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Cytherea’s plan was to puppet the body of the Seventh House cavalier to do all the necessary clean-up around Canaan House, but then she saw Gideon Nav’s eyes and she knew there was one thing she needed to do in her own body.
That was easier said than done. She was weak. She was always weak. Perpetually dying for a myriad did that, but she was on the poor side of her weakness right now. What she needed was to return to John. If she spent some time basking the lemon-scented necromantic stasis field surrounding the Necrolord Prime her Lyctoral powers would have the chance to regroup and heal her not to health, never to health, but at least to something a little less close to death.
She couldn’t do that though. If she went back to John now, chances were it would be good. Chances were that if she went back to John now she’d remember how deeply she loved him and how deeply he loved her in return. If that happened, she’d stay her hand. She’d somehow convince herself it was all nothing, she’d halt her plans and let things go back to the status quo they’d been in for ten thousand years. She knew this because it had happened before. She was determined to make sure it didn’t happen this time.
So she hobbled along the halls of Canaan House on her crutches, followed closely by the body of Protesilaus the Seventh who was arguably also her given the only thing animating him now was a sliver of her consciousness and her necromancy. This had stopped being difficult thousands of years ago even when she was moving her own body as well, and she was grateful that she’d at least be able to catch herself if she collapsed. So she hobbled along and the corpse followed her like a loyal pet.
She couldn’t stop thinking about the moment Gideon Nav had deigned to remove her sunglasses. One minute she’d been flirting with a cute Ninth House nun and the next she’d been staring into A.L.’s eyes in another person’s face. Her first thought had been that John had lied about killing his bodyguard and had in fact sent her off somewhere where she’d lived on and reproduced. That thought had been horrible enough, but also illogical. She knew what A.L. was and was fairly certain childbearing wasn’t a thing the body John had given his first Resurrection was capable of.
The next thought was more logical and worse.
She knew that Mercymorn was also in contact with the BOE. Blood of Eden had tried to hide that from her, but vastly misjudged just how well a ten-thousand-year-old woman could recognize the fingerprints of her Lyctoral siblings. She had worked out that Mercy had done something involving John, the late Commander Wake and the Locked Tomb twenty years or so ago, but her attempts at prodding Mercy for details had been fruitless and she’d been left reconstructing scraps. She’d prodded Gideon about it as well and found him equally close-lipped but also probably oblivious to whatever Mercy had been up to. She’d been debating rounding out the set and prodding Augustine as well. Unlike Gideon, he obviously knew what Mercy’s plan had been—though whether that was because he’d been involved or simply because the Saints of Joy and Patience always knew exactly what the other was up to was impossible to tell—but she’d been putting the endeavor off because trying to pick Augustine’s brain about anything was a level of difficulty akin to trying to break into the Locked Tomb.
The breaking into the Locked Tomb analogy was probably a good one, because, assuming Cytherea was jumping to the right conclusions and after ten thousand years she tended to be able to do so with the other Lyctors, that might have been exactly what Mercy had been trying to do. Why would Mercy have wanted to do that? What could she had done which would have ended with A.L.’s eyes in a Niner’s face? Very little objectively. Unless the eyes in Gideon the Ninth’s face weren’t A.L.’s eyes at all.
Cytherea was very lucky she’d been able to take the realization gracefully. For one instant when she’d realized what those eyes must mean, she’d wanted to crumple into a puddle and howl, but she’d held it together and kept flirting like the universe hadn’t just been knocked fundamentally askew. She was sure Gideon the Ninth with her horrible eyes that were supposed to be impossible had been none the wiser.
So yes there was something she very definitely needed to do in her own body. Even if it meant making her way through the whole of Canaan House to return to the study she and Loveday had shared.
Before she’d left the rooms she’d been granted under the impression she was the Seventh House heir, she’d sent Protesilaus to Cyrus and Valancy’s study to look for supplies. The state of Canaan House was such that Cytherea had surmised that at least some of John’s necromantic influence remained even ten thousand years since he’d last been in residence. Therefore, she wasn’t surprised to find that the oil paints in Cyrus and Valancy’s study hadn’t dried out. She’d had Protesilaus gather all the black tubes up and bring them along. Who would have thought that after a myriad Cyrus and Valancy’s nude self-portrait habit would finally prove useful?
She’d hoped that she’d used her animated corpse to do enough of the necessary things to allow her to do the part she wanted to do herself with minimal strain, but it quickly became obvious that was not to be. She was only partway to her destination when her lungs went into a spasm. She crumpled to the steps, hacking. She coughed and coughed until her eyes ran with tears and her face was a mess of snot and she felt like she was going to throw up. It was horrible. She’d had pneumonia for ten thousand years and you’d think that she’d have gotten used to it but she never had. It kept right on being horrible. She wanted to die. She couldn’t believe she’d ever not wanted to die.
When the fit ended she leaned against Protesilaus’s body and tried to catch her breath. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and even though he was cold and dead and literally being controlled by her, she let herself sink back into the illusion of comfort. She missed the old days, before they’d cracked the Eightfold Word, before the Resurrection Beasts, before all the deaths. Things had been better back then. She’d still been sick but she hadn’t been trapped alone by the consequences of her own sin.
She thought again of A.L.’s eyes in Gideon the Ninth’s face and shuddered. She wondered if dying for a myriad without ever being able to complete the process would have been more tolerable if she’d still had Loveday at her side.
She sat in the safety of Protesilaus’s arms for a long, long time until she felt that she could perhaps make it to her feet and carry on. Then she used the Seventh cavalier to help her up and they continued on their way.
Protesilaus had been gumming up the lock to Cytherea and Loveday’s study while Cytherea had been talking to Gideon, which meant that she had to undo that work to allow them to enter. Perhaps after being alive for so long Cytherea should have gotten over any distaste for having to redo things, but she generally had so little strength that it was still good to avoid this sort of situation. Still, it was easier to unpick her own necromancy than it would have been if it had been someone else’s and since she was here in her own body now when she re-gummed the lock she could do it more thoroughly than she ever could have in Protesilaus’s body.
The inside of the study was exactly how she and Loveday had left it. That realization was too much. She sunk to the floor and buried her face in her skirt and sobbed for several minutes. Coming back here would have been bad under the best of circumstances—not that she’d had many best of circumstances in the last myriad—but coming back now, knowing what she thought she knew now, was even worse. Loveday had always died for nothing—she’d died thinking her death would heal Cytherea’s cancer and it had not—but there was still a difference between the way Cytherea had known her cavalier’s death was a waste over the millennia and this new way her cavalier death had been a waste.
When she’d finished, she mopped her face dry and set to work. She’d forgotten where she and Loveday had kept the dishes, but after riffling through most of the cabinets she eventually found the right one. She selected a plate and squeezed all the tubes of black oil paint out onto it. Then she added a splash of water because she figured that couldn’t hurt. She’d had Protesilaus bring paintbrushes along with the paints and she selected the largest of the options and swirled it thoughtfully in the paint, assessing the muralled walls for the best location.
As she began painting she allowed herself to fantasize about meeting John for the last time sitting under the message she planned to leave for him. In her fevered imaginings she met the Emperor of the Nine Houses sitting under her message with the bodies of the young necromancers who had been brought here to commit the indelible sin of the Eightfold Word arrayed around her. She imaged the way John’s face would change when he took in the scene and read the message. She imagined him realizing that he had not, in fact, gotten away with the thing he must have thought he’d gotten away with after so many years.
Of course that could only happen if John showed up in person and didn’t just send the other Lyctors in to bring her to heel. She was confident that with time she could convince Mercy to see things her way—perhaps Mercy already saw things her way, but Cytherea had been alive and suffering for too long to be that optimistic. But Gideon would never see things her way and Augustine was a flip of the coin she’d rather never have to make. Not to mention that even if by some miracle she did convince them all, John would still be safely too far away for her plans to succeed. John needed to come himself. Anything else was unthinkable.
Thought she supposed even in the worst-case scenario this message was a good move. Perhaps it would make her Lyctoral siblings think even if she couldn’t convince them to help her.
It took a long time to finish the message. Her arms didn’t like being lifted above her head and she had to stop to rest often, but she kept at it and eventually she finished. She collapsed to the ground and stared up at the defaced mural. Now she would have the Seventh cavalier wash the paintbrushes while she rested a little and then they would leave, she would stop up the lock to this room again and then they would return to their rooms. Perhaps she would have Protesilaus carry her back to maintain her energy. This room would remain locked until all the necromancers died without achieving Lyctorhood and John returned to the system and the next phase of her plan began. Things were going according to plan.
She wrapped her arms around herself and stared up at the big, black letters screaming “You lied to us” to her God.
The time for pulling punches in the name of love was long past.