Abigail’s eyes grew intent; she leant forward. “That’s one bet won,” she said, with grim satisfaction. “All right. When did you become aware of what was happening to you? When did you realise what was going on with the other soul?”

It was easier to answer questions mechanically. “In the first days. I knew she would be absorbed. I understood that I would inadvertently destroy her soul—the process was already underway. But it hadn’t finished. I had time. I decided to remove my ability to so incorporate her … by removing my ability to comprehend her.”

Easier, now, to recall it. A litany. The same singsong recitation as the Eightfold Word. It could almost live apart from suffering. “I took the part of my brain that remembered her … that understood her soul … and I disconnected it. Then I made rather crude systems—so as not to be accidentally reminded … knowing that the pathways might reopen if they were knocked about. I had an accomplice … someone who knew how to manipulate the fatty tissue of the brain better than I possibly could. I made my skull a construct, programmed to apply pressure to specific lobes. And it worked, Pent. It worked,” she said. “It was stupid. A brute-force solution. But it worked.”

Abigail was looking at her very carefully, with a different expression than before. Harrow knew she sounded a little irascible when she said, “What?”

“I think we are talking over each other,” said the Fifth adept, rubbing her mittened hands together. “I’m not asking about the preserved soul that made you a Lyctor, Reverend Daughter … though that’s also filled in some of the pieces. Harrowhark, I am referring to the invasive soul.”

“The invasive—?”

“You are being haunted,” said Abigail calmly. “I had assumed you had picked this battlefield deliberately, and raised an army to fight alongside you. I didn’t quite know why you’d chosen us. Now I know, but it seems you did not. You are possessed by an angry spirit, Harrow, and you are losing the war.”

Harrow reflexively tried to pad out her fat reserves; it was really shockingly cold. She was stopped when she realized she could not identify where they sat under the skin of her arms, let alone augment them. The limitation was familiar: it was the limitation she had lived with all her life, when she was Ninth, and not First. Her furnace of power was gone.

She reached for the memory of her other self—no; she underserved herself by separating herself into two halves, Harrow First and Harrow Secundarius, as though she were following bells. They were all one Harrowhark, wearing different clothes. And she was no better now that her vestments were black—in a way she was greatly worse. But the memory was there.

Think of how when you blow air into water, you make bubbles …