The Emperor of the Nine Houses drummed his fingers over his belt. It still hurt you a little, to look into his terrible eyes: the irises like black shadows of the Canaanite white, that iridescent absence of colour, a shade rather than a tint; the purity of the white ring; then the matte black of the sclera. You had never become used to it.

“A myriad ago, I resurrected nine planets,” he said. “And I reignited the central star, and I called it Dominicus. As a reminder. Dominus illuminatio mea et salus mea, quem timebo? God is my light. Harrowhark, if I went under—I’d enter that senseless state, and I am God. What if, forty billion light-years away, my people looked up to see Dominicus falter and go out? What if the very House beneath their feet died all over again, as I turned my back upon it?”

You said, “So if you die, the Houses die with you. The star warming our system fails, and—becomes a gravitational well, as I understand it?”

“Yes. A black hole, like the one that took out Cyrus,” he said. “I can only hope you’d all be dead already. Oh, there’d still be Cohort ships … hold planets … a scattering of us … but we would be so few, and so many people hate us, and my work is not yet done. I cannot behold that apocalypse, Harrow. I think you are one of the only Lyctors who can really and truly understand apocalypse … It is not a death of fire. It’s not showy. You and I would almost prefer the end, if it came as a supernova. It is the inexorable setting of the sun, without another hope of morning.”

Both of you fell into silence.

“If I fought the Resurrection Beast I’d leave my Houses to die,” he said. “If I fought the Heralds, I might well go mad, which would be the same thing. So I’m shut in here—walled in, really—to prevent the Nine Houses becoming none House, with left grief.”

He looked very tired. He looked very rueful. He said, “Once again. You’re not the only one with limitations.”

“May I ask you a question, Teacher?”

“You’re not sick of them yet?”

You said, “Who was A.L.?”

His eyes flew open. God sat up straight in his chair, looked at you in open astonishment, and he said, “Are you sure you want to go with—that one? Let’s go through all the other, less awkward ones first. How is a baby made? I can do that, easy. I mean, I don’t want to, but I’m ready. I have this little book about babies, bodies, friends, and family. Are you and Ianthe being safe?”

It was your turn to sit up straight in your chair and intone, constructing each syllable with the same rigid emphasis you might give to a skeleton: “We—are not—intimate.”