Archive of Our Own

ONE HOUR AFTER THE EMPEROR’S MURDER

You emerged on the shores of the River, wrecked and sputtering. God looked half-dead, which was infinitely preferable to fully dead, as it meant that Dominicus still burned and the Houses still stood and that perhaps you had a chance of getting out of this alive.

The River was endless. Every other time you had visited the realm of the dead in soul and body there had been a carefully timed submersion and a carefully applied ghost ward; on your first trip, Mercymorn had piloted God’s shuttle. Now you painted the ward with your own blood and dogged God’s halting footsteps, only pausing to shiver in terror when he disappeared to navigate the vast emptiness of space on the other end. Periscoping, that is what we called it when the Resurrection Beasts did it. Cassiopeia came up with the term. There was no word for the technique God employed because none of his Saints had known he could do it. He always did like to keep his cards close to his chest.

Later, once you were safely out, you didn’t dare ask him about it; but he caught your eyes and smiled wryly, spreading his hands as if to say—what can you do?

“I think that cat’s out of the bag, isn’t it?”

You blinked, wondering why someone might put a cat inside a bag. “Teacher?”

“The last time, when we left the Erebos…” God sighed. “Well, I did need my focus to carry both of you into the River. But, FYI, I don’t actually need anyone to escort me through the River. As we have established, I literally cannot die.”

He said it so matter of factly, icily. As if he hadn’t almost died hours ago, as if you hadn’t been the one to drag him back from the brink of hell, but you kept your face pleasing and relaxed and said, “Of course, Teacher.”

“Of course,” he agreed. “I like it that we’re on the same page, Ianthe. I would ask you to please be open with me going forward. You want something, I can give it to you. I can give you nearly anything. You go behind my back…” He didn’t have to say it.

“I did save your life.”

He smiled. John never looked more like God than when he was cruel; his sharp half-smile suited him better than any pretence of friendliness.

“That you did,” he said. “Clever girl.”

And—oh—those words. They brought back memories. They reverberated through you, settled heavy and warm over your belly, uncovered your pathetic need like a raw nerve. Clever girl. A hand in your hair, the praise that you so loathed to crave. You made it so easy to get you worked up; I’d had my fill and then I turned my back on you.

That was the last mistake I ever made.

TWO DAYS AFTER THE EMPEROR’S MURDER

The sound of dripping water was driving you insane. Plink. Drop after drop, making a puddle on the floor in the corner. Plink. It brought to mind memories of the Mithraeum, the luxurious bathroom with the antiquated plumbing—all that water, an obscene amount. Plink.

Even a Lyctor tired. Your body may have been a deadly machine, but your pretty little brain was human and faulty—and your mind was rotten. You closed your eyes and slept, and you were drowning all over again. In your dreams you fought against the currents, you swam away from the endless pit of Hell. It was a wretched sight—a hungry void, all gnashing maws and twitching tongues, and just as greedy as your soul.

You forgot yourself and breathed, and the waters of the dead filled up your lungs until your chest burned. The River was filled with ghosts and they were coming to rip you apart, and you couldn’t even scream in terror.

You gasped awake, cold and filled with fear. It was nothing less than what you deserved, my girl.

“Ianthe?”

A voice from the next room over. The Emperor called and you scuttled to his side like a loyal dog.

“Teacher?”

“Oh, there you are. Are you… is everything all right? I heard noises.”

That filled you with irritation. Of course he’d heard noises—that water leak in your room was making it impossible to hear yourself think. His disquieting eyes stared at you; you stared right back and found that he looked terrible. It wasn’t something anyone would dare to comment on—you were in the middle of nowhere, and nobody on this third-rate ship would even dare to lay eyes on the Lord’s face—but it wouldn’t be good for morale by the time you rejoined the Admiralty.

While you considered how to bring it up with him, he spoke first. “Ianthe. Have you been sleeping?”

“Badly.” It pained you to admit weakness, but you knew it was what he wanted; someone to reassure, something to worry over and make him feel like less of a failure.

“We need to go over reports and make contact with the Houses. We still don’t have communications from within the Belt,” he said. “I will have my Hand by my side, but I can’t make use of you if I’m running you ragged.”

That infuriated you. You were a Lyctor; you could do the work of a glorified desk officer. Even Coronabeth could have. “I fought a Resurrection Beast, Teacher. I can go over some reports.”

He rubbed his temple with the side of his hand. “Get yourself some coffee, some of that BARI shit, then come back here. If we send these on, we can leave tomorrow and make for the Bathyals immediately.”

You nodded. The movement of your head made you aware of a puddle of water off the side of your field of vision, just a few drops, pooling from under the door. They really should fix that piece of junk…

“Ianthe?”

“Yes.” You caught yourself. “Yes, I’ll be right back.”

You had been assigned dingy temporary quarters on some Cohort warship, a troop carrier whose crew had never expected they would one day host the Emperor of the Nine Houses. The ship was smaller than the Erebos and carried thrice as many, and your room was a cupboard; the Emperor had magnanimously let the General Staff sleep in their own beds and settled for the middling discomfort of a Colonel’s quarters, leaving you to take the communicating adjutant’s room. The bed was barely long enough to fit your height, and the desk was just a fold-out table in the corner. You missed the palatial spaces of the Mithraeum.

That morning in the mess hall you’d stolen a pack of cigarettes from a junior enlisted, and smoked two in your quarters while John was off doing something else. You’d worried he might say something when he came back to find the place reeking of smoke, but either he’d missed it or he hadn’t noticed—and, anyway, who cared? You wanted a cigarette now.

There was a smoking area off the rec centre, a sad few square meters filled up with Cohort dregs who immediately scattered when they saw you approach. This miserable ship wasn’t the kind of place to announce that Our Holy Lady, the Emperor’s Hand sees fit to grace Deck D or somesuch frippery, but your gilded arm was message enough.

You stopped some passing officer—you didn’t recognise the rank; it was Second Lieutenant—and asked if she had a light. You knew she did, you’d seen her smoking, and you slid the cigarette between your lips and leaned down so that she might light it for you with her shaking hands.

It was, maybe, your fifth or sixth cigarette. There had been those two this morning and this one now; all the others had been on the Mithraeum. You breathed the smoke into your lungs and closed your eyes.

“Oh, dove. You really fucked it up, didn’t you?”

You startled. You opened your eyes—you whipped your head around. “What did you say?”

The Lieutenant was the closest, though of course she hadn’t been the one who had spoken. No one among this bunch would dare to speak to a Lyctor unprompted.

“Holy Saint?”

“Not you,” you said. You looked around, frantic. Dearest, you looked haunted.

If only you’d known.

MONTHS BEFORE THE EMPEROR'S MURDER

Augustine the First was a study in contradictions. She recognised the type: flip and effervescent, breezing through life with studied carelessness, coolly unbothered and always pleasant. He liked flattery—he took it as his due—and he never for a moment believed she meant it, which Ianthe could tell was part of the appeal she held for him. It amused him to see her chirp and simper and laugh, and he liked even better that she had little choice in the matter. He held her life in his hands; she would make herself amusing and interesting and good company, or risk her death.

Not that ingratiating him was a chore. Her new teacher was charming and witty enough, with the fading good looks and the languid manners of an ageing courtier, and under all of that was a man who hated himself, felt very little, and showed nothing. He went on living out of pure inertia; he was obsessed with the King Undying; he smoked his cigarettes as if the taste of it would remind him what it was like to feel human.

It took Ianthe a month on the Mithraeum to determine that he would be amenable, and two more weeks to decide that she wouldn’t mind playing it this way.

It happened after one of their training sessions, a horrible morning spent thoroughly humiliating herself over that wasteful hardwood floor; by the end of it she’d nearly wanted to cry in anger and shame, and she tried very hard not to let herself. Crying was so dramatic, such a Corona move. Mercymorn seemed like the type, too, she thought distractedly; and the Emperor, perhaps, at his most sentimental. Augustine would never. Not this dried-up shadow of a man, marinated in cynicism and cologne for a myriad.

“If I’d been a Herald, you’d be dead. And those come in swarms, my girl, so you’d be dead several times over—a waste of a perfectly good cavalier who gave his soul to you, a waste of a decent necromancer who could’ve aspired to do better.”

That made her want to slap him. “I’m a fucking great necromancer.”

He laughed, just as expressive and as performative as ever. “There’s your fire, sis. You’re clever, you’ll figure it out. Stop letting your thinking brain get in the way of your synapses, stop micromanaging your sword hand, and you’ll make a fucking great Lyctor—in a millennia or two.” He chucked her under the chin, for all that she was half a head taller. “If you live that long.”

She grabbed his hand at the wrist before he could pull it back, holding it there. He looked at her fingers around his arm, bare to the elbow after he’d rolled up his shirtsleeves. Then he looked at her face and smiled. His eyes were just as placid and grey as always.

“Is that how it’s going to be?” He sure was a man who loved the sound of his own voice. Ianthe released her hold but he still kept his hand where it was, cupping her jaw.

“There are so many ways I could play this,” he mused. “I can take what you’re giving me and it would change nothing, you know. I’ve fucked all of our number—I’ve fucked Joy plenty of times and I would kill her in a heartbeat. What do you hope to gain?”

“No need to bother if you’re going to be tedious about it, elder brother.”

That did it. He let his hand fall from her jaw to the side of her throat, tracing her bad arm with his fingertips, chuckling to himself as if she’d said the funniest joke he’d heard in a century.

“Tedious,” he said. “Oh, you clever girl. So young and so jaded. You’ve no idea.”

ONE WEEK AFTER THE EMPEROR’S MURDER

As the days went on, three things became clear to you.

One: the water was not there. That was hard to stomach. It felt real; the large puddles, the plink of the falling drops, the encroaching waves lapping at your bedframe when you woke up in the mornings. The brackish scent, the humid cold—it felt as real as the touch of your own hand. But no one else saw it.

Two: you had never made it out of the River. Not really. Your body was intact, hale and healed, and your soul was in place; but your mind wasn’t wholly there. You couldn’t sleep without seeing the cavernous maw of the stoma—those eager tongues, the abyss without an end—and in every shadow you saw the floating corpses. They were swollen and half-rotten, their skin pale and wrinkled, their long purple tongues hanging from their open mouths. Some of them were missing limbs, some had their faces chewed out. They all wore your sister’s eyes.

Three: you could not afford to look weak. Your worth had always been in your keen intellect, your efficiency, your considerable power and your ruthless willingness to use it. You didn’t have God’s affection or God’s esteem, though you did have God’s gratitude and that counted for something—or so you thought, you foolish girl. You put wards in your room so that nobody heard you scream in your sleep; you decided to make yourself indispensable.

The old soldiers who surrounded you were used to the Saint of Joy and the Saint of Duty and struggled to see you on the same level. Fine. Your gritted your teeth and carried on.

The bone arm helped. You gave orders that carried the weight of the Emperor’s own breath. You read up fast on everything there was to know about Cohort structures and military matters. You ignored the shadow you saw at the corner of your eye, grim and grey, the bloated corpses floating on the waters of the dead, filling the rooms with the stench of decay.

You began to understand Harrowhark—how she’d looked at shadowed corners and spoken to thin air, her insistence that things were different from the objective reality. Never mind that Cytherea’s body had truly been walking, in the end. She still had been nuts.

You smoked. The acrid smell helped to ground you, and you liked that it gave you an excuse to step into the common areas and mingle with the dregs—it kept the shadows away. The first time you saw me, you put out the cigarette against the back of your hand and flinched at the burn. The pain distracted you. It helped.

You blinked, staring at the spot that had been empty seconds ago—the water dripping from my sodden clothes, ripped apart and bloody, the mangled skin, the exposed bone. Grey-faced and red-eyed, half a smile, half a jaw missing. Not a pretty sight, I must admit.

You turned on your heels and fled, hands shaking. You’d been in the rec area of some Admiral’s ship, surrounded by Cohort uppers, not the kind of people you’d want to look like a startled rabbit in front of, but your heartbeat was frantic and adrenaline spiked in your system; you didn’t need to breathe and yet you were running out of oxygen.

John had commandeered for himself a small office by the command centre, and you stalked there in hurried steps, your hand freshly healed. You pushed past a host of aides in the outer room and walked in. He hadn’t been expecting you; he startled as the door closed, his dark head jumping up.

“Ianthe.” He frowned. “Is there an emergency?”

You realised you’d forgotten to knock. You didn’t have the kind of relationship where you’d barge in unexpectedly and unannounced in his private area, and you briefly considered your options.

“Oh.” Temporary humiliation was better than admitting to your deficiencies; you made yourself blink, affecting a confused expression. “I must have gotten the days mixed up. I thought I was late for a meeting.”

You were always a very good liar; so was he. You didn’t know if he believed it, but it suited him to behave accordingly, to play the understanding lord.

“Ianthe. Are you…”

Wilfully ignorant, you asked, “Am I what?”

It seemed ludicrous that he should be asking after your health. He was barely holding himself together, too—you were just two broken pieces supporting each other. You found it insulting that he, who hadn’t shaved in two days and just the evening before distractedly called you Mercymorn, should be keeping it together better than you.

I saw the ghost of Augustine the First, you might have said. You pictured how he would look: fleetingly hopeful, crushingly sad. He might have thought you were mocking him, and reacted accordingly—and the memory of his anger was still too raw, a terrible thing, but it wasn’t fear that stopped you. More than anything, you didn’t want his pity.

Instead, you said, “I have been reading the reports from Ur. Have you seen them?”

“Didn’t get a chance. We’re still stuck on the Sixth House thing.” And then, blissfully, “Please, sit down.”

You didn’t let your relief show. You listened to him talk, you asked questions, you compared notes; anything so you wouldn’t have to leave. At one point he leaned in, his brow wrinkled into a frown, and said, “Ianthe, have you been smoking?”

You didn’t know what to make of his even, careful voice. “Does it bother you?” you asked, with an easiness you didn’t feel.

“Oh, no,” he said. “No.” Then, once more, “No.”

Then he said, “Those things will kill you, though.” He closed his eyes briefly. “Sorry. Bad joke.”

Your eyes glazed around the room: the mess of half-discarded drinks and notes on the desk, the ever-present water, and the ghosts waiting in those odd corners.

“If we are to send a mission to the Ur system, I intend to go myself. It would be the most efficient course of action. Give morale a boost while we’re at it.”

Beyond that, you itched to prove yourself on the field. You wanted to wreck and kill and put things to order with the might of your power, the only way you knew how. Your fingers drummed on the table.

“That’s a good idea,” he said. “If we can spare sending another ship… yes, that’d be ideal.” And then, “You’d have to travel through the River.”

You disliked the implication. “I’ve done that dozens of times, Lord, if you’d recall.”

His brows arched at that familiar manner, the chiding petulance he was well used to, but not for you. “Ianthe,” he pronounced your name carefully. “I dragged you through the River on foot and, frankly, it would be perfectly normal if you wanted to avoid it for some time. We are not so hard up that I need to send you. But if you are ready…”

“I am.” You found his consideration almost insulting. He, who had never cared to keep track of your progress, who’d dispatched his Hands wherever it suited him; and now he was babying you? But he had reason to be careful, you figured. It wasn’t like he had any more Lyctors to spare.

His eyes stared right through you. You held his gaze until he nodded his approval. “Fair enough.”

He went back to his work then, and you to yours; you didn’t leave. He’d taken you through the River and the ghosts hadn’t ripped you apart, and you harboured some illusion that his presence might shield you still.

When an aide knocked on the door, calling him to a meeting—something about a mission to the orbital path of the Sixth House, led by a vice admiral you’d come to loathe—you cleared your throat and said you’d go with him. You stuck to his side the way you’d once done to mine when you thought I might protect you. As if his shadow might save you.

THREE WEEKS AFTER THE EMPEROR’S MURDER

You saw me everywhere. You saw the water, too, worse now that you’d made it planetside, as if the thanergy of this rock were driving up the tides of the dead. You scurried away instinctively—River water would burn you, Lyctor or not, and even if the water wasn’t truly there, you couldn’t take the chance. You were beginning to gain a reputation for restlessness, but you were the finger of God, his fist and gestures, and no one would dare tell you anything.

The Ur system was a sterile, inhospitable place, and if you’d had the misfortune to be born in such a forgotten corner of the universe you would have queued for resettlement years ago. There was discontent among the population, and the part of you that had always taken an interest in the politics of the Empire looked through the briefings with attention.

There had been three bombs planted near Cohort barracks in the hope they might take out a necromancer—they’d taken out two, as it happened, and a dozen infantry troops and nearly twice that number of local civilians, which had in turn started a series of riots. Ships had been burned, entire cities were barricaded, more bombs had exploded and House adepts had retaliated in kind. It was a fucking swamp.

“I understand the picture,” you said, eventually, to a sweaty Major who kept addressing you as Most Honoured Saint and wouldn’t dare look above your collar. “What exactly do you need me to do?”

You were a Lyctor, a blunt force instrument. Summoning one of the Emperor’s own Hands was like throwing a grenade to a locked door when picking the lock might do, but you had little patience and a certain eagerness to bloody your rapier. You could’ve stopped the hearts of half the planet with a mere thought, and that surely would’ve taken the rebels out, but the approach lacked a certain finesse. You never liked the idea of collateral damage, you soft-hearted young fool.

The Major’s eyes were nearly bulging out of their socket. “Need you to do, Holy Saint? I wouldn’t presume—”

You pressed, “You’ve been on the ground here for months. I’m assuming you’ll know the territory, and the situation, better than I do?”

The air-con wasn’t running, but you felt the brush of my sigh like the cold wind of the grave. “That’s not how you deal with the commons, chick. They would rather slit their own throat than give orders to a Lyctor. You have to sweep in and wrestle command from anyone senior enough to talk back at you if you’ll ever order anything stupid. That’s how you know you’re on the right track.”

“That sounds fucking inefficient,” you muttered to the empty air. The poor officer jumped.

“Holy Saint?”

“Look, I don’t have time. I need to wrap this up and get back to the Emperor—” at that, the officer went an unpalatable green shade, “—and I would think that being yourself an Intelligence officer—you are Intelligence, aren’t you? Are my eyes failing me? No? Good. Then I would assume you might have half an idea of what should be done. Or take me to someone somewhere who does.”

“Nicely done. Finally, you’re bringing out some claws.”

Your lips mouthed the words: shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Out loud, you said, “Major, I require an adjutant. Someone who knows the local language, to assist me and carry my correspondence, and keep my schedule. I intend to be done as soon as possible, and I don’t tolerate inefficiencies.”

“A nanny, chick? How intriguing.”

You flinched; the Major didn’t. That was the meter by which you judged your reactions, these days: you misliked company and you craved being alone, but you couldn’t trust your own senses; you’d come to think of it as a necessary evil.

You walked with determined strides in your polished boots, your uniform immaculate, free of wrinkles and rank insignias. Your face looked a fright. The Intelligence officer followed, half a step behind, and I walked with them, just ahead. Sometimes you’d see their face disappear into the back of my head, heard the sound of their boots splashing into the water that dodged my footsteps. You winced every time a drop hit you, cold as death and burning like flames.

I whistled, or tried to. There was a hole in my fucking face, after all; air blew through it with a sound like a death rattle.

You walked faster. I followed.

SIX WEEKS AFTER THE EMPEROR’S MURDER

You returned from Ur victorious and disillusioned. You’d gotten to bloody your sword, finally, but hadn’t especially enjoyed the experience.

“Teacher,” you began, “I have a question.”

God, who paid you little attention unless he was reminded of your existence, looked up from the files he’d been inspecting. Something to do with a shuttle, you’d heard, and a retrieval mission, but you hadn’t been told the detail.

“Yeah?” he said. “Shoot.”

“Why do we send the Cohort to the shepherd planets?”

He didn’t answer. You went on, “Ur has a population of eight million people, I can put down a planet-wide riot in a week. With four thousand years of expansion and—other Lyctors—” you watched his face carefully as you said that; it was the first time either of you acknowledged what had happened “—why are we spreading ourselves thin to supervise the planets? We could settle…”

“Necromancy doesn’t work as well outside the Dominicus system. You know this. We can flip a planet; we can’t make it support a thanergetic ecology.”

“The Mithraeum orbits a thanergetic star.”

“Yes.”

It was all he would say on the matter. One unfortunate effect of being God, you were swiftly coming to learn, was that he didn’t have to explain himself to anyone; he took ample advantage of it whenever it suited him.

“So, no permanent settlements,” you conceded, although you planned on returning to that. Clever girl. “But with the Lyctors… and yourself,” you said and, oh, my girl, that was bold. “We can travel the galaxy in minutes and do the work of a thousand necromancers in days. Why send the Cohort at all?”

He looked at you with those terrible chthonian eyes. His half-smile was as old as the dark between stars, and just as cold. “What else would they have to do?”

Truth be told, we weren’t always that cruel. Not me, not darling Joy, not even John, for all that I wasn’t sure I’d known him at all. But the ages had a way of making you look at humanity, stop seeing people and start to see pawns instead, and that was the snake pit you’d willingly thrown yourself into.

“That’s whom you tied yourself to, my girl. Never forget.” If I’d had a cigarette, I would’ve extended it out to you in salute. Instead, I held out my arm, stretching my mangled fingers. Your eyes followed me.

He said, “Do you have any other questions?”

You jerked back to attention. “Yes. Several, actually. But this perhaps isn’t the time.”

“Mhm. Tell me again in a few years.”

“He’s hoping you’ll forget. Or maybe he isn’t—who the fuck knows, with John. I nearly thought I’d gotten him to come around a few times, and well.”

You’d gotten very good at pretending. You no longer flinched at the waters, the monstrously bloated corpses, the wailing ghosts. You would even hold my gaze, new eyes and all, but you still couldn’t stand the smile. When I hummed, it made you shiver.

“Darling girl. Do you think you’ll still be around in a few years? A few years of this? You, me, him. All those fucking ghosts.”

“Ianthe.”

Was it the third time he’d called your name, or the fourth? It hardly mattered. His eyes were filled with a new, terrible understanding.

“Sorry,” you said. Had you ever pronounced that word before? “I’m tired.”

He said, “Trouble sleeping again? I wouldn’t recommend it long term, but there’s a trick to sensitise the anxiolytic receptors that might help you…”

There was a poem I’d forgotten for ten thousand years. It went: “Shall we, too, rise forgetful from our sleep? And shall my soul, that lies within your hand, remember nothing?”

You stood up so fast you nearly knocked down your chair. “I think I should go.”

He said, “Please, take the evening.”

“He can’t afford another broken baby. I think, if he had to choose, he’d rather have Harrowhark.”

Your eyes flicked to my face. This time, John noticed. He opened his mouth—about to ask something terrible, something that shouldn’t be given voice to.

You fled.

MONTHS BEFORE THE EMPEROR’S MURDER

The smell of Augustine’s cigarettes lingered in her hair, in her clothes, staining her like the mark of some wretched beast covering its territory. Sometimes he would blow smoke on her face, which made her cough—she suspected it was why he did it, and because it got him off.

His hands smelled like nicotine too, when he carded his fingers through her hair or held her jaw open so that he could shove his fingers in her mouth. He’d made her work for it, the arrogance of this man who looked at a bright young woman offering herself up for an undoubtedly mediocre fuck and thought she should beg and fight for the privilege.

“Does it flatter you, elder brother?” she asked, acidic the first time Augustine told her to spread her legs and sit on his desk only to seemingly forget her there as he flickered through his notes.

“You do. Extremely,” he said. She liked that he was straightforward. “You really are committed to ensuring I find you entertaining.”

Ianthe arched an eyebrow, still wholly exposed to the air of the room. He liked her looking down at him; she could tell. “Is it working?”

He said, “I want to see how far you’ll go. Now…”

He put aside his stock of flimsies. She looked at him evenly, a jolt of excitement coursing through her. He laid his hands on her knees and waited like that, sitting at his desk chair, looking at her spread thighs and her glistening cunt—letting the anticipation build Ianthe thought, how predictable.

Augustine the First smiled his usual amiable way and said, “Here is what we’re going to do, my dear. I expect your unrivalled attention.”

“You always have it, elder brother,” she said the title sweetly. He’d killed his younger sibling; Ianthe hoped he liked the reminder.

“Mmm, quite.” He leaned in and kissed up her thigh, along her labia, flicking his tongue but never where she wanted him.

“Eyes on me. At all times.” His fingers played with her cunt as he spoke. “Every time we are alone together, and I haven’t put you to reading something, I want you to look at me. Or unless I’ve put you on your hands and knees,” he said, and, Oh, she thought, There it is. All men only wanted one thing.

But no, it wasn’t like that at all. Augustine wanted everything.

He fucked her with his tongue, slow and leisurely; he put three of his fingers into her as he sucked on her clit. She kept her gaze obediently on his face, an eager little pupil—he liked knowing he took up space in her thoughts. He liked knowing that he filled her mind like she’d let him fill her body; he liked the thrill of having an audience. He spoke, and she listened. She collected nuggets of information about her elders, she poured his wine and laughed at his stale jokes and let him eat her out and fuck her tits and come on her chest.

She bit into his shoulder and marked red ribbons down his back that healed in a blink, she lit his cigarettes for him and put them out on his collarbones. She fucked him a few times, but he was such a bitch about it—Augustine claimed the whole point of fucking a flesh magician was that she should shape herself a cock to his exact specifications, and he was demanding and frankly too into it. She wondered if it was Mercymorn he was picturing during it, or God.

The rare times he wanted her to suck his cock he kept his hand in her hair the whole time, which wasn’t as much about possessiveness as it was a way to ensure he’d know if she used necromancy to pad her knees. Her teacher was of the opinion that discomfort would make her a more worthy Lyctor, or so he claimed—she thought it just amused him to make her uncomfortable.

Many things seemed to amuse him, but there was nothing he truly seemed to enjoy. She wondered when was the last time anyone had made him laugh, and suspected that the answer lay with his dead cavalier of a brother. Ianthe never had these problems; she’d never wanted to be liked. Corona’s love and the world’s admiration were enough.

She currently held neither of those things, but Corona was out there somewhere and Ianthe was a Lyctor, ready to slay planets and win glory or whatever it was that the Emperor’s Hands did. Once she survived Number Seven.

That was all Augustine was, she told herself. Her ticket to survival. He was attractive and good with his hands; she could indulge an old man. He was a hungry, restless soul—a living revenant.

At the time, she had no idea of how true that would turn out to be.

TWO MONTHS AFTER THE EMPEROR’S MURDER

The first time I spent the whole night with you, you didn’t sleep a wink. You dragged yourself through your duties in a cloudy haze, stimulating the cortisol in your body through the pituitary gland to keep yourself alert, as dear Harrow had taught you, and that night you slept like a rock in valiant exhaustion.

You woke to find me perched on your bed, the covers drenched in water. Darling, I could hear the sound of your heartbeat, jack-rabbiting madly at your throat. You were afraid; you were fucking terrified.

“Why the smell?” You asked to the ceiling. “The River—the waters of the River don’t smell. It’s not real water. It’s a liminal dimension.”

“But it felt like real water, didn’t it? When it was filling up your lungs.”

“It never smelled like this. Like…”

“Rotting corpses? You tell me, my girl. You always had a special interest in liminal spaces, didn’t you? The dead and the beyond… you were the best pupil I could’ve hoped for. Ianthe. Sit up. I want your eyes on me.”

You sat up. “You’re not really here.”

“Oh, please. I taught you better than that. Awfully sentient for a hallucination, am I? And would you imagine me like this?” I swept my hand to gesture to my body, bloody and broken as it was. “I’ll tell you this for free about hell, chick. Those things are hungry.”

“I don’t believe you. I’m going fucking insane.” You threw off the covers and stood up—your arm went through me, and you winced. “That happens. The Saint of Duty was talking to himself half the time. Harry wanted to fuck a corpse. Teacher has been talking to you for a week… if you want to haunt someone, why not him?”

You scurried around the room, getting dressed, putting yourself together. Growing more unnerved by the minute as I sat there, watching.

“I said—why not him? Why me?”

“Get yourself under control. This is beneath you. And you don’t want anyone to hear you screaming in an empty room.”

You drew yourself up; you looked murderous, your eyes shining in anger. “You are a tedious, boring shell of a man.” You enunciated every word like a twist of the knife. “If you’re even here—you lived as a ghost for eons before you became one. You are a pathetic wretch of a spiteful shadow, and I will exorcise you from my brain even if I have to cut through it.”

Halfway through that speech—and what a lovely little sermon it was!—I’d disappeared. You found yourself hissing in anger at an empty room, red-faced and furious, humiliated and scared.

You were late to your first meeting, which couldn’t have started without you; then you found an overeager Second House cav to go a round with you in the training room over the shift lunch. You spent all day on edge and quick to anger, and you fell asleep on the cushioned chair of a meeting room because you couldn’t bear to go back to your quarters.

Of course, John heard of it. He called you in and asked you to sit; he offered to make you tea. You refused to speak a word.

That night, you had no choice. You went to your room as if marching to your execution and cut your flesh arm to draw three different ghost wards that never seemed to work. You knocked yourself out and you woke up three hours later, to your own hand wrapped around your throat.

“Relax,” I said. You couldn’t breathe; the golden hand was cutting off your airflow. “Ianthe, relax. It’s not like that.”

Slowly, you unclenched your fingers. They obeyed you. I’d gilded the arm, but it was still yours—I couldn’t get it to move against your will, not if you were awake and conscious. You looked at your hand—that beautiful golden limb that made you a Lyctor, the arm that set you apart from the dregs of the universe, a reminder of your beloved Harrowhark—and then you looked at me.

You said, “Oh.”

“Yes,” I said. “John doesn’t have one of those, you see. Although, given the choice, I’m not sure I’d go for him. I don’t think he’d be as fun.”

You didn’t speak.

“Ianthe. Look at me. You were… well, I can’t say I’m not fucking pissed, but I can’t blame you for acting in your own interests. My clever girl. But you owe me—you are going to do something for me—oh, nothing bad! Whatever you’re thinking of, no. I’m not asking you to doom yourself to bring about the death of Dominicus. No.”

This time when I sat on the bed the springs groaned under my weight. It wasn’t really there but—almost.

“I want you to take that beautiful golden hand, darling, and I want you to get yourself off. I want you to close my eyes, and listen to my voice. Go on, now.”

You were always a marvellous student. You closed your eyes, lay back on the bed, and let yourself drown.

TWO MONTHS AND TWO DAYS AFTER THE EMPEROR’S MURDER

You always were clever. As smart as you were powerful, a necromancy genius; you wouldn’t have become a Lyctor otherwise. When you woke up the next morning, you knew where we stood. I was tied to you, there was no banishing me without undoing yourself.

That whole you spent at your God’s side, and you were relieved when you barely saw me in passing. In the evening you lingered around him; for the past few weeks John had taken on the bad habit of overindulging with alcohol, something that under different circumstances you would’ve turned up your nose at, but you were hardly in a position to criticise anyone’s lucidity.

After dinner, you got yourself another glass and asked him to pour you some wine. He obliged, watching with a surprised frown as you knocked back the whole glass.

“Another,” you ordered God. He obeyed. You drank that one too.

“Another one. I had a shit week,” you said, conversationally. “Better now, though.”

“Mmh,” he said. “You seem more—determined tonight.”

You raised your glass, a wordless toast. “Thank you.”

The third glass you sipped slowly. You watched him watch you; you asked questions about his plans for the manoeuvres in Antioch, and shared the news of a strange object in the western quadrant—possibly a supernova, last you’d heard. You were never good at putting people at ease, but you were good at playing the attentive listener, the jaded young woman with a critical mind; not easily swayed but armoured with a cynicism that would make impressing you all the sweeter. I’d had my fun with it, but I’d always been something of a bon vivant and John was always a sad old bastard.

I could’ve told you it wouldn’t have worked.

You tried, and it was an admirable effort. Five glasses of wine into it, and you tried to do to him what you’d done with me all those months ago: be interesting; be entertaining; give him another reason to care about your survival. You leaned in and you kissed him.

I’d give this to you, darling, it was an excellent performance. You were awkward in a sweet way—endearing and overeager, all too ready to press his mouth to his but not so greedy that you’d slip your tongue into his mouth right away. Instead, you licked at the seam of his lips with the wet tip of your tongue; you cupped his jaw and you pulled back with hesitation in your eyes that wasn’t feigned.

He was smiling; it didn’t reach the eyes.

“I’m flattered,” he said. “But you’ve had six glasses of wine.”

“Five,” you said.

“And I’m not a complete fool.”

“If I thought you were, I wouldn’t be here now.” You didn’t like how this was unfolding, but your mouths were still barely inches from each other; you could feel his breath over your lips. You kissed him again.

This time, he pulled back.

“What is that you want, Ianthe?”

“Ouch. Cold.”

He looked at you, and suddenly you couldn’t move. You were pinned on that cushioned chair, an invisible force squeezing the air from your lungs. Your head ached as if encircled with a tight iron band squeezing tighter and tighter; there was a metallic tang of fear at the back of your throat.

“Ianthe. Don’t fuck with me,” he said, not at all pleasantly. “I’ll ask once again. What is that you need?”

And there my dear you did something very, very stupid.

You told him everything.

EXODUS

It all came rushing out of her.

She spoke until her throat was dry; she reached out for her wine glass, and he filled it without a word. Ianthe went on, about the ghosts pushing her in her sleep, the stench of dead bodies, of bile and fear. She talked until there was nothing more to say, and by the end of it she felt empty and unmoored, and he was dangerously quiet.

He said, “Why haven’t you told me this before?”

“You’re really asking me this?” Once, months ago and a lifetime away, Ianthe had told Harry: God is a dickhead. She stood by it. “I thought I was going insane. You ordered Gideon the First to attack Harrow because she wasn’t good enough. I thought you would kill me.”

“You don’t really believe that.”

Ianthe rolled her eyes. “I believed it enough that I didn’t want to stake my life on it.”

He paced around the room, five, six times. Ianthe’s eyes kept darting around the room, lingering at the corners; she jumped at the touch of his hand on her bare neck.

“You’re scared,” he said. “Your adrenaline, your heartbeat. Is this because of me? You don’t need to be. I’m not that angry.”

“Maybe you aren’t. He’s pissed,” she said. “At me, at you. Especially you.”

There was an expression on his face that she’d never seen before. The King Undying, scourge of death, looked like a child on his birthday, eager and delighted. “He’s here now? Oh, never mind. Of course he’s here. I’m very sorry—this will hurt.”

And then he clasped her bone arm, fingers encircling that golden humerus like a vice. God yanked.

Ianthe screamed.

It hurt worse than any pain she’d ever felt in her life. Worse than losing her arm and then regrowing a new one. It felt like being split apart—like when she’d swallowed Babs and he’d fought her every step of the way, a thousand times worse. A body, even a Lyctor’s body, wasn’t made to be the conduit for this kind of power, the bridge between life and death. It felt as though all the ghosts of hell were tearing through her skin, swelling up her soul until it was too big for her body and she felt like she might burst, a star going supernova.

He didn’t let her. He pressed on her body from the outside as something was surging from the inside, bubbling up from inside her like pus in a wound.

And then it was over. It hurt faintly still, like an ache in her soul, and she was paralysed. Or, she could move—her limbs were moving—but the soul animating her body was someone else’s.

Breathless, John said, “Augustine?”

Her lips pulled back into a snarl. Her gilded hand curled into a fist, and she punched God between the eyes.

It wasn’t a particularly satisfying punch, as those went. The bone made a sick crunching sound, but that arm was all exposed nerves and not made for brute force; the recoil vibrated through her body and it stung her—it stung them both—and John barely took a step back.

“You should’ve gone for the nose,” he said, conversationally. He was looking—staring, taking in the both of them, Augustine’s soul in her body, feasting his eyes over whatever he saw through her eyes while Ianthe could do nothing but watch, a prisoner in the back of her own mind.

The Emperor of the Nine Houses looked rather like a starving man who’d been brought in front of a banquet if that starving man were also personally angry at his food. So it’d have to be a Third House banquet, Ianthe decided. God was frowning.

“What happened to you?”

“Do you have to fucking ask me that, John? You were there.”

“No, I don’t mean that.” He reached out to touch Ianthe’s shoulder—their shoulder. “Your eyes,” he said. “You’re…” He swallowed. For the first time that Ianthe could remember, John Gaius looked well and truly unnerved. “Did you eat a Resurrection Beast down there?”

“Not all of it. Bits and pieces. It's eat or be eaten in here.”

“You’ve been hitting that poor girl with Herald fear every time you showed up.”

He threw up their hands; it felt odd, Augustine’s mannerisms sweeping through her body. “Well, I can’t fucking help it, can I?”

“You’re the one who decided to drag the both of us through the stoma.”

“Don’t, John. Don’t even fucking start.”

“Sorry,” God said.

In the long minutes that followed, Ianthe tried to wrestle back control of her own body. It was daunting; she hadn’t felt this helpless since she’d been six or seven, and one of her tutors had her practising by encasing her in spheres of fatty tissues and expecting Ianthe to get out of it—her and Corona both; Ianthe had always broken out Corona first, because she couldn’t pull oxygen from the tissues if they ran out of air, and in the meantime, the fat around her tightened and tightened until she couldn’t move, enveloped in a gelatinous mass so thick that she could hardly wriggle a finger.

Her mouth opened, and Augustine said, “Ianthe is pissed off right now. Makes me feel like I’m having a stomachache.”

“Ops,” God said. “Five minutes. Look, we’ve done this once already and it went badly, so I’m going to do it again—if I get you out of there, will you come to stand by my side? Or are you going to turn around and try to kill me the first chance you get?”

There was a long long pause. She studied John’s face through Augustine’s intent gaze: he looked expectant but relaxed, though Ianthe knew him well enough by now to suspect he was anything but.

Slowly, Augustine said, “I could lie.”

“Well then it’s a fucking stalemate, isn’t it.” John shoved his hands in his pockets. “Ianthe said you weren’t looking so hot. Fucking sucks in there, doesn’t it?”

“Do you want me to swallow my pride and come begging to you?”

“Nah. Wouldn’t be fun,” he said. “Okay, I’ve got it. Here’s what we’re going to do.”

And there John smiled that wicked half-smile that suited him so well. He stepped closer and sat carefully on her lap—their lap—straddling their thighs; then he grabbed a fistful of hair on the back of her head and kissed Augustine on the mouth.

Ianthe had kissed him minutes ago—it had been a fumbling, tentative kiss; nothing like this. This was hungry and greedy, all teeth. Augustine kissed back like he was drowning; he used Ianthe’s tongue to lick into John’s mouth until they were all out of breath; used her teeth to bite John’s lip hard enough that he winced. It felt good in a way that went beyond the physical sensations: it was the breathless relief of human contact after months of hell, the new soul inside her returned to the world of the living.

When they pulled back, John’s smile looked softer.

“I really, really missed you,” he said. “Okay, so, I can yank you back and it’s going to hurt like a bitch—you, not Ianthe, she’ll be fine—you left enough bits behind that I can make a new body. The soul is all I need and well… we’ve got an anchor right here.” He caressed Ianthe’s gilded arm. “I can do it. I think.”

His hold tightened; he did something, closing his eyes and sending shocks through her body that weren’t exactly pleasant, if painless. She felt the shape of the foreign soul inside of her, half there and half somewhere else. John’s hands around Augustine’s soul, lifting it bit by bit—pulling him out of the pit.

Then he stopped.

“The thing is,” John said, “you’re right. You could lie. And you did fuck with me—you hurt me, and I’m not sure I can trust you not to pull that shit again.”

Ianthe’s mouth opened. Augustine said, “John.”

“So, you know, it’s an open offer. I can get you out, I will get you out.” His fingers caressed her face; Ianthe shivered with somebody else’s fear. “I will get you out. Next, time, maybe.”

And then he pushed him back in.

It hurt, but not as much as getting the soul through her had. Like a sudden deflation, a heavy weight newly removed from her, leaving a stretched-out soul behind.

She was panting. John had stood up; he was staring down at her with his hands in his pockets. “Sorry for putting you through that. Humans aren’t meant to be conduits through hell, not even Lyctors.”

There were tears in her eyes; she blinked them off. “Are you… you can’t leave him there.”

“I’m not leaving him there. Just teaching a lesson. You heard him, and I can’t afford to have him running around if he keeps trying to drag me back there with him. Let him have fun with the ghosts for a while, he’ll realise how much he doesn’t want to be in Hell either, we can go back to stabbing each other in the back in a more civilised way.”

“No, I mean, you can’t leave him there,” Ianthe said, urgently. “He’s tied to me. He’s going to come back—he’ll drive me fucking insane.”

“No, he won’t. I threw him back a little deeper down than he was. It’ll be a while before he climbs back up.” Then he said, “Look, I’m not as bad as that. I wouldn’t kill you even if you were hallucinating all of that, I wouldn’t let him fuck you up that bad, either. You’re my people—you and him. You’re mine. Nothing bad will happen. Just… tell me when he starts climbing back up, and we’ll see.”

Clever girl, Augustine would’ve said. She knew what that meant, the catch in the fine print. ‘Stick with me, and I’ll take care of it. Go off on your own, and the next time Augustine shows up good luck surviving it.’

That was whom she’d tied herself to. A dickhead. Well—she’d gone into it with her eyes open, and she’d make out of it exactly where she wanted to be.

“I guess we’ll see,” Ianthe said. “I’ll hold you to that.”