The pillar of arms was destroyed by a long, sweeping blow from one of the construct’s innumerable bone whips, and she fell to earth again, gravity arrested by the hands helpfully piling themselves up to reduce her fall to terrible from obituary. She landed in a pile next to her necromancer, and her knee went crunch.

“I have bested my father,” said Harrow to nobody, staring upward at nothing, alight with fierce and untrammelled triumph. They were both lying supine on a pile of what felt like feet. “I have bested my father and my grandmother—every single necromancer ever taught by my House—every necromancer who has ever touched a skeleton. Did you see me? Did you behold me, Griddle?”

This was all said somewhat thickly, through pink and bloodied teeth, before Harrow smugly passed out.

* * *

The dust was clearing. The construct could not move. It was making low, plaintive grunts as it thrashed in its half coffin of regenerating ash: with its tentacles, it picked and smashed at the bone cocoons on its back legs, but as soon as it broke some off the stuff simply crumbled back into being. Now that it was concentrating so completely on itself, Gideon could find the cavalier of the Sixth.

Camilla, as she’d seen from above, had caught up with Cytherea the First. She had one hand in the Lyctor’s singed curls, dragging her head back. The other hand pressed a knife against the smaller woman’s throat. This would have been a commanding position, except that the knife blade was quivering in place. Its edge creased the pale skin, but it hadn’t drawn blood, even though Camilla seemed to be leaning on it as hard as she could. Whatever terrible force was holding the knife at bay was also slowly peeling the skin from the cavalier of the Sixth’s hand.

“You’re a nice girl,” the Lyctor said. “I had a nice girl as a cavalier too … once. She died for me. What can you do?”

Camilla said nothing. Her face was slick with sweat and blood. Her crop of dark, blunt-cut hair was powdered grey with bone. Cytherea looked faintly amused by the blade that was a finger’s breadth away from being buried in her jugular. She drawled, “Is this meant to kill me?”

“Give me time,” said Camilla, through gritted teeth.

Cytherea gave this due consideration. “I’d rather not,” she said.

Gideon saw, as Camilla could not, the tentacle of bone that wound silently upward from the mess behind the cavalier, tipped with a vicious point the length of a duellist’s dagger. Even if she’d had a pristine knee and no necro to haul, Gideon was too far away to save her. The barb drew back, like a poised stinger, and Gideon yelled, “Cam!”

Perhaps it was the yell; perhaps it was Camilla’s extraordinary instincts. The Sixth cav twisted sideways, and the hook that should have punched through her spine drove into the meat of her shoulder instead. Her eyes went wide with shock, and the knife fell from her half-flayed hand. Cytherea took the opportunity to shove her contemptuously in the chest, and Camilla toppled backward onto the ground, the sharpened bone still buried in her flesh.

Cytherea took up her rapier. In a panic, Gideon began trying to kick her futile way through a jungle of yellow bone, but putting her weight on her bad leg made her stagger and almost drop. Camilla was struggling herself free of the bone skewer, but another tendril had snaked up across her thighs, trapping her against the floor. The Lyctor stood above her with her green sword gleaming in the light.

“You can’t hurt me,” said Cytherea, almost despairingly. “Nothing can hurt me anymore, cavalier.”

The sword glittered. Gideon thrashed through a mesh of bones that her adept could have parted mid-yawn. As the Lyctor drew back her arm for a clean thrust into Camilla’s heart, four inches of bloodied steel emerged from her belly.

Camilla stared up at her as though trying to work out why everything hadn’t gone black. A red stain was spreading across the thin bedsheet. The Lyctor’s face didn’t change, but she turned her head slightly. A pale head was now nearly pillowed on her shoulder, peeking over, as though to make sure the sword had hit home. Colourless fair hair spilled over Cytherea’s collarbone like a waterfall: the figure behind her smiled.

“Spoke too soon, old news,” said Ianthe.

“Oh,” said Cytherea, “oh, my! A baby Lyctor.”

The construct was stuck fast in the trap that Harrowhark had laid for it, and behind them Gideon could hear its central bulk straining to see what had pained its mistress, like a great skull swivelling in its web. It was held fast, but it still had range, and it lifted its spines to even the fight.

Ianthe ran her free hand over the blood trickling down Cytherea’s hip. She flicked hot drops over her shoulder, where they hung in the air, sizzling. They ran together like quicksilver—spread out, widened and flattened into a shimmering, transparent pink sheet. Ianthe narrowed her watercolour eyes and pointed her free hand upward. The sheet tightened, a wide, watery disc of blood, separating the two Lyctors from the construct.

A barbed bone stinger drove straight at Ianthe’s head, hit the shimmering disc, and dissolved. Gideon bodychecked her way clear, hauling herself to a corner of the room as far away from the construct as possible. She wasn’t thrilled about approaching the embracing Lyctors, but if she played her cards right, she could still get Harrowhark and Camilla out of here. Another stinger, then another, hurtled into the blood disc and evaporated. Despite herself, she turned to watch: the construct stiffened a dozen of its tendrils, two dozen, aiming them like javelins at Ianthe’s tiny form, and Gideon remembered Isaac Tettares, impaled on fifty spines at once.

As Gideon passed it, Ianthe’s blood pool spun even wider, an aegis, a shield. The construct struck from its stuck position, with its whole gathered array of swift spears, enough of them to reduce Ianthe to a double handful of chopped meat. Every single one went up in a cloud of bad-smelling steam.

The remaining stumps drew back in confusion. The construct swayed, and bones dropped free from its superstructure here and there, rattling down to join the general debris around its trapped legs. There was suddenly a lot more space; injured as well as pinned, the construct seemed to be drawing back on itself, pulling in its remaining limbs as if trying to keep them away from Ianthe.

Gideon snuck past the foot of the dais in time to see Cytherea smile. “I’ve always wanted a little sister,” she said.

She walked away from Ianthe’s sword with a bad, liquid sound. Camilla was still wriggling in place, trying to tug herself free of the spike in her shoulder, and Cytherea stepped on her, treading on her collarbone as thoughtlessly as on a ridge in the carpet. Once she was a couple of paces clear, she turned and fell into a beautiful fluid ready stance. She kept running her fingers over the blood at her abdomen, apparently amazed by her capacity to bleed. Gideon wished she was less interested and more dying, but you had to take victories where you could get them.

The other, much newer Lyctor raised Naberius’s sword, kicking bones away for footing.

“I’ve tried the sister thing already,” said Ianthe, circling around to one side, “and I wasn’t any good at it.”

“But I have so much to teach you,” said Cytherea.

They both charged. Once upon a time it would have been pretty cool to watch the perfect showman’s sword of the Third House compete against an ancient and undiluted warrior of the Seventh, but Gideon was crouching down next to Camilla and trying to gauge whether or not her own kneecap was trying to slide off somewhere weird. She had laid down the unconscious Harrowhark behind a pillar on a pile of the softest-looking bones, with her longsword for company, and was wishing fervently that her necromancer was awake. She grabbed Camilla’s shoulder in one hand and the slick bone spur in the other, said, “Sorry,” and pulled.