“Intimately,” you said. “They explained it to me when I was very young. I could draw the theorem mathematics, if you gave me some flimsy.”

“No, I don’t mean mechanically. Conceptually. To all intents and purposes, your mother and father committed a type of resurrection,” he said. “They did something nigh-on impossible. I know, because I have committed the same act, and I know the price I had to pay. Thalergetic modification of an embryo is difficult enough, but to achieve the same thing with thanergy…”

You gave a helpless half shrug. “My parents were not flesh magicians,” you said. “But they were the greatest necromancers the Ninth House had yet produced.”

“No doubt,” said the Emperor. “But, Harrowhark—even as the product of two obvious geniuses—you are a walking miracle. A unique theorem. A natural wonder.”

You looked at him, and you said: “I have just told you that I am the product of my parents’ genocide.”

The Emperor set down his tea and finished off his biscuit, and did that terrible thing that he did, on occasion: he reached over to touch your shoulder in that brief, tentative way, the lightest and swiftest of gestures, as though afraid that he might burn you. Your mother had guided your hands over bloating corpses. Your father had held down the corners of great tomes, and his sleeve had brushed your six-year-old-fingers as he showed you how best to turn their pages. Both of them had pressed a rough rope made of coated fibre into your hands—you recalled the pressure from their palms, their attempts to be gentle. When the Emperor touched you, your body recalled, unbidden, each rare and terrible touch committed by your mother and father.

God said, “I will shepherd your dead two hundred. I will take on their burden to mourn and cherish in more ways than you’ll understand right now. And I’ll remember your parents, who did such a godawful thing to my people and theirs. I will remember it until the universe contracts in on itself and wipes clean what they did, and makes blank such an indelible stain. I acknowledge to you and to infinity that I am the Emperor of the Nine Houses—the Necrolord Prime—and that their stain must be regarded as my stain. Consider it my crime, Harrowhark. I pledge myself to making it right.”

A red heat had begun at your exoskeleton’s necklet—travelled up your throat—darkened your face beneath your paint until you felt as though you had been held too close to a stove. You said, “Lord, you can’t.”

“Teacher.”

“Teacher, have mercy on me. Please don’t tell anyone.”