Ortus did not cry out in pain. You might have respected that, once. He merely turned away—his sword in his hand and the spear dragging behind him—and exploded back out through your ravished front door, your untidy, ward-strewn foyer. You were left slick with bathwater, wet with blood, half-dead and dismayed on the floor outside your bathroom.

The injuries could be seen to. Arteries could be stanched, then snapped back together. Meat could be sewn up and skin made whole. Dentine was easily reconstructed, and so was enamel, though you might have to re-form your jaw a few times before your bite was correct. Nothing cracked in your skull had driven itself into your brain, and the bleeding could be corrected. But your peace was gone, forever.

The Saint of Duty could bypass your wards at any time. The Saint of Duty was a thanergy void. The Saint of Duty was the ultimate nemesis of a bone adept. You would never be able to sleep again.

It was at this point that someone, obviously drawn by the noise from down the corridor, tiptoed over the mess at your front door and peered inside. You did not have to feel her presence to know it was her: you knew the sound of her shoes.

“Harrow?” Ianthe ventured, from somewhere near the door. Then she obviously stopped and saw you naked, bloodied, flayed in your own anguish, with soapsuds still on your feet. You hallucinated that you could smell her: sweat, musk, vetiver.

You saw your probable future clearly. You had not until that point understood the danger.

If Ianthe Tridentarius knelt beside you then, no matter with what sugary contempt or filigreed Third condescension, you would press your diminished bloody terror into her; you would creep naked into her lap, shamelessly, and weep. You would crawl like a worm to whatever clinging scrap of solace she would give you. All your slithering, degraded desperation for condolence you would give to your sister Lyctor with a brazen thirst that you would never come back from. She would be your end, as surely as the hammer to the oxygen-sealant machine of your childhood. You would have reached for her with the mindless desire of an infectious disease. You would have whored yourself to her as necrosis to a wound.

So maybe it was for the best that after a pregnant pause the Princess of Ida said: “Wow! Not how I imagined this happening, at all,” and you heard her hasty footsteps retreat, away, back down the corridor whence she came. Then she was gone.

You lay prone on the cool black tiles, staring up at the smears on the ceiling where your wards had been—dazed and despairing, nearly too dead to sew yourself back up. In the back of your head you heard the Secundarius Bell pealing, pealing, extents beyond any Ninth sacred composition, and never called by any Tomb ringer.