You were finding that if you held half a mouthful of tea in your mouth it cooled, and when it was cool it tasted more serene. Unfortunately, while you were still figuring this trick out, the Emperor of the Nine Houses leaned back and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, looked at you seriously, and said: “Harrowhark, how many in your family? Your mother and father are dead, that much I know.”

You swallowed in haste. How he knew that—the secret you had broken yourself attempting to keep hidden from the rest of the Houses, from the rest of your own House—you didn’t know. But you looked at his kindly, open countenance, and you said with the refreshing candour that came from talking to God: “One, since my parents ended their lives. I was the only child. My mother miscarried multiple times before I was born; I don’t know how many.”

His gaze didn’t leave yours. “How were you born?”

“I don’t understand.” You did understand.

“Harrowhark,” he said, “You are a Lyctor. You generate too much light, or too much darkness, for me to look at you and make out any strong detail. But there are details I have surmised: you were awake during your first time in the River, and you performed necromancy, and believe me when I tell you only one other person has ever done that their first time in. Keep in mind that she was an adult necromancer who went on to found the Sixth House. You have achieved incredible things. I understand your personality and your background, and I understand how they might turn natural talent into … you. But it doesn’t account for what I see in those moments when I can see you clearly. How did they get you?”

You put your cup of tea down, your biscuit still untouched, and you said as though pushed after long interrogation: “My parents gassed fifty-four infants, eighty-one children, and sixty-five teenagers, and harnessed that thanergy bloom to conceive me. My mother used the resultant power to modify her ovum on a chromosomal level, so thanergy ignition wouldn’t compromise the embryo. She did this so I would be a necromancer.”

The Emperor of the Nine Resurrections looked at you for a long time, and then he swore, very quietly, beneath his breath. You thought you understood, but then he said: “This was … all so different … before we discovered the scientific principles.”

“I am assured they had no previous research to go by. They came up with it themselves.”

God said, a little bewildered, “That’s not quite what I mean. But to concentrate so much thanergy into so precise a task—like using a nuclear detonation to power a sewing machine … The ovum ought to have been obliterated at a subatomic level. Do you understand what they did?”