The ninety-six puzzle pieces this cavalier called a skull did not warrant what you were about to do. Your construct skeleton you compacted neatly back to a chip of bone, and your exoskeleton you made inert. If you left them, they would crumble to pieces, and it was better not to give her any indication of your vulnerability while you were under. You moved to sit on the grass. It crushed beneath you, and the smell made you anxious. You deliberately did not think about all the insect life squirming and seething beneath the seat of your robes. You planted your feet flat on the ground and made your spine a soft curve. The ghost wards were already painted on your belly and the back of your neck, though they were superstition only, placed for the unseen emergency where you were forced to physically move your body through the River. A mind without its meat would not attract a ravenous ghost. There would be a thronging populace here, all uninterested in you if you were not attached to your bright, delicious flesh, and anyway you only intended to take the briefest look. You took the weighty sword from your back and placed it beneath your feet, and then you took the partial skull from your lap, and you waded into the River.

You had intended to use the skull to triangulate its owner. It would be otherwise impossible to pick out one ghost between the billions upon billions—innumerable spirits, a nearly infinite mass—making their way through the dark waters.

Time and space works differently in the River no matter how you enter, my chicks, Augustine had warned. Anchor yourself as you’re leaving the old meat robes behind, and as you wade through the waters. Attach to worldly geography; be aware of your body; let it be your harbour, unless you’re dying to be pulled somewhere you don’t want to go.

You used the skull as your geography instead. The water was very cold when it closed over your head. It felt thick and slippery as oil. Augustine had ducked you and Ianthe in the River, to train you for this—to get you used to a River teeming with the mad, the insane, and the ravenous—and you knew what to expect. You would be in filthy water, with the teeth, and the rotten flesh, and the bloody, unseeing eyes. You might, if you were lucky, look down upon the mad ghost of the skull. You could discharge your duty by confirming that he had long ago drifted away, and that Hect might drift away from the buttoned-up primal grief a ghost story had frozen in place. You prepared for the ice, and the initial panic of ghosts exploding outward from your body, that safe predatory entry of your brain—the cloudy water, foggy with old blood—

—and you were standing in a room. Your wet robes were dripping onto a scrubbed wooden floor.