What bothered you was that now the Princess of Ida—pale haired, all height and elbows, twilight shadows beneath her eyes—was looking at you with an expression you struggled to remember ever seeing on her face. Ianthe was fond of languid attitudes and postures; she affected a heavy, artificial tedium, or a faint and glittering malice, sometimes even a self-deprecating and idle humourousness; but she looked at you now with a soft and thoroughly uncharacteristic hunger. She smiled down at you with a frank, overfamiliar indulgence that frightened you. Ianthe looked lit from within.

“Good morning, my comrade,” she said. “My colleague, my ally. I do like your eyes, Harrowhark—like flower petals in a darkened room. And even I can admit that your eyelashes are delicious. Stop wearing that pillowcase any time you like—I’ve seen your face before, and I know it looks like both of your parents were right-angled triangles. We must work with what we’ve got, as the flesh magician said to the leper.”

Your whole soul flinched. A livid heat rose up your neck. With a titanic struggle, you managed not to shield your face with your hands, to be sure of your bedsheet mask. Lyctoral perception had made you complacent. Ianthe Tridentarius was a black hole where no heart could be sensed beating and no brain could be seen sparking. The brain, you knew grudgingly, existed. The heart was an open question. She looked at your face—saw, most likely, her own death reflected in your expression—and reached inside her robe. The palm of your hand slapped to her forehead with a ringing thwack. You could not sense her: she was a locked door in a dark room to you; but with a touch you could feel the orbital bones you might remove from her face.

“Before you do anything I am quick to reassure you that you will regret,” said the other Lyctor, who had not moved—who had not recoiled at your palm’s promise, except, perhaps, a quick shuttering of those mixed-up eyes—“I have a message for you.”

The hand slowly withdrew from the robe. None of this would have been enough, except (the blood howled in your ears; you thought you heard footsteps, but then they slurred into voices, then back into footsteps again) that caught between Ianthe’s fingers was a piece of flimsy with the name Harrowhark clearly upon it. The name Harrowhark was lettered in your hand. Underneath, in smaller lettering, and still your hand: To be given to Harrowhark immediately upon coherence.

You looked at the letter. You looked at Ianthe. Even in that short interval, the battlefield of her eyes had changed. From beneath your palm, you could see that one iris was now wholly a washed-out purple, like a fading bruise or a dying flower; the other one was blue and brown commingled. This glittering mess of heterochromatics focused on you, totally calm, utterly sure of itself.

“I wish you’d explained to me what coherence meant,” she complained. “Did you mean coherent as in, I recognise objects and their names? Did you mean coherent as in, I am no longer remotely out to lunch, which means you’re still not eligible? I wasn’t going anywhere near you in the first instance of you opening your eyes. Your only settings were power-vomit and murder.”

“Tell me how you came to have what you are holding,” you croaked.

“You put it in my own hands, you skull-faced fruitcake,” she said soothingly. “Go on. Take it. It’s yours.”

You withdrew your hand from her forehead, and you took it. You were desperately afraid that your fingers were shaking, and that you would not know to make them stop. In your lap, under the strong white light of the hospital quarter, you could see no error or artifice in the writing: it was yours, not an exceptional copy. It was written in your blood. When you touched the smooth, plex-rendered surface, you could see in your mind’s eye the pen nib, the soft bite of the metal into the inside of your lip.

Unfolding the flimsy and spreading it across your knees was the final gobbet boiling off the skeleton. The letter was written in Ninth House crypt-script; your own cipher, based off that of your parents and developed when you were seven years old. It was unbreakable to anyone who lacked your rosary, Marshal Crux, and a hundred or so years to spare.

You read:

ADDRESSING THE REVEREND LADY HARROWHARK NONAGESIMUS, KNOWN AS THE REVEREND DAUGHTER BY HER OWN DESIRE, NOW HARROWHARK THE FIRST, WRITING AS THE SAME, NOW DEAD.

“I’ll give you a moment,” said Ianthe, and she stood and crossed over to the window, standing bathed in the light of the nearest star.

* * *

ADDRESSING THE REVEREND LADY HARROWHARK NONAGESIMUS, KNOWN AS THE REVEREND DAUGHTER BY HER OWN DESIRE, NOW HARROWHARK THE FIRST, WRITING AS THE SAME, NOW DEAD.

LETTER #2 OF #24. TO BE READ IMMEDIATELY ON COHERENCE.

Harrowhark—

As I write, it has been forty-eight hours since you became a Lyctor at Canaan House. By the time you read this you will not recall the writing thereof, as the Harrowhark of the writing will be dead and gone. Her resurrection constitutes a fail state and must be avoided at all costs.

This letter cannot answer questions. What I have done I will refer to as the work, and its character is actively harmful for you to know. I will instead provide guidelines on how to live the rest of your life. As your life may hopefully now extend into the myriads, it is of enormous import that you are not tempted to deviate from them. You are the living surety of promises I have made. Break troth with me, and from beyond my destruction I will brand you Tomb heretic, cut off utterly from that which lies on the frozen altar, asleep and dead; removed from the adoration thereof, and any promise of part in her resurrection.

GUIDELINE #1: STAY ALIVE.

You may not end your own life through suicide. You may not end your own life through carelessness. Accidental death must be avoided at all costs and never accepted as an outcome. The work relies upon your continuance.

GUIDELINE #2: YOU CAN NEVER RETURN TO THE NINTH HOUSE.

The way home is closed to you. Do not set foot within the House again. Do not allow yourself to be taken there by force.

GUIDELINE #3: THE SWORD WILL REMAIN ON YOU AT ALL TIMES.

Wipe it down with your arterial blood nightly. Coat the blade in the ash which regrows. Do not cut flesh with the naked blade. Do not cut bone with the naked blade. Even this may not prove enough. Treat the sword as your promised death, and act according to the first guideline.

GUIDELINE #4: YOU ARE COMPROMISED.

You may already suspect this, if you’re not as big a fool as I take you for. I will confirm your access to the Lyctoral well. This battery is, most likely, the extent of your capability. Make up for your inevitable failings through study. Your understanding of flesh and spirit magic is execrable, so start there. Do not aim to only build upon what you already know. It pains me to admit this, but you know piss-all. I refuse to let you build your house on such shiftless & ureal sand.

GUIDELINE #5: YOU OWE IANTHE TRIDENTARIUS THE FAVOUR OF THE CHAIN.

This will be difficult to justify. I will therefore not justify it. Tridentarius has made what has come to pass possible. I owe her a debt that you will undoubtedly be paying for the rest of your life. The agreement does end on your death. The agreement does extend into the House, but NOT into the Tomb. The agreement is singular but does take precedence over and above any debt you have sworn to anyone lesser than the Holy Corpse, over and above the Emperor of the Nine Houses. In order to avoid philosophical quandaries she will expect you to re-swear immediately on receipt of the letter, and any failure to do so undoes the whole business. Do not be tardy here.

It goes without saying that Ianthe will destroy you if she can. She has helped me ably, but it has cost her nothing and you everything. I have guarded from her full understanding of the work so that she cannot undo it on a whim or by accident. You are in her power. I am in no doubt of her misusing it. You yourself never had power over anyone else but you misused it violently.

GUIDELINE #6: READ THE OTHER MISSIVES ONLY IF AND WHEN YOU MEET THEIR REQUIREMENTS.

I have left other instructions in case of new circumstances. Ianthe holds twenty-four of these letters and will give you twenty— two, including this one. They are numbered accordingly. Memorise the requirements and carry the letters on you at all times, ready to act the moment you are required to read them. Follow their instructions without hesitation. I repeat: do not read them otherwise.

To myself: a brief break in guidelines follows, before the last. You will think at this point that I have given you a terrible hand to play the game with. I am not unsympathetic. Nonetheless, understand that I envy you more than I have ever envied anyone, and that I look upon your birth as a blessing. Look upon me as a Harrowhark who was handed the first genuine choice of our lives; the only choice ever given where we had free will to say, No, and free will to say, Yes.

Accept that in this instance I have chosen to say, No.

GUIDELINE #7: EXAMINE IANTHE’S JAW AND TONGUE AFTER YOU READ THIS.

Owing to her Lyctoral status this will require physical touch. Under no circumstances can you let her know you are examining them. Do whatever it takes. If you suspect either jaw or tongue has been replaced, DO NOT SWEAR THE OATH. Instead kill her immediately.

In the hope of a future forgiveness, I remained,

HARROWHARK NONAGESIMUS

* * *