The nun did not answer. Ianthe made her voice as low and coaxing as it could go, and she pressed: “Make me understand what this is worth to you, Ninth. Think about what you’ve promised. Consider what I am, and what use you might get from me. I am a Lyctor. I am a necromantic princess of Ida. I am the cleverest necromancer of my generation.”

“Like hell you are,” said Harrowhark.

“So impress me,” said Ianthe, unmoved.

In the mirror, that paintless, unfamiliar face tightened. The lips pressed together until they were the pale brown of roses, ashen. Ianthe found herself thinking what the face could have done to it—the top lip was softly curved, as though the painter had not been able to help embellishing where they thought nobody would notice; the arch of that philtrum was close to a poem. The cheek was unreasonably smooth, considering the amount of topological greasepaint those Ninth House pores must have seen; those heavy eyelids, deep-set, thick with black lashes, a vanity that nobody in that shuffling mausoleum had thought to shear. And that was not even considering that the face was taut and stricken with the starvation marks of agony; that she had shaven her head almost fully bald for this, leaving only pinpricks of black stippling her skull.

Then there were the eyes themselves: that solemn and lightless black that, whatever rictus the nun’s face might assume, could not hide the woman; they stared out of Nonagesimus’s face now with mute, flayed appeal, as stark and discomfiting as skinless muscle.

“I will impress upon you this,” the Ninth necromancer said forebodingly, and stopped.

Then she said: “I asked you for a reason. That reason was not your genius, which I admit exists. Nobody who reverse-engineered the Lyctoral process could be anything but a genius. But I haven’t seen anything that makes me believe you are more than—a kind of necromantic gymnast, doing showy tricks without concern for the theory. You’re not of Sextus’s calibre either.”

“No,” said Ianthe lightly, “but Sextus’s head exploded, proving to the world that he hadn’t accounted for everything.”

“I may have been Sextus’s necromantic superior; but he was the better man. You are not even so worthy of that brain as to wipe its bloodied remnants from the wall,” said the Ninth. “You are a murderer, a conwoman, a cheat, a liar, a slitherer, and you embody the worst flaws of your House—as do I … Nonetheless, I did not ask you because you are a Lyctor, Third. I did not even ask you because you know significantly more about your subject than I do.”

“Tell me, because I am hugely bored of hearing all my flaws,” said Ianthe, with lessened patience.

The shadow cultist stared into the mirror. Those great black eyes were empty pools: abyssal holes—an oil spill in the dark—or unfilled sockets.