The Lyctor leaning over you said warningly, “Don’t you do a thing. I’ll have to fight you, and I cannot begin to tell you how much I don’t want to do that. Oh, why did I stop?” she wailed. “I should have kept walking. I hate reasonable culpability.”

“I want that sword,” said Ortus the First.

“What?”

“Give me her damned sword,” said Ortus the First.

“You’ve already got a whole complement of oversized weapons, greedy.”

Even an overexcited pituitary gland could not mask the sharp shank of fear that sliced down the length of your heart. You tried to raise yourself up on your elbows before you wobbled weakly back down. You said hoarsely, “No. No. It’s mine.”

Mercymorn lost her patience on an almost professional basis. “Oh, just get out of it,” she said peevishly to Ortus. “Leave the baby alone.” Before you could feel indebted to her, she added: “Next time, try this at night! When I’m sleeping! If I see you hurt her I have to intervene, or Teacher will lose his nana.”

The Saint of Duty looked down at you, sprawled so awkwardly in a pool of blood, free of the two new punctures he had given you in such a short space of time. He took his spear and shook it like a bedsheet, and the bone haft folded in on itself until it was no longer or thicker than a mace handle. This short, fat handle and spearhead he shoved into his belt, then he sheathed his rapier, turned around, and left.

His sister-saint bawled after him: “I mean it! You clean this place up!” but he was already gone. She stood and smoothed out the front of her beautiful mother-of-pearl robe—the blood came off it in great gouts of reddish powder, dwindling to nothing—and she said, her placid face creased in complaint: “This place has gone to the dogs … What did you say, to make him try to kill you?”

“Nothing.” The hormones were beginning to cease their pleasant flow, but you were still preternaturally calm when you said: “I came in to get some food. I did not perceive his entrance. The first thing I knew of him was when he stabbed me.”

“Oh. Then he just wants you dead,” she said, with perfect unconcern. “Good luck! Not!! That man is Teacher’s attack dog … If he thinks you’re a threat then I would advise you to settle your affairs.”

You stared up at the ceiling and noted the bone-strewn scrollwork between the frames of the panelling, all about the long planks of electric light. And you said: “But why does Ortus the First want me dead?”

“Who?” said Mercymorn, indifferently.

20