“There’s no reason to kill me,” you said, and marvelled at it, suddenly, the ease of the conclusion.

The Saint of Duty did not answer you. He stood in the corridor with an impassive face, and you said: “The Resurrection Beast will be here within hours. I am going to die. And yet you are here to kill me now?” He did not answer. “That isn’t the act of someone removing a liability. You are either killing me for fun—doubtful—or out of anger—I’m unsure why—or for personal gain.”

Ortus looked at you again. Then he sheathed that plain rapier and twitched the wicked point of his spear up to face the ceiling.

“You’re wrong,” he said.

“How?”

“You’re still a liability.”

“Tell me.”

You thought he would not answer. But then he said, haltingly, in the manner of a man saying something difficult in a language he did not speak well: “Don’t go to the River. End it yourself. Before they breach. Cut off your oxygen. Or however you like.” At your expression, Ortus added as though it were an explanation: “So you don’t … suffer.”

“Why do you care if I suffer?”

“Because I was the one who failed you,” he said briefly. “I pulled too many punches.” And: “Sorry.”

And, most horribly of all: “This wasn’t my idea.”

Then the Saint of Duty turned and walked away from you, disappearing out the mouth of the corridor, into the habitation atrium and beyond. You were suddenly seized with the conviction that the universe would not have judged you if you had lain down in that corridor, shed fifteen years, and thrown an absolute tantrum; if you had pelted the cool panel floor beneath you with hands and fists and wailed. It meant so much that you would die with so many questions unanswered, would go to your unkind grave understanding absolutely jack shit.

“Whose idea?” you called after him, and your voice rose to a shriek. “Whose idea?”

In a way, it helped. Nothing added to your resolution to live so much as someone else suggesting that you die. Ten minutes later you were eating leftover stew in the kitchen with something close to animation, choking down your last lunch before the apocalypse. And you were angry. You were always such a little bitch when you were angry.

39

THE HERALDS OF NUMBER SEVEN—the ghost of a swiftly murdered planet in the demesne of Dominicus—arrived that evening, around forty-three minutes before the habitation lights were due to go off. They had already been dimmed to preserve power, as apparently the defence mechanism locked inside a Lyctor did not need light to fight by—nor senses of any kind, in fact; Mercymorn said they did not even feel pain. Unlike them, you generally needed light and felt pain, but you were the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House. The first was negotiable, and the second was irrelevant.

When the first Herald broke through the Mithraeum’s honour guard of asteroids, it was not particularly terrifying. You had made your preparations. You sat on the floor before your window that looked out onto nothing. The great sword you had taken off and laid before you, as though it were a beloved talisman and not a sickening, befuddling relic, a back-breaking burden your dead self told you to carry. You were almost fond of it, except when you looked at it, at which point all fondness was dispelled.

The courier of the Beast landed on a part of the Mithraeum’s hull very far away from you. You did not feel the impact or hear a sound. It was only when Augustine’s voice came over the communicator, “Confirmed impact. West quadrant, third ring, engineering room,” that you even knew it existed.

God’s voice: “How many minutes before you’re in the halo?”

“Depends. Impact, again. Also west, third ring, same location. Are they spearheading? Impact. North quadrant, habitation ring. Ortus, that’s quite near you.”

A crackle. “I’m fine.”

Another crackle: Mercy’s voice. “Less chatter on the line. Wait until they breach. They’ll try to smother us first, and roast the station.”

“No temperature change,” said God.

Then you felt it: the first vibrational thump, and it sounded astonishingly close. From above you—direction was difficult; thanergetic sense irrelevant—what sounded like a small meteor had struck the hull of the Mithraeum. Silence before, and silence after. There was no distant roaring, perceived through the shudder of the hull and shutters—no monstrous noise, no pageantry. The messengers of the Resurrection Beast arrived without fanfare, and for a moment you resented the anticlimax.

Augustine, on the comm: “Confirmed. East quadrant, habitation. That’s you, girls. Don’t bite your tongues.”

You thought it was one of Augustine’s little jokes, until the fear hit you.

It hit as a smell. Your nostrils quivered, and your head was filled with a strange petroleum odour, redolent of old machines; but there was a sweetish underlayer to it, like vomit. It assaulted you in the manner of a migraine headache. Then the punch—like the Saint of Joy to one’s kidneys—low in your stomach, racing up the central line of your body, seizing your heart in its teeth and shaking. Your palms ran wet. You made a gulping, golloping sound in the back of your throat—you tried to close your eyes as though that were some escape, but it was not—you tilted forward, gasping, your pulse bellowing, your ears deafened. You were suddenly convinced that there were little things crawling over your skin—you rubbed frantically at your forearms—you shivered convulsively, as though to fling them off; you touched obsessively at your ears; you cringed when a stray hair fell across your forehead.

But as you lurched—fretted—perceived—you fought. You made yourself one inhalation and exhalation—reduced yourself to one sensation, following it from down at the toes up all the lines of your body to the crown of your head. As the sensation rose, you filled with contempt for a stranger’s insanity. You had enough of your own to contend with. After a few minutes, you came to with nothing more than a sense of embarrassment, a desire to itch, and a mild heat rash.

Ianthe was screaming over the comm. Everyone waited politely for her to stop.

You said: “Is that all?”

And with a crackle, God said: “It will be like this until they breach, Harrowhark.”

The Princess of Ida’s voice came over the communicator, a little ragged. “How long?”

“Over an hour,” said Mercy.

And Augustine said: “Sit tight, kiddies. The fun starts now.”

* * *

Your room had long ago plunged into near-complete darkness, leaving no distraction from the great rocking thump—thump—thump—of body after body flinging itself against the great mass coating the hull. There was nothing to see—the shutters were down—but you could feel the terrible vibration, hear the groan of chitin on metal, the cataclysmic rending of steel by fungous claw.

It was very cold. A fine shimmer of frost now coated your cheeks, your hair, your eyelashes. In that smothering dark, your breath emerged as wisps of wet grey smoke. Sometimes you screamed a little, which no longer embarrassed you. You understood your body’s reaction to the proximity. Screaming was the least of what might happen.

God’s voice came very calmly over the comm: “Ten minutes until breach.”

* * *

And you walked to your death like a lover.

EPIPARODOS

NINE MONTHS AND TWENTY-NINE DAYS BEFORE THE EMPEROR’S MURDER

“THESE TWO ARE INTENDED FOR YOU,” said Harrowhark Nonagesimus. “They are to be opened only in the event of my death or of the other happenstance, though I have very little hope of you not opening them the moment my back is turned. The other twenty-two are written in an unbreakable code only I can decrypt, intertwined with a false chamber-code that, if even merely beheld, curses you, your family, and the restive bones of your ancestors, for as long as the name of Ianthe Tridentarius is whispered in necromantic hearing. Twenty-four, in all.”

“I would have just gone with a blood ward, personally,” said Ianthe.

“A blood ward is for those without imagination,” said the astonishingly nude-faced girl. The Ninth necromancer unpainted was revealed to be a lean-faced, diamond-jawed nunlet, with very dark brows divided by a crisscross frowning mark—striking looking, certainly, even spiritual, a good subject for a painting if you were ready to settle for The Ninth House Frowned. “As I cannot reasonably expect not to bleed for the next myriad, I cannot rely upon a blood ward, and neither should you. Are we going to do this, Third, or not?”

“This may not work.”

“You have reminded me.”