Gideon the Ninth

She retreated to sit on the edge of the bed, and she pulled the hem of her hospital smock down over her knees. He said, “It wasn’t meant to happen like this. I intended for the new Lyctors to become Lyctors after thinking and contemplating and genuinely understanding their sacrifice—an act of bravery, not an act of fear and desperation. Nobody was meant to lose their lives unwillingly at Canaan House. But—Cytherea…”

The Emperor closed his eyes. “Cytherea was my fault,” he said. “She was the very best of all of us. The most loyal, the most humane, the most resilient. The one with the most capacity for kindness. I made her live ten thousand years in pain, because I was selfish and she let me. Don’t despise her, Harrow—I see it in your eyes. What she did was unforgivable. I can’t understand it. But who she was … she was wonderful.”

“You’re awfully forgiving,” said Harrow, “considering she said she was out to kill you.”

“I wish she’d said that to me,” said the Emperor heavily. “If she and I had just fought this out, it would have been a hell of a lot better for everyone.”

Harrow was silent. He seemed lost in thought. He said presently, “Most of my Lyctors have been destroyed by a war I’ve thought best to fight slowly, through attrition. I have lost my Hands. Not just to death. The loneliness of deep space takes its toll on anyone, and the necrosaints have all put up with it for longer than anybody should ever be asked to bear anything. That’s why I wanted only those who had discovered the cost and were willing to pay it in the full knowledge of what it would entail.”

All this washed over Harrow’s shoulders. She realised immediately that she was a fool: that she was asking the wrong questions, and listening to the wrong thing.

“Who else beside me is alive, Lord?”

“Ianthe Tridentarius,” said the Emperor, “minus one arm.”

“The Sixth House cavalier was only injured when I left her,” said Harrowhark. “Where is she?”

“We haven’t recovered any trace of her, or her body,” said the Emperor. “Nor that of Captain Deuteros of Trentham, nor of the Crown Princess of Ida.”

“What?”

“All the Houses will have questions tonight,” he said. “I can hardly blame them. I’m sorry, Harrow, we couldn’t recover your cavalier either.”

Her brain listed sharply.

“Gideon’s gone?”

“Everyone else is accounted for,” he said. “We have had to settle for partial remains of the Seventh House and the Warden of the Sixth. Only you two were confirmed alive. It doesn’t help matters that I can’t even go down there and search.”

Harrow found herself saying, distantly, “Why can’t you go back? It seemed to be the whole of Cytherea’s plan.”

The Emperor said, “I saved the world once—but not for me.”

Harrow pressed her legs down into the cool metal rib of the gurney. She expected to feel something, but she didn’t. She felt nothing at all. There was a great and gnawing emptiness, which was mildly better than feeling something, at least. A tiny voice in the back of her head was saying, Someone will burn for this, but it was only ever her own.

The Emperor leaned back in his chair and they looked at each other. He had a ridiculously ordinary face: long jaw, high forehead, hair a dull and leaden brown. But those eyes.

He said, “I know you became a Lyctor under duress.”

“Some may call it duress,” said Harrow.

“You aren’t the first,” said the Emperor. “But—listen to me. I will do what I haven’t done in ten thousand years and renew your House.” (How did he know about that?) “I’ll safeguard the Ninth. I will make sure what happened at Canaan House never happens again. But I want you to come with me. You can learn to be my Hand. The Empire can gain another saint, and the Empire needs another saint, more than ever. I have three teachers for you, and a whole universe for you to hold on to—for just a little while longer.”

The King Undying had asked her to follow him. All she wanted was to be alone and weep.

“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.”

There was a vague reflection of her in the window, interrupted by distant space fields pocketed thick with stars. She turned away. If she saw herself in a mirror, she might fight herself: if she saw herself in a mirror, she might find a trace of Gideon Nav, or worse—she might not find anything, she might find nothing at all.

So the universe was ending. Good. At least if she failed here, she would no longer have to be beholden to anybody. Harrow touched her cheek and was surprised to find her fingertips came away wet, and that the Necrolord Prime had chivalrously lowered his gaze.

She said, “I will have to go back eventually.”

“I know,” said the Emperor.

“I need to find out what happened to my cavalier’s body. I need to know what happened to the others.”

“Of course.”