, from the other side of the room, called out, “Love the new outfit, Roman. Cohort uniform really suits the Fourth.”

He hadn’t even looked up from the last of his meal. Thomas suppressed a shiver as he realized that Janus had most likely been listening to their entire conversation. Oh, gosh.

But Roman didn’t seem to mind, and looked inordinately pleased. “Thank you,” he called back, preening.

“Anyway, enough about him,” said Remus, through a messy mouthful of bread. “You don’t look like you’re sadly wasting away to a shriveled pile of cancer-riddled bones. So what’s your deal, Rose From The Dead?”

Thomas blinked. “What?”

Remus blinked right back at him, flapping his eyelids shut once, twice, three times; staring at him with those dusty dark eyes. “Bitch—what do you mean, what? Aren’t all Seventh necromancers meant to be, like, one good stab away from flopping down the River like disembowelled fish?”

“I, uh…” Thomas struggled for words. There was something about Remus that made it hard to focus when he asked you a question. “I—no? I’m not… I’m… I mean, I’m still feeling a bit, you know, from the crash…”

Roman came to his gallant rescue then, saying, “Oh, you garbage cesspool. You don’t see me going around asking you when you’re going to drop dead of cancer, Remus. You could stop being so perfectly awful for just five minutes. I am trying to make a good impression.”

“Well, I’ve never cared much about good impressions,” Remus said pensively. “I’m just trying to make an impression, that’s all.”

Thomas forced a laugh, scratching the back of his head, and said, “Well, you’re… definitely making that. Haha. Hm.”

“Ignore him, Thomas,” Roman said firmly, and tapped his spoon on the table with a charming little clink-clink! “Tell me, where did you get that shirt? Such an unusual fabric, and look at that print!”

“Um, same place as you?” Thomas said. “I think?”

They continued to eat, or avoid eating, and continued to talk, although it was mostly Roman and Thomas talking, with Remus chiming in occasionally to offer off-color commentary. Roman exclaimed over Thomas’s new clothing choices, claiming he’d never seen a style like it before—to which Thomas admitted it had been Virgil’s pick, and Roman huffed and said, “Really? Well, even dumb luck can hit home occasionally. It looks splendid on you, Thomas; I approve.”

Shortly after, Roman explained that he probably shouldn’t have been wearing the Cohort uniform he was in, with all its golden trim and red sashing and ancient mother-of-pearl stitching—but there hadn’t been a lot else in his size in the lost-and-found they’d all raided for clothing. And besides, when else was he going to get the opportunity to wear a real-for-real, actual-factual high-ranking Cohort uniform? Well, obviously eventually he was, but right at this moment—and this was the point when Remus tried to drive a bread knife right into Roman’s hand, and Roman easily deflected with a bread knife of his own. Thomas flinched back, eyes wide, but neither of them seemed to consider this interaction at all unusual. Not even when Remus attempted to do the same with the fork clenched in his other hand, this time into the back of Roman’s neck.

Roman just ducked his head to dodge the fatal fork with ease and an exasperated sigh. “Re, I’m eating,” he said.

Thomas looked between the two of them, and then slowly across the room at Virgil, who was watching with idle boredom. He rolled his eyes at Thomas, shrugged, and tore a loaf of bread in half.

“So,” said Thomas, weakly. “Uh. Brothers, huh?”

“Brothers!” Roman agreed with a huff and a sigh, and then, “There you are. I can’t believe we were awake before the two of you! Honestly, Logan, you’re always claiming your sleep schedule’s perfectly optimized, but look at this—”

Interested, Thomas swiveled around, and saw that two more people he only distantly recognized had entered the refectory. One was absurdly tall and thin; the other not all that much shorter but built much wider, sturdier. The latter of the two was immediately grinning, radiating bright excitement, and waving over at their table, to Virgil’s table, to Janus’s.

“Good morning, everyone! Virgil, hi there! Oh—” And now he’d noticed Thomas, and looked purely, radiantly delighted. “—Hey there, kiddo! You’re up! And lookin’ spiffy too, how’re you doing?” he added, approaching at a rapid trot. The tall man trailing after him looked beleaguered at his own presence in this room, but was following without a word of complaint.

“Not bad, actually,” said Thomas, who was already feeling much improved in the company of at least one friendly face—he wasn’t sure if Remus counted, but Roman certainly did. “And… I feel like I should remember your names, but I don’t. I’m Thomas. Who are you?”

The cheerful man wearing his robe tied around the shoulders like a makeshift cape introduced himself as Patton Pentralis, the Fifth necromancer—and Thomas belatedly pieced together that he’d been who Virgil had been complaining so much about that morning. He was lovely to look at, and lovely to talk to, and looked nothing like any sort of necromancer Thomas could have imagined.

On the other hand, Logan Senarius (as he introduced himself) was just about the most obvious necromancer Thomas could remember seeing. His long, grimly-gray cloak was neatly tied over one shoulder, and Thomas could see little pouches of labeled components hanging at his belt—bone shards, baby teeth, tiny vials of sloshing fluids. His old-fashioned glasses served to make his already rather dour expression even sharper, and he was now eyeing Thomas with the detached expertise of an experienced mortician.

“You are looking much improved,” he told Thomas after a firm, perfunctory handshake. “But if you’re not opposed, I would like to examine you properly after you’ve eaten. I am not entirely certain I did the most thorough job last night.”

There was something about his matter-of-fact directness that was strangely reassuring, and Thomas found himself nodding; thinking, hello, I love you. “Sure. It doesn’t feel like you messed anything up, if that helps? I feel, like… really good. Not completely perfect, but…”

Logan pushed up his glasses with a finger, and took Thomas’s arm so firmly it was hard to pull away. “Hm,” he said, and then, “Hmm, yes. That’s a remarkable lack of burn damage. Consistent all over your body?”

“I think so.” Thomas bit his lip, then said, “Thanks. For fixing me up like that.” Thank you. I love you.

“Well, I would have done it for anyone,” Logan said, and then, at Patton’s pointed nod and cough, added, “But—you are welcome. I am glad to be of assistance.” He smiled, then, a tiny little curve of the mouth that Thomas instantly liked the look of. Immediately, he yawned, and looked furious at himself for doing so. “Come to me if there are any problems,” he added, and looked around. “There is still food, correct?”

Thomas immediately slid his untouched bowl over to Logan, who accepted it with a pleased hum. Within less than a minute, Patton had corralled and wheedled Virgil over to their table, and convinced Logan to sit down with them too, despite the somewhat sour expression on the taller man’s face. (Thomas considered this impressive, because Virgil looked like he severely did not want to be there, and Roman looked like he wanted Virgil there even less.) The bone constructs were there, almost immediately—passing out plates and utensils to the two newcomers, serving out more of that deliciously spiced oatmeal.

Having settled everyone down together like this, Patton turned—evidently intending to make a beeline to the sole remaining loner in the refectory this morning—but before he could even take a step in that direction, Janus the Ninth abruptly stood up and dusted off his gloved hands on his dark robes. He loudly said, “Well, lovely catching up with all of you. We really should do it again sometime. Much to do, must dash.”

“Nobody asked you, you… you collagenic creepazoid,” Virgil muttered, driving and dragging his fork into the table hard enough to leave a series of little parallel stab wounds in the ancient wood.

Janus didn’t seem to hear him or care. He was already making his way to the wide double-doors that led to the rest of Canaan House. On the way, he swish-ed his way right past the table that the rest of them were gathered at, and brushed right by Thomas. With a jagged little smile that extended far too high up one side of his face, he tapped Thomas’s shoulder and said, “I’ll want that back, Seventh. But do take your time.”

And in a maelstrom flurry of black netting and thick shadowy robes, he strode out of the refectory—and was gone.

Thomas was busy slowly dying of a fatal combination of shock, terror, and confusion, but at least nobody else seemed to be doing much better. Virgil was now eyeing Thomas with distinct suspicion, and Patton was staring off in Janus’s direction of departure with a sort of wistful betrayal.

Remus broke the silence with an exasperated, “Well, I can’t not fuck him.”

To which a series of groans erupted and the spell was thoroughly broken, and Virgil stabbed his fork even further into the table, saying, “You don’t need to. You wicked do not need to—”

“Well, what else am I going to do? Teacher Guy isn’t being helpful about the whole immortality shtick, and I’m sure as hell not going to go into the library or whatever and do research. I’ll leave that to the walking talking dick-tionary, and until you sort that out for me—it’s Remus Time, baby!” Remus flung himself to his feet with a decisive clatter. “Gonna go seduce a bone nun! Natch. See all of you losers later.”

And he was off too, racing off towards the departed Ninth cavalier—yelling, “Hey! Short, dark and bony! Wanna get anatomically incorrect about it? Flesh isn’t the only thing I know how to sculpt!”—and then the doors slammed shut behind him, and he was gone.

Roman very carefully placed his head in his hands, groaning. He said, “I’m not going after them. I don’t need to see whatever’s going to happen next.”

“I mean, he has a point,” Patton said thoughtfully.

“About getting nasty with a shadow cultist?” Virgil said, incredulous. He twisted the unfortunate fork into the table, dragging it towards him furiously. “Uh, no thanks! Not if you paid me!”

“No! Not that!” Patton said instantly, eyes wide—and if Thomas was extremely honest with himself, just a bit too quickly. “I mean—not that he isn’t nice, but—no, I just meant, we don’t know what to do about this whole Lyctorhood thing, do we?”

Virgil rolled his eyes, and sighed. “Yeah. Actually. Yeah. Teacher Dude was really vague. Anyone else getting bad vibes from him?”

“You get bad vibes from everyone, you cheerless caval-drear-y,” Roman said sniffily. “Must be your own seeping through.”

“Hey, where is that nice old man?” Patton said, looking around. “I haven’t seen him since the other night. I sort of thought he’d be at breakfast too.”

A series of shrugs from all around the table. Nobody seemed to have seen ‘Teacher Dude’. Thomas, who could barely remember the man from the previous night, certainly hadn’t.

“Remus was right about one other thing,” Roman said, pushing his bowl away. “Our resident Master Warden—or should I say, Master Adore-den; for I simply couldn’t adore you more!—is going to end up solving whatever bizarre riddle the Emperor’s cooked up for us. In three days flat, knowing him. Right, Specs?”

“And all of the work is once more passed off onto me,” Logan said flatly. “Simply fantastic.” And then a sigh, and, “Well, it’s not anything I wasn’t planning on doing anyway. Yes. I’ll let you know all if there’s any developments on my end.”

“You are the best,” Roman declared, clapping Logan firmly on the back—Logan winced.

The conversation shifted, incredibly, from the topic of attaining immortality, and to other, more mundane frontiers. Thomas had to admit that he felt a lot more at ease, now that Janus and Remus had left. Virgil was still mildly unsettling to him in the way that a bedroom door hanging open in the middle of the night was—but with Patton nearby, he seemed to have almost mellowed.

The four of them were currently catching up—well, Roman and Patton were catching up, exchanging a flurry of rapid-fire stories, involving rooftop sword duels, sneaking small furry animals into council meetings, and Remus getting naked in a large variety of increasingly improbable situations.

Logan didn’t seem inclined to speak much, apart from the odd comment or long-suffering sigh. Virgil, too, seemed content to sit back and occasionally fire off the odd insult in Roman’s direction, turning his head away from Patton’s responding disapproving sighs—as if not having to make eye contact would spare him the muted disappointment entirely.

It should have been alienating, sitting with a group of people who’d known each other for longer than Thomas would ever know them. He didn’t have anything to add to the conversation; he didn’t know the in-jokes or subtle well-worn flows that the discussions tumbled in. It would have been easy to be nervous. He wasn’t.

Sitting in a faded, time-worn cafeteria with dead vines dripping from the ceiling, surrounded by four people Thomas did not know at all but loved dearly anyway—he only felt whole and warm.

*

After breakfast, they separated. Roman had muttered something dark about his brother being done with his ungodly carousing by now, and stalked off with one hand on his sword, while Logan and Virgil had both left without any indication of their destinations.

Patton had offered to show him the way to the storeroom, so he could pick up anything he might need, and Thomas had readily agreed. He liked his newly acquired shirts well enough, and was becoming reluctantly accustomed to the boots, but was hoping for something a bit warmer—the chill of the First was beginning to seep right into his bones, and he was starting to feel like one of the First’s multitude of silent skeletal servants.

So now he was being led through more ruined corridors, as Patton chattered on and on about the last time he’d visited the Seventh House, and how allergic he’d been to all of the gardens (which was why he hadn’t been back again, and that’s probably why he didn’t know Thomas, no, I’m not pollen your leg about this one). Thomas was struggling a little to keep up—Patton’s strides were longer than his, and he was still out-of-breath and shaky on his feet from his minor coma. It was hard to get a word in through Patton’s relentless cheerfulness, and it was hard to want to interrupt him, all things considered, so Thomas resigned himself to being just a few steps behind until the older necromancer noticed, or slowed, or something.

There was a short flight of stairs leading down to a hallway with a sign marked ‘STORAGE’, and Patton was already heading down it. Thomas quickly made to follow, but some sixth sense made him look upwards just before entering.

It was there, high above him, that he saw the Ninth cavalier, leaning against a spindly-looking carved railing, staring down at him with that unsettlingly half-yellow gaze. He didn’t say a word, didn’t smile, just stood there with dark fabric sweeping and blowing about him gently in the draughts and breezes of the ancient hallways, staring at Thomas, unblinkingly.

Very slowly, very deliberately, he raised a finger to his lips—then Janus the Ninth turned, and sauntered ever-so-gracefully, right out of Thomas’s sight.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Janus the Ninth"

*

Exactly ten paces towards the great spiral staircase, and the Body held up a gray-rotting hand, indicating Janus should stop—so he did.

It was obvious why it thought he should pause. It wanted him to wait for their oncoming company. Janus could already hear the distinct sound of a spindly, skittering buffoon messily clad in green-and-silver, pounding down the halls in his wake. The sound of steel-toed boots on marble was unmistakable, and distinctive, and also the reddest of red flags, because everything about the necromantic heir of the Fourth screamed dangerously unstable necromancer, likely to die first on the battlefield, possibly on purpose, possibly laughing maniacally all the while.

But Janus had always quite enjoyed lost causes. He stood beside the Body, close enough to touch, rested a hand lightly on his rapier, and waited for the Duke of Onnuria to catch up to him. He made sure he was the very picture of silent amusement, of casual poise and grace, head half-dipped into the shadows and aged new sword prominent on his hip. The Body shifted, chains dangling in windless air. Janus thought that must mean it approved—although it was always so hard to tell.

His efforts were not in vain. The moment that the necromancer of the hour slid-and-scurried around the corner, he brightened to see Janus. His entire mood seemed to improve a hundredfold. His gaze was wildly unhinged, but in a fun and sexy way. Everything about his body language and current facial expression promised unethical experimentation, distressingly violent shenanigans, and many new exciting erotic experiences. He was the very definition of a bad idea, and he hadn’t even opened his mouth yet.

“Good morning,” said Janus, hand on his rapier. This interaction could go one of two ways, and he wanted to be equally prepared for both.

“You,” said Remus Tetradrachmus, with a voice like a strangled cat attempting to reconstruct its mangled vocal chords, “are beautiful. Who did your eyes? I want to eat their frontal lobe.”

Janus was instantly charmed, of course. He loosened his grip on his rapier. “They’re a genetic defect. So I suppose you’ll have to dig up my parents for dinner.”

“Fuck yeah, they can’t give me the shovel talk if I’m the one holding the shovel,” Remus replied, and without having to speak on it, they fell into step next to each other as Janus began to ascend the stairs. “Seriously, though, where have you been all my life? You’re the most awful person I’ve ever seen, even worse than me, and you’ve been haunting the Ninth all this time? You could have been smashing plates at Cohort recruitment balls. I could have been enticing you to stab my brother in the back. We could have been seducing each other in broom cupboards and eating each other’s skin! We’re only meeting now?”

“My apologies,” Janus said, easily keeping pace with Remus’s erratic skips and hops. The Body trailed quietly after, drifting corpsishly in his wake. Its skin glittered, icy. He could barely hear the slip-slick of its unclad feet on stone. “I would have attended all of those splendid-sounding social gatherings, and ravished you bloody in each and every Cohort broom cupboard, if not for my unfortunately miscalibrated alarm clock.”

Remus let out a little showy gasp, twirled sideways to catch himself against the railing. “You overslept?”

“For years and years and years,” Janus said. “Living in a mausoleum makes you terribly sleepy, you know.”

“Your bedroom’s a tomb?” Remus guessed, wide delight all over his narrow features.

“Honey, my bedroom’s a coffin. Tombs are so last-millennia.”

“Your bedroom’s a coffin!” Remus echoed, and twirled again—back the other way, cutting right in front of Janus at an inelegant twisty dip, head thrown all the way back to expose his long pale throat. “How do you sleep?”

“Like the dead,” Janus deadpanned, and Remus cackled, a wild joyful shriek that shot all the way up to the crumbling arching ceilings, ricocheting off into equally wild and joyful echoes. Janus couldn’t help but smile too at the sound.

“He is dangerous. Watch yourself,” said the Body in a deep bass crackle, the first words it had spoken since the shuttle crash.

Janus was unable to keep himself from glancing to it, quirking an inquisitive eyebrow in its direction. Its face was dark and shadowed, lips full and red. It did not move from where it waited at the top of the stairs. The chains dripping from its wrists and ankles did not clatter; they never did—and it did not speak again.

Remus, thankfully, didn’t seem to notice Janus’s momentary lapse. He pranced up two steps and stuck out one leg behind him to balance there like a swaying one-legged skeleton. Janus stopped looking at the Body and kept walking past him, and after a second Remus scrambled to follow, boots squeaking on the filthy tiles like tortured mice.

“So, no necro,” Remus said, as they continued upwards. “What’s that feel like?”

“Well, my heart is shattered into irreparable pieces,” Janus replied. “Just last night it dawned on me that I would never see my darling adept’s face again. And it broke me, I tell you; I am a thoroughly broken man. I boohooed for hours.”

“Really?” said Remus, irreverently interested.

Janus tugged at one glove, glancing away at a nearby tapestry that seemed to be hanging onto the wall by a single, desperate thread. There were cold fingers on the back of his neck, and he knew they weren’t Remus’s. They squeezed lightly; a silent warning, a grounding. “Well, I may have had an emotionally-charged moment or two over it. But it couldn’t be any less of your business.”

“Sure, but I’m still going to bug you about it.”

“Truly, a man after my own heart,” said Janus, and shrugged again, shifting the Body’s hand from him. “The Ninth will not be pleased at her loss, I’m sure. Which is a problem for the me of the future, and not the me of today, so I’m thinking I’ll just… carry on with figuring out the secrets of this grim old mansion all on my lonesome.”

“You think this house has secrets?”

“Oh, every house has secrets,” Janus said. “It’s just a matter of how far you’re willing to strip back the walls to look for them.”

“You can do that with people, too,” Remus said. “They just tend to scream more about it.”

“More screams mean juicer secrets,” Janus said.

“Mm, people juice,” Remus hissed, whirling around Janus and catching him by the arm, sending them both spinning in a tight circle, faces tightly close to each other. Remus’s breath was possibly the most awful thing Janus had ever inhaled (and Janus had smelled some pretty awful things), but all of a sudden he didn’t care at all about that. He didn’t even try to break free from the sudden grab, even though it would have been the work of seconds.

No—almost on instinct, he was reaching out and snatching at Remus’s face, holding his jaw firmly in place. Remus wiggled a bit at the contact, eyes popping and teeth snapping, but after a second he let out an appreciative hum and growl, even allowing Janus to pry open his teeth and peer inside his mouth.

After a moment he said, “Doesn’t that make it difficult to eat?”

Remus said something garbled and seductive that was nonetheless incomprehensible. Janus loosened his grip, enough so that Remus could manage to say, “You looking at my teeth, bonehead?”

“Should I not be looking at your teeth? The craftsmanship is immaculate.”

“Thank youuu,” Remus sang, writhing merrily back and forth. “Spiked them myself. It’s only hard to eat the first few days, then you get used to it. Also I can chew an entire construction strut in half with em’—two minutes flat, Roman timed me.”

Janus shut Remus up by cranking his jaw open once more and dragging him into the light to get a proper look at the elongated, wicked-looking canines. They nested in his mouth like a set of gleaming knives, and Janus knew that if he hadn’t been wearing gloves, he’d have sliced his fingers to ribbons just examining them. “Absolutely not extraordinary at all,” he said. “Forcing thanergy through your own body for enhanced growth… That can’t be safe, can it?”

“Lost a few teeth figuring it out,” Remus admitted, garbled through a half-open mouth. “I have tons of spares, though. Teeth are easy to put back. Crunchy.”

“Sensible,” Janus said, approving; then, “I honestly didn’t think that was possible. What are you, some kind of savant prodigy?”

“Nngh. Nah. Not a prodigy. Just creative.” Remus bit his finger, then—right through the thickness of his glove, a needle of enamel driving right into his flesh. The resulting pain was blissfully sharp, and made Janus howl in delighted pain and give Remus a mighty shove. The two of them fell back against opposite ends of the staircase, and stayed there for a moment.

“I can do yours too if you want,” Remus added, wiping drool from the corner of his mouth. “Never tried it on anyone else—Ro didn’t want monster teeth, ‘cause he’s a baby and a coward—but I’ve done it a million times on myself, it barely even hurts anymore.” His sandstorm eyes lingered for a moment on Janus’s face, where the painted visage of the Half-Ophidian Penitent covered his features. “I could give you fangs.”

Janus gave this serious consideration, squeezing his injured finger with a faint grimace. The Body walked alongside him at a brisk shuffle, barely giving him a glance. It seemed to be more interested in the third floor than him. “Hmm. Fangs would be nice. Maybe later.”

“Hey, whatever groans your bones,” Remus replied, with a shrug. “Brines your spine. Cannibals your mandibles. I’ll do experimental tooth surgery on you any time—just yell and I’ll come running.”

“I’m sure if experimental tooth surgery is due to occur, there will be some amount of yelling and running involved, yes,” replied Janus, and was rewarded with another mad cackle from Remus’s direction, just as they reached the top of the staircase.

They amused themselves by pushing open doors on the third floor for a while. Canaan House had a wide variety of exciting doors to offer its occupants, and very few of them were locked, so it was an excellent game to pass the time. There were libraries and there were firepits and there were doors only half Janus’s height that led to dark messes of entangled pipes. There was a closet full of unanimated bones, and Remus tugged out a clavicle or two and wiggled them playfully at Janus, obviously hoping to initiate an impromptu bony duel. Janus stretched his lips into a thin smile, declined, and followed the Body’s lead to open the next door along the hall—a great grand double-set thing that groaned as he forced his weight against it. It led to what he distantly recognized as a theater—rows of seats and stage and all.

Remus saw this, dropped the bones like they were acid-infused, and went rushing through the chairs and up to the stage, hand out to push and propel him forward through the narrow rows. With a grace that Janus would not have expected of a necromancer as crooked and gangling as him, Remus slid himself up onto the stage itself, unfolding himself to his feet, striking a pose—high-backed, fingers akimbo. A hole in the wall let in a small burst of light at exactly the right angle, casting him in glowing gold.

“My theory’s this! There’s no such thing as life, it’s just catastrophe!” he sang out, with echoing vigor—then rather ruined the effect by adding, “God, this place is a dump.”

“A thespian, I see,” Janus said, weaving his way down the central aisle. The blood-red curtains strung along either side of the stage were aged and sagging on their railings, one of them ripped summarily in half.

Remus dropped his hands, but remained center-stage, gazing around the ruined theater with a discerning eye. “Eh. I have my moments. More my brother’s deal than mine. He always gets pissy with me about breaking the fight choreography.”

“Ah, a connoisseur of spontaneous theater,” Janus said, and situated himself neatly in the least-rotten of the arrayed seats, halfway to the front. When he folded his hands behind his head, leaning back, Remus looked pleased, and promptly struck another pose, this one noticeably more lewd than the last. The Body, which had followed Janus in and was now languishing dimly in the shadows of the far-left seatings, did not seem impressed, but Janus was summarily reluctantly charmed. Ah, well—they couldn’t agree on everything all of the time, after all.

“I like comedies,” Remus said, voice echoing splendidly in the near-dark. “Oh, and tragedies. And also the ones where they talk a lot and don’t get a lot done—I like anything, really! As long as there’s blood and guts and brain matter splattered and shattered all over the floor. The blood and guts is compulsory, you know!”

To this, Janus simply nodded. The Ninth didn’t have much in the way of good playwrights. Dactylic enneameter did not an engaging stageplay make. But with the few scripts he’d managed to salvage from supply shuttles, Janus had somewhat of a taste for it, however distant—and he’d always had the inkling he’d make a rather good director.

“You’re not very talkative, Nine-of-Mine.” Remus had begun to wander around the edges of the stage, poking at half-collapsed props wilting in the wings.

“I’m plenty talkative, how dare you,” Janus said, content to sit there and watch him, the start-and-stop motions of his movement containing a strange elegance within. He cast a gaze to the Body, whose hair now hung in long golden locks, shining through the gloom. He wondered when it would deign to speak again. “I just haven’t found much in the way to say yet.”

Remus disappeared off-stage for a moment and called out from the blackness, “Well, you can make a start with the obvious. You said you wanted to find all the dirty secrets buried in here—what are you even looking for?”

“Same as you, I suspect.”

Remus spun wildly out of the wings, raising a crooked prop sword high in an abominable fencer’s stance. “Well, I’m here to get immortal. But you could’ve figured that already.”

Janus didn’t give an inch. It wasn’t in his nature. “A necromancer of your caliber, I’m not surprised. I rather think immortality would suit you.”

“Aww, you big flirt. And it so would. Can you imagine what I’d do with unlimited necromantic power?”

Janus smiled. “Do I want to?”

“Most people don’t.”

“I’m not most people.” Janus pressed a gloved finger to his lips. “You implied your flesh-sculpting was above average. And then there was the tooth thing; just marvelous. What other tricks have you got up your sleeve?”

He cocked his head to one side like a predator abruptly sighting prey. “Trying to get one over the competition, Hoe-vena? Shit, you’re lucky I don’t give a fuck. I can do it all! I just don’t like it all. Flesh magic is the best and I’d be warping kidneys all year long if it didn’t make me pass out so often. Spirit magic… Well, ghosts are neat, but it’s all chanting and feelings, so, no thanks. I’ll leave that up to the Prejudiced Prude down in the Fifth. Lymph magic rocks. Blood does, too, even though Ro won’t let me keep spare jars of it in the bedroom… I’ve been messing around with hormone alteration, too, now that’s a blast of serotonin for the brain. Or possibly a blast of cortisol. Haven’t quite nailed that one yet.”

“And bone magic?” Janus asked, not looking at the Body.

“Not the biggest fan of bones,” Remus admitted freely.

Janus hummed, surprised, and bared his teeth, tapping a gloved hand to an exposed molar. “Really?”

“Oh, bones attached to people are great,” Remus dismissed with a wild flap of his hand, and sank down to lie face-up on the stage, kicking his long legs up into the air. “They’re the best. You don’t have to use extra thalergy to make them go all spiky and curly and loopy, you can just steal the energy from the person, and then shwoop, bam, instant double-spine. Or six fingers. Or extra leg, or whatever.”

“Surely dead bones can’t be all that different from living ones.”

“Yeah, you’d say that. You’re from the boner house. No, dead-people bones are just…” Remus extended a hand high above him, flipping it back and forth in the fading light, examining it with narrowed eyes. “…Hard. Rigid. Stiffer than a corpse erection. Making something cool with them is like hammering fingernails into your spine, Jayjay; it’s kind of cool in concept, but waaaaay too much effort for something nobody’s going to be impressed with anyway.”

Janus hmmed. “Funny. You struck me as the sort of necromancer who’d take great delight in arranging skeleton orgies.”

“Spoken like a man who’s never tried coordinating one,” Remus replied with a huff. “I grafted so many bone-dicks onto those guys, and they just kept on falling off. And it was only sexy for, like, the first two minutes.” Another huff, and he kicked a leg up, pointing it all the way to the ceiling. “You know what’s a real turn-off? Bones going click click click clattery-fuckery-clank in the middle of your bony boner burlesque show.” He gnawed on a lip, then jabbed a toe in Janus’s direction. “Fuck, what am I saying, you probably find that sexy as hell. What’s the raunchy cabaret like in the Ninth House? Bet there’s some killer boneplay. Does your porn have human sacrifices or what?”

There was no easy way to tell Remus that the depressingly small population of the House of the Sewn Tongue didn’t output much literary material at all, let alone that of a pornographic nature. Oh, wait. Yes, there was. “Sacrifices upon sacrifices. The filthiest of filthy back-of-the-cathedral hookups. The things we can do with a blood-soaked femur would blow your brain directly upwards to unprecedented heights.”

“Huh,” said Remus, then, “Neat.”

“Truly, a shame all of the bone-based erotica I brought along was lost in the crash,” Janus said, and leaned his head back on crossed arms.

“Aw, boo. I’ll have to write some myself.” Remus slipped forwards, hooking his legs over the edge of the stage, sitting upright. “You can beta for me. Let me know how on-the-boner it is.”

When Janus didn’t respond—briefly transfixed by the sight of the Body stepping onto stage and tilting a grimy pale neck upwards to the rafters—Remus seemed to lose interest in the conversation with a certain amount of flightiness, like a child abandoning a beloved toy in favor of a colorful flash or loud noise outside. He meandered around the stage for a bit, poking at floorboards with a floppy prop sword, and then discarded it on the ground, saying, “Well, my brother’s going to try to stab The Major Fail, The Minor Fifth any moment now, so I should go and check that out. You want to tag along?”

“Maybe later. See you around, Duke of the Fourth,” Janus said with a half-smirk and a raised hand, and watched him scamper out of the theater like all of the Emperor’s foes were hot on his tail.

Janus liked Remus, truly and honestly liked him. But he trusted him not a bit, not a jot—markedly less far than he could throw him, and Remus did not seem like a man who’d be easy to throw anyway. He’d probably bite.

Although, to be perfectly fair to Remus Tetradrachmus: Janus didn’t trust any of the current residents of Canaan House.

It was for this reason that Janus loitered for several long minutes in the torn-up theater, with the Body as his silent companion and witness. He busied himself with examining the ragged red curtains and the scratched floorboards, scuffed-over with the evidence of many feet having passed over it in many acts and many performances. The imprints of sharp heels, of cleated boots. It was a well-loved theater. The acoustics, even deteriorated over the centuries, were exquisite. It was perfectly easy to hear when Remus was no longer waiting outside, having made his noisy way back down to ground level.

When the hallway outside was free, Janus straightened his overcoat, adjusted his sword by his side, and went to find Teacher.

Canaan House was a maze, as he’d quickly discovered—nesting dolls upon nesting dolls of unexpected courtyards and terraces and rooms that dipped and melted into each other when you least thought they would, and all of it was beyond disrepair. Janus was well-accustomed to living in the cold embrace of crumbling disrepair, so none of this surprised him. The crypt-like nature of the endless abandoned rooms, partially mummified by sea salt, was almost reassuring in its own bleak way. What he did not like was the light. There were too many windows in Canaan House, and all of them seemed determined to let in as much of that irritatingly cheery radiation-glare as possible, scorching his skin and making his eyes dilate in painful defense.

Living in the Ninth, he’d always looked out at the distant speck of Dominicus, and wished he could drag it a little closer so he could bask in its brightness, feel properly warm for once. Now sufficiently close to feel that warmth, he knew the truth: sunlight was a fucking scam. He was burning to death every time it graced his eyes and skin. Given half the chance, he’d lift high a bucket of water and murder the damned thing.

He rubbed at his eyes, leaning in the shadows, and tugged his veil low. It didn’t help much. He’d lost his original, beloved veil in the crash, and most of the replacements he’d found in the storage rooms had been moth-eaten and useless—lace and netting did not preserve well, as it turned out. At the very least he’d found some passable Ninth robes. At the very least he’d found a decent sword. Going about an unfamiliar location full of unfamiliar strangers with no weapon to hand was an excellent way of getting oneself killed in a terrible fashion.

He said to the Body, currently leaning out of the nearest window, examining the distant waters below, “You could stand to be more helpful.”

It did not reply, which was typical. Its fingers were dripping blood, which was less typical, but not entirely unexpected. Sometimes this happened, just like how it sometimes had pale skin and sometimes had dark—like how it was tall and then it was short; scarred-and-shriveled to bare-faced-and-clean.

This was perfectly normal. The Body’s face was never the same, day-to-day. Hour-to-hour. Minute-to-minute, even. Since Janus could remember, it had been shifting like sand, a furious amalgamation of people he recognized and half-knew and didn’t know at all. It was nothing new and nothing unexpected. It also wasn’t much for conversation, which was just fine. Janus vastly preferred it that way. He required someone to talk at, and debate was so much simpler when your opponent was unwilling to debate back at you nine days out of ten.

Right now, he wished it would speak—but it seemed far more interested in leaning its currently-narrow frame out the window and over the sea, currently-pale gaze raking the tides. He loved it too much to disturb it any further, so he turned away and left it to its inscrutable business.

Back through the house he went. He had a brief, friendly encounter with the Seventh House necromancer (still sporting Janus’s cloak like a fashion statement, he noticed; he really wanted that back), and continued on through the rooms, seeking out a certain, singular individual—but only finding many unnervingly animated bones.

Janus eventually caught up with the man calling himself Teacher at the top of Canaan House—higher than the Sixth House’s dwelling quarters, even higher up than the precariously jutting balconies that extended from every soaring tower like broken bicycle spokes. This annoyed him greatly—especially when he pulled himself up the last length of staircase, completely out of breath, and found that Teacher was sitting cheerfully in a deck chair, reading a magazine that looked both trashy and ancient.

He just knew the smiling old man had been avoiding him on purpose, and very much wanted to stab him about it. But first, he had to stop wheezing like his lungs were staging a dramatic worker’s strike. He was a cavalier. He could even make the claim of cavalier primary, if he was in the mood. As such, he considered himself to be more in-shape than not, but there were limits. He’d read about elevators, once. He knew that other Houses had those hellish-sounding up-down contraptions. Wasn’t the First supposed to be the greatest of them all? Couldn’t the Emperor and all of His Lyctors shell out for an elevator or two?

“Janus the Ninth!” said Teacher, finally turning to face him, as if Janus hadn’t been making his own presence readily apparent for, oh, the last five solid minutes so far. He placed his magazine on his lap, and spread his long fingers, beaming broadly. “Welcome, welcome. Oh, I’m glad you found me, I’ve been meaning to talk, we never got a chance last night. The furthest and darkest-shadowed jewel of our Empire so rarely writes in, and you never visit.”

“With accessibility like this, I can’t imagine why,” Janus muttered, faintly murderous. His throat still felt raw from ragged breathing. Traversing endless stairs wasn’t his exercise regime of choice, and he had to get all the way down after this conversation was over. Maybe he ought to just throw himself out of a window, it might be quicker and less painless. “Ugh. Well, the Ninth House greets you, etcetera, etcetera, do we really need to do all of these pointless formalities?”

“Certainly not,” said Teacher. “I can settle for a friendly fistbump, if you’d like.”

“Never mind,” said Janus, recoiling. “Pointless formalities it is. Hail to the House of the First, Hail to the King Undying, blessed am I to walk on your holy land… and all the rest that I’m no doubt forgetting. Look, can we talk?”

“We’re already talking,” said Teacher, twinkling infuriatingly at him.

Janus had to take a very deep breath to prevent himself from giving the very friendly light-looking High Priest of Canaan House a very friendly light nudge down a long length of stairs.

“Two things,” he said finally, drawing himself up straight and solemn—expression flattening dark and impassive in a way that anyone else would have found foreboding and downright frightening, but Teacher just seemed to find delightful.

“Just two?” said he.

“Two things, and I’ll leave you to…” Janus’s gaze fell upon the magazine folded in Teacher’s lap, and couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. “…Sex and the Sixth-y.”

“Invigorating stuff,” Teacher said, very seriously, and rolled up the magazine tighter, tucking it into his robes, as if afraid that Janus would snatch it from him at any moment. “What did you want to know?”

“One,” said Janus, and held out a single gloved hand. “I would like permission to open a locked door.”

As expected, Teacher simply smiled with childish delight, and retrieved another one of the dull-iron keys that Janus had seen him pass over to Logan the previous night. Janus accepted it, clipped it neatly onto his ring, and folded it away into his robes.

Logan had been so focused on not being seen by anyone else that he had completely neglected to check that nobody, in fact, had been following him. It was a delightful little paradox of priorities that Janus was sure that the Sixth necromancer would completely fail to appreciate, if ever informed. Janus didn’t ever intend on informing him. Nobody else needed to know that he had a key to… well, whatever.

Look, it wasn’t as if he actually knew what this key was or why it was so important, or why he needed permission to open whatever locked door it corresponded to, but it was a secret, and Janus was good at secrets. He ate them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and it was a good thing that he found them so delicious, because there was a massive deficit of anything remotely tasty within the crumbling walls of the Ninth House.

“Now the second thing,” said Janus, and looked Teacher right in his pale blue eyes. “You haven’t actually informed the Emperor of any of the happenings of last night, have you?”

Teacher remained tellingly quiet. Janus knew how to read quietness, and how to read the flat-and-blank expressions of faces that would rather not give up their secrets, and Teacher’s face was far too expressive to hide much at all. He steepled his fingers together. He smiled. He continued:

“And you intend to continue this charade, to the rest of the occupants of Canaan House? To give them false hope that He knows exactly what’s going on—and might even be coming to save them all?”

He let the silence between them linger. An uncomfortable silence tended to draw out nervous honesty far quicker than any pointless chatter. Not even ancient-looking priests of long-dead houses were immune to social manipulation.

“The Emperor cannot be allowed to set foot on the First House,” Teacher said after a moment, clutching his magazine tightly to his chest, rolling it back and forth.

“Good,” said Janus, satisfied—and turned away, already mentally preparing himself for the grueling trek down to ground level. “So let’s keep it that way, shall we?”

*

*

It took him until the stroke of midnight to find the corresponding door to his newly-acquired key. It was truly, overwhelmingly, maddeningly infuriating to discover that the answer had been quite literally underneath his feet this whole time.

Curling around the outside of the lowermost tower, there was a walk-around staircase, narrow and twisted like a strand of curling hair, treacherous like a sprained ankle. You had to squeeze yourself out of a thin door to stand upon it, and press yourself hard against the tower’s outside to navigate down to the bottom without toppling to a watery, rocky demise below.

“This was a great idea, Janus,” he muttered to himself, inching along salt-slicked rungs. The Body, whose limbs were now lithe and slippery, draped in shimmering white, did not respond to him as it inched its own weary way along behind him, his constant companion in trouble, his dearest friend—and so, he answered himself: “I know, Janus, thank you Janus, but you’ll never get anywhere in life if you only do things you absolutely want to do. More’s the pity.”

It was with some relief that he came across an autodoor set into the lower side of the tower. He only had to slam his shoulder into it twice before it admitted defeat and shuddered open, allowing him to slip inside and appreciate the silky smooth darkness of a nice quiet corridor. It was beautiful in here, beautiful and well-kept—in far less disrepair than the rest of Canaan House that he’d seen so far. The tiled floor was expertly designed, run-down rainbows of pale and dark squares fading in and out of each other; long-burnt-out candles set into golden wall sconces, many intriguing dark-wood doors inlaid with delicate little windows of stained glass.

The visible layer of dust settling over every inch of this place was soft, thick, and undisturbed. Janus didn’t have to be a necromancer to tell that this place likely hadn’t been accessed for centuries. Quick glances through the doors (unlocked) confirmed that they led off in various arbitrary directions, some sideways, some upwards. This place wouldn’t remain undisturbed for long, it seemed accessible from many directions. He’d just been lucky enough to come across an entrance before any of the others.

A single one of these doors led further down, and when he made the short trip down a slanting corridor to a large room, the darkness began to press upon him in earnest—so much so that Janus admitted defeat, and produced from his deep pockets a flashlight he’d cunningly pickpocketed from Logan Senarius earlier that day. Shining it around the vast room, he saw many doorframes containing doors without handles, strange smooth faces split halfway through with thin cracks. The ceiling was paneled and sloped upwards to a point, lightless chandelier dangling from the very apex.

It took him a moment to realize that he had found himself some form of lobby, and that the doors were, in fact, the missing elevators he’d complained to himself so ardently about before. Out of interest, he went to dispassionately poke at the buttons with the hilt of a sword. All dead, thoroughly non-functional. Yet another disappointment to add to the vast pile. He looked around and saw that there was yet another staircase leading even deeper. Of course. More stairs. As if he needed any more cardio today.

Nonetheless, a deeper trek into Canaan House promised deeper secrets, so down the stairs he went, the Body a silent shadow at his heels. At least it wasn’t too far down—the landing below was downright visible when he shone a flashlight through the short shaft. When he quickened his pace he was at the bottom within seconds, standing in a massive circular chamber, shadows darting and lengthening as he directed the flashlight this way and that.

In the center of the room was an enormous shut-up metal hatch, practically impenetrable, gleaming black in Janus’s flickering supplied light. The hatch was the only thing in this large chamber worth looking at; for there were no other doors, the caution tape scattered around its outside was peeling and ancient, and the rest of the décor was, in a word, sub-par. In two words: subterranean, also. Concrete floors, the remains of crumbling statues, a half-melted plex chair. The dust was thick and filthy, and he could smell the distant yet distinct remembrance of blood. He winced, then carefully knelt before the trapdoor, silently mourning the inevitable loss of these newly-acquired clothes. He’d have to burn them, no doubt. Remus would be delighted to help with that. They could make an afternoon of it.

A quick examination and test of the trapdoor in question revealed two things: first, that it was up there in the running for ‘most locked door he’d ever seen’, and secondly, a small iron keyhole was inset directly into its center. Janus fished out his keyring, and within seconds the locked door was not remotely locked anymore.

With only a touch of effort, it opened underneath Janus’s hands. An ancient creak and a rush of dust revealed a ladder of jagged metal staples running down the length of an unthinkably dark tube. After a second, a distant pool of clinical, fluorescent light flickered on to shade in the bottom. It was a dizzyingly long way down.

At long last, the Body spoke to him, as they both kneeled there, staring down and down and down yet further. It said, in wind-chime tones, “Below.”

Janus raised his gaze. Its pale white eyes glinted with fluorescence reflected. He said, “You’re sure?”

It looked at him with sweet indifference—and then just shrugged; an elegant, lovely slope of its broad shoulders. “Are you?”

He grimaced. The reminder didn’t come easy. It was never easy for one to remember that they were quite, quite mad. “Forget I asked.”

Madness, thought Janus as he swung his legs over the edge, did not become him. He often wished he were something apart from incurably insane. But you couldn’t help where the dice landed, and he really only had himself to blame for his current circumstances, in all possible senses. Complete lunacy did not necessarily mean lack of productivity, anyway, and he had a job to do.

He looked around one last time, ensuring that nobody had followed him here to this strange secretive place—and, once satisfied, drew his rapier out-and-in of its sheath, ensuring it wasn’t likely to stick at an inconvenient moment. The inside of the trapdoor he examined also, seeing a keyhole there too, and that it functioned just the same from both ends. Good—he had no intention of just leaving it open for any adventurous wanderer to come stumbling in after him.

Thusly prepared, Janus tucked the flashlight into his mouth, holding it steady with his teeth. He slid himself down into the laddered tube, steadied himself on the rungs—and began to climb towards the distant glow.

The trapdoor shut behind him with an echoing click.

Chapter Text

ACT TWO

(Many Ghosts and a High Chance of Death • an Even Higher Chance of Stabby • the Facility • Fight and Flight • Patton has a Snack • Logan Makes a Schedule • Something Worth Loving • That’s What we Call Growth • Can Dying be Good? • Two Months Before the Emperor's Return.)

*

*

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Remus the Fourth”

*

Chapter Text

CHAPTER NINE

“Roman the Fourth”

*

At the start of their second week in Canaan House, Roman the Fourth challenged Virgil the Fifth to a sparring match, and Virgil laughed in his face.

“After last time?” he said, and kept on pulling on the long spool of synthetic thread he’d been re-spooling for Patton. “Not a chance.”

“What do you mean after last time, you were the one fighting dirty,” Roman began, indignant.

Patton, who was busy patching up one of the storage-room cloaks with crooked clumsy stitches (presumably for his cavalier, since it didn’t seem much his style) said, “Now, Roman, play nice.”

Roman groaned, and flung his hands in the air. “…What I mean to say is… my intentions are only to invite you to… the friendliest of matches! With the strictest of rules. Logan’s agreed to arbitrate. It’s good clean fun! Even you can’t say no to good clean fun, Cinque!”

“Your idea of fun is stabbing me?” Virgil said, without looking up. “Real smooth, Princey. That’s really making me want to agree to this. Pat, here, let me thread it…”

“Only if you let yourself get stabbed,” Roman argued, watching the two of them pass sewing supplies between each other. “Oh, come on, Needling and Dread. I can’t believe you. You’re raring for a fight all of the time, aren’t you? Why not make it formal? I’m practically inviting you to do what you’ve always wanted!”

“I can stab you any time I want, I don’t need rules or challenges to make it happen,” Virgil replied flatly. “It’s less fun when you see it coming.”

“You are impossible,” Roman fumed.

“Roman, hey, why don’t you go get Janus?” Patton suggested, with the tone of one desperately trying to prevent his world from falling into chaos. “He’s a cavalier, just like you two. I bet he hasn’t had much of a chance to get his swording and stabbing in.”

This, at least, was something Virgil and Roman could unite on. They exchanged identical disgruntled looks—neither were pleased with Patton’s strange fondness for literally the creepiest person in the building, and that was counting all of the silent spooky skeletons. And then Roman realized that he was commiserating with Virgil, of all people, and quickly looked away.

Virgil said, snidely, “Yeah, actually, you know what? If Roman manages to find Janus, maybe I actually will fight him.”

Which was a jab and a stab if he’d ever heard one, because Virgil knew full well that the last thing Roman wanted to do was invite the Ninth to do anything at all. But Roman was sick and tired of training alone, and all of Remus’s usual murder attempts were even more half-hearted and lackluster than usual, and he dearly wanted a proper duel. It was between the frightful Fifth and the nauseating Ninth. And at this point he’d take both of them at once if it meant something more interesting than jabbing at dusty dummies or listening to Logan mutter about locked doors and lateral thinking puzzles for hours on end.

“Fine,” Roman said, and straightened to his full height, adjusting his uniform. “I will. I will do that. I’ll find him, and then I can show both of you just how well-honed my ‘swording and stabbing’ is.”

Virgil looked momentarily thrown by the acquiescence, and then he narrowed his eyes and smiled a mean little smile, and said, “Great. See you in the training room, then. Both of you.”

“Oh, it’s so good to see you two getting along,” said Patton, relieved, and Roman didn’t have the heart to tell him that his cavalier had just done possibly the least friendly thing possible under the circumstances.

And so, quite reluctantly, Roman found himself on the hunt for Janus the Ninth.

There was no real reason for him to be disgruntled about this. There were only three cavaliers remaining among their numbers, and if Roman was being perfectly honest with himself, it was only fair that Janus should be there too. They all had to keep their skillsets sharp. And the fight itself might even be interesting—Roman hadn’t caught sight of whatever Janus’s offhand was supposed to be, and curiosity was such a curse! What could possibly be so nasty and secretive of an offhand that he kept it hidden so fiercely?

But on the other hand… Janus and Remus had been disappearing off together for longer and longer stretches of time in these last few days, and, oh, Roman just knew that unspeakable sexual horrors were being committed between the two of them. His brother was a grown man and could damn well do what he wanted, of course, but Roman really didn’t want to think about any of the things he was doing.

Actually, it was downright irresponsible of Remus, now that Roman was pondering it properly. Wasn’t the whole purpose of them being here for him to study for Lyctorhood? To unearth the secrets of immortality, as he so often claimed he wanted? And here he was, throwing it all away for the opportunity to suck face with a… a reliquary rapscallion with a fetish for drawing snake stylizations all across his cheekbones!

It was to Roman’s surprise, then, that he didn’t find Janus with Remus at all.

*

He’d been pacing his way through the outside gardens (not that you could call them that, there was barely a hint of greenery in sight), occasionally calling out for the other cavalier’s attention in increasingly exasperated tones. It was while he was moving in and out of the house and passing from terrace to terrace that he heard voices. A conversation, not heated in tone at all. Indistinct, nearly pleasant. Roman brightened, and followed it all of the way outside, until he was standing at the lip of a balcony that overlooked a garden just below, awned-over by a panel of smudged, dirty glass.

This garden seemed to be the only one alive—it must have somehow managed to escape the withering fate of the rest of them. It was all long green stems and flowering blossoms and lingering fragrances that spun and drifted high enough for Roman to catch a smell of them. And the scent was heady, overpowering.

And through the glass, he saw Thomas amidst the roses.

Thomas had been spending a lot of time outside, he knew, mainly at Logan’s suggestion. The interior of Canaan House was bitterly cold at the best of times, which was no good for someone still in recovery from a terrible crash-related ordeal, no matter how impressive their natural healing was. It wasn’t at all unusual to find the cheerful necromancer stretched out under the awnings of a balcony terrace, face reddening under Dominicus’s light—either chatting idly with whichever of the House residents happened to be nearly (Virgil, Patton, Roman, sometimes even Teacher), or humming absently to himself, the music echoing over the distant waves. He often sang to himself, sometimes not even noticing he was doing it until it was pointed out.

Right now, Thomas wasn’t singing. This was a shame for two reasons: one, Roman considered Thomas’s voice to be quite splendid. (One of these days, he was going to coax that man into a duet fantastic enough to make the Emperor weep and beg an encore.) The second reason, however, was that Thomas was, in fact, currently engaged in conversation.

With Janus the Ninth.

Roman peered over the edge of the balcony, trying not to seem too much like he was blatantly and obviously spying—and tried not to grind his teeth too loudly. This was beyond an outrage. He knew Janus Novena was just as unscrupulous and strange as his House and attire would suggest, but taking advantage of an invalid’s condition just to inundate Thomas’s sweet necromantic ears with (no doubt) lies and slander about the rest of them? Completely unacceptable! He had half a mind to forget the formal challenge plan, and strike the other cavalier down where he stood!

Neither of them were looking up, though, which meant he was free to listen in.

“…Totally meant to startle you, Seventh. My every action is calculated to scare the living daylights out of everyone here.”

“Well,” said Thomas, sounding cautious. “You’re… uh, you’re doing a great job of that so far.”

Thomas had levered himself up onto his elbows to properly converse, and Janus was leaning against the balcony, looking perfectly content in the morning air, and perfectly creepy in that snaked-up makeup of his.

“Was there something you, um, wanted, or were you just… checking in on me?” he continued. “You can tell Logan the lotion is working, I’m not burning anymore. If that’s why you were here. But, um…”

In one hand, the Ninth cavalier held a shining red apple, a brilliant spot of color against the black of his cloak and white of the marble terrace. He spun it into the air with a flick of his clever wrist, snatched it, threw it back up again. “Well, I was hoping to get my cloak back. Not that it doesn’t look perfectly fetching on you—”

“This is your cloak?” Thomas said, clearly surprised.

“No, it’s Patton’s,” came the deadpan response, then, a bit softer, contemplating the apple, “Honestly, you didn’t know? I suspected you were keeping a hold of it out of some… strange power play. God knows what the Seventh is into, I wouldn’t know.”

“Oh gosh, no, I had no idea.” Thomas was now fumbling his way out of the cloak, made difficult by his half-prone position. “I thought someone had found it in the storeroom, I didn’t know that—I mean—well, thank you. It’s a really nice cloak.”

“Hence why I would like it back, yes.” He held the uneaten apple up, enticing. “Here, I’ll go and make it fair… in some respects. Trade you.”

“Um, um, thank you. But, I’m—not very hungry.”

“Yes,” said Janus the Ninth. “I’d noticed.” He flicked his wrist again, and the apple went tumbling up into the morning light; up, up, and all the way down again into his waiting grasp. “Trade you anyway. And hurry it up, I only have so much time in my stunted existence to spare. Unless you were planning on staying tangled in it for the rest of known time?”

“Yeah. Yes. Right, of course. I’m so embarrassed, I was just wearing it everywhere…you should have just told me. Now I feel like an idiot.” Thomas, at this point, had not managed to unfasten the cloak, but had managed to bump his head up against one particularly verdant vine, sending pollen cascading over his hair. He sneezed, then apologized about it, then said, “Here—oh, here,” all the while continuing to fail to remove a simple garment of clothing.

“Good to know you can’t wait to get it off you,” Janus said dryly. “Anyone would think you detested me, or something.”

“I don’t!” Thomas said, stopping immediately. His look of regret was obvious, even through the glass, and Roman found himself frowning. “I—sorry, did I make you think I didn’t like you or something? I… well, I know I didn’t react great the first few times I saw you, but in my defense, your face was a little, uh…”

“Gorgeous?” suggested Janus, with the hint of a smile.

“I was going to go with scary.”

“Mm. That too,” agreed Janus, sounding downright flirtatious now, and Roman had heard just about enough of this. He withdrew from the balcony, turned on his heel, and marched rapidly down a nearby flight of stairs, right the way down to the garden where the two of them were.

He strode through the doors, extended his arms wide, and announced, “Oh, Thomas! How lucky to run into you! We were just wondering where you were!”

Thomas, who had been in the process of accepting an apple and handing over a now-neatly-folded cloak to Janus, froze, looking weirdly guilty about it. Roman didn’t see why, it wasn’t as if Thomas was doing anything wrong.

“The Dark and Stormy Nightmare and I have organized a friendly sparring match downstairs,” Roman said to Janus, unable to help himself from raising a challenging eyebrow. “And seeing as our competition is… sadly limited right now, Virgil was hoping you’d come along too.”

“Oh, Virgil was, was he?” said Janus, not looking remotely convinced at all. “Well, then. I suppose I have to come, don’t I?”

“He wouldn’t stop raving about how much he wanted you there,” Roman said, and then, to Thomas, “No pressure at all, but you would of course be welcome to watch! I know Patton’s coming, and Logan’s agreed to oversee things...”

“Oh, that sounds great,” Thomas said brightly. “I haven’t seen a real duel in… um. Well, gosh, I can’t remember how long it’s been, but I’d love to watch you two practice.”

“Well, then! The field of combat awaits us!” Roman offered a hand to Thomas, who gladly accepted it, allowing himself to be gently tugged to his feet and righted. Roman briefly glanced at Janus, and then offered his elbow too, saying, “You look a little shaky. It’s old-fashioned, but won’t you let me guide you down? It’s a steep walk to the training rooms.”

Thomas laughed, said, “My hero,” and accepted the elbow too, linking his arm through Roman’s.

“Ssssuck-up,” Janus muttered, just loud enough so that Roman heard it—even though Thomas didn’t seem to. After a second, he clicked the final clasp of his cloak into place, and adjusted the veil over his shoulders, looking briefly satisfied. “Well, lead the way.”

*

By the time Roman and Thomas (with Janus in tow) made it through the winding corridors and down the many stairs to the small, badly-kept gym, everyone else had arrived too.

A minor horde of House skeletons were hard at work scrubbing the floor with filthy-looking mops, pushing back debris and heavy equipment to clear a space in the middle for them to fight in. Patton and Virgil were both perched on top of piles of stacked spare chairs at the far end of the room, discussing something at a rapid back-and-forth ping-pong. Virgil kept rolling his eyes. If he kept on doing that, they’d stick there. Roman turned his attention briefly to Logan, who was standing near the door, looking as if he’d rather be anywhere but here. He had the distinct twitchiness of a Library nerd wanting to get back to Library nerdiness, one who had no time for any of this swords-and-fencing nonsense.

Remus was there too, cross-legged on the ground and munching on a bowlful of… something. It smelled salty and oily, and made awful crunches as he shoveled mouthful after mouthful of it down. When Roman caught his eye about it, Remus just flicked a fluffy little speck of whatever-it-was at his eye, and said, “Think fast!”

Roman neatly sidestepped the pungent slick of animate fat wriggling into place beneath his feet, no doubt to trip him up and make him snap his neck against a wall or something. He said, “I haven’t seen that in the kitchens.”

Remus shrugged, cheerfully unfazed by yet another unsuccessful murder attempt. “Found it in a laboratory. You can’t have any.” He raised the bowl to his lips, smacking down yet another disgustingly oily mouthful, and added, thickly, “Watching you get your ass beat is always more fun with snacks.”

“You and your asses,” Roman said, as Janus melted his shadowy way off to a distant corner of the room, and Thomas hovered awkwardly in the doorway.

Patton said, “Hey, Thomas! Hey there, Thomathy! Over here, come sit with us!”

Virgil smiled one of his rare smiles, the one that made Roman feel like he was being mocked directly. “Yeah, you can take my spot while I hand Princey’s ass to him.”

“Why is everyone so obsessed with my princely ass today?” Roman wondered, rolling out his shoulders. “Jealousy, clearly.” He sniffed, and flexed his back, feeling the bones make a satisfying crack. “None of you could hope to have a posterior as remotely royal as mine own. It would be a downright privilege to have it handed to me, there is no greater gift to receive! Not that you’re going to get anywhere close, of course.”

“Aaaand I immediately regret bringing up Princey’s ass,” Virgil said, and slid down from the stack of chairs, hitting the floorboards with a deft little thunk of shoes-on-wood. “I blame this one on Remus. Let’s get this over with.”

Thomas went over to sit with Patton, who promptly flung an arm around his shoulder, chattering, “I don’t like the stabby thing, but when they’re doing this, they’re not actually trying to hurt each other! They try to do it with words, I mean, but sometimes it feels like they actually want to stab each other, and it’s like giving toddlers bones to play with, you know? Everyone knows they won’t be able to do much with them, but it’s all about working out the energy, right? And, they’re both super good, even if they don’t believe it when I tell them—”

“Well, color me excited,” Thomas said with wholehearted enthusiasm. “And before I forget—I don’t want it to go to waste, did you want this apple?”

Roman glanced over at Janus, still lurking like it was going out of style and staring, grim-faced, at an oblivious-seeming Thomas. He cleared his throat, and said, “Well! We thought we’d start off with the two of us, since we’re already somewhat familiar with each other’s styles. Unless you wanted to go first-?”

“Oh, no,” said the snake-faced shadow skulker with a stretching smile. “I can’t wait to see how this plays out. I’ll watch.”

“I have elected to arbitrate,” Logan announced to the room, perfectly neutrally. And then he looked at Roman, and added, “I am curious what the status of your backside will be at the conclusion of this venture. I consider this an exercise in data collection.”

“Aw, not you too, Specs,” Roman groaned, withdrawing his buckler from its sheath. “I will say this once, and once only: my ass is perfect, and shall not be beat.”

On the other side of the room, Virgil was shrugging off his robes and pulling his own offhand—a practical short-bladed dagger, its handle wrapped securely in leather. “Ha. Bold words from the man who stole a Cohort uniform for an ego boost. How’s the security blanket treating you?”

“Virge,” said Patton pleadingly, and Virgil raised his eyes to the heavens once more, as if exercising basic human decency was some kind of great suffering he had to endure. But he stopped speaking, and as the room drew quiet around them, they moved into position.

Roman knew all the formal steps to this, and it seemed Virgil did too. Without speaking a word, they stepped up to stand before each other, nearly nose-to-nose—although Roman had an inch or two on Virgil, which he felt shamefully but undeniably smug about. In unison, they laid their offhand arms across their chests. Roman pressed his buckler, a family heirloom decorated with the Onnuria crest, proudly to his collarbone. On the graying fabric of Virgil’s threadbare tunic, his well-polished dagger shone.

They made eye contact, and for a second, Roman could have sworn that Virgil was as excited for this as he was. But then the brightness in the other cavalier’s eyes shuttered, and was replaced by that familiar cool disdain.

“To the first touch,” Logan said briskly from the doorway. “Clavicle to sacrum, arms exception.” Then, “Call.”

“Roman the Fourth,” said Roman grandly, and, in a moment of hubristic weakness, added, “Don’t worry, I’ll go easy on you.”

“Virgil,” said his opponent, hesitated for a split second, then said, “representing the Fifth. Catch me if you can, Slowman the Fourth.”

Which wasn’t even a slightly good pun, but Patton could be hear stifling a delighted snort. Roman tried not to scowl too hard about it.

“Please cease the heated banter. Seven paces back,” Logan instructed, and they did, spinning on their heels with identical furious energy. “Turn—begin—”

Roman had anticipated that Virgil would take the offensive—had already decided that, well, if that was the way he was going to play it, Roman would go even more offensive, offensive enough to make Remus whoop and holler. So even as Virgil came rushing across the room, he was ready. He slid sideways to dodge the low-aimed initial strike, executed a perfect contreparry, and swiftly bore down on Virgil’s exposed quarter, pressing the momentary advantage.

Virgil spun with a hiss, and began to give as good as he got. There was no time to think, barely time to breathe, neither of them willing to give the other even a second’s pause. The most exquisite, exhilarating combat. Roman was abruptly alive, and delightfully surprised, and loving every moment of it, even as he raised his offhand high and ducked back further and further to evade each and every downwards-bearing strike.

Roman and Virgil had fought before, of course. The day Patton had shown up to the biannual Cohort ball with a new, glowering cavalier in tow, Roman had grabbed a butter knife from the table as a makeshift offhand and challenged him—wanting to see just how good this strange newcomer was. And Virgil had lost, quite spectacularly, owing to just how new he was at this—how unused to House formalities and duels. Roman probably shouldn’t have held it so far over his head. Now that he thought about it, it was entirely possible that holding it over Virgil’s head was the source of all that animosity.

It had been a number of years since they’d actually, properly dueled, though. And it seemed as if Virgil had been practicing.

Fortunately, so had Roman.

Virgil drove forwards into Roman’s space, ducking and skipping and feinting like a bladed whirlwind—slashing his dagger out in long vicious sweeps—and Roman took the opportunity to force himself into Virgil’s space in turn, taking jabs at his sides, his stomach, going low for the element of surprise, to get beneath that terrifyingly watchful guard of his.

And then Roman switched it up, went high—and at the exact same moment, so did Virgil. Metal screeched down, forte caught forte, and for a moment they were trapped together, sword straining against sword. Roman couldn’t help but look up and meet Virgil’s gaze.

Virgil glared back at him like winning this fight was his sole purpose in life, the only thing he’d ever be satisfied with, everything he’d ever wanted. How many times had he seen Virgil glaring like this? Directed at Roman’s back, at anyone who dared to look at Patton wrong, at each and every arrogant Cohort officer and high-ranking House official. Roman had always thought him unnecessarily grim, too gloomy and pessimistic for a sunshine puffball like Patton, but when it came down to it—that glare. That drive. That absolute passion. It was… familiar. Why was it all so familiar?

And Roman’s brain froze for a moment. He tried to think, but could only manage an incoherent, Oh.

Up came the leather-bound dagger with a rush like a wave breaking; Roman had been so distracted by those furious violet eyes that he only just managed to raise his buckler in time. He caught the blow on its surface, crooked, and his arm rattled in protest even as he managed to fend it off, casting the dagger wildly to one side and sending Virgil momentarily staggering. Sloppy! he told himself, and forced his head back in the game.

Virgil fought fast and dirty, but in between feints and thrusts and clashes, Roman couldn’t help but admire the swiftness of each blow. There was an element of uncertainty to the way he held his rapier, and he treated it more like a dagger than the longer blade it was—but not enough so that Roman could figure a way to exploit it.

He was thinking two steps ahead, when he should have been thinking in the moment. In a second, it was all over. It was a beautiful move, so sweet and swift that Roman couldn’t have hoped to see it coming. A splendid little sweep of Virgil’s plain-jane undecorated rapier, an almost minute circling of the tip that cleared Roman’s own away and to the side, and Virgil stepped right up to him, raised his dagger, and stopped. Just stopped.

Roman looked down.

Virgil’s dagger was resting just over Roman’s heart, held in a firm fist—delicate enough that it prodded, but did not pierce. Roman was frozen, blood racing in his ears, utterly confused. And it wasn’t just him, was the thing—Virgil looked just as thrown-off that he’d won. His mouth was parted slightly, eyes blown wide. He wasn’t even smiling in triumph, he was just perfectly, gorgeously, flabbergasted at his own success. Which was… unfairly endearing, actually.

Roman couldn’t think of anything to say, so he didn’t. Very carefully, Virgil removed his dagger, and took a step back. Roman slowly became aware that the room around them was dead silent—not a breath, not a flutter of motion. Not even Janus the Ninth seemed to have a sly comment to slip in at the last minute.

“…Match to the Fifth,” Logan said belatedly.

“Wow,” breathed Thomas. “That was… guys, wow.”

Patton started clapping so fast it was like his hands had been replaced by malfunctioning motors, and Logan said, sounding like he was on autopilot, “…Well done. Very well done. That was… an exceptional show.”

Roman was barely paying attention, because he was still staring at Virgil—now awkwardly ducking his head away, and twisting his fingers around the hilt of his sword, over and over again. “Well, consider my ass thoroughly beaten,” he said, slightly bewildered that he wasn’t upset at this outcome.

Virgil smiled a rare smile, and for the first time, Roman felt like it wasn’t a taunt. “Not a bad ass, though, Princey.” He sheathed his sword, then his dagger, and after Roman did the same, held out a hand.

They shook, quite firmly, and Roman hoped Virgil couldn’t see the heat rising to his cheeks. Damn it to the Emperor and back. No. No. Not this. Not now.

“Ugh,” said Remus suddenly, pushing away his now-empty bowl of crunchy garbage. “Why does it suddenly suck now that you’re talking about asses? There’s so much stupid romantic tension in here that I can’t even enjoy seeing Roman getting taken down a peg. Janny, please say you’re going to make this actually interesting. Uh, Janus?”

Janus hadn’t said a word since the match began, and as Roman drew away from Virgil, furiously avoiding eye-contact, he saw that the Ninth cavalier’s gaze was not on either of them. He was eyeing the other side of the room, thumb rubbing at the side of his jaw thoughtfully. After a second, he said, “Hmm. No. Seems like too much effort.”

“You’re no fun,” Remus howled, throwing himself backwards to the ground, sprawling on the filthy floorboards like spilt mopwater.

“Well, I do have to save my energy for other matters,” Janus said, and nodded to the others. “Fifth. Sixth. Seventh.” Then he looked at Roman very significantly, said, “Fourth. See you later,” and swept out of the room in his usual despairingly ominous fashion. Roman had become accustomed to this sort of behavior over the last two weeks, so he just ignored it.

“I’m so proud of you!” Patton exclaimed, and wrapped Virgil into a wild side-hug. (“Pat—no—come on—okay, ugh, fine—”) He was beaming like crazy, looking rapidly from Roman to Virgil and back again. “You’re both so cool.” (“Patton, seriously, let’s not—come on, right in front of everyone-?”) “And was that one of your fancy little parries I saw, Roman? You’ve been practicing that for ages, haven’t you? You’ve got some seriously sharp moves there, mister!”

“This is humiliating,” mumbled Virgil, apparently fully resigned to being cuddled sideways by an overenthusiastic necromancer.

Patton hugged him again. “I love my dark, strange cavalier.”

The departure of Janus had left Roman with not much to do, now. He had been somewhat looking forward to the novelty of dueling someone new, but had to admit that the (relatively) short bout between him and Virgil had him wanting to lie face-down on a bed for the next few hours. Which was ridiculous. He was used to far greater physical exertion than this! He could go at it with a sword and shield for hours and hours on end! Did his heart really have to be racing quite this fast?

A few minutes were spent talking logistics with Logan (who seemed curious about the practicalities of Virgil’s somewhat-unorthodox dueling style), and accepting compliments from Thomas (who was acting as if he’d never seen a duel before at all, the level of enthusiasm he was exhibiting!), but it seemed that all of the members of their little group had decided to move on and drift away. Patton was already out the door, now deep in conversation with Thomas about… dogs? Something about dogs—and Virgil was, of course, close behind.

Roman cleared his throat before the other cavalier could leave entirely. And then he did it again, since the first time hadn’t been nearly loud enough. “Hey, Virgil?”

Virgil stopped. “Yeah, Pr—Roman?”

“Good match. Good—you did a good job. We should do it again,” Roman said, quite honestly.

After a second, Virgil shrugged and said, “Yeah, whatever,” but Roman could tell he wasn’t opposed to the idea. Another second passed, and then he awkwardly raised two fingers to his temple, performed a little salute, and then backed out of the room.

Roman was pretty sure this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Or something. Maybe.

He also was pretty sure that he had absolutely no idea what to do with that.

*

After everyone else, even the few scattered helper skeletons, had dispersed from the training room, and it was just the two of them left, Remus caught his arm, growled out a sigh, and said, “I need you.”

“Uh, obviously?” Roman agreed with a twitch of his eyebrow. In response, Remus promptly tried to pull Roman’s ribs out through the front of his chest, but they only twitched unpleasantly. Roman sighed and shoved him in the shoulder, cutting off the necromancy attempt. “What is it?”

“Well, there’s weird neat necromancy puzzles in a locked vault in the basement,” said Remus, “and I need you to run really fast through a deathtrap corridor for me so I can get a cool golden key.”

Roman nodded, rolling his eyes. “Of course you do.”

“And I also need to eat a good chunk of your arm before you do it.”

Roman laughed. “Right,” he said, “but what do you actually want me to do?”

There was a moment of silence. Remus’s expression was reading a combination of exasperation and annoyance, but not a hint of deception. Roman blinked, then blinked again.

“Oh. You’re serious,” he realized, then: “You found something in the basement? Something to do with the Lyctor trials? Hold on just a minute, you haven’t been disappearing off with Janus at all, have you? You’ve been…” He had to stop for a second, because the concept was so utterly bizarre to consider, so completely alien that it was very nearly beyond him. “…You’ve been actually doing work? Unprompted?”

“Got permission to enter a locked room,” Remus grinned. “Oh, yeah. That reminds me.” He swept a hand out from under his tattered greening robes, and held up a familiar metal band abruptly. Roman’s eyes narrowed as he recognized it. “Stole your keychain, loser! But I’m the one who actually managed to find the keys, so, like, I’m pretty sure I deserve it more than you.”

Indeed, there was now a single iron key dangling off the end of it, clinking and clattering as Remus swung it around and around his finger.

“Also, I actually have been disappearing off with Janus,” he continued, “so you’re not wrong there. It’s just that he can’t actually run very fast, and he refuses to let me eat his brain or muscles or whatever, so we’re at a bit of a collaborative impasse.” He shrugged. “Also, felt unfair to do the whole Lyctor thing without my cav, so, whatever.”

“You’ve never once cared about things being fair,” said Roman, brain whirring overtime.

“I care about things being fair for me,” Remus snorted. “And I actually factually can’t do this alone, so. Me eating you. Big scary deathtrap corridor filled with things you might have to stab. What do you say?”

“Let me see what we’re working with first,” Roman said, sighing. “And then—depending—very depending—there are so many ifs here, you don’t even understand—I can’t believe I’m even saying this—yes, Remus. I might possibly let you eat my arm.”

*

Chapter Text

CHAPTER TEN

“Virgil the Fifth"

*

Somehow, the most bizarre part of all of this was how quickly Princey had flipped from wanting nothing to do with Virgil to wanting everything to do with him.

It was seriously weirding him out, just how friendly Roman was acting all of a sudden. Okay, yes, all of the spiky nicknames and poking and prodding still remained, but now it wasn’t punctuated by glares and disapproval and the undertones of genuine dislike. Now it was downright friendly. Now Virgil was being treated like he’d been friends with Roman for years. He was welcome at the breakfast table, included heartily in conversations—and his opinion was, if not completely respected and acknowledged, at least valued as a valid point of view.

Patton was delighted, of course, but Virgil wasn’t so sure.

Part of him wanted to throw it all back in the Fourth Prince’s face with a sneer and a snort. He’d been rejected from their little clique for years and years now, and this was far too little, way too late. Did he seriously consider a single heated sword fight and a handshake enough to flip everything on its head like this? The sheer entitlement of this guy was astounding.

But on the other hand… well. Admitting it was more than painful, but Virgil was actually beginning to like the guy. When Roman wasn’t being all deliberately antagonistic and critical of Virgil’s every waking moment, movement and motivations, he could be almost… Virgil didn’t want to use the word sweet. But what other word was there for it?

He’d even apologized, the day after the duel. It hadn’t been, like, a good apology or anything—he’d insulted Virgil two times and threatened him at least thrice—but at the end of everything he had seemed to be fairly genuine in his remorse. Virgil hadn’t had the heart to reject the apology, but he did remind Roman of the existence of all his Secret Knives, just in case Roman felt the need to go back on this and start being a shiny stupid stuck-up ass all over again.

To this, Roman just said, how dare you imply-?!—Actually, you know what; that’s probably fair.

And then Virgil noticed suspicious food crime noises coming from the close-by vicinity, and immediately jumped to his feet, electric with horror, because who let Patton into the kitchen? He’d already warned everyone about that—everyone except the skeletons, and Patton himself, it would seem.

The rest of the afternoon was spent putting out the fires that had overtaken the Canaan House systems, and trying to find the best place to dispose of biological hazards. Patton apologized, over and over again, but Roman hadn’t stopped laughing the whole time.

It had been, well, stressful. Most of Virgil’s life was stressful, and the last few weeks hadn’t been even close to an exception. But it had also been… nice? Yeah. It had been nice. Roman slung an arm around Virgil’s shoulder after the smoldering had stopped, and Virgil only felt like stabbing him about it a little bit.

So, yes. Friends now. Apparently. And now, several days later—

“Hang on,” said Virgil, rubbing the bridge of his nose. A headache was starting to form, seriously quickly. “God. Fuck. Wait a second, I need to just… you’re telling me that you’ve actually found the Lyctor trials? The things we’re supposed to be doing now? And they’re all in some spooky ghost basement, underneath this whole place?”

“As much as I’d love to claim the glorious credit for this discovery, I… can’t,” Roman admitted. “That is, regrettably, down to our resident serpentine shadowlord.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Virgil muttered.

“I know,” commiserated Roman, looking and sounding fully pained at the very thought.

If there was one thing his newfound friendship (question mark?) with Roman Tetradrachmus brought in great and satisfying amounts, it was someone to bitch about the goddamn creepiest cavalier in this place with. Patton wouldn’t hear a word of wrong about the guy, and trying to bring it up with him was starting to make Virgil feel bad. Thomas had started as a likely ally in Ninth House hostility, but had recently been making uncomfortable uhh well maybe not sort of faces whenever Virgil had tried broaching the subject. Which made no sense, really, but Thomas Sanders was nice to a fault, so Virgil had decided to just accept it and move on. But Roman…

Roman, among his many faults and strengths, was a killer cavalier to sit and bitch with. He bitched like there was no tomorrow, like he was a finely-oiled, finely-muscled, fine-tuned machine designed only for three things: flexing those considerable muscles, generating an endless parade of witty nicknames, and bitching. He bitched like the Emperor himself had descended once more from far-off climes to rest a gentle hand on his forehead and grant him the immortal ancient secrets of pure, unadulterated bitchcraft. It was fucking amazing. Virgil couldn’t believe he’d been missing out on this for so long.

And Virgil would have been more than happy to complain at length about Janus the Ninth and his creepy, creepy snake face for hours more, if it weren’t for the fact that there was apparently a secret Lyctor laboratory underneath Canaan House.

“So why are you telling me this?” he said. “I’m sure as hell not going down there, and Patton is even more so not going down there.”

“Aha!” said Roman, and raised a finger. And then he actually repeated it, he said, “Aha!” again, like saying it again would make it sound less stupid. “And that is where you’re wrong! Because down there is the place to be, my fine fellow friend in martial fealty! It’s where the magic happens, and it’s where the answers are found, and it’s where our beloved necromancers will find the peak of their power, and also you’re going down there because I’m here to beg for your help.”

Virgil had to admit that the last bit was a considerable incentive. “Okay. I’m listening. Beg.”

“You’re fast,” Roman said simply, and then elaborated, less simply: “Which is not to say that I, the most splendid cavalier primary of the Fourth, am not exceptionally twinkle-toed on my feet… but I do have a bit more muscle on me than you, you skinny stick-insect cosplayer. Ah—that wasn’t meant to sound—that is—”

Virgil rolled his eyes, not unfondly. He was rapidly realizing that Roman slung nicknames and insults where most people would put normal compliments. It was almost sweet, in a pompous sort of way. “Yeah, yeah, I get it. So, what, you need someone fast?”

“Indeed! Someone fast, and someone with good reflexes.”

Virgil did have good reflexes. It came neatly packaged with all of the anxiety. “Okay. Why not Janus?”

Roman’s face twisted up into a grimace, a familiar Ninth House, why!? grimace. “He hates running, apparently.”

“I also hate running,” Virgil pointed out, still not sold on this. “Where’s the begging? You promised me begging.”

Roman sighed, and gestured dramatically outwards with one hand, before falling down to kneel before Virgil on one knee in undeniable supplication. To the ceiling, he proclaimed, “O great and seriously speedy cavalier of the Fifth, perpetually clad in gloom and grump and very fetching eyeshadow, won’t you hear my heartfelt plea?”

Virgil took a step back, immediately dying of embarrassment. “Laying it on a bit thick, Princey.”

“Well, you asked for it,” Roman fired back, unashamed, and then, “Assist me in my hour of need! Lend your sword, your razor-sharp mind, and also your very muscular legs, to my noble cause!”

“My legs aren’t—shut up. Stop talking so loudly—”

“Come with me, Virgil the Fifth! Take my hand, and together we’ll run like the wind! I can show you the world—although by world, I mainly mean a mildly unsettling underground laboratory—and you can show me just how good you are at short-distance sprinting.” He clasped his hands together in front of him. “See how I grovel before you. You and your legs, you’re my only hope. Your very long legs, that never end. Together, we’ll be—”

Virgil knew where this was going. Living with Patton for this long had given him an unrivaled pun-sense. “Don’t.”

“—leg-end-ary.”

“I hate you.” Virgil covered his face with both hands. “Never do that ever again.”

Roman rose to his feet, grinning. “Is that a yes?”

“It’s a yes, if you promise to never do that again. Oh, god, I just agreed to doing something without actually knowing what it is. Why did I do that? I can’t believe I just did that. What did I just agree to?”

“Come down,” Roman said, “and I’ll show you. No take-backsies. Oh,” he added, clicking his fingers. “You’ll need a key, probably. Now, getting it might be a bit of a chore, but I’m sure you’ll manage…”

*

Obtaining the key from Teacher Guy had been a lot easier than Roman had implied it would be. Virgil barely had to mumble something awkward and unplanned about locked doors, when the pale priest had ripped a single key from a ring, practically flung it in Virgil’s direction, and fled the room without another word.

Virgil fumbled the catch, managed to clasp the key to his chest, and looked in the old man’s direction with honest bewilderment. He hadn’t had much opportunity to interact with Teacher since those first few days—not that he minded, talking to an actual appointed priest of God Himself sounded like the literal worst thing in the world—but even so, it wasn’t hard to tell that something about him had shifted, drastically. He didn’t seem to want to talk to anyone, despite all of the conversations Logan kept trying to pull him into about ancient House history. He seemed much more inclined to spending increasing periods of time out the front of the mansion, staring alternately at the sea and the sky.

Well, whatever. It wasn’t any of his business if some old First House priest was diving face-first down a depressive spiral. He could go and contemplate the endless void all on his lonesome if he wanted to, Virgil sure wasn’t going to judge. He had the key, that was all that mattered, and now he was going to get this over with.

But when Virgil reached the lower-House room Roman had directed him to, it was not just Roman waiting for him.

“No,” he said, folding his arms. “Nope. Nuh-uh. Not happening.”

“Safety in numbers?” Roman offered, as if he wasn’t a traitor and an idiot and the person who had apparently invited not just Patton, but Logan and Thomas too to this little basement field trip of his. “Also, uh, you kind of need your necromancer for this, so…”

Virgil was Not Happy about this, and when he looked at Patton—really? You’re really going with this? You’re going to make me deal with this?—his necromancer only shrugged and smiled, saying, “If you’re going, I’m going.”

“You—ugh. All right, I hate that, but I can’t stop you. But why do you guys need to be here?” Virgil glared from Logan to Thomas, and then back at Roman.

“I am an adult,” said Logan, folding his hands together and looking moderately peeved. “I can make my own decisions of where to go, and do not need your protection or approval. Besides, as Roman has so succinctly put it: safety in numbers.”

“We’re better together,” Patton chimed in.

“Hey, it’ll be all right,” said Thomas, and smiled at Virgil, fiddling with the hem of his shirt in that way he did when he was faintly nervous about things. “We have you guys to look after us, right?”

Virgil didn’t have the heart to tell him that looking after one extremely squishy and stabbable necromancer every day of his life was driving him to the relative point of insanity, and he wasn’t sure how much more of this he could take. He said, “Roman, you’re in charge of making sure ghosts don’t eat Logan and Thomas. I’m not taking responsibility for them.”

“Ghosts cannot eat people,” said Logan. “They may attempt to scare us—or possess us, as revenants, but they won’t be able to fully overwhelm our consciousnesses unless we are barely conscious ourselves—or fully dead. The ghosts are hardly the thing to worry about.”

“I wasn’t—” Virgil’s chronic headache was rearing its ugly head once more. “Okay. Fine. Maybe not ghosts. But Roman already told me that there’s, like, so many deathtraps and weird, old, dangerous equipment down there, and I don’t know if it’s a good idea for all of us to—”

“Then we will be careful.” Logan’s tone was controlled and his face was measured, but he was clearly psyched out of his mind to go exploring a secret ancient laboratory filled with ancient laboratory secrets and also death. Why were all necromancers like this?

By now, this basement room had been thoroughly charted by just about everyone in the House, trails of back-and-forth footsteps cutting thick swaths through the dust. Patton had begun sneezing some several minutes before, and hadn’t stopped, and now Roman was gesturing for him to take his newly-acquired key and open up the stupidly ominous trapdoor right in the middle of it.

“I hate this,” Virgil chanted under his breath as he did so. “I hate this, I hate this, I hate this, nope nope nope nope nope—”

Roman rolled his eyes at him. The key went into the lock, and the trapdoor opened, revealing the most red-flag-inducing tunnel-straight-down that Virgil had ever seen.

“Nope,” he said again.

“It’s not so bad,” Roman said placatingly. “When you get to the bottom, at least.”

Five minutes later, Virgil was leading the climb down, and he was reaching the end of the ladder, and Roman was a filthy liar because the bottom of the tunnel was even worse. It was a narrow passageway, six-sided walls like a hexagonal straw lying flat on its side, dull gray metal and dispassionately-laid tiles spilling out from here all the way to where the tunnel crooked around a corner. There were exposed pipes, and grilles in the ceiling, and a smell in the air that was both musty and clinically chemical.

They had elected to go down one at a time, instead of all together—just in case, so if someone slipped on the treacherous-looking rungs, or if the ancient metal decided to give up the ghost, they wouldn’t have a domino cascade of people crashing into each other. Their group was three-fifths weak loser necromancers, so this was a legitimate concern.

Virgil yelled up the ladder, he said, “I still hate this! I’m going to scout ahead!”

“Gotcha, Vigilant Virgil-ante,” Roman’s voice echoed down. “Sending down… er, nickname pending… ooh, Patton-pending next.”

“Go slowly!” Virgil insisted upwards, and forced himself not to stand there, staring upwards and making Patton feel nervous about climbing, like some weird creepy jerk. He was pretty sure Patton could manage a ladder. Like, a solid ninety-percent sure. Eighty, maybe. He would be fine. Logan would be there to fix him up if something happened. Unless Logan was the one who tripped and fell. Did Thomas know healing necromancy? He hadn’t thought to ask—

No. No, no thinking about that. Virgil needed to scout ahead, like he’d said. Survey the area, make sure it was safe. Safe-ish.

He took a few steps down the hallway. The ground was rattly and unsteady under his feet, but the walls absorbed sound greedily. It made it stupidly hard to hear whether anything was coming, whether he was alone in here. He took a moment to hate everything about this situation, and hurried forward to the bend in the corridor, reflexively loosening his rapier from its sheath.

He did not enjoy fighting with a rapier. It was the traditional cav weapon, and sure, he had to use it if he wanted to stick with Pat, but that didn’t change the fact that he didn’t like it and he still hadn’t gotten used to it. Change was stupid. He hated change. Why did everything have to change again? Why did everything happen so much, forever?

Lost in grumbling grumpy thoughts, Virgil looked around the corner, and nearly had a heart attack.

At the end of the corridor, there was a dark-cloaked, misty-veiled person standing at one of the doors, examining a label set into its front. For a second, Virgil’s brain freaked out royally, had a moment of total screaming terror where everything was, hey idiot, you’re gonna get eaten by a ghost goth and then you’re going to DIE and Patton’s going to find your body and be guilty about it—and then he realized that it was just Janus, and promptly felt astoundingly stupid.

He cleared his throat, and said, “Hey.”

Which had just been a polite alert to the fact that he was there. He wasn’t so much of an asshole as to want to scare Janus just as much as he’d (inadvertently) scared Virgil—but almost immediately, it felt like a mistake. The other cavalier’s head shot up, and he looked right at Virgil with a completely unreadable expression.

Virgil got as far as taking one wary step backwards.

And then Janus the Ninth came at him like an arrow, straight down the hallway and right for his heart. Virgil barely had time to raise his own sword before the skull-faced cavalier was on him, bright eye flashing through the darkness. They were fighting in close quarters, the walls so narrow that Virgil was finding it difficult to keep his elbows tucked in tight enough to prevent being knocked off-balance.

And, oh, Janus could fight. Virgil had been harboring vague paranoid doubts about him not being a cavalier at all—he had barely drawn his sword once, and he didn’t even have an offhand—but every one of those doubts were instantly dispelled at the way the shorter man handled his blade. The shining silver licked out this way and that, a serpent’s tongue unfolding. It flickered through the air with lazy, languid strokes that nonetheless were faster than Virgil could manage to track. And all at once he was on the defensive, being pressed backwards, step by step.

Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, he chanted in his head as he retreated backwards down the hallway, falling back into terror and instinct to match every clash and stab and jab that came in his direction. This was not the adrenaline-fuelled delight of a duel with Roman, or the structured rigidity of Fifth cavalier trial duels. This was unfettered violence; complete, insufferable mastery of the blade. This was the best goddamned sword work he’d ever seen. And Virgil was going to have a fucking panic attack about it.

But, like, later.

He was viciously aware of the presence of three impossibly squishy necromancers and one (frankly mediocre) cavalier shortly down the corridor behind him, and knew that if he was forced backwards any further, he’d be risking them too. Which wasn’t even remotely an option, so he swallowed the urge to scream at the top of his lungs, and threw himself low, slashing for Janus’s legs. Take out the legs and they can’t run. If they can’t run, fighting becomes just about impossible.

Janus didn’t miss a beat. He shrugged his cloak evenly off one shoulder, sweeping it over an arm, and brought it down with a flourish as Virgil brought his dagger up. The fabric was thick and did not rip, and the sudden resistance sent Virgil staggering off balance. What the fuck? That was his offhand? That couldn’t be allowed, could it?

Virgil stabbed again, and once again, Janus brought his cloak up fluidly, deflecting with barely a whisper of fabric. What the fuck, what the fuck. Nope nope nope. Feint. Parry. Feint. Feint. Janus was impossible, untouchable. Virgil wasn’t getting anywhere close.

Painted face still blank and impassive, Janus twirled the thick cloak around an arm, twisting it through the air with practiced ease. And then, in a move that Virgil hadn’t thought to see coming, threw it right at Virgil’s face. Everything went abruptly black and musty, and Virgil scrabbled to tug it away, panic rising. Even as he did, fumbling madly with a dagger that suddenly felt clumsy and childish in his hands, he felt a sudden jolt as Janus shoved him backwards with an elbow.

He felt a heel grind down onto his chest, and he was kicked backwards to fall against a wall, wind thoroughly knocked out of him. He groaned, tried to reach down for the knife concealed at the back of his thigh, but the flat of a blade swept his hand away—and then there was a sharp tip right at his throat.

Virgil froze. He thought, oh, right, I’m going to die, and took a moment to accept that. It was surprisingly easy. He’d been prepared to die the moment the shuttles had started crashing; this was a few weeks later than he’d expected.

And all at once the metal-plated ground vibrated like thunder with approaching footsteps, and the sound of several people calling his name split the air. Virgil didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t want to see the look on Patton’s face when Janus brought the blade across his throat, scythed the skin open as easily as you’d split a pomegranate. Patton didn’t like pomegranates, said they looked too gory and heart-like for his tastes. Patton was soft like that, despite everything.

“Virgil? Virgil—Virge—”

God fucking damn it. Why was Virgil thinking about gore-slash-pomegranates in his last moments?

“Janus!” Thomas said from right behind him, sounding shocked and bewildered.

Abruptly, the sword was gone from his throat, and the musty chemical air rushed into Virgil’s lungs with a stutter-start whoosh. He forced his eyes open, and saw that Janus was now taking a step back, resettling his cape over his shoulders, lowering the tip of his sword to point at the ground rather than Virgil.

He said, “Not bad. Could have been a touch faster on the draw, but… not bad at all.”

Virgil couldn’t breathe. All he could do was stare wildly at Janus, who was now acting as if their entire fight hadn’t happened, and who was turning to give a nod and the hint of a smile to Thomas. Patton rounded the corner, closely followed by Logan and Roman bringing up the rear.

“Whoa!” said Patton, skidding up short. “Everything all right down there, kiddo? Decided to move up a House?”

That was… that made no sense. Non-sequitur. What was going on? What had just happened? “Pat—”

“You know,” he said, offering a hand to pull Virgil up. “From Fifth to Floor-th.”

Janus laughed, the sound dripping with insincerity. “Oh, House puns. My very favorite—very good, I particularly enjoyed that one.”

“He tried to stab me!” Virgil managed. His voice squeaked, which was terrible for so many reasons.

Janus raised an eyebrow. “As I recall, you were doing a fair amount of stabbing yourself. I assumed it was just a friendly bout of dueling between us, Virgil. Are you saying you had a problem with it?”

Virgil waved Patton off, knowing from experience that taking the hand would lead to both of them sprawled out on the ground—and instead used the wall as a prop to struggle back to his feet. Logan was at his shoulder, frowning at Janus as he idly ran a finger over the grating of the wall, and Patton was at his other. Virgil appreciated the support from both sides, but also his heart was going fast enough to combust and that panic attack definitely wasn’t too far off. “You tried to kill me.”

“You came at me from behind,” said Janus, “with your sword out, and clear malicious intent. You can hardly blame me for reacting appropriately.”

Virgil was aware that his mouth was hanging open slightly, and hastened to shut it. “You—I—”

“Hey, Sinister Sly-thon, can you chill,” Roman said, sounding more annoyed than honestly offended that Virgil had nearly been the meat on a bony sword kebab. Of course he wasn’t reacting normally to this. His brother made a habit of trying to stab him to death six times before breakfast, and two more times during the meal for good measure. “You’re the one that wanted him here! You can get your dueling practice in later—didn’t you say we don’t have time for this?”

“Yes, you’re right, we don’t,” Janus agreed, and adjusted his cloak about his shoulders once more. “You’re all here to assist with the time trial, I take it? Good, good—well, hurry up, we don’t have all day.”

And then he did that thing again. The thing where he turned on his heel in the stupidest showiest way possible and flounced off with the full expectation that everyone would follow along eagerly. And Patton was already doing so, apparently not at all aware of the fact that Virgil had nearly been cleaved in fucking twain by the literal worst person Virgil had ever met. Logan was tapping his hand to the walls as he walked away, apparently completely engrossed in whatever his psychometry-thing was telling him, and Thomas was… Thomas had an expression on his face that said he was busy thinking about something entirely different to Virgil getting stabbed. Well, fine. Virgil could deal with that. He could seethe in silence about it. He could be the bigger person and not make a huge annoying deal about every little inconvenience, unlike some people.

“Ugh,” Roman said, softly. “Hate that guy and his… stupid sexy snake face. Did I say sexy? I meant stupid again. Hey, Highest Five, are you… okay?”

“Fine,” said Virgil shortly, and stalked furiously in the direction of the group, fuming. No, Virgil didn’t like the Ninth House cavalier. Not one bit. Not as far as Patton could throw him—Virgil was pretty sure he could throw Janus pretty far, given the opportunity. Virgil wanted to throw Janus, actually. Off the highest tower of Canaan House, preferably.

Maybe Roman would help him.

*

Janus led them through into a large nonagonal room, corridors radiating outwards in every direction like a central nervous system. Each passage had a metal placard beside it—LABORATORIES 4-6, MORTUARY, BREAK ROOM, GREENHOUSE—and the cold fluorescent lights shining in from above made the placards shine; made the single enormous whiteboard fixed to one wall gleam coldly.

Virgil’s eye caught on the whiteboard as Janus ushered them past to the corridor marked LABORATORIES 1-3, and he tried to puzzle out the strokes of the letters and numbers and names that had been erased with stained and scratched streaks. There were the fragments of a word starting with EM, the brisk strokes of a M or maybe an N, at the top a meaningless blurred string of numbers followed by a scribbled R and nothing more.

In the center of the board, someone had written, FINALLY FINISHED! Good work, friends!—a message that had been surrounded in a cheery loopy heart, the sort Patton might doodle on the margins of his paperwork or around his and Virgil’s paired names. It was faded and gray, a clear casualty of centuries, but otherwise untouched.

Next to that, a set of hooks screwed neatly into the wall. Two lab coats were still hanging off them, faintly speckled with long-dried blood and seaspray points of black.

The air was dry, parching, and Virgil couldn’t help but notice all of the ash on the ground, swept into corners and built up into delicate little piles that crumbled and dispersed if you were unfortunate enough to nudge it with your foot. He hadn’t noticed any ghosts yet, but then again—you didn’t often notice stray ghosts unless you were actively calling out to them, and Virgil was planning on keeping his mouth firmly shut on that front.

This place sucked. Virgil thought, quite passionately, about the impossible logistics of leaving and never coming back.

The corridor to LABORATORIES 1-3 was narrow and twisty, forcing them to go nearly single-file in order to fit around the sagging wall panels and torn-up floor grilles half-rotted with rust.

Virgil tried to catch someone’s eye, but Patton was too busy following eagerly in Janus’s wake, and Roman was doing the same—and Logan had paused far behind them to examine the scuffed whiteboard with the closest thing he’d ever exhibit to religious fervor. Which just left Thomas—and thankfully, when their eyes met, Thomas looked just as freaked-out as Virgil felt.

“Creepy, right?” Virgil muttered, keeping his voice low.

Thomas’s mouth did a funny little thing as he nodded in agreement, a hybrid frown-scrunch which pulled at his face strangely. “It feels like they… you know, just got up and left. Like they could come back and pick up their whole thing at any time.” He looked over his shoulder, back at the nine-sided antechamber. “But they’re not coming back. They’re… gone. They’re never coming back here, are they?”

Which wasn’t where Virgil’s brain had been at all. “Sure, uh—yeah.” He was a lot more concerned with the dangerous experiments and the death traps and the ghosts that apparently haunted this place, but sure, more abstract creepiness about the inevitable passage of time, he could jive with that, why not?

Ahead, Janus came to an abrupt stop, and said, “Here we are, then.”

They had passed two doors already, and arrived at one final door, at the end of the corridor. It was a heavy-set door, the sort with a little glass panel set a third of the way to the top so you could peek through and spy on activities within. But the glass panel had been painted over in thick dark strokes, and the hinges seemed rusted and worn.

At the center of the door, another metal placard. In neat print, the label read: #7-3 PROJECTION. TIME TRIALS. And under that, in a far less neat and far more faded hand—EVERSION!

Janus crooked his elbow against the door, and heaved it inwards with a little huff of exertion. It creaked and resisted in the way that only a very heavily weighted door knew how to do, and finally allowed him to push it all the way to the inside wall. He flicked a hand at them, and said, “Necromancers first.”

Virgil flipped him off furiously, and stalked inside ahead of everyone else. All of his burgeoning reluctant friendship-feelings for Roman and relative goodwill were being rapidly exhausted. He was swiftly realizing he wanted fuck-all to do with anything Janus had planned, and had the horrible creeping feeling that whatever he was about to be asked to do would not end well, not at all.

A feeling that doubled magnificently when he looked around the small antechamber, and saw Remus Tetradrachmus sitting cross-legged on the floor, doing flesh crimes to a human hand.

Virgil said, “Oh god, not again,” as everyone came in behind him.

Remus looked up from his flesh-stitching, and waved. But not with the hand attached to his wrist. The fleshy length of meat and skin extending from his too-many-fingers construction wriggled and squirmed, twisting up into the air to give a crooked, jagged writhe of greeting.

“Ew!” Thomas shrieked from behind Virgil, recoiling back to the corridor. “No! Why?”

Virgil found the bendy-stretchy hand thing pretty unthinkably gross, too, but he’d had most of his adult life to get used to it. Remus did most things to get a reaction out of other people. The best defense was a good resting bitch face—and Thomas’s horror had most likely just cemented him as the target of Remus’s creative streak for the next eternity.

Janus crossed over to the far end of the room, where a set of large autodoors were set, closed in a way that indicated that they would open vertically, like a bared set of teeth. He said, still dripping with insincerity, “Thank you all for coming. So good to see you here tonight. Let’s get this demonstration underway, shall we?”

“Demonstration?” Logan asked, adjusting his glasses. “I was led to believe you required assistance with some sort of task, or puzzle.”

“Well, yes,” Janus replied. “But best to get a look at our failures first, before we start dreaming up solutions. Now, let’s see…”

He turned away, and Virgil took the opportunity to gaze around the cramped room.

It was a small lab, with empty desks and empty shelves and whiteboards fixed to either walls—scrubbed clean of their contents centuries ago, save for several incomprehensible diagrams and a clearly-written handwritten note that said, TRANSFER PROCESS REQUIRES APPROPRIATE FIXING IN PLACE. CONSUME FLESH TO CONTINUE.

Right underneath, in the same messy hand as the label on the door, someone had added—EAT THE MEAT, THEN BEAT THE MEAT.

This second note had been angrily scribbled out and struck-through. To the left of this board, there was a chunky and solid two-hand switch that Janus was now bracing two gloved hands on, and bringing down to bear with a satisfying clunk. The room rumbled in consideration—then mechanical clicks sounded all across the room, ping-ponging back and forth in a flurry of sound until the doors at the far door of the lab got the message and abruptly flung themselves open, retreating into the ceiling and floor with noisy rattles.

The thin corridor beyond stretched out like a grim gray ribbon, bright laboratory lights flickering down on it from above. Virgil thought it looked akin to a sprinting-track, and guessed it was about a hundred meters; it even had the rough ground and stark white lines painted across at regular perpendicular intervals. There was something weird going on with the walls, but the lighting was playing tricks on his eyes and wouldn’t let him see further without going inside himself.

And at the end of the corridor, fixed directly into the wall, was a gleaming golden key—slightly larger than the facility key currently dangling from Virgil’s ring. It was tantalizingly mysterious, and only a short stroll away—the corridor wasn’t that long—but the fact that it remained there was proof that it couldn’t be that easy. Nothing ever could.

“Clear,” Janus said, from the switch—“That is, clear as mud. Roman, dear, you’re up.”

“I am indeed! Once more unto the breach,” declared the Fourth cavalier. He was already shedding his sheath and robes and buckler, passing them off ceremoniously to his brother—who promptly dumped them to the ground nearby, rolling his eyes. He stretched his arms over head, rolled his shoulders, and made a thorough show of cracking out his back.

Janus said, “Yes, loving the view. Do keep flexing and don’t actually get on with the trial at all.”

Roman waved him off with a careless sweep of a hand, then strode to position in front of the now-open corridor, stepping onto a metal plate just at the front of it. It clicked under his weight, and something in the corridor let out a shrill high-pitched whine. Which was terrifying, and Virgil wanted to grab Roman by the back of his wild untamed hair and drag him all the way back through the facility trapdoor, forever. But everyone else was just standing and watching this happen too, and ugh, peer pressure.

Janus cleared his throat. “Remus—”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t get your tympanic membrane in a twist.” Remus loped over to Roman. He said, “Upper arm sound good?”

Roman said, “If you must. Left one, please, I need my dexter to impress all the pretty boys.”

“Pffah. You’re impressing no-one, you family disappointment,” Remus scoffed, leaned forwards, and—holy shit—chomped his teeth right the fuck in, tearing a sizeable chunk right out of Roman’s shoulder. There was blood dripping down his face now, and he had left clear gouging toothmarks behind, but Roman only winced.

Virgil was just—no. Nope. Virgil had no idea how to react to this. Patton had latched onto his arm painfully at the sight of it, and even Logan seemed perturbed—turning away from the whiteboard, already-pale face even whiter. He said, “Is that really—”

“Necessary? Totes. You’ll see in a sec.” Remus finished chewing, swallowed, and said, “Chewy. I like your leg better. Okay, three-two-one-go!”

And Roman took off down the hallway like a bat from hell, hitting the ground running with the force of a battering ram. He was a quarter of the way to the key when the hands started growing from the walls.

With every step he took, they sprouted from every flat surface, bubbling out of the shadowy metal—long fleshy tubes that took split-seconds to resolve and refine themselves into full hands that immediately began grasping and reaching and stretching in Roman’s direction, catching at his heels and snatching at his arms, and clawing at his legs. Virgil could hear him cursing up an absolute princely storm in there, as he struggled forward, dancing and hopping out of the way in frantic attempts to evade the maelstrom mire of metacarpals.

And in the doorway, beyond the reach of those grasping hands, Remus stood—both hands extended, sparks of electric thanergy dancing around them as he channeled… well, something. It took Virgil a moment to process that Remus was not, in fact, the one creating or controlling these hands. In fact, by the look of things, he was… attempting to hold them back? Virgil had never seen the Duke of the Fourth look quite so focused.

Within seconds, the hands were everywhere—a thicket of squirming, half-formed flesh that was near-impossible to see through. Virgil could see a flash of red and white, about a third of the way down the sprinting-track, but then it was gone, and he thought, He’s dead. Remus really went and killed his brother right in front of me, and I was just actually starting to like him—

“Cut! Cut it!” came the strangled call from within the corridor.

Remus snatched up the stretched-out hand-and-arm he’d been playing with before, and tossed it over the mass of hands, and Virgil realized that it was—well, a lifeline, of sorts. Janus was immediately there, helping Remus haul Roman back, and without even thinking about it Virgil hastened to join them. It was disgusting to pull at the arm, and the smell of the hand-forest was even worse. But nonetheless, it seemed to be working—first Roman’s arm emerged, and then a disheveled head, face dripping with sweat and hand-related fluids Virgil didn’t want to think about—and then the rest of him came all at once with a merry little pop.

The moment that Roman was out, the hands dissolved into nothing, melting back into the walls—and Janus darted back to slam the lever up again. The doors slammed shut too, and the corridor was gone, and the laboratory was completely silent, but for the sounds of Patton’s increasingly distressed breathing.

Roman lay panting on the ground, looking flushed and bruised—handprint-splotches of blue and purple already forming on his neck and exposed arms. It was maybe the worst thing Virgil had ever seen, but even worse was the fact that Roman didn’t seem to care—he was sitting up, looking downright delighted. He said, “Halfway! Did you see that? I made it half the way there!”

“Barely,” Janus dismissed, looking completely unruffled by the proceedings. “Which is why we need Virgil.”

“Oh fuck no,” said Virgil, who had just worked out why, exactly Roman had dragged him down here. “No. Nope. No. You’re not seriously saying—”

Remus said, “Fun, right?” and grinned like mad, right in Virgil’s direction. “Your turn, now!”

Chapter Text

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Patton the Fifth"

*

Chapter Text

CHAPTER TWELVE

“Logan the Sixth"

*

Chapter Text

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Thomas the Seventh"

*

In the dream, he laid on his back under clear blue skies, watched the breeze winnow the clouds across the horizon, and let the flowers spill from his body. They curled their way out of his parted mouth, cracked from beneath his nailbeds, spilt their dewy green tendrils through each and every pore, and stretched out to greet the day. It made him ache with joy and although he shivered with every new sprout and root and shoot, he did not weep and he did not frown.

Magnolias and daffodils and violets from his lips. Then roses and hyacinths and chrysanthemums and forget-me-nots too. Fruit trees of every kind; every sort of greenery. Moss and mycelium and crawling mold fractalizing on skin, the sweet sting of perfume riveting through the morning air. There were small many-legged animals traversing his body, and there were soft-skinned creatures beginning to squirm their way around him; a symphony of life and living.

In the dream, he watched all this life spilling from himself ever upwards and outwards, and was content. In the dream, he was not keeping any secrets—from himself or anyone else. The sky was beautiful and the ground was warm, and the sweet sun shone down upon him with unparalleled glory and warmth.

In the dream, there were footsteps that shook all the way through him, and when he raised his gaze to see who approached, the shadow of a figure blocked out the sun—a stark black eclipse, a firm block of negative space that stared at him with bright eyes and said not a word, for words were not necessary.

The figure reached out a hand, and—hands clumsy but willing—he reached back. And there was joy in the reaching, and there was fear. And there was anticipation. And in the dream, their fingers met.

And the stranger said—

*

“Thomas, wake up,” said Logan’s brisk voice, and Thomas’s eyes snapped open. There was a moment of startled incomprehension, where he was aware that he was in a dark room and the air tickling the back of his throat was faintly dusty, and he was still quite exhausted—but not quite sure of the details beyond that.

It took him a moment to remember that he had moved out of the Fifth quarters for the night, to give Patton and Virgil some space. That Logan had invited him to his own quarters, and that he’d fallen asleep before the Sixth necromancer had even returned. The room was dark because it was Logan’s, and Logan kept black-out blinds strung up against the sunlight. It was dusty because he didn’t spend enough time here anymore to consider regular dusting a necessary undertaking. And he was tired because he never really slept well.

Thomas had taken the cavalier’s bed again, the assigned bed that was setperpendicular to the master bed in almost every House room. It was smaller, but he was finding that he preferred the small, semi-cramped coziness over the main beds that all four of his new friends frequently tried to offer him as he migrated his way between the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth.

Logan was sitting at the desk across the room, surrounded by notebooks and scrolls, dressed in the same grimly gray robes he always wore. They looked wrinkled and rumpled, though—it didn’t look as if he had slept at all.

“Sorry,” Thomas said, curling out of the mound of blankets and sitting up. “Was it… uh, a nightmare? Did I bother you?” He hated the thought of bothering Logan, who seemed perpetually busy and rather sleep-deprived to boot.

Logan said, “No. Not at all. You were smiling.”

Thomas never remembered his dreams. “Oh! Well, it must have been a good one, then.” He yawned, frowned, and then said, “Ugh. Did you have to wake me up, though?”

“Yes,” replied Logan. “I apologize. I know you would rather sleep in, but I have a schedule I wish to implement. The earlier we make a start on that, the better.”

“Oh,” said Thomas, who didn’t think he liked the idea of a schedule very much, and had a suspicion the others wouldn’t be exactly enthused either. “Well, that’s… all right, I guess I’ll get up. Breakfast calls, y’know.”

Logan nodded. “I will wait.”

“Thanks,” said Thomas, and set about the immense task of trying to convince himself to rise from a warm and comfortable bed. He wasn’t sure if he had the willpower for it, but he didn’t want to keep Logan waiting—even if it had been distinctly cruel and unjust to wake Thomas at such an hour, and he kind of wanted to scream about it.

“You’ve been quiet,” said Logan after a second—not looking at Thomas, studying the little black notebook he’d taken to carrying around everywhere.

Thomas was now flailing his way wormishly from the mattress, trying to get his legs to coordinate with each other. He couldn’t help but fire back, “Yeah, I was asleep.”

“That is not what I meant,” Logan said, and sighed. “I am… not good at this. What I meant to say is… you are well? Your injuries are not resurfacing? I don’t know you as well as I do some others—I am not accustomed enough to you to know if you’re concealing something from me.”

Thomas raised his hands, extended his fingers, and wiggled them, smiling. “All fine! You did a good job on the burns—it only tingles a bit, now.”

“Hmm,” said Logan, then, “I’m glad,” then, “Let me know when you’re ready.”

He could have told Logan his secret, then, but he didn’t. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Logan. It was hard not to trust Logan—hard not to love him, quite a lot, just by virtue of knowing him. There was something comforting about Logan Senarius—his immense focus on the task at hand, the level-and-rhythmic meter of his words when he was explaining something to you; the absolute attention to detail in the way his gaze lingered on your hands, your throat, your eyes. But he didn’t say it. It was too sour in his throat. He tried to force it up and out, but it stuck and it choked him.

“Actually, let me get dressed,” he said, instead, casting his gaze around the room for the ragged little satchel he’d taken to keeping his clothes in. “I’ll meet you downstairs in a bit, sound good?”

Logan hummed in the key of affirmative, looking distracted by his own notes. He nodded a goodbye to Thomas, who struggled gamely into new clothes and finger-combed his hair back, and then went into the bathroom to hate himself a little. The bathroom was a good place to hate yourself in, he’d found. The quiet acoustics, the shiny tiles, the mirror throwing your own stupid self right back at you; it was all custom-built and perfectly-designed for a good bit of relentless self-loathing.

He tried to smile at himself, but didn’t like the look his reflection was giving him. He grimaced, then sighed, and then brought his forehead down to collide with the scratched glass. There was something squirming in his chest, and guilt clawing its way up his throat, and a twitch in his fingers he was astounded that nobody else had seen yet. He was a mess, and his reflection looked just fine, and that didn’t seem fine at all.

It was three weeks into his stay at Canaan House—and Thomas was keeping the most horrible secret.

*

For the first few days, he collaborated with Roman. And Thomas loved Roman a lot, so this was a good start. The two of them clicked without having to work for it, no awkward skirting around or stuttering gaps in conversations required. It was really quite simple when it all came down to it: Roman liked singing. He enjoyed telling tall tales and adored spinning splendid nicknames out of nothing and, most importantly of all, he had a vested interest in being the most dramatic person in the room at any given time. Thomas also liked singing, and he very much enjoyed the tales and nicknames—and although he thought Roman was in for some stiff competition in the ‘most dramatic’ department, he appreciated and enjoyed the effort. Roman the Fourth was a lot more personable and affable than Janus the Ninth, after all.

Today, they were in the Laboratory Four testing chamber (‘CONDUCTION/CONDUIT CHAMBER. CONTAINMENT FACILITY, DO NOT BREACH!!’) and trying to figure out what in the name of the Emperor’s shiny new clothes (Roman’s words, not Thomas’s) you were supposed to do with the elaborately crafted chair built into the middle of it. Although it seemed more like a torture device than a receptacle for sitting—all straps and dials and twisted bits of leather-and-metal, and faded blood-runes that Thomas understood not a bit.

Both of them had attempted sitting on it, despite the warning signs—with the door propped entirely open, so they could yell for someone actually competent if the chair started growing hands or feet or something even worse—but nothing happened. The straps didn’t move or constrict, no ominous clicking sounded from the rest of the testing chamber, and if there was a key in here, it was nowhere to be seen.

They were now on an impromptu scavenger hunt around the lab, which almost immediately was put on hold as they realized how good the acoustics were. The ceiling was domed, curving upwards to a lovely echo-y taper, as long as they kept the door shut and kept an eye on the time, nobody could get on their case about messing around and getting nothing done. Roman knew many songs that Thomas didn’t, ranging from the light and absurd to the solemn and haunting. Quite a few of them made excellent impromptu duets.

Thomas could have sat in that room, back to the wall and legs curled half-to his chest, singing with Roman until the end of time. But after a while, Roman’s voice faltered and cracked and he called for a break, smiling and shaking his head. “I should have warmed up! Oh, I should have… next time, tell me to warm up, Thomas. But that’s a look on your face; that’s a thinking look, which can only mean that you have a question.”

Thomas hadn’t been aware he had a question until this exact moment, but Roman was often right about these sorts of things. “I… guess I do?”

“Splendid—what’s on your mind, Seventh?”

Everything and nothing, as always. “Promise you won’t hate me if I ask something accidentally insensitive?”

“I could never,” Roman said, then—”Hmm. How insensitive?”

“I don’t know, that’s why it would be an accident if it was.”

“What an tantalizingly tentative request. My good self is immediately intrigued… And I’m used to insensitive; you have met my necromancer, haven’t you? Ask away.”

“Do you… like your brother?” he asked, and then immediately realized the full implications of what a terrible, terrible thing that was to ask. “Oh, oh no. Just forget I said that.”

Roman made a face. “Has he been bothering you? He does tend to do that,” he said, then, “Of course I like him, he’s my brother. You don’t have to, though. Not if you don’t want to.”

“I mean, I like you…” Thomas trailed off. “I wouldn’t want to make him… or you… you know… “ He wasn’t even sure what he was saying.

“Well, he doesn’t care,” Roman said. “Seriously—I’m serious, he couldn’t care less what you think of him. What anyone thinks of him; he’s…” Helplessly, he flapped a hand around. “…madder than an untethered moon. The free-est of free spirits! You could punch him in the face and he’d thank you for the experience! And then punch you back, just so you could share it.”

Thomas nodded, and made a note to himself to never punch Remus Tetradrachmus in the face.

“I love him more than anything. but that’s only because we share a room and I know what plays he’ll cry his grim little heart out over.”

“…That’s all that it takes to love someone? Sharing a room?”

“For over twenty years?” Roman made a uh, I don’t know sort of hand gesture, and accompanied it with the universal mouth noise that meant exactly the same. “It certainly worked for me! Which is not to say that it’d work for everyone, it’s only that we grew up together and there’s not a lot of options for best friends forever on the Fourth. It was each other or nothing. Don’t you have any siblings?”

“A few,” Thomas said without thinking. “But I haven’t seen them for ages.”

“Not very close?” Roman said sympathetically. “My condolences. Or my congratulations, depending on how bad it is.”

Thomas laughed through his headache. “Well, I mainly just can’t imagine having what… you guys have. Necromancer and cavalier. That’s not normal, is it?”

“Like I said,” Roman said, and stretched. “Not a lot of options. We make it work quite brilliantly, don’t we? I’m the muscle, and I’m also the brains, and I’m also the pretty one—and he… well, he can make his arms stretch to twice their natural size. And frequently does! Much to your distress.”

“I wish he’d stop doing the stretchy arms,” Thomas muttered mournfully.

“He’s not all bad,” Roman told Thomas. “I mean, he’s mostly horrifying, but that doesn’t mean he’s bad at all; you just have to meet him on his level, and not flinch too hard when he gets in your face. I know he doesn’t care, but it… hurts.” He looked at Thomas. “It hurts that nobody else really gets him.”

“You get him,” Thomas said. “You love him.”

“Well, yes. And I suppose he is getting along with Janus the Ninth.” Roman’s face reflected complicated emotions. “I wasn’t too sure about him at first, him and his creepy snake face, but if he’s making Remus happy… he can’t be all that bad.”

“You care about your brother,” said Thomas, fingers pressing at the side of his face, the place where skin met hairline. Fleshy and silky. Headache.

“Yes. Of course. I’d kill for him,” said Roman, and shrugged. “Or die for him, but mostly kill. He’d appreciate both, though.”

Thomas nodded thoughtfully, and rotated all of this information in his mind like you’d rotate a cow. He tried to make himself like Remus, and failed, and decided he’d try again later when his headache wasn’t getting steadily worse.

Together, they looked at the chair in the center of the room. It sat there, doing nothing.

“I could try hitting it with my sword,” Roman said thoughtfully.

Thomas was out of ideas, and this was the best one he’d heard all day. “Well, it probably can’t hurt,” he said, and spent the next hour watching Roman trying to murder a chair with a rapier.

*

Several days later, Virgil and Thomas were combing the upper House with a new key in hand—Remus had been relentlessly busy; he and Logan had cracked the trial in Laboratory Seven with a deft hand and Roman’s assistance. Remus had passed the green key off to Virgil, and told him to bring back the notebooks (“Or secret sex toys, or mummified corpses, or whatever.”) and now Thomas was here, along for the ride. Mainly because Virgil kept getting lost, even with Logan’s instructions, and for some reason none of them could entirely figure out…

“You really do know your way around,” Virgil said, after a surprisingly quick jaunt up two flights of stairs and to a balcony half-hidden by a sheet of gauzy hessian. “How are you doing that? You didn’t even look at Logan’s directions.”

Thomas laughed, awkward in his own competency. “Well… yeah. It’s been about a month, right? I’ve lost track of time… it’s starting to feel familiar. Don’t you think?”

“It’s starting to feel even more creepy,” Virgil muttered, eyes darting back and forth as if some ancient First House resident was going to jump out at any moment and start lecturing on disturbing ancestral dust. No desiccated elder deigned to emerge—far below, a skeletal construct moseyed its bony way across the entrance-hall tiles, dragging a long snaking hose behind it. “It’s falling apart around our ears. We’re going to wake up one morning and there’s going to be a massive fuckoff support strut right through the middle of the hall. Any luck and it’ll hit Janus when it goes.”

“…Okay, maybe. But it’s charming!” Thomas defended. “Don’t you think it’s charming?”

And Virgil stared at him for a second longer than Thomas felt was strictly necessary. It was a weird look on Virgil’s face, like he had just translated one of Logan’s old indecipherable texts without any experience or knowledge of how to do it.

“You actually like it here,” he said, with a sort of dawning realization—which was strange. Thomas thought he had been pretty obvious about it. Canaan House, for all its disrepair and ruin, had a warmth to its halls—to the bedrooms, to the workrooms, even to the storage cupboards. A lingering love that its original occupants hadn’t taken with them. It was hard for Thomas not to love it back.

And all Thomas could do was shrug. “You don’t?”

“I don’t like houses,” Virgil said. “I like the people in them. Also, Teacher Guy,” he added, abruptly swinging around to a previously-abandoned topic. “All that talk about watching over us in our studies and watching us grow, and then he just vanishes. Have you even seen him lately?”

“Uh, a few times. He’s been eating breakfast after us,” Thomas said. “And lunch. And… dinner, too. Oh. I think he’s avoiding us.” He paused to think about this, and then took Virgil’s offered keychain so he could press the bright-green key into its corresponding lock, the one with all of the strange squiggles and patterns he couldn’t decipher. “Well… the crash was pretty scary. Maybe he got spooked.”

Finding the light switch wasn’t necessary, this time—this room’s windows were wide and tall and ripe for sunlight to spill through, reminding him a lot of the Fifth House quarters. It was bright and homey, warm and lovely. The quilt hanging off the main sofa looked home-made. There was the most gorgeous hand-painted mural spilling across the far wall. Thomas adored it immediately.

“Okay,” said Virgil, who apparently didn’t have any time to spare for sentimentality and ogling the loveliest room in this entire house. “Notes. Papers. Some sort of notebook. Where would they have kept the notebook… come on, I want to get out of here.”

“Desk?” suggested Thomas, pointing vaguely across the room.

Virgil flicked him a two-finger salute of appreciation, and crossed the room to begin unearthing what he’d been sent to find. Thomas started quietly prodding through a row of shelves, the detritus of two more strangers’ lives. There was a jar filled with strangely-shaped silver rings, a broken board fitted out with wheels, a series of wax-stamped letters bundled into thick cream envelopes, signed with kisses and the initials TO K, FROM L. A sort of instinctive nosiness dragged at him, but he resisted the urge to break the seals. That wasn’t his name on the letters—it wasn’t his business. Nonetheless, he couldn’t help but brush his fingers along the swirling rose-skull seal, wondering what sort of love was contained within.

“You actually like us,” Virgil said abruptly from across the room, with even more of that dawning realization.

Thomas jolted away from the pile of letters, and looked over his shoulder to see Virgil sitting on the high wooden workbench, frowning at him with bewilderment, a stack of notebooks in his lap.

And what was there to say to that? He couldn’t exactly explain that, no, he didn’t just like Virgil and Patton and Logan and Roman, he loved them; he couldn’t help but do so—just like he couldn’t help but love the house they walked in, and the ground it was built on, and the seas surrounding them on every side. He loved Janus too, in a weird distant way he couldn’t press his finger firmly against, and he didn’t necessarily like Remus very much, but like Roman had said—like wasn’t a necessary precursor to love. And he barely knew them, any of them, so he was almost certain that it’d be wrong to say it out loud.

There were so many things he wasn’t saying.

“Yeah,” he said, instead. It was so much simpler. “I do.”

“Oh,” said Virgil, like it was some huge revelation, and then, “Why?”

Thomas definitely didn’t know how to answer that. Why did he have to explain why he loved them? He just did. It just made sense. “You’re nice. You’re all… nice to me.”

“That can’t be where the bar is,” Virgil muttered, then shook his head, dismissing it. “You—never mind. Yeah, we’re nice to you. You’re easy to be nice to, you’re… nice.”

“Well,” said Thomas, “that’s nice. I’m glad we’re friends, too, Virge.”

Virgil rolled his eyes, but Thomas thought there was something pleased about it. “Yeah, we’re all besties, and it’s great, and nothing’s wrong at all. Found the notes, by the way, but also—come look at this.”

On the far wall of the airy, bright Lyctor study, scraps of flimsy were arranged on the wall in a mosaic of lightly fluttering plastic and peeling tape. The handwriting was friendly and almost familiar in its friendliness, like the writer wanted nothing more to reach out through the many dividing centuries and be your friend—although the contents of the notes themselves were somewhat less amiably-inclined.

Virgil leaned in close, mouth drawn flatly tight, hand on his rapier, and read, “‘And fortunate is the lion which the man eats so that the lion becomes a man; and cursed is the man whom the lion eats so that the man becomes a lion.’ What the fuck is a lion?”

“They’re all like that,” Thomas said, maybe a bit too obviously, but he couldn’t think of anything less obvious to say. He ran his fingers over the handwritten litany of nonsense, and his fingertips tingled, catching on one dog-eared note. “‘Wretched is the body which depends on a body’,” he muttered, “’and wretched is the soul dependent on these two.’ Do you want to say it, or…?”

“Creepy,” said Virgil with a strange combination of satisfaction and deep hatred. “Just, the most creepy. Bad juju, bad vibes. I’ve got the notebooks, let’s get out of here.”

So they did—they got out of there, as fast as Virgil could herd Thomas out of there, which was pretty fast. For such a lithe and small man, he could be remarkably pushy when he wanted to. But Thomas couldn’t help casting a glance over his shoulder as he went—at the hand-painted mural spilling over the walls, down to the floor, creeping up onto the ceiling. At all those lovingly-rendered flowers, more colorful than the rain and brighter than the sun.

*

On the day he was meant to be paired with Remus Tetradrachmus, he arrived at the door to Laboratory Eight—or, as the metal plaque on the door put it, #14-8 DIVERSION. PROCEDURAL CHAMBER. (AVULSION!) But beneath this plaque was another note, stained with suspicious fluids and an unmistakable wild scrawl, reading:

HEY FUCK RIGHT OFF IDIOT, I MEAN IT JUST GO CRAWL UP YOUR OWN ASS OR BACK INTO BED OR JERK IT OR WHATEVER DON’T NEED HELP TODAY. HEY YOU SHOULD TRY JERKING IT THOUGH. MIGHT LOOSEN YOU UP FOR A CHANGE AND THEN YOU MIGHT ACTUALLY BE INTERESTING. GO TUG ON A DICK LOSER

XOXOXOXXXX GET ME

For some godforsaken reason, Thomas reached out to try the handle anyway. He wrapped his fingers around it and twisted and even jiggled at it a bit, but—thankfully for his sanity—it was thoroughly shut.

For a moment, Thomas hovered in the empty hallway, looking around for someone to tell him what to do. He wondered briefly if he should go to Logan and ask if he could hang out with someone else for the day, but a combination of that’s stupid, this isn’t actually a science summer camp and the irrational fear of interrupting some Very Important Work led him to an important decision: no, he would not be doing that.

He wandered back through the hallways, trying to listen out for other people and whatever they were doing today, but hearing mainly nothing. Sound did the opposite of carrying in this place. Unless you were standing in the same room as someone else, or unless they were screaming pure bloody murder at the top of their damned lungs, you weren’t going to hear a word they were saying.

He passed through the central Facility chamber, pausing to glance at the largest whiteboard. It had been repurposed as a kind of gathering-place for everything they were learning—neat lines had been scraped into the form of a many-celled table. It was in the process of being filled out with words and phrases like megatheorem and only one ghost and theoretical synthesis and blood for the blood lab! MORE BONES FOR TRIAL ROOM EIGHT!

Due east was where the non-laboratory rooms were. There was a cramped but cozy break room, the unfamiliar snacks and drinks occupying its cupboards still mostly-preserved (to Remus and Roman’s obvious delight). There were several other more businesslike spaces in that direction too—such as the meeting room, desks around a roundtable with yet another whiteboard at the middle of it all, and the mortuary, the slim body cabinets filled with an uncomfortable amount of preserved, inanimate human skeletons. (Logan had looked for a long time at these, and eventually pronounced them ‘probable backups’ for the many skeletal servitors upstairs. Which didn’t make them any less creepy.)

Thomas headed into the silence and headed east, but not for any of those places. The skeleton morgue was creepy and the meeting room was eighteen empty chairs that nobody could bring themselves to occupy. No, Thomas was heading towards the greenhouse. He’d immediately loved it the first time he’d seen it, and kept coming back whenever he needed a break from the chaos of… well, everything. Which was often.

The door was heavy warped glass, lattices of wire stretching along the inside, requiring effort to heave it open. With no helpful cavalier to assist, he was forced to brave the horrors of physical exertion alone. He shoved with a shoulder and made some truly undignified noises about it, but gradually the worn hinges creaked and gave, and he was in his very favorite place in the entire House.

The greenhouse had been preserved, same as the rest of it, but Thomas couldn’t help but feel that it might have been left to grow and overgrow just a bit. What else could account for the curling branches and vines that sprawled lasciviously across the narrow greenhouse paths, the sheer amount of color and variety that hadn’t been trimmed back or kept tidy even an inch? Stepping into the greenhouse was like stepping into another world. There was artificial sunlight beaming in from above, an automated ancient system that almost felt like the real thing. The air was thick and moist, settling over your face and skin in a furry damp layer, and the scent was heady and glorious. Thomas picked his way through the swaying leaves, running his hands along the mossy dirty flowerbeds. Gardenia, magnolia, jasmine, honeysuckle…

Approaching a particularly vibrant bush, Thomas gently eased a rose from its stem, twisting it until the delicate strands broke and he could tuck it behind an ear. The Facility was so clinically chemical, and the contents of the tests and trials didn’t help the air any. It always smelled like the atmosphere was slowly dying a horrible bloody death. Bringing a flower or two along with him didn’t help much, but it was better than nothing.

And occasionally he’d get a muttered, “It looks good on you, or whatever,” from Virgil, or a comment about his rosy complexion from Patton or nod from Logan or extravagant compliment from Roman. And maybe he was just a chronic people-pleaser, but that sort of thing felt really nice. They were all—well, mostly all—being so nice to him, even though they didn’t know him, not at all, and even though he was an awful lying bitch who kept important secrets from people he liked and respected, and that was terrible, and he was terrible.

Thomas squeezed himself between two narrow rows of creaky metal tables to look more closely at a flower he didn’t recognize, and thought about just how terrible he was. Yes, he was pretty sure he wasn’t a good person. He tried to make peace with that, realized he couldn’t, and promptly felt even worse.

He reached for the mystery flower, the one that was bone-white with watercolor-punk splotches fading around the ragged edges. Pulling at it but not separating, he drew the stem closer to him, and thought that he should tell someone. Literally anybody. The flower was very pretty. His fingers were shaking.

Abruptly, Thomas realized that the flower he was holding had teeth.

He blinked, and squinted, and they were still there. Perfectly-formed and gleaming from between the soft splotches of color, like rows of spiky pearls. Growing right out of the bright silky petals. He wrinkled his nose, and wondered why he didn’t find that nearly as gross as he should have. For some reason, he almost found it cute.

He leaned in closer, fingering the petals, and sniffed at it. The scent wasn’t quite flowery, wasn’t quite right, there was a subtle sharpness to it that he guessed was because of the… tooth thing. Did teeth smell like anything in particular? He couldn’t remember.

“Ever imagined killing your brother?” hissed someone standing right behind his left ear.

Thomas jolted so hard the flower nearly bit him (which would be a deeply embarrassing reason to have bitemarks on his hand) and backpedalled wildly, directly into the sharp metal rim of a planting table. His thighs stung with an inevitable bruise, and his ears were ringing with the harshness of Remus’s laughter, because the Duke of Onnuria was perched on a countertop and cackling, fit to burst.

He groaned, and rubbed his forehead. “Remus. Hi. Why?”

“Don’t need a reason! Don’t need a rhyme!” Remus caroled merrily, and wriggled his way across to Thomas to snatch the tooth-flower from his grip. “Twenty four/sev, it’s Remus Jumpscare Time! What the fuck is this!”

“It’s… I don’t know,” Thomas said weakly. “Just some sort of flower, I guess… I don’t know if you should—oh.”

Too late—Remus had already twisted the stem, strangling and severing the blossom. With intense clinical interest that was a bit too horny for Thomas’s comfort, he was peering at the teeth, teasing them out of the petals, stuffing some into his pockets for safekeeping, and popping a few others into his mouth for… further safekeeping? A quick snack? Impossible to tell.

“So this is where you keep running off to,” he said, after discarding the stripped-down defanged flower over a shoulder—Thomas winced. “I was going to make fun of you for being the most boring of basic bitches, hanging out in the garden again, didn’t you get enough of that outside?—but the dental flora almost makes up for it. What it doesn’t make up for is the fact that you’re slacking on precious us time. Didn’t you see the schedule? We’re stuck together until the end of time.”

This was a lot to process. Thomas decided to just focus on the last bit. “It was just… until the end of today.”

“Time is an illusion made by God,” Remus said, clasping a hand to his green-spangled chest, “to trick us into thinking we have a finite amount, and to keep us idiotically mortal. And I plan to best Him at his tricksy Necrolord-y game this very month. But how am I supposed to do that without a research assistant? Roman’s off playing cavalier tonsil hockey with Virgie-baby. Logan said I could warp your flesh and distort your body to my ends. So I’m going to use you as a battery, sound good?”

Nothing about this sounded remotely in the realms of ‘good’. It sounded far closer to the mythical, majestic realm of ‘completely fucking insane’. He thought about yelling to Virgil for help, or maybe Roman, but was pretty sure the sound wouldn’t carry out to them. “I thought… I thought that you didn’t want me in the lab today?”

Remus goggled. “What made you think that, fuckwordface?”

“You left… a note. On the door.”

“And you paid attention to it,” Remus said, with a distinct whine to his voice. “Roman never does. Wow, you’re not smart, are you?”

Thomas wanted to disagree with this, but couldn’t quite manage it. Still, he wasn’t sure about the logic of leaving a note that massively contradicted what Remus actually wanted. “I… so you do want me in the lab today?”

“Or you could just stay in the garden and indulge your fertilizer kink,” Remus snorted, rolling his eyes at Thomas’s obvious hesitation. “Well, fine. I can do it on my own. I’ll do it all on my own, and we’ll see who’s laughing when I’m the only immortal one in this entire house! Come get me if you find any more flowers that bite back! If I eat all carnivorous plants, I’ll eventually become the ultimate lifeform.”

“Probably…” Thomas had to swallow, hard, to get his breathing under control. Remus was hard to talk to. “…Probably not how that works. But, um. I’ll do my best. If I find any.”

“Awesome,” said Remus, and flipped Thomas off. “Fuck you later, Sanders.”

“Nope,” said Thomas weakly, and Remus just laughed before spinning around and grabbing another bone-flower, ostensibly for the road.

And Thomas loved Remus, despite all of this, despite how much the Duke unsettled and frightened him—he loved him anyway. He didn’t know why, but he did.

But the thing was this, he thought, as he watched Remus retreat through the rows of gently bobbing flowers and trees and ferns, watched him hum a grating little tune as he pushed his way out the door and disappeared back into the cold clinical halls of the Facility: the thing was; he really, really wished he didn’t.

*

On the thirty-first morning of his stay at Canaan House, Thomas checked his schedule, and saw that he had been assigned to work with Janus Novena on cracking the Laboratory Nine trial.

Thomas still wasn’t sure what to think about Janus. He loved him, of course, but the specifics were always more complicated than that, even though he wished they weren’t. Most of his fellow House-dwellers could be split into the categories of ‘people he considered moderately close friends, and he hoped they considered him friends back’ and ‘Remus’. But Janus cheerfully defied categorization. He was by turns frighteningly friendly and charmingly cold to Thomas—seemed to swing wildly between lurking in the shadows and smiling at others’ misfortunes, and courteously lending Thomas a helpful arm down steps or ladders when he began to stumble. And his mismatched eyes were always looking in all the wrong places.

Thomas didn’t think anyone else had noticed this. It was strange, because it was so obvious. Janus was seeing things that they weren’t. He thought he should bring it up at some point, to Janus or someone else. But it didn’t feel like his secret to tell, and he was already bad enough at telling his own secrets, so…

So it didn’t feel worth saying.

He had skipped breakfast in favor of wandering the greenhouse for a while, and was lingering at the bottom of the Facility ladder, now—white-petaled flower twined between his fingers, half-an-eye on the hatch above, waiting for maybe the most anxiety-inducing of his pair-ups to commence.

He was not disappointed. Soon enough, the hatch opened, and Janus Novena descended into the Facility with brisk efficiency, sliding himself slickly down the rungs like a circling snake. He reached the ground, readjusted his cape with a flick, and nodded to himself.

“Good morning—” Thomas began.

But Janus swept past him, cutting him off with a, “Yes, yes, gracious greetings and all that nonsense, now do hurry up,” and Thomas could do nothing but follow along in his black-robed wake at a half-run—all down the hallways, all the way to Laboratory Nine. They passed Logan on the way, who greeted them with a nod and a, “Patton, please stop trying to sneak friendship bracelets onto my dominant wrist.” They passed Roman, who was complaining extensively at Virgil about his brother but still took the time to bow extravagantly and wish Thomas a very good morning. And they passed Remus, who was sitting cross-legged outside of Laboratory Two, humming a madly cheerful tune as he scribbled inky splotchy notes on the bare skin of his arms. Then they were pushing through into the LABORATORIES 7-9 corridor, and there it was.

The sign on the door to Laboratory Nine read, LAB #13-9. ANNEX CHAMBER. EXPERIMENTAL ONLY, and it had been the bane of the collective research experiment since the beginning. No-one had the first clue of how to reach the black gleaming key located on the far side of the eponymous ‘Annex Chamber’—it was located in plain sight, high up a wall, but unreachable on pain of being-torn-to-bloody-screaming-shreds death.

Now, Janus shoved Thomas in through the first set of doors and shut the door behind them firmly, leaving them secluded in the pre-chamber chamber. It was tiny and cramped and drew them unbearably close together, the shadows making his rightmost eye gleam like liquid gold.

For a moment, he looked at Thomas. And then his gaze drifted like it tended to, sliding skittishly to one side, crawling up the side of one wall, blankly regarding something that was not visibly there. Thomas couldn’t help but wonder what he was seeing. If it was something worth loving, or if it was something that he didn’t want to see very much at all. His expression was unreadable; it was impossible to tell.

Thomas said, “Janus? Did you want to get started with the-?”

“Shut up,” Janus said, which was startling in how simply he said it—not harsh or hissed at all, in such a normal tone of voice it made Thomas stop and blink.

And the next thing he said made Thomas more than blink, it just about made Thomas’s heart stop, because he came in so swift and close that their noses were touching and their air was shared, and those mismatched eyes were glaring half-gold and half-obsidian.

Janus the Ninth said, “It’s over, Seventh. I know what you’re hiding.”

*

Chapter Text

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Janus the Ninth"

*

At breakfast, Janus had been forced to contend with the combined sounds of the BFF squad enthusiastically debating the contents of some sort of mushy romance novel— (“…Okay, but how is she a revenant if she’s not dead?” / “I had assumed she was accidentally and unknowingly contacting him through the River. It only seemed reasonable.” / “Well, I’m just glad the book had a happy ending! That’s what makes good literature!” / “Good grief, are you finally going to read my fanfiction or what.”)—and Remus rattling off a list of increasingly insane necromantic hypotheticals directly into his ear, evidently under the incorrect impression that Janus had more than a passing knowledge of such things. On top of this, a pair of dead inky eyes were now near-perpetually boring a hole into the side of his head—and chilly fingers curling around his wrists hadn’t let him sleep for days on end. He was running on less than three hours of rest, some delightfully bitter invention Remus had called ‘coffee’, and pure unadulterated spite, which was almost as good as the coffee.

At least the exhaustion was mostly covered by his monochrome mask of facepaint and a truly exquisite poker face. At least there was that.

Despite all of their work: all of Logan’s scheduling, all of Remus’s manic energy and unorthodox solutions—despite all of that, only three trials had been completed thus far. Their brilliantly-executed success in the aversion trial room had perhaps boosted their confidence a bit too much, and although Logan and Remus had made swift work of Laboratory Seven, and—shockingly—Patton and Virgil had done much the same for Laboratory Five, the rest of the Facility’s mysteries remained maddeningly opaque. They had not retrieved any new keys for weeks, nor delved into any new studies or found any world-shattering necromantic breakthroughs.

Janus did not share Logan’s particular drive for necromantic knowledge and knowhow, nor did he share Remus’s lust for immortality—it would all be useless to a cavalier, anyway—but what he did have was a particular propensity for the hidden, for the secured and secret. And in the absence of any ancient dirty laundry to dig up, he thought he might as well go for some low-hanging fruit in the form of his lab partner of the day. Nothing like being stuck in a lab together for a significant period of time to finally get a chance to talk to someone very clearly hiding something.

Really—if Janus didn’t know better, he’d think Thomas was avoiding him or something.

*

He locked them in to the Lab Nine pre-chamber, made sure that they were quite alone, and said, “I know what you’re hiding,”—and Thomas Sanders immediately went as gray and ashy as the corpse standing directly behind him.

Janus didn’t know, of course. He had a few well-educated guesses, because there were quite a few things about the unassuming necromancer of the Seventh that screamed ‘scared out of his mind, clearly not saying something very important’—but to be fair to him, most everyone in this place looked like that. No, he only knew for a fact that the best way to get someone to dump their dark dirty secrets all over the ground like so much soiled laundry was to act like you already knew this disturbing truth of it all.

It worked a treat and it worked a charm. Janus didn’t even have to press the point any further. Almost immediately, Thomas blurted out, “I should have gone to the wedding,” and then clapped a hand over his mouth, eyes wide—like he’d just cursed out the Emperor fiercely enough to make Remus blush.

…Which had totally been what Janus was expecting him to say. Definitely, the tantalizing thing he’d been holding back all this time. The juiciest of juicy hidden bites of knowledge. What the fuck?

Even the Body looked nonplussed—turning its head slowly to blink shifting blackhole eyes in confusion, twist its ragged amalgamation of patchwork skin into a confused little frown.

Janus said, “Ah—uh. Sorry. Wedding?”

“I was meant to be at my friend’s wedding!” Thomas said, looking miserable. “That’s what I remembered. That’s what I keep remembering! I shouldn’t have gone to the House, I needed to be at the wedding—they’d been talking about it for months, they’re my best friends, they really wanted me to be there. And I kept thinking, I should tell them to push it forwards, or back, they’d totally understand, right? But I kept putting it off, and I kept not telling them, and you know how time sometimes does that thing where it just gets faster without letting you know, and then the day comes, and you just can’t—”

“Stop,” snapped Janus. “Stop. Thomas—you—just, stop. You are… seriously telling me that when presented with the choice between attending a friends’ wedding, and ascending to immortality in the homeward House of the Emperor Himself… there was even the slightest moment of hesitation with which one to pick?”

Thomas’s mouth hung open for a second, and then another. His eyes were very wide, and extremely brown. Pitifully, he said, “They’re my best friends.” Then, as if it made him any less ridiculous: “And—I love them.”

“Lord Unsleeping,” Janus muttered, and had to turn away to compose himself. It was something like relief and something like disappointment. Of course it wasn’t something dark and terrible, he told himself, exasperated. Of course it was just some terribly mundane life dilemma. What had he thought would be tearing Thomas of the House of the Seventh to shreds so fiercely?

“Please don’t tell the others,” Thomas muttered. His cheeks were flaming red, even though his head was dipped and his hands had risen to mask much of his face. “Please, just… don’t tell them? Roman really likes weddings. And Pat—”

“I’m not going to tell anyone,” Janus said, resisting the ridiculous urge to start cackling madly, “about your… moral friendship lapse. Your wedding failure. Your… it doesn’t matter. Look, I’m sure the moment we’re done here, you can send them the loveliest of fruit baskets, and all will be forgiven.” He saw Thomas’s expression. “Oh, I’m not angry at you. This just wasn’t what I expected… it’s fine. It’s really fine.”

Thomas’s face broke out in a sudden-onset outbreakof utter relief, tempered by lingering nervousness. “Wait—what did you—”

“Truthfully, I thought you were about to tell me you were a mass-murderer,” Janus said cheerfully, and made a go-on-then gesture towards the testing chamber proper. “So my day’s going far better than I thought it would. Now, I believe we had a trial to solve—so, shall we?”

Thomas nodded, and then nodded again, and then—still smiling skittishly—backed away from Janus, pressing the door open with a shoulder and backing away into the Annex Chamber. Janus was already making to follow. As he did, the Body looked at him and said, its voice high and clear and lovely—

“He’s lying.”

Janus paused midstep, and looked to it. Right now, its face was girlish—roundly moonlike—painted with the broad unsmiling strokes of the Jawless Skull. Dark curls spilling down past the neck, nun’s garb wrapped with ribcage. Familiar like a photograph. Distant like the dead.

He nodded to the Body once, and it nodded back—and he followed Thomas into the Annex Chamber without a word.

*

With the rest of the laboratory chambers, their group at least had some rudimentary idea of how to solve the trials, even if they hadn’t managed the practicalities of whatever-the-trial was just yet. With Laboratory Nine, Annex Chamber, nobody even had the first clue of where to start. It had quickly become the assignment least beloved by everyone—even Logan tended to balk when his name came up, and frequently made excuses to go back to Laboratory Four, or Eight, or even the dreaded Lab Two.

“All right,” Janus said, as he, a drifting corpse, and a demonstrably incompetent necromancer stood in the echoing chamber that was Laboratory Nine. “From the beginning. What do we know?”

Thomas was frowning, and picking at his fingernails nervously as he looked around. “I… I feel like I should warn you, I’m probably not going to be much help with this? I don’t actually know a whole lot about necromancy, and I haven’t—”

Janus rolled his eyes. “Seventh, I couldn’t give a damn about your impostor syndrome right now. I am moderately certain that you have eyes. Be a darling and try to use them for a change, would you?”

What they knew about the Annex Chamber: it was large, cylindrical, towering. Far taller than any other testing chambers, tall enough that it was a surprise it didn’t break through the ground floor of Canaan House itself. The walls were speckled with holes—thousands of them, at regular inscrutable intervals, barely big enough to slip a paperclip through—and there were two skinny ladders shooting straight the walls up to the slim, almost invisible catwalk that bisected right across the chamber’s diameter. And then there was the box, hanging from the catwalk—suspended nearly perfectly in the center of the Annex Chamber. Tantalizingly close, but oh-so-far away.

He knew Remus and Logan had already tried sending flesh and bone constructs up to snatch it from its suspension, but nothing had succeeded. The area in which the box was held was complete dead space—no physical object could penetrate without suffering total disintegration, all necromantic input withered and died within seconds. Whatever theorems were running the area were completely inscrutable, and too far away to access.

Janus said to Thomas, “Throw something at it.”

Thomas scoured the depths of his depressingly ragged satchel for a moment, then withdrew a bruised apple that looked like it had sat in there for weeks. He held it up in Janus’s direction, and at a nod, executed a pathetic little overarm throw in an upwards sort of direction. The apple barely brushed the barrier, but it was enough—within a split-second of it being there, it had unraveled to dust. A single seed briefly escaped the messy implosion—sailing down to land at their feet, before crumbling to dust also.

“Okay,” Thomas said, “so, there has to be a way to deactivate that, right? I don’t want to explode. I also don’t want you to explode”

“There go my plans for the afternoon,” Janus said with a sigh. “I was so looking forward to being torn to shreds; I could do with the rest.”

Thomas also had a flashlight in his satchel. He passed it promptly to Janus, so the two of them could shine it into the speckled wall-holes and peer in. It was completely dark in all of the holes they checked, dark and airless. They didn’t seem to lead to anywhere or be for anything, mechanics or ventilation or otherwise. They smelled faintly of rot and decay, but didn’t everything down here?

The ladders were another story. There were two of them, perfectly positioned on opposite sides of the chamber, stretching up all the way to the catwalk that spanned the very top of the massive chamber. When Janus attempted to clamber up one of them, it clicked and sank beneath his weight, compressing sliding down several meters. Reaching the top would be fully impossible.

Thomas said, several seconds late to be of any use, “Careful! It might be broken!”

A sweet sentiment, to be sure, but Janus hefted himself up one more rung just to be certain. With a click, the base of the ladder impacted with the ground and stayed there. He said, “No. I don’t think so. This seems fairly intentional, wouldn’t you say? Look—it’s weighted.” So saying, he released his grip from the ladder and sprang backwards to the ground—and the ladder reshuffled itself back to its proper state. “Counterbalance. It needs another weight, on the other side.”

Thomas looked over his shoulder, and said with dawning realization, “Oh, the second ladder. Should I-?”

“Why not? It’s worth a try,” Janus said, already knowing how this would end.

It seemed Thomas had not been paying attention to the lab notes in the central chamber. He secured himself on the other ladder, bringing it dipping to the ground, and watched the other ladder lever its way upwards, allowing Janus to climb.

In less than a minute, Janus had reached the top of his ladder, and tapped ineffectually at the barrier that was impeding his progress—the one that had snapped shut the moment Thomas’s ladder had hit the ground—and looked down with a shrug. “Would you look at that? We’ve both got to go through at the same time.”

“But… we can’t.”

“How astute of you to notice that,” replied Janus, and descended once more.

Their variance in weight was too great—Janus was several kilograms lighter than Thomas, but he knew that even if he had slim-and-slender Virgil to hold onto the other ladder, it still wouldn’t be close enough to make up the difference. The ladders were exquisitely tuned, the mechanism crafted with finer balance than a dancer tiptoe on knifepoint. It would have to be nearly completely exact.

For several minutes, Janus took his time inspecting every inch of the room, comparing its meager contents with his notes copied off the communal whiteboard as well as Remus and Logan’s assorted musings. Not a lot of time had been spent on this room, so there wasn’t much to work off.

After he’d finished making two rounds of the perimeter, tugging at the ladders and frowning at the high-up key, he came back to Thomas. Thomas had finished fidgeting in awkward boredom minutes ago, and was now intently peering into the holes in the wall, looking like he might legitimately be having a coherent thought in that pretty little head of his.

“There’s something in them,” Thomas said, when Janus came up to him, nudging him dispassionately with the tip of a foot. “It smells like… I don’t know… it smells familiar.”

“It smells like someone’s died,” Janus said, agreeing heartily with the familiar part. He withdrew his rapier—Thomas immediately blanched, and Janus rolled his eyes—“Oh, don’t be boring. Why would I stab you now?”—before carefully slotting the tip into the hole Thomas had been examining. There was a tiny voice that sounded exactly like Remus Tetradrachmus in the back of his head cracking a series of increasingly filthy jokes, all at once, but he ignored it in favor of twisting the rapier elegantly around, prodding it in as far as he could manage, and then withdrawing it carefully.

There were two things dusted on the end—one of which he immediately recognized, one that he did not. He said, “Bone meal?”

And Thomas said, “Thale cress seeds?”

They both looked at each other in mutual astonishment and confusion. Janus said, “What seeds?” just as Thomas said, “That’s bone?”

There was a slightly awkward pause.

“Look, I know what seeds look like,” said Thomas, defensively, just as Janus said, “Bone isn’t that hard to identify.”

There was a longer pause, more thoughtful this time, as they both pondered through the implications of there being a mixture of plant and human matter stored within the walls of this chamber. There were many conclusions one could draw from a setup like this. Most of them were contradictory, many of them were confusing.

“It would seem,” said Janus, eventually, “that a necromancer is meant to create something from the contents of these holes.”

“Oh,” Thomas said. “Like… a skeleton?”

“A skilled necromancer would be capable of doing that, yes,” Janus agreed, and waited.

“Like… a skeleton that weighs the same as you?” Thomas asked, now getting into painful levels of stating the outright obvious. (Janus fought the urge to wince.) He proceeded to clarify, completely unnecessarily, “So that we can balance the ladders out?”

Janus pinched the bridge of his nose, faking exasperation, feeling the greasepaint smudging onto his gloves. “Do I need to get Logan to do this for me instead?”

“No,” Thomas said. He was visibly sweating, a fine sheen of perspiration making his forehead shine. “No, I… okay.”

Janus waited. And he waited some more. And he kept on waiting, as Thomas stared at the holes with intense concentration, wiggling his fingers slightly. Nothing perceptible was happening. Janus couldn’t say he was surprised. He wiped the bone and plant matter carefully from his blade with the edge of his cape, and resheathed it.

“Could your necromancer have… done this?” Thomas asked quietly, after a second. “Sorry. I know you don’t like talking about her—”

“Yes,” Janus lied flagrantly. “She was immensely talented at raising bone constructs. Seven in the morning before breakfast, just for fun. Occasionally she’d section portions of my collarbone just so she could have bonus skeletal mes lurking around, for additional protection. I miss her every hour, every day. I’d miss her less if you’d hurry up and get on with it.”

“It’s just… I’ve never really worked with bone…”

Janus stared Thomas dead in the eyes. “Goodness. Anyone would think that you couldn’t do necromancy at all, Mr Sanders.”

There ensued a long, painful silence where the two of them just looked at each other. Thomas’s face reflected blank incomprehension, so Janus turned up the accusatory I-know-what-you-are-ness even higher.

Because it had not at all escaped his attention that Thomas had not performed a single act of necromancy in the entire month that they’d known each other.

“Bone constructs,” Thomas said, more like mouthed, and then licked his lips and drew his fists to his chest. “Bone construct. Your size—your weight. Okay. From the walls. Okay.”

A second passed, and Thomas’s fingers twitched—and then slim white worms began to descend from every hole. This scared Janus so much he nearly cursed at the top of his lungs; he hadn’t been expecting anything to happen, much less this. He managed to hold his tongue, and realized that they weren’t worms at all—they were slim tuber roots, and they were growing from the hidden seeds in the walls, and they were growing with purpose.

They wriggled and squirmed, centralizing on a grounded point just in front of Thomas’s outstretched hand. On this spot, they congregated into a root-ball mass, writhed for a second or two, then began to sprout leaves. Great bursts of greenery that spiraled together, twisting together and shooting up, expanding out in starbursts of green and wood and white.

It was like watching destruction in reverse. It was a symphony of impossibly rapid horticulture, plants with purpose. The stuffy laboratory air was electric and fresh all at once, and Janus tasted blood and bone on his lips.

And then it all stopped. It stopped so suddenly it gave him severe whiplash. Wholly unsettling: Janus was now staring at himself. Not entirely himself—a lopsided, wavering figure in his vague shape, cape and veil and rapier and all, outlined in moss and grass and greenery, shivering in a nonexistent breeze. It didn’t have eyes, didn’t have enough feature in the face to be able to make out eyes, but it was impossible to shake the notion that the mossy, flowering copy of him was staring back.

His heart pounded. He felt as if he had been knocked sideways through the chamber walls by a battering ram and left to lie, dizzied in the dust. His ears were ringing and he was surprised he was still standing upright.

Behind the plant-thing, Thomas stood. A single tear slipped from his right eye, trickling down his face, curving off his chin, splashing to the ground. A watery streak of pink remained. He said, “I don’t think I did that right.”

Janus opened his mouth, about to say something he knew he’d regret, but the Body whispered, “No,” and he immediately shut it. Instead, he simply shrugged and reached out to prod his arboreal duplicate in its mossy green chest. It rustled, but didn’t react.

He was very frightened, but pushed that all far down to the bottom of a deep dark hole in his chest. Aloud, he simply said, “Can you control it?”

Thomas shivered all over, like the idea of making his plant monstrosity do anything at all was the worst thing in the world, but he raised his hands, and pointed at one of the ladders. Immediately—with a grace and fluidity that scared him because he only knew himself to be capable of it—the phytoid look-alike swiveled on its soft springy heel and went directly to the ladder on the far side of the room. It wrapped vine-like fingers around the chest-height rung, and waited patiently.

Another bloody tear dripped down Thomas’s face. The Body watched him with soft-eyed intensity and a halo of dark curling hair. Janus did too, but only for a moment. Then he curled his fingers inwards, and walked without a word to the other ladder.

He thought about undoing his rapier, but his vegetative twin seemed to be bearing a bladed wooden duplicate—so he left it at his hip, for fear of disbalancing the weight again.

Without preamble, Janus pulled himself up to the lowest rung of the ladder, and—a split second delayed—his photosynthesising photocopy did the same. The ladders creaked, but did not sink.

“Yay,” said Thomas weakly.

“Well, don’t count your clavicles before they’ve cracked,” Janus muttered, and began to climb.

Of course, it couldn’t be that easy. Only seconds into this, and the ladder was already creaking and swaying and dipping beneath him, jolting up and down. The other ladder was much the same. Janus cursed and called down to Thomas, praying to the Tomb that his voice would remain steady, “We need to be moving at the same time.”

“What do you mean?” The chamber was built in such a way that the echo was fantastic. Every sound, every twitch, every cough, it carried through the whole space. They could hold a conversation as easily as if they were standing besides each other. “Aren’t you already moving at the same time?”

“Exactly at the same time,” Janus clarified, clenching his fists on the ladder. “Perfect motion synchronicity. Otherwise I suspect it will tip, and I really don’t want to fall from here. So, if you would…?”

They went slower. Thomas counted out the rhythm to which the plant construct climbed, and the ladder jolted, swayed, clicked, but reluctantly allowed their progress.

Janus made it to the trapdoor without either of them causing it to shut, pulled himself through to above it, and felt a great well of relief tempered with just as much trepidation. He wasn’t even a third of the way up the height of the Annex Chamber yet, and keeping in perfect timing with his double was already proving near-impossible. He could see the next length of ladder was tighter, slimmer, requiring careful maneuvering to not fall hazard to the disintegration field. He seriously doubted Thomas would be up to the task of controlling the plant-thing to that degree.

“Janus?” Thomas said. “You okay? Do you want to keep going, or take a break, or…?”

“I can’t,” Janus said shortly, his mind racing. He could feel the prickle of the disintegration field, just inches above his head. If he were any taller, he’d be one impromptu lobotomy shorter right now. “I…” He longed to have the Body next to him, but there was no room on the ladder for the two of them to stand side by side. It waited, a wispy ghost of a figure, next to Thomas. Staring up in something that he chose to interpret as concern, although the expression was more than dispassionate.

“Janus?” Thomas said again.

Janus didn’t want to say it out loud. Saying it out loud would make it real. He preferred in many cases to live in blissful ignorance. But who else could he do this trial with? Certainly not Remus, definitely not Logan, and Patton couldn’t be trusted for reliable bone manipulation.

“You’re meant to control me, too,” he said. “I can’t do this alone. I’ll die. I’ll fall into the field—I’ll die.”

“Oh,” said Thomas, and the word echoed and lingered and faded to nothing. When it was gone, he said it again, “Oh.”

“The timing,” Janus said, and his knuckles drew tighter around the ladder rung. He swayed—the ladder swayed with him. “The only way you can get it right, perfect like the trial wants—the timing has to be exact. You’d need to be a dancer. Or a conductor. Or the same person in two bodies.”

Thomas audibly swallowed. The acoustics were good enough that Janus could hear it. It was reassuring, somehow, to know that he wasn’t at all eager to do this—or at the least, a very good actor. “Oh,” he said, a third time. “How—how do I-?”

Janus swallowed, hard. “I’ll come back down,” he said. “And I suppose we can figure it out… together.”

Down to the stone-cracked floor they went, he and his awful twin, and soon they were standing-swaying before Thomas, whose face was pale and remained streaked with tremulous stretches of blood. Janus looked at him, and abruptly had no doubts whatsoever that Thomas could do it. Which was not at all the same thing as wanting him to do it.

Thomas said, “My necromancy isn’t, uh… I don’t practice much, let’s just say?”

Impossible to tell if this was a lie or half-truth or (improbably) the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but it. Janus realized, also quite abruptly, that if he kept guessing and second-guessing Thomas’s every word, action, and intention, he’d never get anything done–not today, at least. Reluctantly, he took his big box of suspicions and paranoia, and very carefully set it on the not today, fool! mental shelf. He said, “You recall the Eversion trial?”

Thomas nodded. “Hand corridor. Um, ice brain bubble.”

“Splendid memory. It’s the same principle, except in all the ways it’s nothing like that whatsoever. Here, take my hand.” He almost extended a hand all the way, then split-second rethought it, quickly stripping his glove from the skin first. Thomas took it. His skin was very warm. “Can you feel my nervous system?”

Thomas let loose a nervous laugh, eyes flickering away, to which Janus rolled his own eyes and said, “Yes, yes, just be glad you weren’t partnered with Remus for this, can you even imagine–”

“Oh,” said Thomas, rapidly sobering, “yes. Yes, I can.” He paused, and there was a minute shiver through Janus’s body, like the aftershocks of nerve damage. He felt cold, then hot, then like hands were cupping his brain. It was very gentle and very delicate and terribly wrong. “Okay. I feel it.”

“Maintain that,” Janus demanded, then took a step back, untangling his hand and tucking it behind his back. “You can feel the construct too? You don’t need to keep us separate. Think of us as one entity, if you need.”

Thomas nodded, vague and not-entirely-there. A new trickle of blood was running from his eye, curving down the outer hollow of his nose. “How do you know all of this? You’re not a necromancer.”

“No.” Involuntarily, Janus’s fingers twitched, then curled. He couldn’t suppress a shudder. “I read a lot of theory. What do you think I do in my spare time?”

“Does the Ninth have a good library?”

“Passable,” Janus said, finding suddenly that he could not blink. His eyes were too dry. Another muscle in his arm twitched, and the elbow curled inwards. “I have an all-access pass… they couldn’t keep me out if they tried… Are you ready yet?”

“I think so. I won’t… I won’t make you do…” Thomas’s voice was shaky, and he cleared his throat. “It’s just for the trial. I’ll just get you up there, and pull the switch, and get you down, and that’s it.”

“How charming, you have a moral compass,” Janus snapped, secretly eternally grateful. “Do you want to make a pinky-promise that you’ll give me my body back when you’re done? Just get on with it.”

Thomas gulped again—and got on with it.

It wasn’t unpleasant. Which was somehow worse, Janus thought, than if it had been painful, if it had felt like an abrupt violation of every sense the way it should have. Instead it just felt warm—a warmness extending through his senses, his limbs, right down to his bones. Then his fingers twitched, and he hadn’t made them twitch, and a shameful part of his mind descended into shrieking screaming terror. That was not meant to happen.

“Janus?” Thomas said, soft and carrying. “Is that okay? Are you… okay?”

But Janus did not have his vocal cords to call his own. He couldn’t speak. After a moment, his fingers twitched again, and then his hands started to move, and that was even worse. The screaming continued, inaudible to anyone but himself. He wished the Body would lay hands on him.

Both he and the plant-thing started to climb. He thought Thomas might be saying something, but he could no longer hear it, could only feel the sensation of his limbs moving independentl. It sickened him, like seeing his own exposed organs. He drifted away from himself, abruptly, and began to recite prayers within his mind. Hypocritical ones, pointless ones, the ravings of a damned faithful. Still, he prayed. I pray that the Tomb is shut forever. I pray the rock is never rolled away. I pray that which was buried stays buried…

He was up on the catwalk now, and everything was fuzzy, bright at the edges. The bridge creaked and swayed beneath his non-responsive feet. He knew already that it was weighted just as the ladders were—any disturbance in balance would cause it to collapse. He could also see a double-switch at the center of the catwalk. Similarly symmetrical—it would require two sets of hands to activate. Two people, pulling at once. Or a person and a cloned freak of nature. Ha.

One step. Two steps. He couldn’t raise his head to look up properly, to meet the leafy non-gaze of the other him, because Thomas was too busy focusing on the mechanics of walking to allow him that. He couldn’t reach for his rapier, should a sudden attack arrive. Couldn’t adjust his veil to block out light, if it flared. Couldn’t so much as blink.

More steps. A steady, stilted rhythm. Two good little toy soldiers walking in step. If he had control of his arms, he could have reached out to grasp the switch himself—but as it was, he had to wait seconds for their two-body circus sideshow act to come to a rest, for their hands to come up and fumble into synchronous place. For Thomas to take a breath and raise his fingers—and, through them, pull it down.

The switch fell home, and there was a mechanical clatter. His hands stayed on the switch, and if he had been controlling them, they would have been shaking. Beneath him, through the clear glass of the catwalk, he could see the box flip open with a pleasing little click, flexing its inwards out. It had clearly been designed so at the moment of opening, its contents would be released, falling right through the now-defunct barrier and onto the floor.

But there was no clatter and no flash of metal, and nothing else happened. A few seconds passed, and the box closed itself with a neat mechanical flip, and the room was perfectly still once more.

There was no key.

*

Flowers.

Janus was on the ground, now—he had been puppeteered back down the ladder, and Thomas had released him, and all of his limbs were tingling but he couldn’t stop pacing. The pacing was making the tingling worse. The clone was nothing but twigs and dirt now, scattered against the cold tiles. Janus was not sad to see it go, but he also wasn’t thinking much about it. For the fourth time since he’d reached ground floor, he said, “No.”

There were flowers.

Thomas’s lips were parted in confusion. He raised his hands in vague placation, saying, “Maybe it… got stuck? Maybe we need to do it again—I think I could do it again—”

“No!” Janus snapped again, and spun to face Thomas on shaky legs, narrowly missing colliding with the Body—flaring with incandescent rage. Vocal cords now his own, he was determined to use them. “It didn’t get stuck, Thomas, ancient Lyctor trials don’t get stuck—none of the others have gotten stuck, so why would this one?”

Flowers. Everywhere.

“Then… there wasn’t a key—” Thomas began, but he barely sounded like he was convincing himself.

There were flowers absolutely everywhere. Scattered petals across the floor, sickly in their sweet scent, roses of every color. They squished and slid under his boots as he tracked wide circles. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw them blooming from the cracks and holes near-imperceptible in the walls, curling with thorn and leaf down to the ground, blooming and unblooming all around them.

“There was a key,” Janus seethed. “Someone else just got to it first. And didn’t tell any of us about it.” His gloved hands clenched, friction burning the fabric against his palms. He already had a suspicion; two likely suspects in fact. It was less the fact that the trial had been completed before he could get to it—more that they hadn’t bothered to tell him. That he had to be subjected to the indignity of being puppeted around like a freakshow for nearly half an hour, blood roaring in his ears and the Body watching in silent judgment, and it had all been for nothing at all. “Oh, when I get my hands around his miserable throat—”

Thomas hadn’t commented on the flowers yet. Maybe he didn’t think them worth mentioning. Maybe they simply didn’t exist.

“Whoa!” went Thomas as Janus jolted forwards—instinctively reaching out to the Body to steady himself when he fell, but pulling back before he could touch its hallowed skin. Upright, straightened back, veil askew but no time to fix it—it was time to murder a bitch. “Whoa, hey, are you sure you want to—”

“Pretty sure,” Janus growled. “Good work, Thomas; pleasure working with you, let’s never do it ever again.” Past the flowers, wilting and dying by the second. Through the Annex Chamber, which unsealed with a hiss, out through the antechamber, all the way through the narrow hallway leading back to the main Facility.

Janus threw the door open in a wave of rosy perfume—just in time to hear someone scream.

*

It was distant in the way that all sounds were, down here. But both Janus and Thomas—several steps behind him, still brushing pollen from his hair—froze on the spot, because it was so very clearly the worst scream that had ever erupted from someone’s lips. It was pain and it was terror, and it was a desperate plea for help.

The Body’s face looked familiar, all at once. Strikingly familiar, but Janus didn’t have time to process it: he was looking at Thomas, and Thomas was looking back at him. They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. Janus started running, and in the same instant Thomas was running too, and the Body was pointing to Laboratory Six. Janus went to it, pounded on the door with a singleminded fury until Logan threw it open, frowning.

“Something’s wrong,” Janus said, before Logan could get a word out.

Virgil’s glareful countenance appeared beside him; the two must have been partnered for the day. He said, “What the hell, Novena?”

“Someone screamed, they were over here—” Thomas was now throwing open doors madly, weak fingers fumbling with handles and panels—finding nothing, nothing, nothing. “Roman? Patton? Where are they, have you seen-?”

Logan and Virgil must have noticed his considerable distress. Within seconds, they were alongside them, searching and calling out. Through the central chamber they went, eight directions to turn and not a single clue where to look. No more screams, no more hints.

Remus was emerging from the corridor that led to the greenhouse and breakroom, looking cheerfully distracted as he toyed with something small and white, tossing it hand-to-hand. He saw them approaching, and raised an eyebrow at the group.

“Where’s your brother?” Janus snapped at Remus as they clattered to a stop in front of him.

“Fuck, do I look like I own him?” Remus retorted, dropping the white-thing into a pocket with a roll of his eyes. “Take a chill pill, take a break. What’s with all the running?”

“Patton?” Thomas yelled, voice cracking. “Roman!”

No response, none, nothing. The sound echoed and died.

“Emergency orgy?” Remus suggested hopefully.

“Shut up, Remus,” Virgil snarled.

At some sound only he seemed to hear Logan stiffened, and turned on his heel, then broke out into as much of a sprint as he was capable of. The group swarmed and followed, helpless in the face of someone taking a lead. Even Remus came along for the ride, keeping pace with Janus and the Body.

Laboratory Two was the only one which was gradually beginning to smell of blood. And it was the only one where the door was open, and the light inside was flickering, and the slow, steady sound of helpless sobbing could be heard, stuttering like a broken clock.

Logan always looked pale, but now he was practically vampiresque. He took a step back, and said, “Virgil, perhaps you should…”

Virgil drew two daggers in a single frenetic swipe, teeth half-bared. Janus could see sweat beading at his forehead, as he kicked the door inwards.

Janus’s sword was out too, without him having to think about it, cloak flicking over an arm. He shoved his way to the forefront of the group, forcing Thomas and Logan and Remus behind him, standing side-by-side-with Virgil, and he took in the scene.

The blood overwhelmed. It sickened. It festered in the air. It pooled on the ground at the center of the lab’s sickly-gray antechamber, ringed with metal desks and empty shelves, metal grilles decorating the corners and curves of the ground. The lights went, sporadic. The blood dark, then bright, then dark again.

Janus saw the rapier, first—the ruby-hilted marvel, that shining feat of metalwork and swordsmithery. Divested from its scabbard, it quivered where it had landed—point-down in the sidemost flooring grille, which itself was slowly collecting blood.

Then, he saw Patton Pentralis kneeling in abject horror, collapsed against the far side of the wall with his round face turned ashen and fat tears making panicked tracks down his face. He was letting out terrible noises of nonsense. It seemed he wanted to scream, but the noise wasn’t allowing itself from his throat.

From behind him, Thomas let out a low, dreadful moan, the keening of a dying beast. From behind him, the Body’s hands landed on his back; cold digits pressing at his spine to ground him in place though it felt like he was a million miles away, all at once. From behind him, he was sure that all of the others were saying all number of things, screaming and sobbing and gasping and turning away to throw up, but he wasn’t paying the slightest attention to any of them.

Because there in the center of the gore—inexplicably intact, not a cut on his limbs or body or face—lay the still, staring corpse of Roman Tetradrachmus.

*

Chapter Text

ACT THREE

(In Remembrance • Remus Makes Dinner • The Stranger • Fitting In (Nine Houses) • Living Space • Thomas Speaks A Secret •Trial By Liar • Janus Takes A Stab In The Dark • Corpse Eyes • One Month Before the Emperor's Return.)

*

*

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“Logan the Sixth”

*

Chapter Text

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Janus the Ninth"

*

Janus remembered—

Well, Janus was in the business of perpetually hallucinating a constantly-shifting corpse, so maybe what he remembered shouldn’t be taken as the good gospel truth. Nonetheless, it wasn’t that hard to remember back to a few days ago.

It was hard to get privacy in these dreadful days they were living through. Necessity dictated that he and the rest of the condemned fools in this condemned house spend every moment within a whisper’s distance of each other, so that nobody wandered off and did a stupid thing like getting murdered, or doing the murdering. Still, they were human enough to afford one another a bit of privacy, so when one of them said something like, “I will be washing my hair presently; each strand, individually. Don’t wait up,” it was generally accepted this meant you would be having an extended breakdown in the ablution chamber until further notice, and this would be politely ignored by everyone except Remus, who was a jackass.

Patton had granted himself several of these breakdowns, Virgil was currently scoring magnificent records for amount of time spent hyperventilating over the sink, and even Thomas had politely taken one or two for himself, as a treat. Breakdown hour was a reasonable pretext, Janus felt, for locking himself in the bathroom. But it was not a breakdown he wanted to inflict on himself—it was a conversation.

In some ways, that was worse.

So now they were huddled on the Fifth-House bathroom floor like children, Janus and the Body he did not want to look at. Janus was taking the time to scrub down and reapply his sacramental mask, which he did not need or want a mirror for. The finicky detailing had ceased to be a problem the hundredth time he had painted it. It was second nature, now. The quirked-up swoop of the too-long mouth, the insistent tessellation of scales curving across his leftmost cheekbone. He rather thought it all brought out his eyes.

The Body was tapping long nails against the wall in monotone polyrhythm. This was mildly surprising, and almost interesting. It had never before exhibited an interest in music or percussion of any sort, but then again, it had been ghosting around for over a decade, now. It was probably time for it to pick up some hobbies other than perfecting a thousand-lightyear stare, letting its chained wrists flow limply in the nonexistent breeze, and following Janus around in perpetuity.

Janus said, “Interesting. Perhaps I should pick up an instrument; we could form a very small, grim band,” and presently, the Body stopped drumming.

Janus did not ask it to start again. He finished daubing grease onto his face, and asked the Body, “Was that real?”

And it did not speak back to him.

He said, “Beloved, please, I am this close to spilling everything to the rest of this System‘s most miserable sleepover party. I need you to talk me out of it. I need you to tell me that what I saw in the Annex Chamber was real.” Then, a frustrated second later, “Yes, of course that was a lie, I have my moments but I’m not that much of a senseless fool. Just tell me: were there flowers?”

And it did not speak back to him.

He said, “Why have you forsaken me? Why do you turn from saving me?”

The Body reached out and silently laid hands on his bared forearms, deadened skin pressing tight to his. The nails were neatly-trimmed and redly-painted, the wrist dangling with frayed lengths of colorful string. And it did not speak back to him.

He sighed, and wanted to scrub at his eyes in frustration, but he’d just put on fresh greasepaint and despised having the stuff smudged. If he ruined the eyesockets, he’d end up looking like Virgil, which nobody wanted, especially not Virgil. “Roman. Well, that was real, wasn’t it?”

Once again, it did not answer, but for a minute tightening of the grip. It didn’t matter—Janus was fairly certain Roman Tetradrachmus was real-for-real dead. If he wasn’t, then the last week of misery and moping had been an extended hallucination he had no hope of ever leaving, and the thin distinction between reality and illusion was forever lost to him.

“But what came before it…”

It had all been a blur of unfamiliar sensations—of height and loss of control, of the rustling of animated leaves and branches echoing through a vast chamber, of feet finding their footing without his body’s consent. The memories all faded together into a colorful mush, and then sharpened and separated with the sting of adrenaline upon hearing Patton’s scream. Retrospect was even harder than living in the present. He tried so hard to be sure of things, but found his mind sorely lacking.

Being mad was such difficult work these days.

“Either way, we didn’t find a key,” he said. “Or, if we did, I didn’t keep it, more fool me. So it might not have been real at all. There’s no way of knowing.”

“You could ask him,” the Body said, finally, and he was sure it was staring at him accusingly. Nobody did accusatory stare like a corpse, and this particular corpse really had the face for it.

“He could lie,” Janus rejoined. “He’s in the habit of it.” And then, “Flowers. There were flowers.”

“Maybe,” said the Body, its hand still on his arm.

“But if there were flowers,” Janus whispered, “what would that mean?”

And once again, the Body did not speak back to him.

*

*

Eight days after Roman’s corpse had been packed in ice and interred in the First House freezer, Janus accompanied Logan down to the basement. His rapier was drawn and he was ready for, (if not exactly expecting) a conflict of the brutal sort, should their mysterious attacker decide to show their face again. The fear hadn’t left him. If anything it had increased at an exponential crawl of dread—but time marched on, and tasks were to be attended to.

And Logan had made the point, quite rightly, that the ancient Lyctor laboratory complex full of secrets and forbidden knowledge was the last place they wanted any murderer creeping about, even if they weren’t creeping about in there themselves.

“And if they’re still down there, hopefully they’ll just starve to death or something,” Virgil had added helpfully, but not particularly reassuringly.

So everyone else was upstairs, where it was bright afternoon and fairly warm for the First House’s standards, where there was the minimum of mildew and rot. And Janus and Logan were down here in the dust and dreariness, painting bloody streaks on the ground near an ancient tomb. It was just like preschool all over again—considerably less bones, but just as many bloodstains. Janus did not recall preschool with especial fondness.

“Master Warden—” Janus said, after some amount of this. “—a question. A theoretical one.”

Logan’s fingers continued to wander in the vast sweeping whorls of a blood ward for a good few seconds. Then they stilled, and he looked up. His glasses glinted dully in the weak electric light. “All right. Ask.”

“I am not a necromancer,” Janus said, and even though it was the obvious truth it felt difficult to admit. “My grasp on the practicalities of the process is—often limited. If I sound like a hopeless moron, I proudly ask you to pretend this conversation never happened and never look me in the eyes ever again.”

Logan’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. “Granted,” he said, and dipped a finger through another line of the blood ward. “I’d never fault someone for a lack of knowledge. That would be distinctly illogical of me. Your question?”

Janus rested his head against the wall, tilting sideways against the Body’s cold sloping shoulder. “The capabilities of necromantic theorems include bone, flesh, and spirit. The conversion of thalergy to thanergy. I know that much. But could you…” He hesitated. “…well, for example, make a flower grow? Amplify its thalergical potential, cause it to sprout from nothing?”

The ensuing silence was maddening, but it only lasted for forty-six seconds. Not that Janus was counting, or anything.

“What you’re describing is a form of resurrection, in a very technical sense,” Logan said, after that long moment of earnest contemplation. “A seed doesn’t have any thalergy in itself, so you would be creating life from nothing, which simply isn’t done.”

Janus’s fingers twitched. “If you were to transfer it from another source—”

Logan shook his head before the half-formed thought could begin completing itself. “It’s not done. It’s still resurrection, and true resurrection is something only the Emperor is capable of. The secrets of that are lost to time… if they’re something anyone had in the first place. So many things were lost before the Great Resurrection. Maybe we simply don’t have the ability anymore, maybe we never did. Either way—no, I can’t think of any way you might make a flower truly grow from nothing. Excepting time, water and light, of course.”

“You couldn’t convert thalergy to more thalergy,” Janus said, distinctly frightened now at a thought he didn’t want to properly wrap his mind around. “Or thanergy to thalergy?”

“I suppose one might replicate plant cells to mimic the structure and give the illusion of growth,” Logan replies. “But without a consistent source of life energy, it would quickly wither and, well, die.”

“What you did with Thomas—”

“There is a reason ‘medical necromancy’ is often considered to be an oxymoron,” Logan told him, and closed the blood ward with a flat sweep of a palm, sitting back on his haunches. A moment passed where his breathing came ragged and his expression was greatly pained, but he seemed to shake it off quickly enough, and staggered to his feet in a flutter of gray robes that were even greyer with dust than usual. “Usually—ah, apologies—usually, necromancy is only used as support in the task. It’s curative science. Cell replication and modification of the body… damn and blast. Hold my arm, please.” (Janus did; stepping out from the wall to prevent Logan from swooning into the ground. The perfect pious nun, assisting wherever necessary.) “Thank you. Modification of the body is frowned upon. I only did what I had to with Thomas as a last resort. It could have gone very unfavorably indeed… I am glad it did not.”

“Unfavorable, how?”

Logan swayed thoughtfully on his feet. Janus continued to steady him. “It is… it’s similar to an organ transplant. I don’t suppose you’ve had one?”

“Not many surgeons on the Ninth,” Janus said dryly. “You tend to survive or die. Mostly die, in my experience.”

“Ah. Regrettable. Well, there is a chance of rejection in permanent procedures. You can do everything right, spend every second perfecting the cellular match-up… and the human body can still end up being its notoriously fickle self, and refuse to accept the skin graft, or organ graft, or whatever you are attempting. It can end up worse than when you started. Most medics avoid using any necromancy for that precise reason.”

“And yet, you performed a skin graft under remarkably pressing circumstances,” Janus pointed out, impressed despite himself. “And it seems to have gone swimmingly in all cases. Well done, Master Warden.”

“Yes, well, last resorts,” Logan said. “He seems to be a universal recipient, which did help matters.”

“Hm. How very lucky for him.”

“Indeed.”

Together, they stood in the darkness and surveyed Logan’s bloody work.

“It will alert me to anyone attempting to bypass it,” Logan said. “From outside or within—and should keep them out long enough for us to arrive and confront them.”

“Great plan,” was Janus’s opinion. “Almost certainly won’t end in our mass slaughter.” He paused, still trying to process the flower thing, and his mouth opened and said, “What makes you think they’ll come back here, anyway?”

“Roman’s keyring was missing,” Logan replied darkly, mouth flattening. “And nothing else. Clearly, whoever it was had some agenda other than pointless murder.” And then, after a moment of clearly unwilling contemplation: “I require my sugar levels heightened in order to avoid a state of hypoglycemia.”

“Yes,” Janus agreed, patting the sticklike skinniness of Logan Senarius’s weak little noodle arm, “that was a distressing amount of blood. Let’s get you a juice box with a little straw, shall we?”

They ascended the stairs, passed through the darkened halls. Janus kept his arm linked lightly through Logan’s and his other firmly on his rapier’s pommel.

Logan said, “Why are you curious?”

Janus had been trying not to look at the Body. Its striking resemblance to someone he knew well had only strengthened over the last few days, and that wild untamed hair and dark stormy eyes was not something he wanted to linger on. Distracted, he replied, “Fatal character flaw. Why—why are you curious?”

“About the theoretics of resurrecting flowers,” Logan clarified, and now he sounded a little sad, a little suspicious. Well, they all were sounding a little sad, a little suspicious these days; so that was hardly anything new. Still…

“Thomas’s favorite rose died,” Janus told him blandly. “Just last week. I was hoping one of the more morbidly-inclined might be able to bring it to its former glory, but alas. The fundamental laws of the universe… so limiting.”

“That is kind of you,” Logan said, leaning more heavily on Janus for a split second. He frowned. “But surely he could just pick another one?”

 “No,” Janus said. There were cold fingers caressing his cheek, blunted nails up his malar bone. Chains swept heavy past his shoulder. “I don’t think that’s an option.”

The others, to the best of Janus’s knowledge, were currently in the upper House—easily defensible (good), strategically opportune (double good), and blessedly free of black mold (bonus!). It was to there they were proceeding, but he wanted to delay the stair-climbing bit as long as possible, so he dawdled a bit under the pretext of eyeing the hallway they were traversing for danger.

“Did your adept not explain necromancy adequately to you?” Logan asked, abrupt.

“What?”

He repeated the question, and added, “It seems an odd thing for a cavalier not to have learned incidentally, especially the cavalier primary.”

“I must not have been paying attention in Thanergy Transfer 101,” Janus said dismissively. “I never had much use for necromancy, hardly my department.”

“You had other avenues of study to pursue?” Logan guessed.

“Yes. While you were busy dissecting babies,” he said, “I studied the blade.”

They passed through the doorway leading them into that grand entrance hall. Janus was prepared to make directly for the stairs, avoiding any more conversation about his delightful dead necromantic adept, that holy Reverend Daughter of his House. But Logan caught his arm.

Janus would usually object to being grabbed in this way, but there was suddenly something a lot more important at the forefront of his intention. Namely the person that was not meant to be here, who was currently making a small spectacle of being here.

Janus regularly saw people who were not meant to be there, but he assumed that since Logan was currently grabbing his arm about it, the Head Warden was seeing this particular grim figure too.

“Stop,” said Janus, because said grim figure was currently in the process of walking its merry way right out the front door and down to the landing docks, and he fucking thought not.

Incredibly (he was used to not being listened to) they stopped.

The stranger that was now standing very still at the open front door was not remarkably tall, nor remarkably short. Anything that could have made them remarkable or notable was summarily covered with a long, dark cloak that was longer and darker than anything Janus typically favored. It was the sort of cloak that you would only wear if you were attempting to hide every facet of your identity.

Motionless, they stood, looking out towards the wild sea. They were hunched over, seemingly hefting something heavy in both arms, but it was too obscured by grim monochrome cloakery to make out the shape of.

“Trying to sneak out after curfew?” Janus drawled, elbowing Logan in the ribs to force him backwards. Logan let out an unpleased hiss of pain—the big skinny baby, he hadn’t even elbowed that hard—and took a step to the side instead, obviously craning his neck to get a look at this new anomaly. “Let’s get a look at that face of yours.”

The cloaked figure could have been a Ninth-House statue, for all its noctiferous stillness. They did not respond to Janus’s menacing threat, or the implied bonus threat of getting a sword jabbed in a place where you did not want a sword to go.

“Either you run and take your chances outside,” Janus pointed out with a hand on his rapier hilt, quite reasonably he thought, “which, let’s face it, not a lot of options seeing as we’re on an island in the middle of eternal ocean—or you show yourself, and we get this absurd charade over with. So? Am I to assume you are the charming individual who graciously murdered our good friend and colleague just over a week ago? Please, I’m dying to hear all about it.”

“Janus,” Logan said lowly, a clear warning in that wavering voice—but over whatever he was about to say next, the figure laughed. It was rough and it was dirty, like whoever-it-was had never stooped to use their vocal cords for such a damnably mundane expression of joy. Then just as quickly, as if for expediency’s sake, the laughter was over, and the figure was turning to face them. Well, sort of face them. They were not speaking, and they were holding their strangely-shaped parcel like it was the only thing that mattered in the world. Janus didn’t step forward, but he did not feel like stepping back either. He stayed static, and so did Logan, and they watched with joint mute fascination.

The hood was still dipped low and shadowy, obscuring any face or form. Pale slender fingers were all that protruded from the cloak, and they were now shucking away the oily black rags that covered up the something that were still clutching to their chest, working with practiced brutal efficiency. And as the rags sloughed away and scattered to the ground, they could now see what that something was.

For a second, Janus did not know what the cloaked figure held. The shape of it was unfamiliar to him—the blocky edges, the sharp edges shaped for violence, the long barrel running out from the bulk of it that tapered into a tiny dark oval. And then the figure hefted the entire gleaming ensemble onto one shoulder, and there was a click, and all at once the entrance hall was howling with gunfire.

He thought, oh, a gun, and then, I’ve only seen those in pictures, and then his body was moving without him having to think about it. He was sprinting across the entrance hall, sliding to tangle an arm around Logan’s thin waist and pull them both into a doorway, around the corner, briefly out of sight.

And it must have been luck, it must have been miracle, it must have been the will of God Himself reaching out through the light years to bless a heathen like him; but neither of them had been shot and neither of them were dead. Not yet. The gun-toting Stranger—a gun, a real gun, so massive and so heavy they were dwarfed by its size and staggering with its weight, the sort of thing that hadn’t been seen in the System for centuries—had been, bizarrely, aiming for Logan and not Janus, and on top of that their shot had gone laughably wide.

*

For a split-second, Logan and Janus stayed pressed to the wall together, mute mutual adrenaline coursing through them as gunshots continued to ring out. It sounded like the far wall of the entrance hall was cracking, crumbling. The structural integrity of the place was getting increasingly compromised with every passing bang and rattle.

“Who is that?” Logan breathed.

“You can go ask them, if you want,” Janus offered, and sneezed. “They seemed to be aiming at you, Warden, so I assumed it was a Library grievance… an overdue book, perhaps…”

The entrance hall beyond the doorway was now mostly-silent, filled with wavering dust and the slow approach of footsteps.

One of Logan’s component pouches—his were never quite as involved or well-stocked as Remus’s were, Janus knew, but they were eminently practical—was hanging open already. With hands sick and shivering from shock, Logan was dragging out handfuls of bone dust, scattering them to the ground and raising ribcage picket fences over the doorframe like a cage. They weren’t good bone constructions, and they weren’t remotely mobile, but they might even hold their attacker off for three, maybe four seconds. Janus very nearly respected the attempt.

“All right, run,” Janus said, and when Logan didn’t move, shoved him mightily in the back, causing him to stagger on the first step of the staircase: “RUN! Get the others, or don’t and just save your own bedamned skin, what do I care!”

Logan jumped and nodded and skedaddled like a startled skeleton. His skinny limbs flailed pointlessly as he fled up the stairs, heaving out pathetic little puffs and pants, as all necromancers tended to when confronted with cardio. Janus was left nearly-alone in the entrance hall, the grim echo of not-so-distant footsteps drawing closer and closer before stopping sharply, right beyond the thicket of bones. The shadow of the Stranger paused, unmoving, and let out another huff of that rough laughter.

Then there was a brief, contemplative silence from both sides of the doorway.

“What do you think?” Janus asked the Body.

In the dull, rich voice of Roman Tetradrachmus, it told him, “You’ve brought a sword to a gunfight.”

“I know,” he said, and shrugged his cloak low over one arm. “Now, be honest—how smug do you think I ought to be about winning?”

The barrier shattered with a staccato rattle of three consecutive shots, the half-formed bones shattering and shooting out in every direction at once. With a sideways stagger, a lurch of effort, the Stranger came stumble-striding into the hallway. Janus sidestepped them and launched forwards. He was sweeping the bulk of his cape over the top of the monstrous shotgun, he was grabbing the bottom edge of it in his other hand, and then he was yanking both ends fiercely, dragging it out of their frail grip to collide with the ground. It went down like a felled meteor, cracking the tiles mightily on impact.

The Stranger, now divested of a great weight, toppled backwards, righted themselves on the offstep, and immediately shifted into a well-balanced crouch. It was a surprisingly agile move from someone who had previously been stumbling around like they’d shoved their head into a barrel of sacramental wine after huffing the fumes of the holy Drearburh flames for a solid half hour, not that Janus would know what any of that felt like.

The gun laid malevolently on the ground between them. Janus decided he should perhaps remove it from the immediate vicinity so the Stranger couldn’t pick it up and start blasting airholes for speed into his poor little body. So he kicked it, and it hurt his foot greatly but did not budge an inch because it was a fucking heavy-as-fuck massive fuckoff gun and he was a lithe yet incredibly suave bone nun. He said, “Ow, fuck this,” drew his rapier, and, like the lithe and incredibly suave bone nun he was, went in for the kill.

To his surprise, the kill became a dance. He expected himself to land a textbook glorious mortal blow within the first few seconds, but since when had anything worked out for him? The Stranger dodged, ducked, weaved to evade the next few passes, and it was utterly fucking bizarre, the way they’d gone from lumbering zombie to sprightly boxer within minutes. Had that been an act? No, it couldn’t have been. They weren’t perfect even now, whoever they were—and worse, they were improving by the second.

And then they drove a swift kick at him in heavy boots, bruising his thighs. He hopped back, scowling in pain, and the pale hands dove back into salt-encrusted black robes, re-emerging with a rusted silver carving knife.

He recognized it from the kitchen. It might even have been washed from dinner. But it was a very short moment of recognition because he immediately had to start worrying about not-dying instead. The Stranger put him on the defensive, driving him backwards down the hallway. The knife left denting nocks all along the steel of his blade as the Stranger lunged at him over and over again, and Janus was forced to block repeatedly—frantically—until he could find an opening.

Seconds later, he seized an opportunity to slice a whispering gouge down the side of the robes that were flowing and swirling in all directions. Speckles of blood hit the ground and the Stranger didn’t even wince, though it looked like an extreme boo-boo if Janus had ever seen one. With a duck and a spin like a dancer with a half-twisted ankle, they shuddered to the ground; swept up Janus’s own fallen cloak, came roaring back at him with a limp and a hop.

They threw it at his face, obviously trying to throw him off. His own best move used against him; infuriating! He ducked, obviously, let it clump heavily to the ground behind him, and brought his rapier in a quick one-two slice, ONE-TWO right from shoulder to shoulder, slipping it deviously between his opponent’s attacks. He did not feel the parting of flesh from flesh, but the robes did give way, the tangled dark mess of obscurity slipping and sliding, revealing hints of a perfectly average figure beneath. A perfectly average figure who was still wielding a kitchen knife like an assassin, mind.

“I’ve had enough of this,” Janus said, and lunged forwards, slipping sideways, snaking smoothly against another half-clumsy half-clever knife stroke to his side. They were still wavering drunkenly at every important move, which was the only thing saving him at this point. Something was wrong with his opponent—and Janus couldn’t be gladder, because it was that wrongness that allowed him to slam the Stranger sideways into the wall, brace them with an arm and a sword to the throat, and grab the salt-sticky fabric with one gloved hand. “Let’s get a look at you.”

The arms that fought him off were stiff and unyielding—but not especially strong, not compared to him. He overpowered the grip easily; a cavalier they were not—and reached up to tear back the hood. They tried to duck back, tried to squirm sideways and away, but to no avail—their head was exposed, in all of its familiar glory.

And Janus beheld the face of the Stranger. He beheld it very hard. He continued beholding it for several seconds longer than was probably safe, considering the fact that they were barely out of the weeds of a death match and hadn’t formally agreed on an intermission.

And yet, he didn’t feel like fighting anymore. His grip loosened. His body shuddered. He failed to comprehend, and had to take a second swing at doing so.

Finally, he said, “It’s you?”

That voice was low and vicious, strained flat with hatred. “Me. Go to hell.”

Janus’s body was electric with tension. Nothing made sense anymore. “But—you—this isn’t—this can’t be it.”

“Don’t care what it can or can’t be,” came the reply. “You know under any other circumstances you’d be dead, yeah? Dead little freak.” With astounding speed, the hood was tugged sharply back over the head, and the gun was heaved up from the floor. A click, a check, and—“Good fight, you can live for now. I’m saving these bullets for your other freaky friends. Fucking wizards.”—and a stagger and a shuffle, and they were heading out the door. And yes, Janus should have been finishing the job that he’d started, should have at least been attempting to restrain them and hold them still so that once the others arrived they could confirm that they were seeing what he was seeing, but for some really truly absurd reason, all he wanted to do was pray.

He caught one last glimpse of silvery-white eyes, corpselike in their blankness, and then the cloak fluttered and they were gone—downstairs, they were going downstairs, back the way he and Logan had emerged.

He looked to the right, and gunshots had carved out puckered little stone-wounds in the walls. To the left, and his cloak was crumpled carelessly on the ground.

“Was that real?” he said to the Body, standing silent sentinel at the far end of the corridor.

The Body stared at him with Roman’s eyes, stormy-dark and dusty-gold—and even now, it did not speak back to him. For the first time, Janus realized that it might not have any more clue than he did.

For some reason, that distressed him far more than the Stranger’s face had. He found himself sinking to the floor, burying his face in his hands, and he stayed there for a very long time.

*

Virgil and Patton were the first to find Janus, with Logan huffing and gasping for breath close behind. They came down the stairs like avenging necrosaints, Virgil’s sword-and-dagger extended and cloak fluttering, Patton’s hands glowing with spirit mist and Logan’s fingers clutching at bone—and were met with nothing more than an unexciting aftermath.

“Oh, sure,” Janus said, from where he was sprawled on the ground, trying to catch his breath and also any faint scraps of his own sanity that might be improbably still drifting around, “run straight into danger, get a bullet right through your head, get yourself killed too. Didn’t you think to consider I might be dead, and my mysterial murderer might have been lying in loathsome wait for your good selves?”

“I considered it,” admitted Virgil, who was an absolute delight like that. “And now I’m just disappointed.” But his sword was still drawn and now he was descending to stand by Janus, shielding him from any obvious angles of attack. A gloomy angstful sentinel in the growing dimness of afternoon. He said, “We couldn’t hear any more gunshots, we figured it was probably safe,” and then, “What happened? Where are they?”

“Licking their wounds, I expect,” Janus said, and pushed himself further up the wall, grimacing. “I got a good stab or sixteen in. You may congratulate me at your leisure. Don’t all go at once.”

“Oh, um, congratulations,” Patton said, hurrying down to kneel at Janus’s side, and followed that up with, “but are you all right?”

“Fine, fine.” Janus waved him off gently, and then up at Logan on the stairs, guiltily tucking away all his bones: “Thomas, Remus, where were they? Did you find them?”

“Here,” called Remus from the other side of the corridor, and he and Thomas emerged together, both… dripping wet? Completely soaked to the skin. Remus looked delighted about it, and Thomas just looked scared, eyes darting back and forth like he wasn’t entirely sure where in the House he was. “Oh, boo, did we miss the fun? I heard yelling and unnecessary dramatics.”

“Whoever killed Roman has decided to show themselves,” Logan told them. “If only briefly.” Then, to Janus, anxious in a way Janus suspected only he knew how to look for: “Did you discern their identity? Did they speak at all?”

“No,” Janus said. “That cloak and hood of theirs isn’t just a fashion statement, I didn’t get a single glimpse. And they only know how to talk with their bullets… which doesn’t make for scintillating conversation.”

“Gosh, rude,” Patton muttered.

“Very rude,” Janus agreed, patting him on the arm with reluctant fondness. “I really am fine. I’m…” He hesitated. “…Shaken. Unnerved. But unharmed, except for some very nasty bruises on my lower thighs which, come to think of it, I might be dying of. A truly nasty way to go. Someone, come and hold me while I slip into oblivion.”

Obligingly, Patton expanded his arms. It had been a joke and a lie, but Janus was almost tempted to accept the hug anyway. The only embraces he’d been getting for the last decade-and-a-half were dubiously existent, and quite besides that, the Body was the sort of bedmate who did not wear socks and had feet colder than the proverbial tomb. Some warmth might be nice, for a change.

He shook it off and waved off Patton once more with a roll of the eyes, and looked over at Remus, who was now curiously prising bullets from the wall with quickly-extended fingernails as Thomas stood nearby, shivering. They resembled a pair of drowned rats. “Why are you two—”

“He pushed me in the pool,” Thomas said, dripping sadly. After a second he added, “But he filled it up, first. I guess that’s better than the other way around...”

“Skeletons will do anything for you if you boss them around hard enough,” Remus explained proudly, snapped off his overgrown fingernails, and slipped a pair of bullets into one of those endless pockets of his. “So, where’d they run off to?”

Janus pointed, mutely, then felt obliged to add the obvious: “I wouldn’t advise following.”

“Sorry,” Thomas said, in the process of wringing out his sopping T-shirt, “I think I missed a lot? I definitely missed a lot. I was just through there… and I can’t remember if I heard the gunshots or not… and there was the pool. But is someone else in the House, someone other than us?” A pause, then, quieter: “Do we know that’s who killed Roman?”

“You think there’s more than one murderer?” came Virgil’s horrified response, his fingers tightening around his sword’s hilt.

At the same time Logan said, “Well, I suppose not—” and Remus rolled his eyes, adding, “Murder is such a strong word—” and Patton, for his part, just looked fully distressed, fiddling absently at Janus’s sleeve, twisting the sheer fabric back and forth.

“Well, here’s what we know,” said Janus, ignoring all of this,and he spread his fingers wide. “There is a gun-wielding maniac loose in Canaan House. I’m sure everything will eventually be okay, but I’ve not a clue what will happen next. And judging by your faces, you don’t either. Now, if you’ll excuse me: I plan to be upstairs, horizontal, and thoroughly unconscious in the next ten minutes. This day is getting more awful by the minute, and I need a fucking nap.”

Chapter Text

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Virgil the Fifth"

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Chapter Text

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“Thomas the Seventh"

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Chapter Text

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Patton the Fifth"

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Chapter Text

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Remus the Fourth”

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