“THESE TWO ARE INTENDED FOR YOU,” said Harrowhark Nonagesimus. “They are to be opened only in the event of my death or of the other happenstance, though I have very little hope of you not opening them the moment my back is turned. The other twenty-two are written in an unbreakable code only I can decrypt, intertwined with a false chamber-code that, if even merely beheld, curses you, your family, and the restive bones of your ancestors, for as long as the name of Ianthe Tridentarius is whispered in necromantic hearing. Twenty-four, in all.”

“I would have just gone with a blood ward, personally,” said Ianthe.

“A blood ward is for those without imagination,” said the astonishingly nude-faced girl. The Ninth necromancer unpainted was revealed to be a lean-faced, diamond-jawed nunlet, with very dark brows divided by a crisscross frowning mark—striking looking, certainly, even spiritual, a good subject for a painting if you were ready to settle for The Ninth House Frowned. “As I cannot reasonably expect not to bleed for the next myriad, I cannot rely upon a blood ward, and neither should you. Are we going to do this, Third, or not?”

“This may not work.”

“You have reminded me.”

“I’ll say it again. The procedure could fail. Or it may work, but only temporarily. There could be any number of side effects—physical disorders—if you push your brain too hard, any surgery could simply heal over—and if you’re doing what I have a suspicion you’re doing, it could play merry hell with scar tissue. This is profoundly experimental. More to the point, it is totally fucking demented.”

Their eyes met in the mirror. The ex-Reverend Daughter had set one up in front and one above her head, which was being held by two of the obedient skeletons of the sort she so obviously loved. Ianthe still did not understand the entrancing appeal of the dark aptitude of the bone; it was as though somebody had decided to make flesh magic less flexible, less subtle, and much less interesting to look at. What was the joke again? That the Ninth House knew a thousand shades of off-white?

She looked down at the tray of tools—scalpel, saw, little bottle of water with a spray nozzle—and astonished herself by saying: “Ninth. Maybe this is an eleventh-hour point to make, but I find myself making it. Tell me what you’re doing. Tell me the details of your grim, dark, and shadowy plan. If you don’t, I have no assurance that I am not about to have a front-row seat as you reduce yourself to a gibbering wreck—or lower. A vegetable. A hunk of wood. A Fourth House write-in advice column.”