Then everything changed, abruptly, forever. Harrowhark fell in love.

“This won’t work,” she said. “I’ve never had to work with something so small before.” “That’s what she said,” murmured Gideon, sotto voce.

Then she counted, and at the end of five counts there was Pyrrha at the door saying, “Ah, my darling hearts, my sleeping babes, Daddy’s own treasures,” and Camilla saying without opening her eyes, “Go to bed. I just got her to sleep.” Nona fell asleep and was happy.

I KISSED YOU AND LATER I WOULD KISS HIM TOO BEFORE I UNDERSTOOD WHAT YOU WERE, AND ALL THREE OF US LIVED TO REGRET IT—BUT WHEN I AM IN HEAVEN I WILL REMEMBER YOUR MOUTH, AND WHEN YOU ROAST DOWN IN HELL I THINK YOU WILL REMEMBER MINE

“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?”

You know the worst part? She cried. She and A— both cried. In each other’s arms, like babies. They were so fucking scared. And I was right there, and I couldn’t do piss. Everything I was and everything I had done, and I couldn’t do a damned thing.

Magnus said quickly: “Jeanne said to tell Gideon hi. If you see her before we do—” “Though try not to with any great hurry,” said the Fifth spirit-caller.

“Or—you can go back home again,” he said. “I have not assumed you’ll agree with me. I will not force you or buy you. I will keep covenant with your House whether you come with me or stay at home.” Harrow said, “We can’t go home again.”

“Have you been eating sand again?” “I haven’t eaten sand in months,” Nona protested, then more truthfully: “Weeks,” and more truthfully than that: “One week.”

There was no betrayal of any emotion on his face: not the surprise that had dawned over his heavy-lidded eyes earlier, nor anger, nor even dissatisfaction. He caught your gaze. You held his. And the Saint of Duty lifted his lit cigarette to you in an unmistakable salute.

Harrow said— “I cannot do this.” “You already did it,” said Gideon. “It’s done. You ate me and rebuilt me. We can’t go home again.”

Ulysses was for a dog my nana had when I was a child. I worshipped that dog. He was the bravest dog I’d ever met. Half Chihuahua, half pug. Nan called him Ulysses S. Grunt. Died from eating too much pizza. The dog, I mean. Nan died of pneumonia when I was a teenager.

Looking deep into the eyes of the cavalier she murdered, you realised, not for the first time, and not willingly, that Ianthe Tridentarius was beautiful.

He smiled, and with that strange alchemy he was made lovely, his grey eyes bright and clear. Palamedes entered the sickroom.

P— said I looked like a Māori TV Pink Panther. C— said I looked like Edward Cullen from that old Twilight movie, if Edward Cullen had the body of a history teacher. A— said I looked cool. He was the only one.

Why, your fist is so big, and my butthole is so small.

Gideon almost felt sorry for her: hood and paint and robes on the priesthood around her had put her off dinners at the same age. But the teen stuck her awful courage to its sticking place, breathed out hard through her teeth, and blurted very quietly: “Ninth ... how big are your biceps?”

“She has lovely hair. And when she hugs you she smells like cinnamon, and her breasts feel nice, and she’s so big and pretty.” Palamedes looked at her, and then he took the notepad out of Camilla’s capacious pockets. Nona despaired: there was always a tick somewhere if she mentioned breasts.

She dug her hands into the mattress and she cried for Gideon Nav.

Harrow said, “But you’re God.” And God said, “And I am not enough.”

He took the knife and he scored her finger, saying, “Not much longer,” and he pressed her own bloody finger to her cool and bloody mouth, and he said, “Don’t look back. Whatever you do, don’t look back,” and they huddled their heads together, they rested their heads on each other’s shoulders.

“I am not perfection yet, when it comes to meat,” you said. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t be close … but you want something I can’t give. Nor is it something I’m prepared to give. Being honest, I am mildly disgusted you asked. Is there soup left in the kitchen?”

Her cavalier tried the door marked Response, but it wouldn’t move and there didn’t seem to be a conventional touchpad. Harrow said, “It won’t open like that, Nav. Come with me, and don’t touch anything.” Gideon went with Harrow and did not touch anything.

He demanded: “Tell me how to do it, and I’ll do it.” Camilla said, “Go loud.”

“But you might do it,” she said, softly. You saw her looking at the necklet of bone that peeked out from the collar of your shirt, the top of your homebrew exoskeleton. “You could do it, Harrowhark. And maybe I’d even let you, seeing as we’re comrades-in-arms. Seeing as we’re intimates.”

“I didn’t want to do it either … I didn’t want to do it at all … but I was dying. Loveday—she was my cavalier—she and I thought it could make me live. Instead I’ve just kept dying, all this time. No, you wouldn’t have done it, and you’re smart not to. You can’t do that to somebody’s soul.”

Abruptly, Nona threw her third tantrum.

For a long time she pressed her face into the wet patch of mattress she had cried into, and smelled the old stuffing, and felt the grief that had multiplied into a universe.

Twenty-five, thought Gideon, distantly ignoring the ugly twist beneath Harrow’s veil that promised that there would be much to talk about later and that it would not go well for Gideon. Twenty-five years, and Harrowhark was probably going to live forever.

Nona had broken. Her only use was translating, and there she was, listening to the most important conversation that had ever been had, and she was not translating.

I did not know what the fuck to say to this incoherent spew. She said, ragged, peevish: “What? No tongue in your head, you—you mutant, you mistake, you great big calf-eyed fuck-up? I need to think. I need to think. Why are those eyes now in your face? Unless…”

“If you looked in a dictionary you’d find it’s envious, and I’m hardly envious of—” “No, it’s one hundred percent jealous,” said Gideon recklessly, “on account of how you’re always doing this when it looks like she’s taking up my time.”

And so Nona lived with Camilla, Palamedes, and Pyrrha, on the thirtieth floor of a building where nearly everyone was unhappy, in a city where nearly everyone was unhappy, on a world where everyone said that you could outrun the zombies, but not forever.

LOOK, I HAD THE best of intentions for your body. I was very aware that I was walking around in borrowed clothes, and I did not want to scuff them, mangle them, spindle them, or otherwise do long-lasting damage.

Jeannemary had no intention of stopping: she was tearing into her unbeatable foe as though running away had never been in question. She barely seemed to notice that Gideon had grabbed her, her limbs thrashing, her throat one long howl that Gideon only translated later: Fidelity! Fidelity! Fidelity!

Pyrrha said, “Wake had your photo, you know. She kept it on her.”

The Lyctor took her silently in his arms: they held each other like children who’d had a nightmare and had woken in a fright. Just as silently, they detached.

She pulled her watch out of her pocket and checked it: twenty minutes to go, a quarter hour and change. Gideon was home free. Gideon was gone. Nothing and nobody could change that now.

“I’m struggling to understand why you’re here … what you’re doing … what you want out of this. What do you want, Gideon?” The corpse prince considered this. “I don’t want much of anything anymore,” she said brightly. “I just don’t really give a shit.”

“The pledge did not condone disrespect,” you said. “I will not suckle at your bootheel.” (“Unnecessarily descriptive,” said Ianthe.)

Colum advanced. “Come back,” said Silas, unruffled. “I bid you return. I bid you return. Colum—I bid you return. I bid you return. I bid you return. I bid. I bid, I bid, I bid— Colum—” The thing that lived in Colum raised Colum’s sword, and drove the point through Silas Octakiseron’s throat.

“I’m holding something down in the water. It’s the same water, the good water. But whatever I’m holding doesn’t want to stay down, it keeps coming back. To the surface, I mean.” “What are you holding?” “The girl with the painted face.”

Thick tears pooled in those bloody, stormy eyes. Augustine looked at her, and then he quite abruptly pressed his back to the wall and slid down until he was sitting; a posture of absolute defeat.

THERE WERE FIVE MINUTES to go when Gideon’s eighty-seventh escape plan got messed up fantastically. “I see that your genius strategy, Griddle,” said a final voice from the tierway, “was to order a shuttle and walk out the door.”

Nona wanted to know: “What’s pimp?” Instead of getting to know what pimp was, she got in trouble for giving anyone their door number and house number. Nona cried, lavishly and immediately, but Camilla and Pyrrha wouldn’t budge.

Hell spat you back out. Fair enough.

“Well, all I can say is thank the Tomb that nobody knows you’re not really one of ours. If I didn’t know that, I’d be saying that you were Matthias Nonius come again or something equally saccharine.”

“My soul’s mine. You give yourself away to anyone who doesn’t want you.”

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.