The Emperor kept a respectful distance between himself and his handiwork as you and the Body peered into each casket. Eventually the ranks of bone-and-skin boxes terminated in a clearing of their smaller, more colourful siblings. These were formed of white stone, not osseous matter, and were so freshly carved that the powder of their planing still clung to the sides. They were all of different shapes: some the six-sided funerary box of the deep burial, some the compact hexagon of the ossuary. All were draped in the spectrum of House colours, lacking only black—no empty coffins for your House tonight—except for one plain casket to the side. A little household rose sat atop it, shedding milky blush petals on the stone.

These were the corpses you were aware of before: each a crisp, silent slice of thanergy, without even a flicker of bacterial thalergy pattering over their skins. They were statuesque and incorruptible. The Emperor’s doing, maybe. But some of them were aberrant. You stared with calm vacuity at a six-sided container draped with the Second House’s scarlet and white, which had no human remains inside. The single casket covered in tissue the gorgeous gold of the Third had no one from the Third in residence. Nor could you locate bodies within either of the plain grey-sheeted hexagons intended for the Sixth, though there were pitiable scraps and remains in one: leavings only, much less than a corpse. Something flickered in your nervous system that was a bit like an emotion, but it struggled and died, much to your relief.

You were aware of the Body standing a little way behind you, quite close beside the Emperor. You said: “How will you explain the missing corpses?”

“Among the dubious privileges of the First House,” said God, “is that one is rarely forced to explain.”

“The cavaliers—”

“Have joined their Lyctors,” he said. “It’s not really a lie. It’s simply a flattening of an awesome … and sacramental … truth.”

You said nothing. He said, “We went over Canaan House with a fine-tooth comb when we picked you up. We found nobody alive and no more remains, and whatever end came to those we can’t account for—if an end has come to them—is a mystery I plan on solving. Until then, I have declared them dead. Call me premature, but I’d rather the Houses weep now, Harrowhark, with room for later rejoicing.”

It was the plain, uncovered coffin you stared at, the one with the waxy little rose; you suddenly understood which ancient cancerous corpse was frozen within. Your nervous system tried to process many emotions at once and then shut down entirely. The Body came and turned your face away, but she could not turn back the sudden access of patchwork memory.

The Emperor said gently, “She needs to go home, Harrow.”

You did not look. “And will the Seventh House accept her?”