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Csorwe sat with her back against a pillar of the great plaza, and watched the necromancer of the Eighth work.
The young woman stood tracing the great friezes that adorned the last standing wall, occasionally bringing her fingertips to her lips to taste the dust. She'd noticed the unnatural pattern of decay that mottled the grooves of the friezes yesterday. She was doing well - ahead of the Sixth. Though the Sixth, when they noticed, would approve and take efficient advantage of the way she was investigating in plain sight, scholarly curiosity having long overtaken any inclination either to conspiracy or competition.
To someone with necromantic aptitude, it was possible to see that within the carvings of trees and buildings and long-extinct creatures, some parts of the wall had decayed at accelerated rates, and some at a delay. The distinctions were so precise that they formed messages, as if the person who had written there had used time as ink.
Csorwe did not possess such aptitude, and rarely wished for it, but she wished for it idly now. If she could see what Qanwa Shuthmili saw, it would be like watching someone as they read a letter you had left for them to find. She could have left that letter, and filled it with hints and imagery that brightened Shuthmili's eyes with curiosity.
After all, that was why the markings were there, and why Csorwe knew what it was Shuthmili was reading. Tal had imprinted them painstakingly last month, whining about the work all the while, one of the last pieces of set-dressing in their little theatre.
They had left the clues and set up the trials, and now the necromancers hopeful of winning the favor of the Lord Undying were congratulating themselves on what they had learned. At this stage in the game, they thought they were making true discoveries. It was sometimes tedious to watch them, and sometimes restful. The necromancer of the Eighth was methodical and avid and Csorwe was glad that she was currently the one to watch. Generation upon generation, Csorwe and Tal had taken their little show from city to dead city, setting the scene in a new location every time. Sometimes, looking beyond the pretence, their charges came up with something genuinely interesting about destroyed Echentyr, the faithless world.
Later, the necromancers would learn they were being tricked and artificially tested, and the resulting tensions generally reduced their numbers, and in the middle of the drama, Tal would usually come up with some sort of grand reveal - his favorite part, which of course meant it wasn't Csorwe's.
"You make it too easy," said Tal, over her shoulder.
Csorwe didn't jump. The last time she'd held a blade to Tal's throat, he'd grown out her eyelashes and stitched her eyes shut.
It had spared her Belthandros Sethennai's look of heavy disappointment at the antics of his least Saint and his last cavalier, and another of the Lyctors had swiftly undone the work. But she hadn't appreciated it.
"I thought you were still busy with Daryou Malkhaya," she murmured back. "Didn't last?"
"You're so bad at sexual insults," he said, with an air of one taking comfort that there were familiar things in the world. "And you wouldn't say that to me if you knew the situation," he added, with a smirking sort of woe.
"I'd make more of an effort to mock your sex life if I cared," Csorwe said.
"Daryou Malkhaya's dead."
"What," Csorwe said. "Letting the one you're sleeping with get murdered is just carelessness, Tal. Sethennai's going to hate that. Shuthmili's really promising."
But an adept needed a cavalier.
She half-turned to Tal; she could no longer bring herself to look across the plaza at the Eighth adept and risk catching the fascinated gleam in her eyes. She started to count off in her head who might be responsible. There was a certain type of necromancer prone to an appalling unconcern about the value of life.
"I know," Tal said, low and grim. "I know, I know. But he figured it out. So I killed him."
That made the two strands connect - the swagger and the tension. Of course Tal hadn't hesitated. It was what Belthandros Sethennai would have told him to do, and now he was congratulating himself for that loyalty to make up for whatever else he was feeling.
Csorwe closed her eyes, teeth grinding against her good tusk in disappointment and frustration, and brought their purpose to mind: the war, the shadow on the stars, ships winking out like candles, the sound and the smell of a Revenant Beast that carried across airless distances through its dreadful psychic potency. The reason they were here, carrying out this farce, to allow necromancers to come to terms with the awful secret of resurrection away from the front lines.
"I need to go establish an alibi. Which means you need to hide the body," Tal added.
Right, in a long-dead city full of necromancers.
Fucking Tal.
"I'm not stupid, you know," Shuthmili said quietly to Csorwe, over breakfast, as though she was merely remarking on an unusual image glimpsed through the Maze-torn sky.
"Of course not," Csorwe agreed. Shuthmili blinked. Whatever tone she had been expecting, Csorwe had surprised her. Shuthmili narrowed her eyes.
"You weren't trained to be Talasseres Charossa's cavalier," Shuthmili challenged. Oh, that one was easy, and even offered an opening.
"Talasseres Charossa does not believe in having a cavalier," Csorwe said, with studied disapproval for the pampered scion of an indulgent House that Tal supposedly was. "You don't want to know what he did with the last one. As a compromise, he got me."
This was all technically true, because Talasseres Charossa did not need a cavalier. Lyctors didn't. But he'd never had one.
Once, Tal had been the cavalier to his uncle, Olthaaros Charossa, and his uncle had betrayed God and usurped his throne. When Belthandros Sethennai had returned, Tal had betrayed his uncle in turn and offered up his loyalty.
To prove himself, and to tidy up loose ends, Sethennai had required Tal to consume his uncle's soul. Sethennai's metaphorical hand-holding, and Sethennai's metaphorical force-feeding, had made up for Tal's own very mediocre necromantic talent. He was Sethennai's miracle, Sethennai's mercy, Sethennai's walking demonstration. He'd used to try to unnerve Csorwe by looking at her through Olthaaros' eyes. Now, Csorwe understood, he mostly saved that for the bedroom.
Of course, he'd soon learned not to use the reminder of his status to score a point over Csorwe. He might be a Lyctor, as she was not, but she'd been there for his sobbing transformation. She knew how little raw power he could call on, and how little use he was as a paladin of the Necrolord Prime. (Not that Tal had ever really aimed to be useful to anyone. To God, he had mainly hoped to be an ornament.)
"Hm," Shuthmili said. "And you knew that the false key the Third tried to forge would work on the trapdoor in the middle of the rotunda, and the hidden doorway by the empty pool, but would dissolve when they created a theoretical replica of the Reliquary."
She should have acted more surprised at the time, but acting had never been her strong suit. Csorwe usually kept her demeanour as neutral as possible and trusted the necromancers to either ascribe to her the cavalier stereotype of blissful lack of intellect, or make the wrong assumptions about what she was hiding. The Third's attempt at making a false key had been long before the murder of Daryou Malkhaya. Csorwe tried to suppress a pleased feeling that Shuthmili had been paying so much attention to her then.
Shuthmili added, "And the Seventh adept isn't dying. She's a lot more powerful than she'd like us to think - you specifically - and wearing someone else's face," and all of the pleased feeling disappeared.
"Tal," Csorwe said. "Tal, it's Oranna."
The Saint of Fidelity whirled on her, looking genuinely alarmed.
"She got in?"
The way to Echentyr was barred almost as surely as if it had been a bubble in the River of Death, except when the Kindly Prince allowed it, as he did at the start and end of necromancer trials. Usually, Tal and Csorwe discouraged people from leaving by stealing their ansibles and hiding or destroying their ships, to cover up the fact that those ships would not have been able to pass through the fringes of the world when God decreed it otherwise. There was, therefore, a worse possibility than the news Csorwe bore. It didn't give her much comfort.
"No," she said. "She's always been here. The Seventh adept didn't arrive."
Tal made a face. "I've never trusted her cavalier," he said, convinced already.
"He didn't flirt with you," Csorwe said wearily.
"That was my second clue," Tal said, and didn't elaborate.
"She must have been laughing at us this whole time," Csorwe said. "I don't know why she hasn't made a move on the Reliquary."
Opening the Reliquary was the task set to the necromancers, and keeping the Reliquary closed was therefore the task of God's saints. Every time a new crop of necromancers gathered on Echentyr, the Hands of God devised traps and tasks that would require the heights of necromantic ability and inspiration to get it open. As to the box itself - Csorwe had never seen it open. God was possessive of it. That was enough - for both Csorwe and Oranna.
"Maybe," Tal was saying, "she wants something else."
He was looking almost sympathetic. It didn't suit his pretty features. He knew Csorwe felt about Oranna.
They had come from the same backwater planet, in only the second century of the ascension of the Necrolord Prime, when God still walked unannounced among his people, when the secrets of the resurrection were perceived to be within the grasp of ordinary scholars and not just those graced with the Emperor's favour.
Csorwe had been raised among seekers of immortality for the express purpose of dying to achieve their means.
Then God had come, and driven out death. He had taken Csorwe from the sacrificial altar, and to Oranna, who would have wielded the knife, he offered knowledge instead.
When Oranna joined the Hands of God, a year later, she never confirmed who she'd consumed. Rumour was that it was her sister, a twin. When those kinds of rumours entered a conversation, Csorwe made herself absent.
Oranna was the only Lyctor to gain immortality alone, and the only Lyctor to break faith. She who was called the Saint of Inspiration became the Heretic Saint, and God in his infinite wisdom did not set others on the path that way again.
Belthandros Sethennai had lost Oranna long ago, but he kept Csorwe - another demonstration. She was mortal, but he chose to sustain her. She, unlike Tal, knew how to be useful. She also knew that God could ask for her life at any time, and she would have to yield it.
"What else would Oranna want but the Reliquary?" Csorwe did not want to play this game with Talasseres Charossa.
Tal clearly thought about saying, "You," and then didn't say it, and because this was Tal, somehow managed to make this insulting. "Who can say?" He fidgeted. "She's crazy."
"If we didn't have the Reliquary, I'd think it was a good thing she was in here with us," Csorwe said. "No way she can get out and sabotage the Cohort. It might almost be worth it. Sometimes I wonder if he dangles it in front of her as bait."
"If," Tal agreed morosely. "You know what you have to do."
"Tal," Csorwe said, "I figured out you've been trying to push me into becoming Shuthmili's cavalier a long time ago."
"Good," said Tal snidely. "I thought I was going to have to spell it out. She's one of the strongest we've seen, we can't let the joyless prudes at the Eighth House have her back, and she's your type."
"I don't have a type," Csorwe said, pointlessly irritated. She hated when he pretended that he knew her better than he knew herself. She was right, he had been bluffing; his ears twitched.
"It was Sethennai's idea," he said.
"Wait," Csorwe said. "Daryou Malkhaya didn't figure out you're a Lyctor, did he."
"No," he said, exasperated at her for having been misled now that it was no longer convenient. Then he ran his hands through his hair. "I can't believe I pinned his death on the Saint of Inspiration."
"Yes, good thing you didn't actually succeed in making it conclusive," Csorwe said.
He ignored the sarcasm. "Hm. I don't want her to realize we know. You and I need a public falling-out so you can offer to swear yourself to Shuthmili. You should go to the Seventh and tell her you think I killed Daryou and you can't trust me any more. Get her to accuse me."
Csorwe groaned.
It wasn't the appalling prospect of attempting to manipulate God's craziest ex-girlfriend. It wasn't that Tal's solution to everything put him in the spotlight. It was how neatly it had come together: she liked Shuthmili, her openness and sharpness, her power and finesse. Csorwe was a blade to wield and Shuthmili could yield her. And God wanted it. It was a story already told, the way Csorwe's life should have been. What all of her lives added up to.
Csorwe wasn't exactly surprised to find herself here again, standing against God's defiant Saint, battling a tornado of snake fangs lifted from the graves of Echentyr and primed with new poison. Perhaps a quarter of all of their Lyctor recruitment attempts ended in combat. Sometimes she was the aggressor.
Battling against Oranna was novel, but not in a good way. She hadn't even gone for the Reliquary. It sat incongruously open, protected by one of the city's few remaining outdoor roofs. Inside, the heart of God's cavalier robustly beat.
"Shuthmili," Csorwe said, "You have to - "
"I won't," the Eighth adept said.
Csorwe dodged a fang flying towards her from the left and smashed one coming from the right, then ducked and twisted to avoid one that had been about to impale her from behind. Oranna was good. Most bone adepts specialized in constructs; Oranna, although she couldn't regrow bone as skilfully as some necromancers Csorwe had seen, was unique in the ability to keep hundreds of unconnected bones flying in savage patterns through the air.
The cavalier of the Second, still improbably upright, jumped into the fray again, drawing Oranna's wrath. Csorwe raced over to her necromancer.
"I mean it," Shuthmili said. "I saw what Fifth did. I understand it, and I can replicate it. No."
Csorwe had contemplated this sort of moment before, but never in the kind of detail that had answered questions such as who might be holding the knife. She had never realized it might have to be her.
"Csorwe," Shuthmili said sharply. "I mean it. No." And she stood up, leaving the pitiful cover a turned-over table had given them. Csorwe lifted her sword towards her throat and found her arms pulled wide, the flesh of each wrist pressed against a table leg and then knotted to it. It didn't even hurt.
Pinned there, she didn't see the confrontation. She heard the whirlwind change shape and she heard Oranna yell and then, all at once, there was the soft rain of dust - the occasional plop - as the fangs, dissolving in mid-air, fell to earth.
Her flesh-ties unravelled themselves from the table legs and recombined into her. Csorwe shook out her wrists gingerly, and looked to Shuthmili.
"The Eighth trained you well," Csorwe said, "to resist temptation. But they are not a treasonous house, and the Emperor needs you."
She knelt.
"Does that mean," Shuthmili asked, "he no longer needs you?"
Csorwe refused to flinch. "He needs Lyctors, vowed to one flesh and one end."
She swallowed her pride. "It doesn't have to be me. You could have anyone. There are people who would ask for the honour." Even though it made her sick to draw on that kind of devotion. She could only assume that in most circumstances it was blind.
"Oh," Shuthmili said. "No. That would be worse. I know you mean it. I like you."
She bit her lip. Csorwe began to feel hopeful. Not, exactly, of what she'd thought she'd feel hopeful for. Something that felt like temptation. Like putting down a burden. Like heresy.
"You think I'm something really special," Shuthmili said, thoughtful, "and so I assume the Emperor does too. Well, he can wait. I want to learn. I want to be sure that this is the only way."
"You've never been outside the Eighth House," Csorwe said, beginning to build up an argument for how many times she'd seen this reluctance, and how inevitable the result had been.
"Exactly," Shuthmili said. "I don't know what I don't know. I'm not eating a soul until I understand. And if the Emperor wants you to be my cavalier, he can spare you to come with me."
Csorwe told herself that this was an argument she could continue tomorrow, or the next day, and a fight she could pursue when she wasn't already exhausted from fighting Oranna. She told herself that what really mattered was staying close by to Shuthmili, for when she changed her mind. And she told herself that it was a pleasure well-earned to leave the mess behind them for Tal to clean up.
Shuthmili left, and Csorwe followed.