Outside, the hull shuddered as a few hundred more Heralds assembled on its surface. The basket hilt of the rapier nudged into your hip, like an animal that wanted feeding, and in a sudden fit of temper you considered unbuckling the damn thing and hurling it as hard as you possibly could to the other side of the room only you worried how pitifully short it would fall. You sat down with your legs crossed and your hands laid helplessly in your lap. The frost was already resolving into a fine dew misting your face and the back of your neck, and you were hot inside your robes. Deep through the nose, deep out the mouth, just as you had been taught.
You picked your way back through the concentric rings of ground acetabula you had laid, the fine gritty layers of femur, and you stood in the centre and breathed. “Do not underestimate me, Teacher,” you said. After a brief pause, he said: “Harrow, please don’t be in such a hurry to die.” You imagined him sitting in his patchy, worn-out chair, all alone, worrying his right temple with the thumb he always worried his right temple with. If you wanted a Hand who needed a door to hide behind-even now-then I have misjudged you.”įrom his far-off sanctum deep within the Mithraeum, you heard him exhale. “I am a Lyctor, Lord,” you heard yourself say. “Harrowhark, we need you in the River, and while you are in the River your necromancy will not work.”
Scanning for something damning and intellectual to say, you snapped: “I can take care of myself.” You staggered to your feet, limpid skirts gathered in both hands, and picked your way over to the comm button. Harrow, I’m leaving yours closed as long as possible.” We’ve got half an hour of air-con left … after that, you’ll be working in the oven. God’s voice came very calmly over the comm: Screaming was the least of what might happen. You understood your body’s reaction to the proximity. Sometimes you screamed a little, which no longer embarrassed you. In that smothering dark, your breath emerged as wisps of wet grey smoke. A fine shimmer of frost now coated your cheeks, your hair, your eyelashes. There was nothing to see-the shutters were down-but you could feel the terrible vibration, hear the groan of chitin on metal, the cataclysmic rending of steel by fungous claw. YOUR ROOM HAD LONG AGO plunged into near-complete darkness, leaving no distraction from the great rocking thump-thump-thump of body after body flinging itself onto the great mass already coating the hull.
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