Gideon had been eleven when the Lord and Lady of the House of the Ninth had slipped into death in sudden, awful secret. It was such a huge bag of ass how it had happened: what she’d found, what she’d seen. She hadn’t been sad. If she’d been stuck being Harrow’s parents she would have done the same years ago.

“Listen,” said the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth, rising to stand.

The enthroned Lord and Lady should have taken charge of the sacred ritual, but they couldn’t, because they were mega-dead. Harrowhark had handily gotten around this by giving them a vow of silence. Every year she added to their penitents’ vows—of fasting, of daily contemplation, of seclusion—so blandly and barefacedly that it seemed inevitable that someone would eventually say hang on a minute, this sounds like … A LOAD OF HOT GARBAGE, and she’d be found out. But she never was. Crux covered for her, and so did Aiglamene, and the Lord’s cavalier had helpfully decided to die the day that Priam died. And so Gideon covered too, hating every moment, saving up this last secret in the hopes that with it she could extort her freedom.

All prayer beads stopped clacking. The hands of Harrow’s parents stilled unnaturally in unison. Gideon slung her arms around the back of her pew and kicked one foot up atop the other, wishing her head would stop ringing.

“The noble House of the Ninth has called you here today,” said Harrowhark, “because we have been given a gift of enormous import. Our sacred Emperor—the Necrolord Prime, the King of the Nine Renewals, our Resurrector—has sent us summons.”

That got asses in seats. The skeletons remained perfectly still and attentive, but a querulous excitement arose from the assorted Ninth congregation. There were soft cries of joy. There were exclamations of praise and thankfulness. The letter could have been a drawing of a butt and they would have been lining up thrice to kiss the edge of the paper.

“I will share this letter with you,” said Harrowhark, “because nobody loves their people, their sacred brothers and sacred sisters, as the Ninth House loves her people—her devotees and her priests, her children and her faithful.” (Gideon thought Harrow was slathering it on pretty thick.) “If the Reverend Mother will permit her daughter to read?”

Like she’d say no with Harrow’s hands on her strings. With a pallid smile, Pelleamena gently inclined her head in a way she never had in life: alive, she had been as chill and remote as ice at the bottom of a cave. “With my gracious mother’s permission,” said Harrow, and began to read:

“ADDRESSING THE HOUSE OF THE NINTH, ITS REVEREND LADY PELLEAMENA HIGHT NOVENARIUS AND ITS REVEREND LORD PRIAM HIGHT NONIUSVIANUS:

“Salutations to the House of the Ninth, and blessings upon its tombs, its peaceful dead, and its manifold mysteries.

“His Celestial Kindliness, the First Reborn, begs this house to honour its love for the Creator, as set in the contract of tenderness made on the day of the Resurrection, and humbly asks for the first fruits of your household …

(“My name is listed here,” said Harrowhark, simpering modestly, then with less enthusiasm: “—and Ortus’s.”)

“For in need now are the Emperor’s Hands, the most blessed and beloved of the King Undying, the faithful and the everlasting! The Emperor calls now for postulants to the position of Lyctor, heirs to the eight stalwarts who have served these ten thousand years: as many of them now lie waiting for the rivers to rise on the day they wake to their King, those lonely Guard remaining petition for their numbers to be renewed and their Lord above Lords to find eight new liegemen.

“To this end we beg the first of your House and their cavalier to kneel in glory and attend the finest study, that of being the Emperor’s bones and joints, his fists and gestures …

“Eight we hope will meditate and ascend to the Emperor in glory in the temple of the First House, eight new Lyctors joined with their cavaliers; and if the Necrolord Highest blesses but does not take, they shall return home in full honour, with trump and timbrel.

“There is no dutiful gift so perfect, nor so lovely in his eyes.”

Harrowhark lowered the paper to a long silence; a real silence, without even the hint of a prayer knuckle clacking or a skeleton’s jaw falling off. The Ninth seemed completely taken aback. There was a wheezing squeal from one of the pews in the transept behind Gideon as one of the faithful decided to go the whole hog and have a heart attack, and this distracted everyone. The nuns tried their best, but a few minutes later it was confirmed that one of the hermits had died of shock, and everyone around him celebrated his sacred good fortune. Gideon failed to hide a snicker as Harrowhark sighed, obviously calculating inside her head what this did to the current Ninth census.

“I won’t!”

A second hand disturbed the community tomb as Ortus’s mother stood, finger trembling, her other arm draped around her son’s shoulders. He looked completely affrighted. She looked as though she were about to follow the faithful departed to an untimely grave, face frozen beneath her alabaster base paint, black skull paint slipping with sweat.

“My son—my son,” she cried out, shrill and cracked; “my first-born sweet! His father’s endowment! My only joy!”

“Sister Glaurica, please,” said Harrow, looking bored.

Ortus’s mother had wrapped both arms around him now, and was weeping fully into his shoulder. Her own shook with very real fear and grief. He looked wetly depressed. She was saying, between sobs: “I gave you my husband—Lord Noniusvianus, I gave you my spouse—Lord Noniusvianus, do you demand my son of me? Do you demand my son? Surely not! Surely not now!”

“You forget yourself, Glaurica,” Crux snapped.

“I know the things that befall cavaliers, my lord, I know his fate!”

“Sister Glaurica,” Harrowhark said, “be calm.”

“He is young,” quavered Ortus’s mother, half-pulling him into the safety of the chevet when she realised Lord Noniusvianus would not intercede. “He is young, he is not robust.”

“Some would say otherwise,” said Harrowhark, sotto voce.

But Ortus said, with his big, sombre eyes and his squashed, disheartened voice: “I do fear death, my Lady Harrowhark.”

“A cavalier should welcome death,” said Aiglamene, affronted.

“Your father welcomed death unflinching,” said Crux.

At this tender piece of sympathy, his mother burst into tears. The congregation muttered, mostly reproachful, and Gideon started to perk up. It wasn’t quite the worst day of her life now. This was some A-grade entertainment. Ortus, not bothering to disentangle himself from his sobbing parent, was mumbling that he would make sure she was provided for; the heinous great-aunts had returned to prayer and were crooning a wordless hymn; Crux was loudly abusing Ortus’s mother; and Harrowhark stood in this sea, mute and contemptuous as a monument.

“—leave and pray for guidance, or I’ll have you, I’ll take you off the sanctuary,” Crux was saying.

“—I gave this house everything; I paid the highest price—”

“—what comes of Mortus marrying an immigrant Eighth, you shameful hag—”

Gideon was grinning so hugely that her split lips recommenced bleeding. Amid the massed heads of the uncaring dead and the disturbed devout, Harrowhark’s eyes found hers, and that disdainful mask slipped in its blankness; her lips thinned. The people clamoured. Gideon winked.