Harrow the Ninth Read online

  Your gaze met Ianthe’s. She had followed the whole thing in rank fascination; now she quirked her own eyebrows at you in what you had come to understand was, Who knows? For a moment you worried that, come another myriad, you and she might be able to carry on such a conversation: that you would know her intent by the twist of her mouth and her exhalation, to the point where you could speak without dialogue.

  In the end, Mercymorn said, “Blech!” and turned on one heel and stalked out. She flung open the door, said anxiously, “White wine!” and with that cryptic epigram, disappeared.

  The Saint of Patience said, “That went significantly better than I thought it might,” without a glance at his sink of bloodied teeth. “Come on—I want one of you on each of my arms on this battlefront. On my right, Ianthe. I’m not clutching that bone; I never did like ’em skinny—Harrowhark, you really didn’t get any height, did you? Lord! Imagine being crystallized a teenager, forever! Whatever you see tonight,” he added, suddenly serious as the grave, “do not get involved.”

  Behind his back—as you walked down the corridor—the Princess of Ida mouthed at you smugly: Quick! Sophisticated! Devious!

  30

  IT TURNED OUT THAT AUGUSTINE THE FIRST—Saint of Patience, founder of the court of Koniortos, genius of the River—ten thousand years old and oldest among saints, quick and sophisticated and devious—had a shrewd plan to assist you in the murder of his dutiful brother. His shrewd plan: to get everyone profoundly drunk.

  Two hours later you sat amid a pillage. The remains of a meal lay before you, more than you had ever eaten of your own volition. You’d had to. The only other option was unconsciousness. A pyre of candles cast their radiance across the snowy white linen and the silver cutlery that the Saint of Patience had so carefully set, and on the crumb-strewn plate that had once contained rolls of some description, but they had been eaten—or put somewhere—you did not know, and you didn’t care. The shining bones of Cohort heroes hung as silent observers on either side of the room, and you fancied weariness in their eyeless expressions.

  You were not sure how it had happened. It had seemed to begin as all previous dinners had, just more formal. Maybe Augustine’s cooking was more careful and more lavish—he tended to cook in short bursts of violence, serving many parts of a meal but not all at once, which coming from the Drearburh table you found bewildering. You hadn’t been able to focus on what you were eating; only that by the third course, you had to continue or suffer the consequences. You did not really like the taste of wine, which Augustine had served you before, and had not imagined there could be that much of it. He refilled the glasses before you ever finished one, so that you never made it to the bottom of the first.

  Now, in the smoking ruins of dinner, he and the Saint of Joy, and God and Ianthe, had moved their seats to a cluster at the end of the table. Ianthe’s First House robes were somewhere on the floor, and her elbows were on the tablecloth, and her cheeks were pink, which gave her a spurious loveliness. Augustine had removed his jacket and was sitting in his white button-up shirt. The tie at his throat had come undone entirely to hang limp and black beneath the points of his dishevelled collar. Mercy had it worst: the knot of hair at her neck had come down, and now was springing loose in pale, rose-gold strands, and she was actually sniggering.

  God sat between them. Teacher had his sleeves rolled up to his elbows; if it was a tidier or nicer shirt than he usually wore, you could not tell. The coronet of bones and leaves had fallen from his brow, probably in among the napkins, and his top button was crooked, and every so often he would come around and fill up everyone’s water glasses, and say with increasing earnestness: “Keep drinking water, Harrow,” as though water were the greatest and most impossible boon granted to the Nine Houses. His smile kept crinkling the edges of those white-encircled eyes.

  Every so often you would look over the table at the man you intended to kill. The Saint of Duty had drunk just as much as Augustine, but had an expression like stone, with not a button out of place. He had more than once shared a glance with you that you were very afraid was solidarity. You weren’t sure. You were drinking water. You were drinking a great deal of water.

  “To absent friends,” said Augustine suddenly, and raised his glass.

  And everyone said, “Absent friends,” and raised their glasses, and drank. That was the invention of torture; you had no doubt that either the Third or the Fifth House had come up with the damned rule that whenever you raised your glass and proposed a sentimental toast, everyone had to drink with you. You sipped. You did not have any absent friends.

  “And to our cavaliers,” said the Saint of Joy, quite suddenly, after everyone had drunk.

  Augustine raised his glass again. “I’ll drink to that. To cavaliers—we didn’t deserve ’em … and they didn’t deserve us, as I always say. To Alfred—Cristabel—Pyrrha—Loveday—Naberius—to them all.”

  You saw the Emperor darting an impassive glance at the increasingly disarranged saint at his right, but she did not greet this toast with anger. She simply said, “To Cristabel,” and drained her glass in one single, violent motion. When God briefly pressed the tips of his fingers to the tips of her fingers, she said instantly: “I’m not drunk!!”

  “I’d never think it,” he said.

  You watched Ianthe take another swig of the pale, apple-yellow liquid in her glass. She leaned over to you and murmured, breathlessly: “This is the greatest night of my life.”

  “I’ve drunk enough to Alfred over the years, so let me drink to Cristabel,” said the Saint of Patience, and he drank, and then he swirled the contents of his glass meditatively. “Here’s to Cristabel.”

  Mercy said, with less rancour: “You never liked Cristabel, even before what happened.”

  “Bullshit I didn’t like Cristabel,” he said instantly, with the careful, measured reasonableness of a man you had personally seen get through two bottles of wine. “You know what I feel … you know I don’t think she was the best influence on Alfred … you know I thought they brought out the worst in each other, and I don’t think you disagree.”

  God said, “They were very similar people.”

  “No,” said Augustine. “They weren’t, John. She was a fanatic and an idiot—yes, she was, Mercy—and he … was a man who regretted that he wasn’t. It took surprisingly little to lead my brother astray.”

  “Nobody could lead him where he didn’t want to go,” said God, and his patience took a solemn edge. “You know that.”

  “Lord! Don’t tell me that,” said his Lyctor, faintly smiling. “I have built an entire myriad on the idea that I could’ve made him come around, given five minutes.”

  His sister-saint said nothing to this. She flicked her eyes down to her own glass, instead, and he quickly filled up the awkward pause with, “Anyway, let’s drink to a woman who never divided opinion. Here’s to Pyrrha Dve.”

  All eyes trailed fatally down the table to the Saint of Duty. Your gaze was among them. You grasped the stem of your wineglass in your hand, and you looked at the face of the man who had been necromancer once to a woman called Pyrrha: the inscrutable lack of expression that had greeted you in the bathtub, and the first time he’d walked into the Mithraeum’s chapel.

  He said flatly, with a note of warning: “Augustine.”

  “I mean it. Don’t you think that’s astonishing, after all this time? Even Mercy doesn’t have a bad thing to say about her.” (“Why am I constantly painted as a critical person,” came the inevitable critique.) “I say, here’s to Pyrrha, the woman I cultivated a smoking habit to impress—the cavalier, the legend, the stone-cold fox … John, please stop joggling my elbow, I have heard stone-cold fox from your own holy lips.”

  The Emperor protested, “Respectfully! Respectfully.”

  Ortus said, “Another topic.”

  “Right,” said Augustine. He took another gulp of wine as though to fortify himself, and Ianthe suggested: “To our enemies, older brother.”

/>   “Yes! Great,” he agreed heartily. “A classic. This is why you are my chosen apprentice, chick. To our enemies—the enemies of the Empire—to those safely in the River, that is. I won’t drink to enemies alive, but let’s drink to enemies fallen, as we can afford to be gracious. Let’s drink to the dried-up Blood of Eden.”

  Both the Emperor and Mercy said, immediately: “They’re not gone.”

  “Fine, pedants—I drink to the best of them, gone for absolute certain … not the remnant kooks, idiots, and zealots who think a nuclear missile could give us pause. The commander would never have settled for a nuclear missile … Lord, that was a merry dance she led us. It deserves something. Perhaps it’s a toast.”

  Across the table, you noticed that the Saint of Duty’s knuckles had clenched, just slightly. You had a good sense for knuckles. The Emperor mistook your focus for puzzlement: “It was before you were born, Harrowhark.” (“Long before you were born,” added Mercy owlishly, “because you are three years old.”) “This isn’t really a story that deserves to be told after … three glasses of wine.”

  “That was never three glasses of wine,” said the man to his left.

  “Four glasses of wine,” amended God, which was probably still inadequate. “This is a good lesson for you, girls, not to underestimate anyone. A quarter century ago these fanatics found out about the Resurrection Beasts. Which are classified to the upper echelons of the Cohort, mind, so that was an intelligence effort and a half…”

  “They knew about them,” said Ortus. “They just didn’t know what they were.”

  “Finding out what they were didn’t stop them. They searched one Beast out … threw away half their ships separating a Herald from the pack … killed that Herald, let’s drink to that—” (“To killing Heralds,” said his two elder Lyctors, and they drank, and so did Ianthe, and you put your lips on the glass.) “Even a dead Herald can drive a necromancer insane. They took that thing apart. They made it into knives. They made it into axes. They made it into armour. I mean, extremely frugal, but honestly—that commander had Herald bullets.”

  “Bullets,” said Augustine, “Darts. Throwing knives. Dead shot. Got me right between the eyes once. Mad as a cut snake, and three times as vicious. We nearly lost you to her a few times, didn’t we, Ortus? Should we drink to Commander Wake?”

  The glasses rattled as the Saint of Duty stood, and said the most words you had ever heard him say. “Probably not. Excuse me. I’m tired.”

  They watched him go in pursed-up silence. Teacher rose from the table, silently, as though thinking of going after him. When the door shut behind the escaping Lyctor, Mercymorn hissed, “Augustine, you ass,” and he protested calmly: “He’s fine.”

  “You call that fine—”

  “—sudden access of sympathy a little uncharacteristic when—”

  “—not difficult to imagine that maybe—”

  “Don’t,” said God, sitting back down with some difficulty. “Don’t. Not when you’re finally talking again. This is more amicable conversation than I have seen you two exchange in … it must be decades. Don’t. I’ve had a very nice evening. Harrow, you haven’t drunk too much, have you?”

  You had drunk exceptionally too much, and were dying to purge your kidneys manually. “No,” you said, at the same time that your seatmate said, “Very obviously, yes.”

  “Nobody asked you,” you said, but Ianthe was moving her chair over, and she was slinging her living arm around your bare shoulders—which made them feel less bare and less cold, which you resented—and she was saying, “There, there, Harry.” (God repressed a smile at this vile nickname, for which you once again assured Ianthe slow death.) “Let me introduce you to the special world of sisterhood—I will reveal everything you do, contradict you at every turn, and hold back your hair in the morning.”

  You did not want Ianthe to reveal everything you did, nor did you want her to contradict you at every turn, and you especially did not want her to hold back your hair in the morning. But God said cheerfully, “Here’s to sisters,” and the other Lyctors reached for any glass that contained anything, and you had to take yours—Ianthe pressed it into your hand—and you drank.

  Augustine said, “To sisters, and the women we’ve left behind.”

  God’s mouth was cheerful as ever, but his eyes were not when he said, “Do I have to drink to that?”

  For the first time, you were witness to the Saint of Patience discombobulated. “Apologies, John. Wasn’t meant as a jab.”

  “It doesn’t hurt anymore—most of the time,” said God, and he was still smiling.

  The Lyctor at his left was combing out her hair—it tumbled in a heavy mass around her shoulders, that curious heart-of-a-yellow-rose colour, that pinkish, reddish, goldenish shade that was not entirely appealing. Her glass still had wine in it, which seemed unrealistic, and she said: “Here’s a better toast.… To the Emperor of the Nine Houses. To the Resurrector. To my God.”

  “To Emperor John Gaius, the Necrolord Prime!” said Augustine, and he drained his glass.

  This was the only toast you were willing to drink to; you drank, because you held to your convictions, and also because Ianthe was looking at you with the mocking and faintly pitying expression of someone who did not expect you to drink. This made you drink twice.

  “I’m not going to drink to myself,” Teacher was saying. “I’m not the best man who ever lived, but I’m not quite that much of a narcissist.”

  The Saint of Joy said, with uncharacteristic ferocity: “You are the best man who ever lived.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” said Augustine.

  You could not behold God’s expression for any great length of time. Augustine stood, and he refilled his glass, and he refilled Mercymorn’s. He clinked his wineglass against hers with a little crystal tinkle—she beheld him with dim and unfeeling eyes—and they drank in silence, at either side of the Emperor of the Nine Houses.

  Eventually, she said: “I think I wish Cytherea were here.”

  “I don’t,” said the saint on the other side. “We would have had to suffer her favourite conversation of Who had the hottest cavalier? And my answer hasn’t changed for anyone’s money. I don’t care that she was ten years my senior, Pyrrha Dve was hotter than the very fires of Hell.”

  “Agreed,” said God.

  “John, you dog.”

  “An absolute bombshell,” said God. He looked deeply into Augustine’s eyes, took another slug of wine, and then said in graveyard tones: “Though maybe not quite such a bombshell as your mother.”

  It destroyed some cavern of your reverence to watch Augustine punch the Prince Undying on the arm, and to watch the Prince Undying gamely cuff him back. Part of your brain temporarily calcified into atheism. You had not thought it would be like this. From the day the letter arrived in Drearburh, you’d thought that your Lyctoral days would be spent in prayer, training, and the beauty of necromantic mysteries. You did not think any part of it would be spent honestly quite drunk, wearing a piece of material no larger than a towel, and with Ianthe Tridentarius’s fingers idly caressing the hair at the nape of your neck. For a moment, you wondered wildly if you had hit your head quite hard entering the shuttle out of Drearburh, and had hallucinated everything subsequent.

  Mercymorn said peevishly: “I always thought Nigella was prettier,” and both men assured her, “You’re not wrong,” “Good choice, et cetera,” until Augustine said gloomily: “Try getting a look-in with Cassy around, though.”

  You turned your head and muttered into Ianthe’s ear, knowing your desperation was naked: “When do we leave?”

  “The time has not yet come,” she murmured. You looked into her shining brown-flecked eyes and were stricken with panic that the time might never come.

  Mercymorn finished off another glass of wine—Teacher removed her wineglass, and then, thoughtfully, removed the bottle closest to her, and then removed any bottles of wine within her reach—and she placed her tranquil oval
of a face into her slender hand, and she said: “You’re wrong, Augustine. You still hate Cristabel … you hated my cavalier long before what she did.”

  He was arrested in the process of refilling his glass. You had no idea how anyone could drink as much as the Saint of Patience had and remain coherent. He put down the bottle and said, “Do I?”

  God said, “This isn’t a conversation either of you have to have. Not now. Especially not after five glasses of wine.”

  “Lot more than five. No. No, it’s fine. Judge ye not. Let her dig him up again,” said Augustine, though now he sounded a trifle unsteady. “Do I, Mercy? God help me, I don’t think I do.”

  She said, “Look me in the eyes and say that.”

  Augustine stood, with nary a tremble. He wiped his mouth carefully with his handkerchief again, and although God had half-risen too, again—put his hand on Augustine’s arm, and looked at him, and whatever passed between them was too swift to classify—he moved next to the Saint of Joy’s chair. He crouched a little so that they were eye to eye—in the candlelight you could not tell whether you thought they looked appallingly old, or no older than Ianthe—and he said, “Joy, what’s done is done. They’re dead. The crime is punished. I don’t hate Cristabel.”

  Her face was savage and smooth and implacable. “Say it again,” she said.

  “I don’t hate Cristabel,” he said lowly. “Dear, I barely hate you.”

  For a moment you thought you were about to see a replay of what had happened in his rooms, and that the distraction would consist of a battle between two Lyctors that you would have been somewhat sorry to miss.

  It did not. Wild eyed, tumultuous, unbalanced, Mercy leaned in and kissed him.

  An alarm crescendo of horror went off in your head. She did not kiss him placidly—he responded immediately and without restraint. The Lyctors kissed each other in the manner of two people who either held a decided passion for one another or were attempting to slide a hidden object mouth to mouth. The Saints of Joy and Patience kissed each other with a fervid, drunken familiarity, without preamble, or frankly any shame.