“Even worse,” said Ianthe, and wrestled from its housing what appeared to be a full tulle skirt in midnight purple; skirt and woman scuffled momentarily before she heaved it across the room. “No—yes, for a different and much better party—no—no. Sometimes I think the Emperor of the Nine Houses favours you because you’ve got the same taste in clothes. God, what’s this? That’s a bit risqué—”

You grew desperate. “Let me pick.”

Ianthe looked at you; her blue-and-brown eyes were beatific. “Harry,” she said, and she said it tenderly, “have you never read a trashy novel in which the hero gets a life-affirming change of clothes and some makeup, and then goes to the party and everyone says things like, ‘By the Emperor’s bones! But you’re beautiful,’ or, ‘This is the first time I have ever truly seen you,’ and if the hero’s a necromancer it’ll be described like, ‘His frailty made his unearthly handsomeness all the more ephemeral,’ et cetera, et cetera, the word mewled fifteen pages later, the word nipple one page after that?”

You said emphatically: “No.”

“Then we have no shared point of reference. Thankfully, however, this is not that part,” she said. “Not even one of the Emperor’s fists and gestures could give Harrowhark Nonagesimus a sexy makeover. Sometimes I think you look like a twig’s funeral. In the right light though— Oh, this might do, it’s even your colour. Come here.”

She was holding a mass of black fabric, but no black such as ever existed in the House of the Locked Tomb. You approached with naked horror. Ianthe shook out a long piece of starry sable stuff and held it against you; it appeared to be some sort of—enormous handkerchief. It was not a dress.

When you pointed this out she said, with some asperity: “Valancy Trinit was my height, weighed more than both of us put together, and—judging by her portraits—had a body that did not quit. Your body, by comparison, gave up at the starting line. Take off your clothes.”

Take off your clothes was an imperative you never thought you would obey. You did not take off all your clothes, but you consented to strip down to your shirtsleeves, because the shirt was long. The exoskeleton provided some coverage, though not remotely enough for comfort. You stood there with your chin thrust out, expecting a steady flow of crude japery, but all she said was: “Will you take off that grotesque skeleton corset?”

“No.”

“What about your face paint?”

“No.”

“I do not know why I ask these questions,” she said.