The hand was almost an indulgence. The skeleton recalled itself. You did not need to know so intimately the lover’s knot of carpal bones—the long tooth of her lunate, the jutting promontory of her trapezium—nor did you need to know the arch of the distal phalange, the shaft, the base. The new bone sprang avidly to meet your fingers, as though you were lovers joining hands after a long time apart. Your role with the bones was more guide than artist. The artistry would come at this point, and you warned her: “This will hurt.”

Ianthe rocked upward.

You knew your limits. You had understood what to do with her body innately, and it was not what she wanted, but you thought it would suffice. You blistered the bone in tendons only where you thought it was necessary for range of motion. You bubbled nerves into that shining periosteum where nerves had never been before. Not a full complement, but just enough. Bone would call to bone, and nerve would call to brain. When you trailed your fingers up that new trunk of electrified humerus, she almost spat out the chunk of lace—when you pressed your palm into her shoulder and plugged her in, she sobbed, rhythmically, beneath you.

What was left at the end was not an arm. It was a construct: a sectioned skeleton, defleshed. When you sat down beside her you were chilly with sweat and pleasantly tired, as though you had run a good distance. You watched as Ianthe took the saliva-sodden wad of nightgown from her teeth, and as, shaking, she raised her new arm up to the light: the warm electric lamplight made her naked arm bones an iridescent gold.

The old arm lay on the carpet, abandoned and dead, looking a little sorry for itself. You said, “I didn’t bother about the meat.”

Ianthe said wonderingly, “But I’ve got some feeling in it.”

“Most of the nervous glands are in your elbow.”

“Why even—”

“You have worked out that the Lyctoral healing process is dependent on your nerve fibres?”

“But you don’t—”

“I lack entirely what you all have,” you said, “and have had to work out a replacement. I watched, and compared. In the beginning I thought maybe I could implant the process in myself … but it’s not just a matter of nerves, even if those signal the reconstruction. I thought if I experienced enough pain, something might kick in to save me. It didn’t.”

She spread her rightmost finger bones wide, then back, experimentally making a fist. You said, “You will still need a mat of tissue or cartilage on the palmar bones, to hold the sword. Think of it as a glove.”